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Can your grandfather's diet shorten your life? · Stuff You Should Know

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  Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
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  Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff You Should Know
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  Speaker 1: from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
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  Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant,
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  Speaker 1: and I'm Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and I'm Josh Clark.
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  Speaker 1: And that makes this stuff you should know? Right, Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: So this is our podcast. We've been doing it for
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  Speaker 1: a while. And um, are you welcoming new listeners? Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: here's another one. Okay, all right, and actually I'm pretty
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  Speaker 1: excited about this one. I've been wanting to do this
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  Speaker 1: one for a while. You've been bugging me. Genetics, Chuck it,
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  Speaker 1: do it. Let's do it. The cutting edge of research
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  Speaker 1: of human, of our understanding of life, not just human,
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  Speaker 1: of all life. My mind was blown. It's a pretty
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  Speaker 1: big deal, real big deal. So, Chuck, you've heard of
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  Speaker 1: the genetic revolution. Charles Darwin, he had a long beard,
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  Speaker 1: loved seat turtles, that kind of thing. He's a vacation
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  Speaker 1: in the Galapa Ghosts right. He um wrote on the
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  Speaker 1: Origin of the species and h it was a pretty
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  Speaker 1: groundbreaking book. It's basically what He came up with, was
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  Speaker 1: we are driven by our genes, right, we have genetic
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  Speaker 1: code and our DNA, and that makes us red headed,
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  Speaker 1: it makes us timid, it makes us courageous pro to cancer,
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  Speaker 1: right exactly, and it makes us stick tongued alright sometimes yeah,
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  Speaker 1: and we are slaves to these genes, right, there's nothing
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  Speaker 1: we can do to alter and we get him from
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  Speaker 1: our parents. But you know, if if we find out
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  Speaker 1: that over time, being thick tongued is um say, advantageous
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  Speaker 1: to human survival, we're all gonna talk like me. But
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  Speaker 1: millions of years from now, at least hundreds of thousands,
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  Speaker 1: it definitely does. And I just look for it in
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  Speaker 1: the future, okay, when we're all running around with robot bodies. Um.
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  Speaker 1: There was another guy, and actually Darwin, just to show off,
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  Speaker 1: once came across a type of orchid, right, the moon orchid,
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  Speaker 1: I believe it's what it's called. And it had a
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  Speaker 1: very very deep, um, I guess pistol pistol or statement.
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  Speaker 1: I can never keep those things apart. And the nectar
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  Speaker 1: was down in there and he looked at that flower
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  Speaker 1: and said, you know what, there is an organism out there,
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  Speaker 1: probably a flying organism that it has a probosist that
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  Speaker 1: fits perfectly into that flower. It was a hawk moth.
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  Speaker 1: And sure enough, a few a few years later, at
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  Speaker 1: some point in time later, they discovered the hawk moth
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  Speaker 1: and it was pretty much literally made to fit. Right.
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  Speaker 1: So there's another guy named Jean Baptiste Lamarck, who I
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  Speaker 1: know you've heard of as well, right, all and all
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  Speaker 1: his Lamarkian stuff. Right, he was, He was about sixty
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  Speaker 1: to eighty. He was working about sixty or so years
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  Speaker 1: before Darwin. He had his own ideas based on giraffe's right. Yes,
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  Speaker 1: he said that giraffe's next grew to reach the food,
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  Speaker 1: but it was just over the course of a few generations, right,
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  Speaker 1: And that's kind of flies in the face of Darwin. Yeah, sure,
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  Speaker 1: who said it takes hundreds of thousands of years with
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  Speaker 1: this stuff called epigenetics that we're about to talk about today.
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  Speaker 1: Suddenly people are starting to go back and look at Lamarck,
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  Speaker 1: who was kind of dismissed as a quack. Yeah, um,
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  Speaker 1: and say, you know what, lamark may have been right
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  Speaker 1: in this one. Yeah, prepare for your minds to be melted.
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  Speaker 1: Let's all I have to say. Let's talk about epigenetics
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  Speaker 1: Chuck and go Joshua's first talk about the genome. I
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  Speaker 1: heard a computer reference analogy that I thought was was
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  Speaker 1: pretty spot on. If you think of the genome as
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  Speaker 1: computer hardware, then the epigenome would be the software that
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  Speaker 1: tells the computer what to do and when to do it.
