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SYSK Selects: Can Your Grandfather's Diet Shorten Your Life? · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hi, everyone, Can your grandfather's diet short in your life?
0:03
Speaker 1: What does that even mean? Well, it turns out it's possible.
0:07
Speaker 1: And I remember when we stumbled upon this topic in
0:09
Speaker 1: June of two thousand ten, really really fascinating stuff for me.
0:14
Speaker 1: And it turns out it's true. There is actually Well
0:17
Speaker 1: how about this. I'm not going to ruin it, just
0:19
Speaker 1: give it a listen to everyone, Can your grandfather's diet
0:22
Speaker 1: shorten your life? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from
0:28
Speaker 1: house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
0:35
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and I'm
0:39
Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and I'm Josh Clark. And that
0:41
Speaker 1: makes this stuff you should Know? Right. Yeah, So this
0:46
Speaker 1: is our podcast. We've been doing it for a while,
0:49
Speaker 1: and um, are you welcoming new listeners? Yeah, here's another one. Okay,
0:53
Speaker 1: all right, and actually I'm pretty excited about this one.
0:56
Speaker 1: I've been wanting to do this one for a while.
0:57
Speaker 1: You've been bugging me. Epigenetics do it. Let's do it.
1:01
Speaker 1: The cutting edge of research of human of of our
1:06
Speaker 1: understanding of life, not just human, of all life. My
1:09
Speaker 1: mind was blown. It's a pretty big deal, real big deal. So, Chuck,
1:13
Speaker 1: you've heard of the genetic revolution. Charles Darwin, he had
1:16
Speaker 1: a long beard. He loved sea turtles, that kind of thing.
1:20
Speaker 1: He used a vacation in the Galapagos, right. He um
1:23
Speaker 1: wrote on the origin of the species, and it was
1:26
Speaker 1: a pretty groundbreaking book, I would say. So it's basically
1:30
Speaker 1: what he came up with was we are driven by
1:33
Speaker 1: our genes. Right, we have genetic code and our DNA,
1:38
Speaker 1: and that makes us red headed, it makes us timid,
1:42
Speaker 1: it makes us courageous, prone to cancer, right exactly, and
1:46
Speaker 1: it makes us thick tongued alright sometimes yeah, and we
1:50
Speaker 1: are slaves to these genes, right, there's nothing we can
1:52
Speaker 1: do to alter and we get him from our parents.
1:54
Speaker 1: But you know, if if we find out that over time,
1:58
Speaker 1: being thick tongued is um say, advantageous to human survival,
2:05
Speaker 1: we're all going to talk like me. But millions of
2:07
Speaker 1: years from now, at least hundreds of thousands, it definitely does.
2:12
Speaker 1: And I just look for it in the future, Okay,
2:14
Speaker 1: when we're all running around with robot bodies. Um, there
2:18
Speaker 1: was another guy, and actually Darwin, just to show off,
2:22
Speaker 1: once came across a type of orchid, right, the moon orchid,
2:27
Speaker 1: I believe it's what it's called. And it had a
2:30
Speaker 1: very very deep um I guess pistol pistol or statement.
2:35
Speaker 1: I can never keep those things apart. And the nectar
2:38
Speaker 1: was down in there. And he looked at that flower
2:40
Speaker 1: and said, you know what, there is an organism out there,
2:42
Speaker 1: probably a flying organism that it has a probosist that
2:47
Speaker 1: fits perfectly into that flower. It was a um hawk moth.
2:53
Speaker 1: And sure enough a few a few years later, at
2:55
Speaker 1: some point in time later, they discovered the hawk moth
2:58
Speaker 1: and it was pretty much literal really made to fit. Right.
3:01
Speaker 1: So there's another guy named Jean Baptiste Lamark, who I
3:04
Speaker 1: know you've heard of as well, right, all and all
3:07
Speaker 1: his lamarky and stuff. Right, he was he was about
3:10
Speaker 1: sixty to eighty. He was working about sixty or so
3:12
Speaker 1: years before Darwin. He had his own ideas based on giraffes. Right. Yes,
3:16
Speaker 1: he said that giraffe's next grew to reach the food,
3:20
Speaker 1: but it was just over the course of a few generations, right, right,
3:23
Speaker 1: And that's kind of flies in the face of Darwin. Yeah, sure,
3:27
Speaker 1: who said it takes hundreds of thousands of years with
3:30
Speaker 1: this stuff called epigenetics that we're about to talk about today.
