Genetic susceptibility means that’s you may have an increased risk of developing a particular disease or condition based on your genetic makeup

We look at key genes involved in methylation and detoxification because we believe that your health can be improved by understanding this. Let me give you an example:

Let’s say that in your family, there are many members that suffer from estrogen dominant conditioned like fibrocystic Breasts, fibrocystic ovaries, endometriosis, fibroids, Breast cancer, prostate cancer. Then our first steps would be to look at your genes that get rid of toxic estrogen from the body like COMT, CYP1B1, Glucuronidation genes and if you have mutations (changes from the norm) then we would help those genes (and enzymes) to work better with specific nutrients so you don’t get the build up of toxic estrogen. So you don’t end up with conditions that may run in your family.

This is incredibly exciting, because it means that you can change the course of your families health.

Obviously our environment has the biggest part to play in all this. Because its actually your environment that causes the genes to express. Let’s take the example of estrogen metabolism again. There are many fake estrogens in our environment (called xenoestrogens) that block our estrogen receptors and make the condition worse. These include plastics and phthalates and chemicals in our personal care products and sunscreens. So if we know this we can avoid them further.

Of course you can’t say that one gene is responsible for a disease and the research now is focused on identifying genetic changes that have a small effect on disease risk but are common in the general population. Although each of these variations only slightly increases a person's risk, having changes in several different genes may combine to increase disease risk significantly. Changes in many genes, each with a small effect, may underlie susceptibility to many common diseases, including cancer, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and mental illness.

You are born with the genes you have and there is nothing you can do about that. You cannot change the genes but you can certainly change the way they act. In people with a genetic predisposition, the risk of disease can depend on multiple factors in addition to an identified genetic change. So our lifestyle and our environment has a big influence. That’s why we need to improve both of these factors to help improve health.

These are exciting times. We have the power to make significant changes if we know what factors may influence it.