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  Speaker 1: But in this case, the epigenome tells your cells what
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  Speaker 1: to do, what kind of cells to be, when to
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  Speaker 1: activate or deactivate. So like I guess every cell or yeah,
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  Speaker 1: the d n A and every cell in the human
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  Speaker 1: body has the exact same DNA. You have like half
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  Speaker 1: of your mother's and half of your father's when it
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  Speaker 1: comes together and gives you your d n A. Right, Um,
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  Speaker 1: And if you look at the DNA and every cell
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  Speaker 1: from a uh, the kind of cell that makes up
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  Speaker 1: your fingernail, what would that be a carat in a
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  Speaker 1: site okay, to a sperm cell? Right, very very specialized
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  Speaker 1: type of cell. They all have the same d n A,
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  Speaker 1: They have the same genes in there um, But what
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  Speaker 1: makes them different and what makes a carat in a
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  Speaker 1: site and a sperm cell Those things are the the
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  Speaker 1: tags on those genes. So some are turned off, some
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  Speaker 1: are turned on, and in a specific combination you have
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  Speaker 1: either a cretin, a site or sperm cell, or a
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  Speaker 1: neuron or a cell that makes up your eyeball, all
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  Speaker 1: of that stuff. So it's essentially it's a chemical tag
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  Speaker 1: that literally changes the physical structure of your genome. So
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  Speaker 1: it'll bind tightly, let's say, to an inactive UH gene
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  Speaker 1: and make it unreadable, or it'll stretch out an active
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  Speaker 1: gene and make it really accessible, physically changing it. And
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  Speaker 1: epigenetics means above the genome because these tags, these they
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  Speaker 1: are called methyl tags, which is what one hydrogen and
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  Speaker 1: two carbon carbon and hydrogen bundles. Yeah, okay, so it's
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  Speaker 1: a really group. It's a really simple um compound UM.
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  Speaker 1: But they they they attached to the gene and a
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  Speaker 1: place where other proteins or enzymes normally would attach to
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  Speaker 1: activate it. So basically what they do is block a
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  Speaker 1: gene from being activated and they can silence them. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: so it's like a light switch. Literally you can turn
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  Speaker 1: off some genes and turn off others. UM and the
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  Speaker 1: the honey bee actually is is a pretty good demonstration
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  Speaker 1: of this. Did you read about honey bees? Okay, so
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  Speaker 1: you've got a worker bee, right, which is a sterile,
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  Speaker 1: kind of mindless um B that just does what it's
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  Speaker 1: supposed to do. Agreed. Hey, I'm all down with may Day,
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  Speaker 1: all right? Uh uh with um? A queen bee you
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  Speaker 1: have this, Uh, First of all, she can reproduce, she
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  Speaker 1: goes and kills other rival queens. She does um kind
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  Speaker 1: of all sorts of other stuff that a worker bee
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  Speaker 1: isn't capable of doing. Um. And what they found was
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  Speaker 1: a queen bee queen bee larva raised in this royal jelly, right,
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  Speaker 1: which worker bees secrete from their their heads. It's just
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  Speaker 1: nutrient rich jelly, so the larva grows in it. And
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  Speaker 1: what they found, Yeah, it sounds kind of good, doesn't that?
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  Speaker 1: Just because of the jelly part. What they found was that, um,
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  Speaker 1: the royal jelly has it adds a methyl tag to
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  Speaker 1: the queen bee larva's d n m T three gene.
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  Speaker 1: And this gene is like literally the on off switch.
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  Speaker 1: If this gene is on, it goes to the default
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  Speaker 1: worker be right right. If it's off, then all the
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  Speaker 1: genes that that make a queen be a queen bee
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  Speaker 1: are able to be turned on. Crazy, isn't it so?
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  Speaker 1: Epigenetics happens in bees as well and mice. Yes, the
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  Speaker 1: they've done a lot of studies with mice obviously in
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  Speaker 1: the a goody gene in these mice, and they would
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  Speaker 1: they experiment with um with these mice affecting basically turning
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  Speaker 1: on and off the epigenetic switch. So an unmethylated gene
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  Speaker 1: would affect the mouse's size and weight and then and
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  Speaker 1: then coat color. It makes them real fat and like yellow, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: instead of skinny and brown. Have you seen one of
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  Speaker 1: these things? Yeah, they're huge. They should all be named Wilburg.