3:33
Speaker 1: Suddenly people are starting to go back and look at Lamark,
3:36
Speaker 1: who was kind of dismissed as a quack. Yeah, um,
3:40
Speaker 1: and say, you know what, Lamark may have been right
3:43
Speaker 1: in this one. Yeah, prepare for your minds to be melted.
3:45
Speaker 1: Let's all I have to say. Let's talk about epigenetics,
3:48
Speaker 1: Chuck and go. Josh's first talk about the genome. I
3:56
Speaker 1: heard a computer reference analogy that I thought was was
3:59
Speaker 1: pretty spot on. If you think of the genome as
4:03
Speaker 1: computer hardware, then the epigenome would be the software that
4:07
Speaker 1: tells the computer what to do and when to do it.
4:10
Speaker 1: But in this case, the epigenome tells your cells what
4:13
Speaker 1: to do, what kind of cells to be, when to
4:15
Speaker 1: activate or deactivate. So, like I guess every cell or yeah,
4:21
Speaker 1: the d n A in every cell in the human
4:23
Speaker 1: body has the exact same DNA. Yes, you have like
4:27
Speaker 1: half of your mother's and half of your father's and
4:29
Speaker 1: it comes together and gives you your d n A. Right. Um.
4:32
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
4:38
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
4:46
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 and a
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Speaker 1: site and a sperm cell those things are the the
4:59
Speaker 1: tag on those genes. So some are turned off, some
5:03
Speaker 1: are turned on, and in a specific combination, you have
5:05
Speaker 1: either a kratinosite or sperm cell, or a neuron or
5:11
Speaker 1: a cell that makes up your eyeball, all of that stuff. Yeah,
5:15
Speaker 1: So it's essentially it's a chemical tag that literally changes
5:18
Speaker 1: the physical structure of your genome. So it'll bind tightly,
5:22
Speaker 1: let's say, to an inactive UH gene make it unreadable,
5:26
Speaker 1: or it'll stretch out an active gene and make it
5:29
Speaker 1: really accessible, physically changing it. And epigenetics means above the
5:34
Speaker 1: genome because these tags, these they're called methyl tags, which
5:38
Speaker 1: is what one hydrogen and two carbon carbon and hydrogen bundles. Yeah, okay,
5:44
Speaker 1: so it's a group. It's a really simple um compound um.
5:49
Speaker 1: But they they they attached to the gene and a
5:52
Speaker 1: place where other proteins or enzymes normally would attach to
5:56
Speaker 1: activate it. So basically what they do is block a
5:59
Speaker 1: gene from being active beaded, and they can silence them. Yeah.
6:01
Speaker 1: So it's like a light switch. Literally you can turn
6:03
Speaker 1: off sun jeans and turn off others. Um. And the uh,
6:08
Speaker 1: the honey bee actually is is a pretty good demonstration
6:12
Speaker 1: of this. Did you read about honey bees? Okay, so
6:15
Speaker 1: you've got a worker bee, right, which is a sterile,
6:17
Speaker 1: kind of mindless dumb bee that just does what it's
6:20
Speaker 1: supposed to do, no offense agreed. Hey, I'm all down
6:25
Speaker 1: with may Day all right? Uh? And uh with um
6:29
Speaker 1: a queen bee, you have this, Uh, First of all,
6:33
Speaker 1: she can reproduce, she goes and kills other rival queens,
6:37
Speaker 1: she does um kind of all sorts of other stuff
6:39
Speaker 1: that a worker bee isn't capable of doing. Um. And
6:43
Speaker 1: what they found was a queen bee. Queen bee larva
6:46
Speaker 1: are raised in this royal jelly, right, which worker bees
6:49
Speaker 1: secrete from their their heads. It's a nutrient rich jelly,
6:53
Speaker 1: so the larva grows in it. And what they found, Yeah,
6:55
Speaker 1: it sounds kind of good, doesn't it, just because of
6:58
Speaker 1: the jelly part. What they found was that um, the
7:02
Speaker 1: royal jelly has it adds a methyl tag to the
7:07
Speaker 1: queen bee Larva's d n m T three gene. And
7:11
Speaker 1: this gene is like literally the on off switch. If
7:15
Speaker 1: this gene is on, it goes to the default worker.
