So the hero's journey is all about transformation, isn't it?
We're transforming throughout the entire journey,
whether it's departure, initiation or return.
You know, it's interesting, in initiation, which is what I'm talking about,
Joseph Campbell made it very clear:
It's war out there!
It's hell.
And you need to be armed with everything you can possibly find
to be able to get through it, day by day, minute by minute,
nanosecond by nanosecond.
Now, the transformation you've heard about could be mental, psychological, spiritual.
But I'm going to teach you,
I'm going to guide you through a brand new kind of transformation
based upon a science that's so exciting
that's it's blown the minds of people like myself,
a physician and a scientist, and all my colleagues.
And now I'm going to blow your mind.
Are you ready?
(Audience) Yeah!
Have you ever heard of epigenetics?
Raise your hand.
Okay, very good. Excellent.
Have you had your kale today?
Soon, soon, you'll understand why this is such -
well -
an epigenetic transformation.
A tale of kale.
(Laughter)
Ready?
Okay.
Well,
made it very simple.
First, we start with this:
I was taught, and I'm going to teach you my journey too,
share it with you,
that you are what you eat.
Have you heard this?
Of course! You are what you eat.
So, you know, out there, sometimes it works;
well, sometimes it doesn't.
(Laughter)
I try, and I really do.
So, I try to live a very healthy lifestyle.
There's my armpit picture.
I am a triathlete;
I like to get out there and, you know, get outdoors at any excuse I can,
no matter what it looks like when I do it.
But I do it. I have fun. I show up.
The same thing goes with the food.
Lots of colors - check! check! check!
They tell me what to do - I do it!
That's exactly what I love to do, right?
Did you do that too?
Of course you did.
Everything was going well,
until something rather interesting happened.
Well, you see, the holy grail, all along, was DNA was your destiny,
and that, quite frankly, genes controlled you.
So, you are what you are, you know?
Whatever you got when you were born, you're stuck with!
And that's it!
A little proclivity toward obesity, toward diabetes, heart disease,
ruh roh, you're in trouble.
Right?
What could you do about it?
Well, you kind of just keep remembering,
"Well, I am what I eat. I try to do the best I can."
But as scientists, we never knew where any of this was going.
We had some observational studies, and back and forth.
What was really happening in that black box?
And then all hell broke out in 2007.
That's how recent it was.
The birth of epigenetics.
Let me tell you how it happens.
I'll bet you think that all great science happens with strategy,
and we sit down with blueprints and figure this out right off the bat.
Nah. We're just screwing around in the lab
just trying to figure out fun things to do.
And then one day, something wild and crazy happens.
Dr. Randy Jirtle at Duke University
one day was playing around with some very special mice -
they're called Agouti mice.
Now, Agouti mice have the Agouti gene, appropriately so.
Now, this gene basically condemns them
to a life of being obese, floppy, yellow -
very important because that's connected with this gene -
color of the fur,
and they die early of all the usual suspects:
heart diesease, diabetes and cancer.
Kind of a - not a good life.
Right?
So one day, he was saying, "You know, I know where this gene's located.
And I also know that there are these funny little things called methyl donors -
CH3, a little side chain -
that we could, you know, sometimes play with here,
that might just do something with this gene ...
I don't know.
Well, what's the worst that can happen?"
So how do we give these little happy campers,
these Agouti mice, methyl donors?
You guessed it: It's the green stuff.
Mom was right.
So, he fed them all the greens he could in the form of folate and B vitamins,
a little greens, he kind of ground them all up,
and said, "Here."
And he fed the mothers who were going to become pregnant.
And then he sat around, and he thought, "Well, I wonder what's going to happen."
You see, we scientists have no personal life,
so we sit around looking at cages, waiting for mice to be born.
This is what we do on Friday nights.
Right?
So he's sitting there like this with the whole team,
going, "Okay, let's just pop one of those little babes out
and see what it looks like."
Son of a gun.
The birth of epigenetics.
Only eating greens, that mother produced a baby that was lean, brown
and lived forever.
(Laughter)
How cool is that?