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  Speaker 1: The cool thing is though they showed the difference between
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  Speaker 1: the skinny brown one and the fat yellow one. But
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  Speaker 1: then they also did experiments where they did half and half,
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  Speaker 1: like turned on half of them and turned off half
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  Speaker 1: of them, and they literally showed him in a sequence.
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  Speaker 1: I don't know if you saw this picture, but they
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  Speaker 1: went from fat yellow to skinny brown, and in between
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  Speaker 1: they got thinner and with spotted coats along the way,
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  Speaker 1: crazy like yellow and brown spotted coats. That specific. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: and the one of the ways that they have found
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  Speaker 1: that they can manipulate these what is it A goody
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  Speaker 1: goody gene and these mice that I guess our bread
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  Speaker 1: specifically for this gene to be easily observed or something
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  Speaker 1: to um is through diet. So they've actually taken a
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  Speaker 1: goody jeen mice mothers who are pregnant fed him a
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  Speaker 1: bunch of UM B vitamins in their diet. Yeah, soy
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  Speaker 1: is a really easy, easy grab for B vitamins. Uglie. Right,
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  Speaker 1: Um fed these these pregnant, big fat yellow, ugly mice
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  Speaker 1: B vitamins and their kids came out that that healthy,
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  Speaker 1: skinny brown right. Um. They had identical moms with the
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  Speaker 1: same like a goody gan, same upbringing, shame everything. Just
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  Speaker 1: fed them in the normal mouth diet without vitamin B
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  Speaker 1: and they had the big fat yellow kids. So diet
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  Speaker 1: is a really big factor in epigenetic changes. Like, let's
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  Speaker 1: think about this for a second. Okay, what what Chuck
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  Speaker 1: and I are talking about right now is that science
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  Speaker 1: has found evidence that you can change the genetics of
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  Speaker 1: your children by eating B vitamins or by being abused
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  Speaker 1: when you're pregnant. Well, see that's what gets me. Some
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  Speaker 1: of the diet like makes a little bit of sense,
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  Speaker 1: but the fact that an environmental stimulus placed on your
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  Speaker 1: mom or even your grandparents can affect your children or
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  Speaker 1: grandchildren something you didn't even experience at all. It's kind
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  Speaker 1: of unfair. And actually, I have to tell you, the
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  Speaker 1: more I study this, the more worried I am for
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  Speaker 1: my own child or children. Like. Really, what they're finding
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  Speaker 1: is the decisions that you make, especially at a young
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  Speaker 1: fish age, are going to affect several generations because these
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  Speaker 1: what you're doing is adding methyl taps. What we're talking
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  Speaker 1: about is pretty much the definitive answer to the nature
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  Speaker 1: and nurture debate. And what we're finding is both you
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  Speaker 1: have nature, which is your genes, and they're very much active,
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  Speaker 1: but you have nurture, which is the environment. Whether it's diet,
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  Speaker 1: whether it's stress um, whether it's lack of exercise. Your
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  Speaker 1: body responds to these changes by saying, okay, all right,
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  Speaker 1: well then we need to If you're gonna lay around
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  Speaker 1: and be fat, then we have to we have to
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  Speaker 1: deactivate this gene. We will punish your grandkids, and your
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  Speaker 1: grandkids who are trying to be normal are going to
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  Speaker 1: be fat little kids that have live you know, shortened lives.
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  Speaker 1: And this is where it came from, right, Chuck, wasn't
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  Speaker 1: there there was a study in Sweden that kind of
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  Speaker 1: broke this ground. Yeah, didn't they find that? Um, it
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  Speaker 1: was a very isolated group of people in Sweden, and
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  Speaker 1: at the time they were very isolated at least where
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  Speaker 1: they couldn't get help from the outside world, very very readily.
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  Speaker 1: And I think they studied the famine in that right. Well,
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  Speaker 1: they the famine affected the generations afterwards. Well, they had
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  Speaker 1: like feast or famine. It was like an agricultural town.
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  Speaker 1: And they looked at these agricultural records that this town
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  Speaker 1: kept for some reason, like really detailed records for throughout
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  Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, and some years there was nothing and
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  Speaker 1: people starved death. The next year there was everything. And
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  Speaker 1: they found that the grand parents, the grand fathers, um
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  Speaker 1: who feasted and starved within a year of one another. Um,
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  Speaker 1: their grandkids lived in average of thirty two years shorter
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  Speaker 1: or less. Then it's the same the grandkids of the
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  Speaker 1: same people who didn't have that kind of feast or
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  Speaker 1: famine experience in the same town around with the same
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  Speaker 1: socioeconomic conditions. So yeah, that's three generations right there, right. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: did you hear about the Angelman syndrome and the Prodavadi syndrome.