7:18
Speaker 1: Be right right. If it's off, then all the genes
7:22
Speaker 1: that that make a queen be a queen bee are
7:25
Speaker 1: able to be turned on. Crazy, isn't it so? Epigenetics
7:29
Speaker 1: happens in bees as well? And mice. Yes, the they've
7:33
Speaker 1: done a lot of studies with mice. Obviously in the
7:35
Speaker 1: a goody gene in these mice, and they would they
7:38
Speaker 1: experiment with um with these mice affecting basically turning on
7:43
Speaker 1: and off the epigenetic switch. So an unmethylated gene would
7:51
Speaker 1: affect the mouse's size and weight and then and then
7:55
Speaker 1: coat color. It makes them real fat and like yellow, yeah,
7:59
Speaker 1: instead of skinning and brown. Have you seen one of
8:01
Speaker 1: these things? Yeah, they're huge. They should all be named Wilburg.
8:06
Speaker 1: The cool thing is though they showed the difference between
8:08
Speaker 1: the skinny brown one and the fat yellow one. But
8:10
Speaker 1: then they also did experiments where they did half and half,
8:13
Speaker 1: like turned on half of them and turned off half
8:15
Speaker 1: of them. And they literally showed him in a sequence.
8:17
Speaker 1: I don't know if you saw this picture, but they
8:19
Speaker 1: went from fat yellow to skinny brown, and in between
8:22
Speaker 1: they got thinner and with spotted coats along the way,
8:26
Speaker 1: crazy like yellow and brown spotted coat. Yeah. It's that specific. Yeah.
8:30
Speaker 1: And the one of the ways that they have found
8:33
Speaker 1: that they can manipulate these what is it a goody Yeah,
8:36
Speaker 1: the goody gene and these mice that I guess our
8:39
Speaker 1: bread specifically for this gene to be easily observed or something, Yeah,
8:44
Speaker 1: manipulated to UM is through diet. Right, So they've actually
8:49
Speaker 1: taken a goody jeen mice mothers who are pregnant fed
8:54
Speaker 1: him a bunch of UM B vitamins in their diet. Yeah,
8:57
Speaker 1: and soy right, yeah, soy is a really easy easy
9:00
Speaker 1: grab for B vitamins, U belief, right, UM fed these
9:03
Speaker 1: these pregnant, big fat yellow, ugly mice B vitamins and
9:08
Speaker 1: their kids came out that that healthy, skinny brown right. Um.
9:15
Speaker 1: They had identical moms with the same like a goody gan,
9:18
Speaker 1: same upbringing, same everything, just fed them in the normal
9:20
Speaker 1: mouse diet without vitamin B and they had the big
9:23
Speaker 1: fat yellow kids. So diet is a really big factor
9:28
Speaker 1: in epigenetic changes. What Chuck and I are talking about
9:47
Speaker 1: right now is that science has found evidence that you
9:54
Speaker 1: can change the genetics of your children by eating be
10:00
Speaker 1: vitamins or by being abused when you're pregnant. Well, see,
10:05
Speaker 1: that's what gets me. Some of the diet like makes
10:08
Speaker 1: a little bit of sense, But the fact that an
10:10
Speaker 1: environmental stimulus placed on your mom or even your grandparents
10:14
Speaker 1: can affect your children or grandchildren something you didn't even
10:17
Speaker 1: experience at all, it's kind of unfair. And actually, I
10:21
Speaker 1: have to tell you, the more I study this, the
10:23
Speaker 1: more worried I am for my own child or children. Like. Really,
10:27
Speaker 1: what they're finding is the decisions that you make, especially
10:31
Speaker 1: at a youngish age, are going to affect several generations
10:35
Speaker 1: because these what you're doing is adding metal tags. What
10:38
Speaker 1: we're talking about is pretty much the definitive answer to
10:41
Speaker 1: the nature and nurture debate. And what we're finding is
10:44
Speaker 1: both you have nature, which is your genes and they're
10:48
Speaker 1: very much active, but you have nurture, which is the environment.