(Laughter)
Eating your greens.
Well, needless to say, this was published,
and this absolutely ripped apart the entire scientific world.
What?!
This is heresy!
DNA is not destiny?
No.
As it turns out, everything you do with your whole life
is now your destiny.
Everything from eating to thoughts that you may have
to every single lifestyle habit
is messing with one thing in particular.
And what that is, is
your very gene expression.
This is a picture from my laboratory at the National Institutes of Health.
These are fat cells - "Know thy enemy."
So -
(Laughter)
This is important - it's like a therapy thing.
Just keep staring at it, and maybe it will just go away after -
But there it is.
And you can see all the way into the nucleus.
Right?
And one of the things we found out was,
wow, I can affect everything from my fat cell distribution
to how many I have.
I could reverse it.
So if I got born with something that was a little funky,
I can dampen that down.
Did you know that if you were born
with the most lethal form of the obesity gene, the FTO gene,
that by doing something as simple as taking a walk every day,
over the course of six months, you dampen it by 40 percent.
Add that - add a little kale to it -
(Laughter)
and then what happens?
Wow, you're way over 50 percent.
We're loving it. This is good! We didn't know this!
Every single thing.
That means, for instance, addiction.
Let's look at that for a moment.
Cigarettes. Like to smoke?
This is your last day.
(Laughter)
Because what happens is over the course of two to three years,
we have counted over 50,000 different genetic mutations
that come out of this,
variations on your gene expression,
because you smoked.
Your body's saying, "What? What are you doing?!
Think about this!"
Well, who's saying that, actually?
Let's go down to the gene level.
When you go to the actual gene level, what do you see?
You see the gene sitting there. Nothing's going on with the gene.
The gene's just sitting there with lots of potential.
Little histones hang around, they're little proteins,
and they basically monitor what's going on.
They play with the volume on this whole thing.
And they basically, "What are you doing?! You're eating a what?!
That's a Ho-Ho!
That's not food. That's a science fair project!
(Laughter)
I can't believe you just put that in your mouth!
Okay, fine! Suffer!"
And then, all of the sudden,
the speech to the rest of the body from that gene
is "Erode immune function."
Here come some allergens. It's just a mess.
(Gasp)
"She ate an apple! Yay!"
And the histones are all having little orgasms.
And they're all happy and everything.
And then they, "Whoa! ..."
And then you augment immune function.
You rock and roll.
You fill your body with phytonutrients.
Isn't that the way to go?
What if you were born with the addictive gene?
You can dampen it; you can quiet it
by every mouthful that you take,
every step that you take with physical movement, for instance.
And also, please, whatever you do, don't forget the brain.
Every thought you have.
Right now, every single one of you,
I'm here as a physician to save your lives.
Don't you just love that?
I love saying that.
Makes me feel so - well, anyway.
I digress.
So what I'd like you to do right now is I want to save your life a little bit.
I want you to turn to the person next to you,
and I want you to say, "You are so cool!" and give them a high five, right now.
(Audience responds)
Alright!
Okay, we're done.
Now, in those few seconds, while you were high-fiving somebody -
get your hands off her! -
(Laughter)
what you were doing was actually changing gene expression.
Because you see you laughing right now? I'm helping save your life. Why?
Research shows that you have a choice:
You can either laugh or be in despair.
You cannot do both at the same time,
because the brain doesn't work that way.
So I'm keeping you over here instead of over there.
Are you enjoying yourselves?
Wonderful. I'm thrilled.
Okay.
(Laughter)
Now, just want to drill it home again.
DNA is not destiny.
This is brand new!
This is so exciting and so empowering!
It's kind of scary too, isn't it?
Because when you think about it, every single thought, every mouthful,
every single movement that you take changes gene expression.
Remember those histones -
they're scoping you right now -
alters your destiny
and transforms the mind-body.
What's not to love?
So, instead of "You are what you eat,"
you are what your parents ate?
Well, that's what this research showed.
So, hmm, wait a minute now,
in my journey, I had to think about this for a second.
No comment about the hair.
