Genetic, Epigenetic, and Vitamin D3

Researchers clear your minds as this is the opportunity for new novel designs for preventing and healing disease.

Note 1.

Dr. John Cannell of the Vitamin D Council says that Vitamin D3 targets over 2000 genes or about 10% of the genome.  We have long thought that we are predisposed to get this disease or that disease because our genes were pre-programmed.  We have thought that the genes were responsible and this is correct.  But in the human body it is not only that the genes exist, it is whether it is turned off or on.

Not being hampered by an education in the biological sciences I can freely speculate about how this happens.  We too often are so tied into how a certain thing works.  Our models that we have created in our minds become permanent fixtures. This may or may not be how a process actually presents itself.  Science has had a long history of confirming a certain theory only to find out later that there is more or worse it is not even close to being accurate.  However, the theories that we have developed allow for many wonderful outcomes.

This is the case with genetics.  It is my belief that everybody has a reasonably reliable gene map.  That is; it is capable of given you a healthy life.  Something in our environment has allowed this gene map to be turned off/on.  Genes are almost ‘digital’ in this matter.  Only on occasion do we have a part on gene and part off gene.  Or some cells may be turning on a gene and others may be turning off the same gene or a ‘fuzzy logic’ sort of action.  This happens in tumors where the immature cells continue to grow and their program to stop growth does not act for apoptosis or programmed cellular death.

The genes are present so you cannot really say that we are genetically predisposed.  What has happened is that either because of the stress of the environment or the diet that we consume has had a significant impact on our genes.  Yes there is imprinting from parent to child, but can that be affected by our present environment and our diet.  Evidently this is how the vitamin D3 works.

Here we introduce epigenetics as a way to turn off and on genes.  Epigenetics time line can be seen at this google page where a history of our understanding of this science is displayed.  We see that most of the work in this science did not start to happen until the twenty first century.  We mapped the genome and found that we could not with certainty say that this gene caused a certain happening.  The gene existed, but it was whether it was turned off/on.  This control ‘above genes’ is known as epigenetics.

This idea about how our environments stressed us and our diets affected us in this manner was promoted in a book by Bruce H. Lipton, Phd ( you may find his work here: http://www.brucelipton.com/) called ‘The Biology of Belief’.  Now this was too far out for most doing research in the biological sciences because they had always believed that if the gene existed it would give you a certain result.  It is like saying that because you have a light bulb with power attached that you will have light without consideration for whether the switch is turned off/on.

Some years ago Dr. Randy Jirtle at Duke University starting doing work with twins to try to make some sense of biology versus nurture.  His discovery was that it is both.  You can find out more about his work at this PBS Nova Science Now website.  There is a short video describing his findings.  Be sure to watch one of his researcher’s ‘Tale of Two Mice’ in the middle of the page.  In brief what they found was that by feeding the mother certain nutrients that they could make the offspring either thin with a brown coat or fat with a gray coat.  I am like the fat mouse with the gray coat.

This lead to the discovery that bisphenyl-a or BPA could give an undesirable effect.  Many recent news articles have been published about how BPA would affect your baby.  Here is a recent article form the Chicago Sun-Times. If the bottles that you were using had this form of plasticizers then you could expect a not so good effect on you child.  I believe that by now all of the baby bottle manufacturers have voluntarily removed BPA as they were most likely concerned over the liability.

If you would like to read more about Dr. Randy Jirtle’s work you can find it at his geneimprint website. Also here is his Duke web page for the researchers. It has a brief description of the current work on carcinogenesis.

It seems that methylation or the binding on the surface of genes by methyl groups (free radicals) keeps the genes from expressing themselves for your health.  There are some great images from ‘A Tale of Two Mice’ above that clearly show how this works.  Now some genes we want turned on and some we want off.  In the case of the mice it was a ‘fat gene’ that was staying on constantly.  By feeding the mice methyl donors, the gene was forced off. This seems like a very precarious balance that we need to negotiate.  After all in the press we read about how ‘free radicals’ are really bad for us but in some cases it appears that they are a necessity.  I would suspect that when you are eating the right things this ‘fat gene’ gets turned off and tells the body to not eat any more food.  I also suspect that the mounds of junk food that we eat do not have the right kind of methyl donors.