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  Speaker 1: No to they I saw that actually it was a
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  Speaker 1: PBS documentary. The it's called The Ghost in Your Genes.
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  Speaker 1: Did you watch that, dude? It's on YouTube. It's in five,
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  Speaker 1: I think five or six sections of ten minutes a piece.
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  Speaker 1: It's a full show. Mind blowing. Uh. They found that
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  Speaker 1: there's there's these two different syndromes and I won't get
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  Speaker 1: too deep into what they are, but Angelman syndrome and uh,
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  Speaker 1: Prida Villi syndrome is what it's called. And they found
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  Speaker 1: the Italian proddy. Sorry I dropped the ball there. Uh. Basically,
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  Speaker 1: what causes each of these is a missing piece of
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  Speaker 1: DNA and it can cause two different disease. What they
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  Speaker 1: found it and cause to these two different diseases, they're
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  Speaker 1: completely unrelated depending on which parent it came from, which
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  Speaker 1: missing uh part of the gene it came from. So basically, uh,
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  Speaker 1: it's as if the gene knew where it was coming from,
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  Speaker 1: like gene imprinting. The gene had a memory that, oh,
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  Speaker 1: it came from the father, so you're gonna have Angelman syndrome,
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  Speaker 1: or it came from the mother, so you're gonna have
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  Speaker 1: proda eility. Right, And this is a relatively recent discovery.
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  Speaker 1: We were talking about them looking at agricultural records of
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  Speaker 1: the nineteenth century in Sweden. That was a doctor named
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  Speaker 1: Dr Lars olov Bygren, but he was working in the
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  Speaker 1: mid eighties and he didn't really start to lay the
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  Speaker 1: foundation of epigenetic research until the mid to late nineties.
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  Speaker 1: So this is a very new field. But what they're finding,
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  Speaker 1: and what Chuck was just saying, is that your parents
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  Speaker 1: can pass on these epigenetic changes that happened within themselves, right, Um,
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  Speaker 1: and your grandparents can too. But this isn't supposed to happen.
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  Speaker 1: What happens when an egg and a sperm meat, right,
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  Speaker 1: and it's like, hey, here's half, here's my DNA, here's
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  Speaker 1: my DNA, right, and they get together. Um. There is
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  Speaker 1: actually a process where these specialized cells go through and
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  Speaker 1: basically clean the d n A of methyl tags. But
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  Speaker 1: they found that not all methyl taps get cleaned off,
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  Speaker 1: so diet can affect certain genes. These methyl taps can
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  Speaker 1: be passed down. Um, and and with abuse as well.
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  Speaker 1: Uh have you heard about PTSD? Yeah down, Yeah, They
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  Speaker 1: covered that in the in that special as well. They
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  Speaker 1: did a test with pregnant women who were in New
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  Speaker 1: York at the time of nine eleven. Did you hear
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  Speaker 1: about this one? Yeah, this is really recent study, right, Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: And they basically found that pregnant women the experience that
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  Speaker 1: were pregnant at the time the towers came down and
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  Speaker 1: experienced post traumatic stress disorder. They found that their babies
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  Speaker 1: had lower levels of cortisol, just like their moms did,
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  Speaker 1: which helps you deal with stress, helps you how you
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  Speaker 1: deal with stress. So these little babies inherited, basically inherited
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  Speaker 1: post traumatic s disorder from their mothers. In the and
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  Speaker 1: um cortisol it's a hormone and it would be produced
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  Speaker 1: by a gene or expressed by a gene, and how
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  Speaker 1: much or how little is express depends on whether that
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  Speaker 1: gene is silenced, whether it's altered. And that alteration comes
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  Speaker 1: from metal tags which can be passed down, so PTSD
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  Speaker 1: can be passed down, right, Yeah. And they're what they're
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  Speaker 1: speculating now that and this is obviously speculation because these
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  Speaker 1: kids are still young, but they're speculating that it's gonna
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  Speaker 1: happen to their kids as well, and that's gonna be
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  Speaker 1: the real like gold nugget right there. There. They do
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  Speaker 1: go away eventually, they think methyl tags. Well, they have
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  Speaker 1: in like fruit flies. With fruit flies it's like four generations,
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  Speaker 1: but fruit flies have a generation every like five minutes.