10:52
Speaker 1: Whether it's diet, whether it's stress, um, whether it's lack
10:56
Speaker 1: of exercise. Your body responds to these changes by saying, okay,
11:01
Speaker 1: all right, Well, then we need to if you're gonna
11:03
Speaker 1: lay around and be fat, then we have to we
11:05
Speaker 1: have to deactivate this Chaine, we will punish your grandkids,
11:08
Speaker 1: and your grandkids who are trying to be normal are
11:11
Speaker 1: going to be fat little kids that live you know,
11:13
Speaker 1: shortened lives. And this is where it came from, right, Chuck,
11:17
Speaker 1: Wasn't there there was a study in Sweden that kind
11:21
Speaker 1: of broke this ground. Yeah, didn't they find that? Um,
11:25
Speaker 1: it was a very isolated group of people in Sweden
11:28
Speaker 1: and at the time they were very isolated at least
11:30
Speaker 1: where they couldn't get help from the outside world, very
11:33
Speaker 1: very readily. And I think they studied the famine in
11:36
Speaker 1: that right, Well, they the famine affected the generations afterwards. Well,
11:41
Speaker 1: they had like feast or famine. It was like an
11:43
Speaker 1: agricultural town. And they looked at these agricultural records that
11:47
Speaker 1: this town kept for some reason, like really detailed records
11:51
Speaker 1: for throughout the nineteenth century, and some years there was
11:56
Speaker 1: nothing and people starved death. The next year there was everything.
11:59
Speaker 1: And they found that the grand parents, the grand fathers,
12:06
Speaker 1: um who feasted and starved within a year of one another. Um,
12:13
Speaker 1: they're grandkids lived in average of thirty two years shorter
12:19
Speaker 1: or less. Then it's the same the grandkids of the
12:22
Speaker 1: same people who didn't have that kind of feast or
12:26
Speaker 1: famine experience in the same town right around, with the
12:29
Speaker 1: same socio economic conditions. So yeah, that's three generations right there, right. Yeah.
12:36
Speaker 1: Did you hear about the Angelman syndrome and the Prodavadi syndrome? No,
12:41
Speaker 1: totally they I saw that. Actually, it was a PBS documentary.
12:45
Speaker 1: The it's called The Ghost in Your Jeans. Did you
12:48
Speaker 1: watch that, dude? It's on YouTube. It's in five, I
12:53
Speaker 1: think five or six sections of ten minutes apiece. It's
12:55
Speaker 1: a full show. Mind blowing. Uh. They found that there's
12:59
Speaker 1: there's these two day print syndromes and I won't get
13:01
Speaker 1: too deep into what they are, but Angelman syndrome and
13:05
Speaker 1: uh Proda Villi syndrome is what it's called. And they
13:08
Speaker 1: found the sons Italian prodovity. Sorry I dropped the ball there. Uh. Basically,
13:14
Speaker 1: what causes each of these is a missing piece of
13:16
Speaker 1: DNA and it can cause two different disease. Where they
13:19
Speaker 1: found it and cause to these two different diseases, they're
13:22
Speaker 1: completely unrelated depending on which parent it came from which
13:26
Speaker 1: missing uh, part of the gene it came from. So basically, uh,
13:32
Speaker 1: it's as if the gene knew where it was coming from.
13:35
Speaker 1: Like gene imprinting, the gene had a memory that, Oh,
13:38
Speaker 1: it came from the father, so you're gonna have Angelman syndrome,
13:41
Speaker 1: or it came from the mother, so you're gonna have
13:42
Speaker 1: prida evilly. Right, And this is a relatively recent discovery.