(Laughter)
I was helpless.
(Laughter)
Now, there's my mom and my dad.
The good news is they ate well.
So I'm looking pretty good in the neighborhood, right?
What if they didn't? What if they were, like, trash eaters?
I mean, you know, welcome to America.
So here's the deal:
What if they were eating not so well?
A lot of science fair projects.
Hmmm.
Am I still okay? Yeah. You know why?
Epigenetics works that way too.
Here's the way it works.
Remember this.
Genetics may load the gun, but epigenetics pulls the trigger.
Ahhh. I see you're all going, Whew!
Wow, you can put the Prozac away; you're feeling better.
It's good. It's good.
So, I Iucked out. My parents were pretty cool.
Alright?
I'm looking good.
And then all of the sudden, just when I was sitting back,
thinking, "Yeah, this is feeling real good,"
new research showed up:
You are what your grandparents ate?!
Are you kidding me?!
That's two generations.
Look, this is a hero's journey already.
I'm working as hard as I can; I'm trying to do this right.
What?! Two generations?! You're killing me here.
So I started thinking about this for a second.
I know the grandparents on my mom's side.
They're okay; they're exonerated.
Ate okay. Musicians. Joyful. Really nice people. Whatever.
Didn't know my dad's side,
because they died early.
And I was wondering, Wow, who are these people and what goes on?
So this is Grandpa Raymond.
Right?
And this is my grandmother on that side, my father's side.
And that is Grandma Mollnar.
Hmmm. Elizabeth Mollnar.
What were you cooking? How did you eat?
I started getting a little paranoid.
Why? Because the new science, on top of the Agouti mice,
there was something incredible that came down
that you need to understand.
You know, we look at nature and nurture intertwined.
A number of studies showed something really mind-blowing
that I want to share with you.
And that is, the Swedes were the lead-off on this.
The Swedes love to count demographics and numbers.
Indeed, they collected some of the most incredible data I've ever seen.
And this is in the mid-1880s.
There's a wonderful little place called Överkalix.
And in this place - it's fairly remote in Sweden -
they either had feast or famine.
And after looking at multiple generations, guess what they found.
That if you were the child and the grandchild
of someone who had been in famine, you actually live longer.
Because what happens is your genes kick in with survival, don't they?
All of the sudden, you just sort of amp it up with the survival thing.
That's the good news.
The funky news is you also end up having other issues like depression.
Right?
Well, what about if it was feast?
You're sitting around there going, yeah, give me that remote.
And just letting in rip.
What happens with those?
You actually die earlier, all cause.
Hmmm, that's interesting.
What about the horrific issue of World War II
with the Dutch Hongerwinter.
And what they did during that time was
there were little towns in the Netherlands that were cut off, that were blockaded
during that terrible war.
And those people were eating 580 calories a day.
22,000 people died.
What happened to their children and their grandchildren?
They were all very and significantly underweight
for at least two generations,
in addition to the psychological prodrom.
The industrial revolution. Hmm, what's up with that?
A lot of plastics.
A lot of science fair projects.
What do you think that's done?
Hmmm. Could that have laid the groundwork for a lot of the issues we see today?
Question mark.
The epigeneticists are hard at work.
And then finally,
the British Avon study of the mid-1990s.
Guess what they found.
And this was very important information.
When you had the feast or famine,
or when you had, in this case, smoking among men, they looked at specifically.
And if the smoking started between the ages of 9 and 12,
during the time when your epigenome was most vulnerable, guess what happened.
Their sons became overweight and obese and so did their grandchildren.
There's a crossover.
Wow.
Suddenly, I was thinking, grandparents, grandparents. Huh.
I have to know more about this.
I really want to understand more about me.
What happened to that side of the family?
Because that was a big question mark.
So I scoped it out.
Guess what.
I'm the direct descendant of gypsies!
It's a trip!
We have all kinds of Hungarians and gypsies and wild and crazy people
on that side of the family.
And that's what they ate.
What is that yellow stuff, anyway?
I wanted to understand what kind of life they lived.
Well, as it turns out, it was a joyful, wild and crazy life too.
