With major changes to the nation’s health-care system looming, it may be more important than ever for people to keep track of their own physical health. Primary-care doctors could become increasingly pressed for time, and long-term doctor-patient relationships may be harder to sustain. The growing emphasis on preventive medicine may also place more responsibility on patients to head off illnesses before they become serious.

Proper nutrition is an essential part of maintaining good health and preventing diseases such as diabetes and other ailments. Getting the nutrients your body needs can help keep your immune system strong and ensure proper functioning of your stomach, liver, kidneys and other organs.

So, like the Journal says, we should “be vigilant for anything new or unusual” about our bodies. And if we really want to be ahead of the game, we should make sure our body’s genetic nutrition needs are being met.

If we say to ourselves, “Twinkies aren’t any good for me and they’re making me fat… I really need to stop eating those”, but our true belief is, “But, maaaaaan… I sure do LOVE Twinkies!! I love the way they taste, I love how happy they make me while I’m eating them, I look forward to my Twinkie snack all day long!!” It’s unlikely we’ll be giving up Twinkies anytime soon… we’ve still got too much pleasure attached to the idea of a Twinkie!

Our belief is that the Twinkies are GOOD, therefore our behavior (eating them) is in alignment with that belief.

There’s an even more-important point made towards the middle of the post. It’s so sensible, and so obvious, yet so many people either disregard this fundamental fact or don’t think about it:

A food choice is either congruent with our innate genetic requirements (and moves us toward health), or it’s not.

It doesn’t get much simpler than that.

Think about that when you’re meal-planning…or at grocery store…or the gas station, trying to decide between Zingers and Ding-Dongs. If it’s not in line with your genetic needs, it’s not healthy.

Visit the full post here for some great information and insight.

… 16,450 units per daily serving (50 grams) - three times as powerful as pomegranate juice (ORAC of 5,250) and almost two times more powerful than Acai berry juice (ORAC of 9,200). It is over ten times more potent than juice made from Noni berries (ORAC of 856), Goji berries (ORAC of 706), and blueberries (ORAC of 1,600).

A brief explanation of ORAC:
ORAC is an acronym for Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity - basically, how well a food or supplement performs as an antioxidant. Foods and nutrients with a higher ORAC score are believed to be more effective at eliminating oxygen free radicals in the body, promoting improved health and function of the body.

So, EpiGaia’s high ORAC value - higher than several other nutrition/health drinks and juices - looks pretty impressive. One possible explanation comes from Guohua (Howard) Cao, a physician and chemist who developed the ORAC assay: “It may be that combinations of nutrients found in foods have greater protective effects than each nutrient taken alone.”

If you’d like to read the press release, it’s available here. For more information about EpiGaia, be sure to visit the EpiGaia website and download the free report, “Epigenetic Nutrition: Attaining Natural Good Health through Ancestral Sourced Whole Foods.”

“The birth of this transgenic marmoset baby is undoubtedly a milestone,” stem cell expert Dr. Gerald Schatten, of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and Shoukhrat Mitalipov, of Oregon Health and Sciences University, wrote in a commentary in Nature.

“Transgenic marmosets are potentially useful models for research into infectious diseases, immunology and neurological disorders, for example,” they wrote.

The scientists who successfully implanted the gene are focused on using this new information in research on currently incurable diseases such as Parkinsons disease. See the original article here.

This is just another example of the high degree of commonality in the genes of all living things, and especially between humans and primates. It’s also a great illustration of epigenetics - non-DNA memory in genes plays such an important role in how genetic information is expressed or passed along to offspring.

Fruit flies exposed to certain chemicals transmit changes—bristly outgrowths on their eyes—down at least 13 generations.

Exposing a pregnant rat to a chemical that alters reproductive hormones leads to generations of sick offspring.

People malnourished in adolescence transmit higher rates of heart disease and diabetes to their children and grandchildren.

In these and 97 other cases the changes in subsequent generations were not from changes in DNA but from epigenetics.

According to the Current.com post, the biggest implication of this new research is that “All the stuff we’re synthesizing and creating from plastics to nanomaterials is going to live in our bodies and take its toll down the generations for a long, long time.”

The “glass-half-full’ flipside to this opinion is epigenetic nutrition: we can identify nutrients and specific foods, used by our ancestors, that meet the needs of our present-day bodies.

Scientists think it’s because older people have been exposed to other viruses in the past that are more similar to swine flu than more recent seasonal flus.

But the results come from complicated lab work and calculations, and it’s not yet clear how safe older people actually are from the new infection, federal officials said.

“We can’t say,” said Dr. Anne Schuchat of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. So older people are advised to take the same precautions as their children and grandchildren.

As part of these precautions, it’s always a good idea to make sure your diet has a full compliment of healthy nutrients designed to boost your immune system.

- Cancer patients tend to need more protein than healthy people. Peanut butter crackers, yogurt and fruit, a hard-boiled egg and piece of toast all are good mini-meals.

- White, bland foods tend to help with nausea, such as Cream of Wheat, mashed potatoes, cottage cheese.

- Odors often worsen nausea, and foods served at room temperature rather than warm tend to have milder odors.

- Fresh ginger about 30 minutes before eating also can take the edge off nausea, but not ginger flavoring common in many sodas. A study published last week found ginger capsules work, too.

The most important tip in the list is a reminder to tell your doctor about any over-the-counter dietary supplements you may be taking - including EpiGaia. It’s important to consult your physician whenever you are considering taking a supplement, but it is vital for cancer patients due to possible “dangerous interactions with anticancer medications.”

The complete list is available here: if you or someone you know has cancer, take advantage of these tips to make sure you’re getting the nutrition you need.

Similarly, healthy nutrition and lifestyle choices can positively sway gene expression. “Food is truly medicine when you are talking about epigenetic changes,” Jirtle said…

The epigenome’s malleability highlights the power we can have over the health of ourselves and our children, said Jirtle.

Check out the article here for a great overview of epigenetics, and some of the great health benefits associated with this emerging science.