On nutrition

A new approach to nutrition

Welcome to a site that strives to provide the broadest possible spectrum of nutritional information with an emphasis on the epigenetic effects of individual food components, nutrients or herbs. Some of these have been used for centuries as foods, spices or medicinal herbs, but modern science is shedding new light on their potential uses. Others are substances that have only recently been recognised in natural sources. All of them, however, have extraordinary effects on our physical and mental condition and health.

The tradition of herbal healing is perhaps as old as mankind itself. The oldest written records of it date back to the 3rd millennium BC, but according to archaeological findings, herbs were used for healing as early as the Stone Age. Up until the modern era, they were practically the only medicinal means available to mankind. Not only the natural remedies used, but also the healing systems themselves changed over time.

At the dawn of mankind, it was an empirical approach , i.e. “trial and error”. Very soon, however, an energetic approach probably began to develop, which perceived the human body in terms of energy balance and selected herbs primarily according to their energetic quality. Two healing systems in particular have achieved mastery in this direction: traditional Chinese medicine and the Indian system of Ayurveda, which have survived to the present day.

It was not until modern times that the biochemical approach was developed, which detects the content of active substances in herbs and then uses this knowledge in the treatment of specific health problems.

However, a big change has come in the last two decades, when science has focused on the study of plant substances from the point of view of epigenetics.

Epigenetics or health in your own hands

In the word “epigenetics”, you certainly hear the base “genetics”. But while genetics looks at the order of genes in our DNA and their effect on humans, epigenetics focuses on the mechanisms that allow individual genes to be switched off or on, thereby influencing whether or not they are “read” at all.

The mere existence of a gene does not mean that the gene will be expressed. In order for it to be “read” (i.e. for the body to make proteins according to it), it must be switched on. And it is only three biochemical reactions that influence the switching on and off of genes:

• Gene methylation
• Histone acetylation
• Regulation of microRNAs

The impact of these reactions can be quite substantial. Just look at bees, for example. All those hundreds of bees living together in one hive have exactly the same DNA, and yet they can be very different. While a queen can grow up to 2.5 cm long and lay thousands of eggs, a worker bee with the same genes is just over a centimetre long and infertile. This huge difference is only due to their nutrition – while the worker only receives the so-called royal jelly for the first three days after birth, the queen feeds on it all her life. Thus, nutrition alone determines whether the genes that influence the growth and development of individual bees are switched on or off.

A gene cannot turn itself on or off, it needs an external stimulus to trigger the above-mentioned biochemical reactions (the term epigenetics means something “beyond genes”). One of these stimuli is nutrition, others are the environment or regular physical exercise. Importantly, however, epigenetic processes are largely reversible and we can influence the switching on and off of certain genes ourselves.

Which genes can we influence?

Some genes cannot be influenced by medicinal plants or nutrition at least in adulthood – when you are over thirty, you just don’t grow up. However, we can very effectively turn on genes that co-determine the onset and development of many diseases, including the most serious ones such as cancer or cardiovascular disease or Alzheimer’s disease. But epigenetics can also help us lose weight or slow down ageing.

Epigenetic research on nutritional substances thus gives us a powerful tool to influence our health and quality of life well into old age.