Just different food.
I was kind of interested in that food.
Kind of paranoid.
Where were the greens that I learned to love -
those little methyl donors?
Well, here's a recipe I found
for one of the soups that my grandmother made.
You see where it says kale, right?
(Laughter)
I'm obsessed!
You noticed that.
Well, as it turns out, for crying out loud,
you methylate not just with kale -
that's nothing more than a metaphor
for all the great things you're going to be doing for your body,
epigenetically, with the great thoughts that you had,
with movement that you have,
everything.
And with what you eat, and that's all good stuff.
But I was still paranoid.
I was thinking, hmm, I wonder what my genes look like.
And I don't mean Calvin Klein.
So, I went ahead and got a BodySync data analysis, a DNA analysis.
Guess what I got.
A little swab just like that CSI Miami thing on TV.
I went for the swab, sent it off,
and I sat around thinking, oh no.
And I looked at the whole host of genes.
I wanted to make sure I was methylating optimally.
And so would you.
So, I looked at one particular gene,
especially - I really wanted to hone in on this one.
Because this was a gene that was really, really, really important
to be able to help take methyl donors from folate, like from kale,
and to be able to do DNA repair.
With all the crazy things I do all day long,
and you do all day long,
I wanted to repair my DNA optimally.
So, I looked at this one gene:
methylene tetrahydrofolate reductase.
That's the name of it.
Well, I'd never seen it in gene-speak.
Well, there it is.
(Laughter)
Okay.
I knew you'd get it immediately.
(Laughter)
I looked at it and I fell off my chair.
I said, I can't put that on a slide.
(Laughter)
It's the mother (ahem) gene.
(Laughter)
And in the case of Grandmother Mollnar, it's a - put a G there -
it's a grandmother (ahem) gene.
So there it was. It's an easy one to remember.
Lo and behold, my gene was normal.
There it is. I'm methylating like crazy.
I'm loving every single moment of this.
And I methylate with everything: mind, body ...
mind, mouth and muscle.
All three of them.
So, I was feeling very, very good.
So, I'm going to gift you with something special.
I promised you that on this hero's journey,
you would be armed with something new.
Not just what you already know about:
get in there with perseverance and will power and determination -
of course that's important.
But I want to give you epigene-speak.
So, you know,
getting your veggies.
Well, yeah, you already know all that.
But now when you walk into a grocery store,
I want you to be highly enlightened.
I want you to walk up to the produce section and say,
"I need to score some methyl donors."
(Laughter)
I want to be able to find any way I possibly can
to be able to "do" my methyl donors.
And you keep saying to yourself, "Everything I do"
from the moment you leave here,
what kind of thoughts are you having?
Positive thoughts?
Loving thoughts?
You're changing your very epigenome.
Positive thoughts. Loving thoughts.
What are you putting in your mouth?
Think about it. Be mindful.
What about that physical movement of yours?
Do you actually assume the vertical?
I know it's radical, but do you assume the vertical?
And move!
And rejoice that you can do that.
Ooh, I love that.
The same time, what are you hooked on?
What are your genes hooked on?
Right?
Are you into kicking the fix? Come on! Who needs this nasty thing.
These tall things you spend $12.50 for at the barista.
Ew!
Alright?
Sugary, fatty, salty, hyperpalatable.
It's just kicking in with that food addiction, right?
No. Instead, come on ...
Do kale.
(Laughter)
So, DNA is not destiny!
It's not destiny at all!
You are!
You write the very script of your life!
Mind, mouth and muscle.
You're the ones doing it!
Just sitting here right now.
You're writing away.
Your histones are busily monitoring everything in your life.
You love that.
At the same time, you treat yourself.
I always have a cupcake in at least one slide.
There's always a little treat in there.
And you're also eating
and rejoicing with, ahh, whole foods!
Love it! Love it!
How about that physical activity?
We love that too.
How about mind-body activity?
How about those greens?
Ahh ...
my histones harken.
It's time to methylate.
(Laughter)
I wish you all a very green hero's journey.
(Applause)