13:46
Speaker 1: We were talking about them looking at agricultural records of
13:48
Speaker 1: the u nineteenth century in Sweden. That was a doctor
13:52
Speaker 1: named h Dr Lars olov Bygren, but he was working
13:56
Speaker 1: in the mid eighties and he didn't really start to
14:00
Speaker 1: lay the foundation of epigenetic research until the mid to
14:03
Speaker 1: late nineties. So this is a very new field. But
14:06
Speaker 1: what they're finding, and what Chuck was just saying, is
14:10
Speaker 1: that your parents can pass on these epigenetic changes that
14:17
Speaker 1: happen within themselves, right, Um, and your grandparents can too.
14:21
Speaker 1: But this isn't supposed to happen. What happens when an
14:24
Speaker 1: egg and a sperm meat, right, and it's like, hey,
14:27
Speaker 1: here's half, here's my DNA, here's my DNA, and then
14:30
Speaker 1: they get together. Um, there is actually a process where
14:34
Speaker 1: these specialized cells go through and basically clean the d
14:37
Speaker 1: n A of methyl tags. But they found that not
14:41
Speaker 1: all methyl tags get cleaned off, so diet can affect
14:46
Speaker 1: certain genes. These methyl tags can be passed down UM
14:49
Speaker 1: and and with abuse as well. H Have you heard
14:52
Speaker 1: about PTSD? Yeah, we passed down. They covered that in
14:57
Speaker 1: the in that special as well. They did tests with
15:01
Speaker 1: pregnant women who were in New York at the time
15:04
Speaker 1: of nine eleven. Did you hear about this one? Yeah,
15:06
Speaker 1: that's really recent study, right, Yeah, And they basically found
15:09
Speaker 1: that pregnant women the experience that were pregnant at the
15:13
Speaker 1: time the Towers came down and experienced post traumatic stress disorder.
15:17
Speaker 1: They found that their babies had lower levels of cortisol
15:22
Speaker 1: just like their moms did, which helps you deal with stress,
15:25
Speaker 1: helps you how you deal with stress. So these little
15:28
Speaker 1: babies inherited, basically inherited post traumatic stress disorder from their
15:33
Speaker 1: mothers in the womb in utero and um. Cortisol it's
15:36
Speaker 1: a hormone and it would be produced by a gene
15:39
Speaker 1: or expressed by a gene, and how much or how
15:42
Speaker 1: little is express depends on whether that gene is silenced
15:45
Speaker 1: whether it's altered, and that alteration comes from methyal tags
15:50
Speaker 1: which can be passed down, So PTSD can be passed down, right, Yeah,
15:54
Speaker 1: and they're what they're speculating now that and this is
15:57
Speaker 1: obviously speculation because these kids are still young, but they're
16:00
Speaker 1: speculating that it's gonna happen to their kids as well,
16:03
Speaker 1: and that's gonna be the real like gold nugget right
16:07
Speaker 1: there there. They do go away eventually, they think mental tags, well,
16:11
Speaker 1: they have in like fruit flies. With fruit flies, it's
16:13
Speaker 1: like four generations, but fruit flies have a generation every
16:17
Speaker 1: like five minutes and now um, and then I think
16:20
Speaker 1: with mice it's like forty generations or something like that. Um.
16:24
Speaker 1: And with humans, they expect it to be somewhere around
16:27
Speaker 1: three maybe a few more. And then yeah, because what's
16:32
Speaker 1: happening is our bodies are responding to environmental cues to change.
16:37
Speaker 1: And then after those environmental cues go away, the body's like, okay,
16:40
Speaker 1: well we can go back to normal now and get
16:42
Speaker 1: rid of this methyl tag. So we've got nutrition. Right.
16:46
Speaker 1: You are what you're You are what you eat, You
16:49
Speaker 1: are what your parents eight, you are what your grandparents eight?