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  Speaker 1: And now um. And then I think with mice it's
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  Speaker 1: like forty generations or something like that. Um. And with
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  Speaker 1: humans they expect it to be somewhere around three, maybe
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  Speaker 1: a few more. And then the yeah, because what's happening
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  Speaker 1: is our bodies are responding to environmental cues to change.
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  Speaker 1: And then after those environmental cues go away, the body's like, okay,
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  Speaker 1: well we can go back to normal now and get
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  Speaker 1: rid of this meth al tag. So we've got nutrition. Right.
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  Speaker 1: You are what you're You are what you eat, You
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  Speaker 1: are what your parents eight, you are what your grandparents eight. Uh.
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  Speaker 1: And then there's um things like stress which parenting right
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  Speaker 1: and yeah, I think they found with mice, mice mothers
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  Speaker 1: that didn't nurture their kids um or nurse their kids,
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  Speaker 1: uh raise kids produced kids that were kind of jumpy
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  Speaker 1: and um, I guess had the mice version of PTSD.
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  Speaker 1: And they theorized that the the body had undergone an
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  Speaker 1: epigenetic change to prepare these mice for stressful life because
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  Speaker 1: they need to be on guard, you know, which if
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  Speaker 1: you think about it, Chuck, I wrote a blog post
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  Speaker 1: about us. It's possible. What we call PTSD is an
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  Speaker 1: epigenetic change that says you live in an environment where
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  Speaker 1: you can't just you can't relax, right, So we're gonna
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  Speaker 1: make you jumpy, you're gonna be edgy, and you're going
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  Speaker 1: to have flashbacks so that you're always you know, on point.
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  Speaker 1: And it's the result of an epigenetic change from a
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  Speaker 1: stressful event. Yeah, and the same Yeah, I think you
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  Speaker 1: mentioned abuse earlier. They found that one out of every
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  Speaker 1: five suicide victims was a victim of child abuse as well.
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  Speaker 1: So they're still kind of theorizing now, but they think
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  Speaker 1: there's a positive correlation there between, like you said, stressful
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  Speaker 1: upbringing in an epigenetic change. So what else? Uh, well,
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  Speaker 1: do I mean we're gonna talk about the good? What
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  Speaker 1: could be good about this? Potentially? Yes, because it could
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  Speaker 1: be really good. We're talking about and it's still early going.
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  Speaker 1: We're talking about potentially curing things like Alzheimer's cancer, um
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  Speaker 1: mental disorders, uh, multiple sclerosis, you name it, thick tonguedness,
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  Speaker 1: potentially being able to cure this because you it. They
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  Speaker 1: found that it's really hard to fix like a cancer cell.
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  Speaker 1: And so what the doctors are thinking now is it's
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  Speaker 1: really hard to to fix a cancer cell, but it's
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  Speaker 1: a whole lot easier to turn these epigenetic switches on
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  Speaker 1: and off, which may in turn help defeat cancer. Like
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  Speaker 1: you want to get a tumor suppressing gene going yeah,
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  Speaker 1: and then but you want to get a cellular growth
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  Speaker 1: gene turned down a little bit, right like that, and
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  Speaker 1: that you just cured cancer. Yeah. This This one doctor
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  Speaker 1: put it like this. He said that, um, it's almost
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  Speaker 1: like a diplomacy instead of a war, Like you'll go
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  Speaker 1: tell the cell, hey, you're a good human cell. You
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  Speaker 1: don't need to behave this way. You should not be
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  Speaker 1: behaving this way. Yes, it's called as a citadine. It's
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  Speaker 1: good to me as a citadine. It was originally marketed
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  Speaker 1: for UM something else entirely probably Alzheimer's. Everything was uh,
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  Speaker 1: And then they come up with they figure out that
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  Speaker 1: it's actually UM turning down own these growth cells or
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  Speaker 1: these growth genes, and they say, hey, how about we
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  Speaker 1: use this for leukemia? Ba boom. But being there, you go, yeah,
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: people all of a sudden in remission where they hadn't
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: been before, so it's pretty pretty startling. Yeah, it's still
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: in the early stages though, right. Uh. The other thing
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: too is you can you can. It's it's easier to
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: fix the epigenome. That's the good news. As we move forward.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: It's also a lot easier to mess up your own
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: epigenome diet and smoking and things like that. Yeah, there
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: was a the guy who was studying Sweden hooked up
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: with a guy who proposed, uh, the entire field of
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: epigenetics in and then they got together with another researcher
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: who was running that You remember the framing Framinghamton Farmington.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: Is it farming him, farming him, framing him, framing him?
