The Hemp Connection [Search results for genetics] 

I have been taught that 50% of what influences PCOS is genetic, 25% is nutrition, and 25% is lifestyle.

I have observed that when a person is told they have a"genetically" influenced issue, they tend to view that as a"get out of jail free" card when it comes to making healthy lifestyle choices. In other words, why should you have to worry about lifestyle if genes have so much control?

It is not that simple.

Yes, DNA programs disease risk. But did you know that nutrition can influence DNA? The foods you eat can influence how your DNA expresses itself. So even though the major things we know how to measure with regards to nutrition and PCOS look to be about 25% of the answer, nutrition has an indirect influence on another 50% of what is going on.

The area of study that looks at the influence of diet on genetics is called nutrigenomics. One example you've seen here in this blog is our caution of excessive chromium use and its potential to cause DNA damage.

Too much of a nutrient, too little of a nutrient, imbalances between nutrients…all can be important influences.

The most important thing to NOT do is stop taking good care of yourself and assuming there is nothing that can be done until genetics researchers discover a cure. Chances are, they're going to still encourage you to make many of the same choices you can make right now to help those genes be healthy.

If you're diligent about PCOS news, you probably haven't missed the press release reporting the finding that women with PCOS have 60% higher blood levels of bisphenol-a than other women.

The question is, what can you do with that information? My hunch is that many of you immediately wanted to know where you could get your blood levels tested and what to do if they turned out to be high. I worked much of yesterday trying to put together some answers for you, because it's highly likely that soon there will be people out there marketing solutions to all of you, some of which might be helpful…and others which are more likely to help fatten the other person's wallet than to improve your own personal situation.

The first thing I looked for was whether or not there was any way you could actually have your own blood BPA levels tested. I wrote to the Environmental Working Group, who has done some BPA testing, and who I trust.

Here is their response:

Thank you for your interest in EWG's work. Unfortunately, testing for toxins in the body is an expensive and time consuming endeavor. Some commercial labs will test for certain chemicals (and your physician may be some help here), but the kind of tests we ran for our BodyBurden reports would be almost impossible to procure for the average individual, not to mention cost prohibitive.

We are not associated with any lab in particular, but you might find the study’s methodologies--and what tests were run, and where--helpful:
http://archive.ewg.org/reports/bodyburden1/
http://archive.ewg.org/reports/bodyburden2/

In addition, we do not recommend that individuals seek body burden testing for the chemicals in the Human Toxome Project. These tests rarely provide any concrete information regarding the origin of your condition or the sources of your exposure.

1. Health effects of many of the industrial chemicals at levels found in people are mostly unknown. Most studies measure the toxic effects of these chemicals at high doses in animals. Few studies reveal potential health concerns from the complex, low-dose mixtures found in people.

2. We cannot at this time associate current health problems or predict future health problems from the chemicals that might be in your body. Scientists are only beginning to study the health effects of repeated exposures to trace levels of these chemicals. While studies suggest that some specific chemicals may play a role in certain health problems, risks to an individual are largely unknown. Genetics, timing of exposure, and levels of exposure all may be important.

3. Even if you were to be tested for dozens of chemicals, you would not know the added effect of the hundreds of other industrial chemicals that contaminate the human body at any given moment. The additive effects of the chemical mixtures found in people make understanding the potential health implications of your personal exposures even more complicated.

As an alternative we recommend that you review our site for suggestions of ways to limit your exposure to toxic chemicals, and join us in our fight for more protective policies that limit our exposures to harmful chemicals. Policy measures are the most permanent, cost effective, precautionary and equitable way to protect our health. Thanks again for your interest in our work.

Bottom line: running out and getting yourself tested for your own BPA levels is not a recommended response. Staying apprised and learning how to limit BPA exposure are great preventive strategies.

It’s normal to have some anxiety from time to time. Everyone experiences anxiety as a normal reaction to threatening, dangerous, uncertain, or important situations. When you’re taking a test, going on a trip, or meeting your prospective in-laws for the first time, you’re going to have anxiety. Psychologists classify anxiety as normal or pathological. Normal anxiety can enhance your function, motivation, and productivity, such as the person who works well under pressure.

But there’s a larger problem called Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), and it affects an estimated five to seven million Americans. People with GAD experience pathological anxiety, which is excessive, chronic, and typically interferes with their ability to function in normal daily activities. GAD patients are about 60%women/40% men, and women with PCOS are affected by anxiety disorders more often than other people, just as we’re more affected by depressive disorders.

