Holistic Health from an Evolutionary Viewpoint
It is becoming more and more clear that the living cell via its genome is aware of and senses its environment and adjusts(adapts) to it. The environment, on its own part, affects the genes directly through mutations or indirectly, by modifying their expression, epigenetically in a physical or steric alteration of the heterochromatin and euchromatin, and with the introduction of chemical tags on genes through, for example, DNA methylation and acetylation.
The genome senses itself through its sensing genes and their proteins, and makes the necessary adjustments to sustain life, by correcting damage done or adopting new 'lifestyle' if damage is permanent but not lethal. Genes exposed to the outer environment are not expressed because of the influence of inhibitory factors from without, while the inner ones, shielded from such influences, are expressed.
These sensors equally determine species body architecture. The master gene which determines the body plan binds many transcription factors or growth factors. Since different species have different genome, they are sensed differently and develop differently. Damage will be lethal if the inbuilt protective mechanisms or checkpoints-- and there are usually several of them-- have been breached. The cell may survive insults but live with a disease. Such a disease may still confer some degree of fitness to the cell by preventing a more lethal one from taking a foothold. Hence enhanced apoptosis will increase susceptibility to Alzheimer's but confer resistance to cancer, and, sickle cell disease will ward off malaria. Healthy hosts with just one effective allele of the gene, however, will pass the trait to future generations.
Geographical(macro-environmental)and functional(micro-environmental)factors impart the genome and drive evolutional adaptations and species developments. We grow when challenged. And that is good. This can only happen if our genomic checkpoints have not been lethally breached in the event. Microbes drive our cell growth and immune system development, provided they don't kill the host. We have a limited pool of immune cells and must manage them well to help us evolve and be able to fight subsequent intruders. Balanced nutrition will help.
Understanding the genome, body function and checkpoints, is a prerequisite to gaining a good, holistic insight into human development, health, evolution and, disease with its prevention and treatment. Hence, we should subject ourselves to challenges such as physical exercise, calorie restriction, mental exercises, commonly referred to as eustress, but not to the breaking point, where checkpoints or protective mechanisms will have been breached to produce disease-causing distress.
Life is therefore a matter of maintaining a healthy balance. For example, too much mental stress will activate the glutamate receptors which further impart neuronal stimulation that can cause cell damage as well as manic disease or, it may impart the inhibitory GABA cells and cause depressive illness. Health maintenance and disease prevention strategies should aim at stretching the body but not overdoing it, so that a healthy balance is achieved and maintained. Health is not the absence of germs, nor is the solution to it adoption of sedentary lifestyle.
If inactivity or complete antisepsis is adopted, how then can we develop, evolve, train our immune system and be able to prevent eventual diseases? But, care must be taken to the effect that checkpoints are not breached as we seek to embrace healthful challenges. The problem remains that, in most cases, we do not know precisely where these checkpoints lie. And, how to feel or macroscopically sense them and strike the perfect balance to achieve optimal health.
The genome senses itself through its sensing genes and their proteins, and makes the necessary adjustments to sustain life, by correcting damage done or adopting new 'lifestyle' if damage is permanent but not lethal. Genes exposed to the outer environment are not expressed because of the influence of inhibitory factors from without, while the inner ones, shielded from such influences, are expressed.
These sensors equally determine species body architecture. The master gene which determines the body plan binds many transcription factors or growth factors. Since different species have different genome, they are sensed differently and develop differently. Damage will be lethal if the inbuilt protective mechanisms or checkpoints-- and there are usually several of them-- have been breached. The cell may survive insults but live with a disease. Such a disease may still confer some degree of fitness to the cell by preventing a more lethal one from taking a foothold. Hence enhanced apoptosis will increase susceptibility to Alzheimer's but confer resistance to cancer, and, sickle cell disease will ward off malaria. Healthy hosts with just one effective allele of the gene, however, will pass the trait to future generations.
Geographical(macro-environmental)and functional(micro-environmental)factors impart the genome and drive evolutional adaptations and species developments. We grow when challenged. And that is good. This can only happen if our genomic checkpoints have not been lethally breached in the event. Microbes drive our cell growth and immune system development, provided they don't kill the host. We have a limited pool of immune cells and must manage them well to help us evolve and be able to fight subsequent intruders. Balanced nutrition will help.
Understanding the genome, body function and checkpoints, is a prerequisite to gaining a good, holistic insight into human development, health, evolution and, disease with its prevention and treatment. Hence, we should subject ourselves to challenges such as physical exercise, calorie restriction, mental exercises, commonly referred to as eustress, but not to the breaking point, where checkpoints or protective mechanisms will have been breached to produce disease-causing distress.
Life is therefore a matter of maintaining a healthy balance. For example, too much mental stress will activate the glutamate receptors which further impart neuronal stimulation that can cause cell damage as well as manic disease or, it may impart the inhibitory GABA cells and cause depressive illness. Health maintenance and disease prevention strategies should aim at stretching the body but not overdoing it, so that a healthy balance is achieved and maintained. Health is not the absence of germs, nor is the solution to it adoption of sedentary lifestyle.
If inactivity or complete antisepsis is adopted, how then can we develop, evolve, train our immune system and be able to prevent eventual diseases? But, care must be taken to the effect that checkpoints are not breached as we seek to embrace healthful challenges. The problem remains that, in most cases, we do not know precisely where these checkpoints lie. And, how to feel or macroscopically sense them and strike the perfect balance to achieve optimal health.
Dr. Oliver Verbe Birnso, MD.
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