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: That the Massachusetts study, the heart study. Yeah, that's remember
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: forty years long or something, right, remember Great Britain's version
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: of It's like the Avon Longitudinal study. Okay, So this
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: guy had a friend who had access to these these files,
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: and what they found was that one d and sixties
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: six fathers in this study had started smoking around age eleven. Uh.
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: And so they started looking at these these guys and
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: found that their kids were shorter and fatter and just
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: generally unhealthier than other kids. Even controlling for other factors
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: as well. So smoking is a problems. Drugs are a problem.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: Cocaine addicted mice past memory problems onto three generations of
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: their offspring. Yeah, it said that cocaine, especially tripp triggers
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: epigenetic changes that affect like hundreds of genes at the
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: same time. It's because memories just such a complex process.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: So don't do cocaine. No, and don't smoke. It's just
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: a bad idea, especially at a young age. And Chuck,
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: there's a project underway. Remember the Human Genome Project completed
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: in March of two thousand, which is now exactly There
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: was a did you read this time article at the
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: end of it that the author is talking about the
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: epigenome project, right, and he was saying that the Human
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: Epigenome Project is going to make the Human Genome Project
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: look like the homework that sixteenth century school kids did
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: on their advocacies. Think about this. What they found in
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: the Human Genome Project is twenty seven thousand genes that
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: are mapped. Right, Um, just just fiddling with these combinations
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: increases the map that needs to be created exponentially, right,
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: like Domino's Pizza has twenty seven ingredients they produces, they do.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: I went counting the produces eighty eight million different combinations
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: from seven I imagine twenty seven thousand ingredients. I'm many
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: different combinations is that produced. This is the scope of
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: the human epigenome project that's underway. Now, wow, what what
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: about Pizza Hut with all their like stuff crust and
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: eat it backwards and the ingredients are underneath your pizza
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: and probably even more stuff. Yeah, but I think Domino's
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: has more pizza because they've got like the Philly cheese
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: steak one and they have like the cheeseburger, the bacon cheeseburger,
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: which yeah they do, like the Ruben sandwich pizza that
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: would be very good, would be good. So epigenetics is
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: changing everything I think, and it's core. It's going to
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: it's going to point out that all of our understanding
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: of medicine is just an odd way of describing an
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: epigenetic change, you know, like psychology, psychiatry. I predict that
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: our future and complete understanding of humanity is going to
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: be a combination of sociology and epigenetics. So we we
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: thought we were onto something with me or neurons, but
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: forget what we said, not just kidding. Actually, yeah, I
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: think that you could probably explain that epigenetically and with
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: sociology as well. Have you heard of this guy, Dr
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: Bruce Lipton. He is, he's got a documentary out called
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: The Living Matrix, And at first I was reading and
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: I was like, Wow, this guy's really onto something. But
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: then I started reading other people saying this guy's a quack. Yeah.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: He basically he's a big epigenetics guy, but he thinks
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: that your brain can essentially change your genetic expression by
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: manipulating the epigenome like concentrating. He thinks the placebo effect
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: could potentially be explained by this, and like spontaneous remission
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: and cancer spontaneous combustion. Spontaneous remission obviously is when you
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: go into remission with no known cause, not from you know,
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: any treatment, And he says this is explained because you're
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: you have a profound change in your perception of your
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: life and what life is all about, and that can
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: potentially alter the epigenome. Well, you could also to make
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: a case that this guy, what this guy is talking
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: about is decreasing stress, which stresses freaks havoc on us
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: and could create metal tags and alter gene expression. So
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: maybe he's just using a quacky way of describing lowering
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: your own stress levels by increasing self confidence. It's interesting
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: when you see these people, though, and you watch a
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: YouTube video and you think, oh my gosh, that's the
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: secret to the future, and then you see all these
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: other people go that guy is such a quack. Yeah,
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: but at the same time you could you could say, well,
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: maybe those other people are unmaginative. Good point. So if
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: you want to learn more about epigenetics, I strongly recommend
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: University of Utah's website it Um have you been on it? Chuck?