There are biological and environmental risk factors for GAD, which include the following:

• Environmental stressors (e.g., work, school, relationships)

• Genetics (Research has shown a 20% risk for GAD in blood relatives of people with the disorder and a 10% risk among relatives of people with depression.)

• Sleep deprivation, sleep inconsistency

Stress in the following areas can intensify symptoms:

• Financial concerns

• Health

• Relationships

• School problems

• Work problems

Symptoms include trembling, general nervousness or tension, shortness of breath, diarrhea, hot flashes, feeling worried or agitated, trouble falling asleep, poor concentration, tingling, sweating, rapid heartbeat, frequent urination, and dizziness. A panic attack, which is an extreme manifestation of anxiety, may feel like a heart attack, and sends many patients to the emergency room. If you’re having these types of symptoms, you should definitely make sure you’ve seen a physician to rule out medical conditions.

This type of anxiety is obviously more severe than normal anxiety, and can even be quite disabling. There might be a tendency to expect the worst without clear evidence, with particular worries about health, finances, job, and family. Individuals often can’t relax, sleep or concentrate on the task at hand. This disorder affects the quality of work and home life. You may know that your worry is excessive, but don’t feel like you can do anything about it. There are also some cultural issues — many people in the United States who are diagnosed with GAD claim to have been nervous or anxious their whole lives. Eastern societies, on the other hand, perceive and treat anxiety differently, as something associated with pain. So anxiety may be seen as normal in one setting, and pathological in another setting.

GAD is associated with irregular levels of neurotransmitters in the brain. Neurotransmitters are chemicals that carry signals across nerve endings. Neurotransmitters that seem to involve anxiety include norepinephrine, GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid), and serotonin. Anxiety may result in part from defects in serotonin neurotransmission, and drugs that augment this activity may be useful in the treatment of anxiety disorders. However, many therapists believe that GAD is a behavioral condition and should not be treated with medication. Further, some believe GAD is more closely related to depression than to anxiety. I tend to believe that there’s a spectrum, and usually, if you’ve got depression, you’ve got some anxiety, and vice versa. There also seems to be a correlation between GAD and other psychiatric disorders, including depression, phobia disorder, and panic disorder. Anxiety is a risk factor for sleep disorders such as insomnia.

If you have numerous symptoms of anxiety, it’s important to be evaluated by a mental health professional who can help you identify the causes of your anxiety, and teach you ways to manage your anxiety. Many forms of therapy are effective, and I see great results in my anxiety clients who practice yoga or meditation (or both!). If that’s not enough, you can be evaluated by a psychiatrist and try some of the highly effective anxiety-reduction medications.

Gretchen Kubacky, Psy.D. is a Health Psychologist in private practice in West Los Angeles, California. She has completed the inCYST training. She specializes in counseling women and couples who are coping with infertility, PCOS, and related endocrine disorders and chronic illnesses.

If you would like to learn more about Dr. HOUSE or her practice, or obtain referrals in the Los Angeles area, please visit her website at www.drhousemd.com, or e-mail her at AskDrHouseMD@gmail.com. You can also follow her on Twitter @askdrhousemd.

Have you given up on changing your lifestyle because you've read that PCOS has a genetic connection? Did you know that what you eat, among other things, affects how your genes behave?

We've got a webinar on the topic tomorrow. If you can't make the live session, it will be available to purchase in its recorded form through December 31, 2010. This webinar can be attended individually, or as a component of the comprehensive PCOS professional training. The individual session costs $40, and the comprehensive training is $425.

Please note the time for YOUR TIME ZONE:
2 pm Eastern Daylight Time
1 pm Central Daylight Time
12 noon Mountain Daylight Time
11 am Pacific Daylight Time/Arizona

Linda's webinar will include
- Understanding the basics of genetics
- Fundamentals of Nutritional Genomics
- How diet and lifestyle can influence gene expression
- Why your DNA is not your destiny

ABOUT THE PRESENTER

Linda Caley, MA, RD, is a registered dietitian in private practice in Colchester, Connecticut. Her practice focuses on providing nutritional therapy and guidance for individuals of all ages. In addition to PCOS, she enjoys working with people with eating disorders and distorted body image, weight management issues, diabetes, and general, healthy lifestyle recommendations.

Linda has a special interest in functional medicine/nutrition, and its application to PCOS management.

Click here to register.