Now Dr. Cedric Garland and Dr. John Cannell (Newsletter on Vitamin A) have both expressed concern over too much Vitamin A as they believe that it somehow ‘blinds’ the receptors for vitamin D or VDR’s. Dr. Cannell thinks that taking any preformed vitamin A may give you a problem.  He thinks that people should only get their vitamin A from carotene and let the body make whatever retinol and retinoic acid that it needs.  I do not believe this is the case.  This gives me a real disconnect when you read articles about how too much beta-carotene is not good if you have prostate cancer and lung cancer.  This most likely is because vitamin A and vitamin D are antagonist and they deplete each other as the body is using them for health.  Without enough vitamin D to balance the A the cancer gets worse.

During the healing of my vertebral disc, I found that by taking vitamin A from fish liver oil that the cartilage healed quicker.  I had my major increase in height where I actually grew an inch and one half (a sign of healing vertebral disc) in three months when I started taking this form of vitamin A.

I had found from the Oregon State Micro Nutrient center; and from this article from Japan;  that vitamin A and vitamin D worked together for cellular differentiation of chrondrocytes or the cells that form cartilage.  There were many more articles but these two will get you started.

It seems that dimers are formed from the large family of retinol receptors or RXR and vitamin D receptors or VDR.  Also I found that retinoic acid receptors, RAR, and thyroid receptors, TR, work in synergy for cellular differentiation as well. I also started a seaweed supplement for iodine for a healthier thyroid.  If you chose to read more then you may find a paper on this understanding at the Journal of Biological Science, Nuclear Import of the retinoid X receptor, the vitamin D receptor, and their mutual hetrodimer.

So where does this lead us.  Given the body of work by the many scientists on how vitamin D prevents so many different diseases, I propose that vitamin D3 is the ‘master switch’ of epigenetics from nutrients.  It acts like a shepherd in allowing the body’s various hormones to act for your health.  Genes that need to be on get turned on and genes that need to be off get turned off.

The new body of research and drug development for treating various diseases should be pointed toward the combination of nutrients for healing.  I know that the work will most likely be pointed toward drugs and we will just have to read the research to find out what combination of foods will give us health.  After all, our system of medicine is about treatment, the money that results, and not prevention.  However, now that we know the ‘master switch’ or vitamin D3, we can start down the road to health.

I have not lost the weight even though vitamin D3 has a significant effect on blood sugar and insulin which are some of the controls for appetite.  I am that fat gray mouse.  What are those methyl donors -give me some of that!  Somehow I need to overcome the ingrained statement in our family at dinner; ‘Now I need just a little something sweet.’  I suspect that this saying is gene imprinting from my mother-in-law.  Don’t worry; she does not have a computer.  Our environment and how we perceive ourselves and our needs definitely affect our genes.

Get rid of all the bad carbs, eat more good fats, be sure to get enough protein, eliminate the artificial sweeteners because we do not have a clue, and GO INTO THE SUN. 

– Pandemic Survivor

1. Okay researchers, how are you going to make some sense of the combination of nutrients?  I do not think our present statistical method for evaluation of combination of factors will get the job done.  I know that we have forever been using analysis by the variance.  This type of model requires way too much data to determine what is happening with certainty and really does not point to which factor and their interactions that gives you the result.  In manufacturing, I learned a method of analysis of the means which allows you to use small data sets of 3 to 10.  It will plainly show which factor causes what result and more importantly the interaction of the factors and results.  This interaction is what is extremely important in epigenetics. ANOM has been shown by many scholarly papers to be as precise as AOV.  Ellis R. Ott, (ASQ bio) developed ANOM for his work in military and industrial applications which require much accuracy before making a process change.  You can learn the method from his book: ‘Process Quality Control’.  This graphical method will point you to the correct solution without headache.  I am sure that it is available from Amazon as well.