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: Why didn't you recommend that to me? Did you see it?
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: I don't think so I did. There's like a month
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: ago when uh, yeah, you can turn up gene expression,
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: turn it down. There's like, um, a lot of foods
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: that you should eat if you want to alter yourself epigenetically,
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: especially if you're pregnant, or go to YouTube and watch
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: the Ghost in your Jeans. PBS is literally mind blowing,
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: well not literally people, obviously, literally it's talk about changing
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: your genetic expression. And if you want to read some
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: very beautiful prose on epigenetics, uh shock full of flight
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: simulator references read uh, how epigenetics works by typing epigenetics
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: in the handy search bar how stuff works dot com,
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: which means it's time for listener mail. Yes, indeed, Josh, Josh,
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: you remember Sarah the amazing eleven year old fan it's
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: not eleven anymore, who captured our hearts when she first
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: emailed early on in the days of podcastings to do
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: like she was one of the first fans. Actually, yeah,
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: Sarah the amazing eleven year old fan is now Sarah
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: the amazing thirteen year old fan. Gosh, I feel so
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: old now. We shouldn't do this a while. Well, yeah,
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: and we should keep like once a year, we should
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: update people on Sarah's age. And then when she graduate,
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: if we're still doing this in five years, when she
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: graduates college, we should go like or a high school.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: We should go to her graduation, or we should give
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: the commencement speech. She should I call valedictorian. Well yeah,
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: and then the prince would be like, who are you guys?
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: Can we get security in here? We'll say I'm the valedictorian.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: He's a salutatorian. What do you mean? Uh? So this
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: comes from Sarah? She checked someone that's from time to time,
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: and she's still just as cute at thirteen. She's not
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: all bratty now that she's a teenager. Hello to some
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: of my favorite people. Today. I earned some strange looks
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: from people about my knowledge of legos or Lego bricks.
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: I also tried making a sphere of Lego but I
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: couldn't figure it out. Also, today's my birthday. I'm really
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: excited that I'm finally a teen Yahoo. Do you remember
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: what I asked for and what she asked for? She's
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: got a blog now, and she asked if one of
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: us could comment on her blog. And I went to
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: her blog and commented in Her blog is basically her
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: and her little friend talking back and forth to each
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: other about stuff. It got their eyes with hearts. No, well,
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: I don't think you can do that, but it is
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: really really cute. And um, I'm actually gonna encourage people
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: to go to her blog. I hope she gets mad traffic.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: And her blog, Josh is Sarah loves Australian Commercials dot
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: webs dot com. And here's the clincher. It is s
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: A S A r w H. There's no www right
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: now And she missed spells Australian all over the place.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: She spells it A U S t r A I
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: l I A n. So it's like aus trail I
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: N hey I A n right, so spell the whole
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: U r l h t t P colon slash slash
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: s A r A h l O v e s
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: A U s t r A I l I A
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: n c O M m e r c e i
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: A l s dot webbs w e b s dot com.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: And I hope people go back there and check it out.
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: I hope so too. Um So she turned thirteen. She says,
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: by the way, can you please not tell Kristin, Molly
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: or Katie that I think you guys are better than them.
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: I think that would be kind of like bragging. It
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: would be kind of like bragging, which is why we
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: would never do. We would never tell them, and they
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: I'm sure they don't listen to our shows, so they'll
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: never know. And then she closes, and this is Emily
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: just thought, this is the cutest thing ever. Well, so long,
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: farewell our al vetter, saying goodbye, A do a do
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: to you and you and you, And then in the
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: seas she says, in case you didn't know that was
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: from the sound of music. So long farewell. Yeah, and
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: and that's one of Emily's favorite Well, you should send
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: the rest of it. Dudde doe do you and you
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: and you so Sarah, Happy birthday. You're awesome and you're
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: a dedicated fan. We just think you're super cool. And
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: good luck with the blog if you do learn how
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: to do eyes with heart. We want to know, Sarah,
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: Happy birthday to you. If you want to become a
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: fan who has captured our hearts, send us something interesting.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: We want to uh, we want another super fan and
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: be a cute little kid. Otherwise you're not gonna culture
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: that helps as well. Broken English doesn't hurt too true.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: You can send an email to Stuff podcast at how
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: the house stuff works dot com home page. Brought to
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready,
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: are you