A friend of mine is a two-time survivor of breast cancer. She is a single woman, diagnosed at age 40, who chose a double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery. Along the way, she’s had a lot of challenging medical procedures, fears, and unpleasant side effects. After dealing with the immediate medical issues, she realized she was depressed, and turned to the internet for help.

She found numerous online resources for cancer, and breast cancer specifically. She was steeped in depression, lethargic at best, but that’s when she got angry! Her anger pleased me as a therapist, by the way, because getting angry often leads to action, and she needed to take some serious action to get out of her depression. She found that there were a lot of people saying “Why me?” about cancer. (As an aside, there are two very helpful organizations online called www.whyme.org for pediatric cancer and www.y-me.org for breast cancer.). But what she said to me is “Why NOT me?! Who am I to be so special that I escape a very common disease?” She found “why-ing” to be pointless and actually an impediment to her getting well. And here I’d been thinking that it was a perfectly reasonable question!

I’d venture a guess that you’ve said “Why me?” more than a few times when it comes to your PCOS. I know I have. There are many questions and thoughts that come along with that first thought, and all of them have the underlying subtext of “THIS IS SO UNFAIR”:

• Why do other women get to go on a diet and lose weight with relative ease?
• Why do other women get pregnant by accident, and I tried for a decade and it never happened?
• Why do I have to shave my face every day (or spend thousands of dollars on laser hair removal and electrolysis)?
• Who is ever going to love me/want to have sex with me when I look like this?
• Why do I have to take all these supplements?
• Why can’t I eat carbs like normal people?
• WHAT is happening with my hair?
• Why do I need an endocrinologist? And a cardiologist? And, and, and…

It IS unfair. It’s expensive, inconvenient, awkward, uncomfortable, scary, humiliating, enraging, and a whole lot of other things. And yet, the reality is, 10 – 20% of women have PCOS. You are fortunate enough to know that you’ve got it, so you can start dealing with it proactively. You found this blog, and hopefully some other resources. As http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_von_Humboldt Karl Wilhelm von Humboldt says, “How a person masters his fate is more important than what his fate is.”

So your fate is PCOS. I know it’s a hard thing to accept. But once you can move to acceptance you can take action. Mastery of your fate means taking control, and making choices that support your good health. It means understanding that, although genetics dealt you a bad hand, there are many things you can do to positively affect the daily quality of your life, and your long-term health, well-being, and longevity.

Instead of saying “Why Me?” (and really, it IS okay to say it every now and then – you’re not perfect, you’re human, and a little self-pity may be a necessary step along the road to further and fuller acceptance), see if you can feel a shift in your mental landscape by saying “Why not me? Yeah, why not me?” Then move forward from there with something more productive.

Gretchen Kubacky, Psy.D. is a Health Psychologist in private practice in West Los Angeles, California. She specializes in counseling women and couples who are coping with infertility, PCOS, and related endocrine disorders and chronic illnesses.

If you would like to learn more about Dr. HOUSE or her practice, or obtain referrals in the Los Angeles area, please visit her website at www.drhousemd.com, or e-mail her at Gretchen@drhousemd.com. You can also follow her on Twitter @askdrhousemd.

I'm a nutritionist, I studied nutrition in school for 4 years, and I've been practicing in the profession for 26 years. You think that would give me enough time to learn about every fruit and vegetable there is to know about. Not. A few years ago I walked into the local produce section and there was this funky spotted thing called a PLUOT. What the heck?!?!?!

The produce man told me it was a cross between a plum and an apricot. That sounded cool, given the fact that half the time I ever bought apricots they were mealy and I like to try new things. I loved the taste and they've become one of my favorite summer treats.

I learned some interesting things about pluots while researching this blog post.
1. Since pluots are a genetic cross-breed, they are actually a trademarked product of the company Zaiger's Genetics. Even though they are genetically cross-bred, they are NOT genetically modified. That is an entirely different agricultural technique.
2. Depending on how much plum and how much apricot is in the fruit, you have different names, including aprium and plumcot.
3. Sometimes, because they can be speckled, pluots are called dinosaur plums.
4. One medium pluot has 80 calories and no fat.

The type of pluot shown in the picture, what I have in my refrigerator right now, is called a Dapple Dandy.

I like to eat them plain. They're handy to throw in a bag for an afternoon snack! This week I've been cutting them up to put into my morning oatmeal. I've seen recipes where sliced, grilled pluots have been added to a barbecue meal.

If you're an adventurous eater, or just bored with the same old fruits, consider trying a pluot. They'll be in your store through the fall.