16:51
Speaker 1: Uh and then there's um things like stress. Yeah, which
16:55
Speaker 1: parenting right, And Yeah, I think they found with mice
16:58
Speaker 1: mice mother's it didn't nurture their kids, um or nurse
17:03
Speaker 1: their kids, uh, raise kids, produced kids that were kind
17:09
Speaker 1: of jumpy and um, I guess had the mice version
17:12
Speaker 1: of PTSD. And they theorized that the the body had
17:16
Speaker 1: undergone an epigenetic change to prepare these mice for stressful
17:21
Speaker 1: life where they need to be on guard. You know which,
17:23
Speaker 1: if you think about it, chuck a blog post about this,
17:26
Speaker 1: it's possible. What we call PTSD is an epigenetic change
17:30
Speaker 1: that says you live in an environment where you can't
17:34
Speaker 1: just you can't relax, so we're gonna make you jumpy,
17:37
Speaker 1: you're gonna be edgy, and you're going to have flashbacks
17:39
Speaker 1: so that you're always you know, on point. And it's
17:43
Speaker 1: the result of an epigenetic change from a stressful event. Yeah,
17:48
Speaker 1: and the same Yeah, I think you mentioned abuse earlier.
17:50
Speaker 1: They found that one out of every five suicide victims
17:54
Speaker 1: was a victim of child abuse as well. So they're
17:57
Speaker 1: still kind of theorizing now, but they think there's a
17:59
Speaker 1: positive correlation are between like you said, stressful upbringing in
18:03
Speaker 1: an epigenetic change. So what else? Uh, well do you
18:07
Speaker 1: I mean? And we're gonna talk about the good What
18:08
Speaker 1: could be good about this? Potentially, yes, because it could
18:11
Speaker 1: be really good. We're talking about and it's still early going.
18:15
Speaker 1: We're talking about potentially curing things like Alzheimer's cancer, um,
18:20
Speaker 1: mental disorders, uh, multiple sclerosis, you name its, thick tonguedness,
18:28
Speaker 1: potentially being able to cure this because you can't. They
18:32
Speaker 1: found that it's really hard to fix like a cancer cell.
18:37
Speaker 1: And so what the doctors are thinking now is it's
18:40
Speaker 1: really hard to fix a cancer cell, but it's a
18:43
Speaker 1: whole lot easier to turn these epigenetic switches on and off,
18:48
Speaker 1: which may in turn help defeat cancer. Like you want
18:51
Speaker 1: to get a tumor suppressing gene going yeah, and then
18:55
Speaker 1: but you want to get a cellular growth gene turned
18:58
Speaker 1: down a little bit right like that, and that you
19:00
Speaker 1: just cured cancer. Yeah. This This one doctor put it
19:03
Speaker 1: like this. He said that, Um, it's almost like a
19:05
Speaker 1: diplomacy instead of a war, Like you'll go tell the cell, hey,
19:09
Speaker 1: you're a good human cell. You don't need to behave
19:12
Speaker 1: this way. You should not be behaving this way. Yes,
19:15
Speaker 1: it's called as a citadine. It's good to me as
19:19
Speaker 1: a citadine. It was originally marketed for UM something else entirely,
19:24
Speaker 1: probably Alzheimer's. Everything was uh, and then they come up
19:28
Speaker 1: with they figure out that it's actually UM turning down
19:32
Speaker 1: these growth cells are these growth genes, and they say, hey,
19:37
Speaker 1: how about we use this for leukemia? Right boom being
19:40
Speaker 1: there you go. Yeah, people all of a sudden in
19:42
Speaker 1: remission where they hadn't been before. So it's pretty pretty startling. Yeah,
19:47
Speaker 1: it's still in the early stages though, right. Uh. The
19:51
Speaker 1: other thing too is you can you can. It's it's
19:55
Speaker 1: easier to fix the epigenome. That's the good news. As
19:58
Speaker 1: we move forward, it's also a lot easier to mess
20:01
Speaker 1: up your own epigenome diet and smoking and things like that. Yeah,
20:07
Speaker 1: there was a the guy who was studying Sweden hooked
20:11
Speaker 1: up with a guy who proposed, uh, the entire field
20:14
Speaker 1: of epigenetics in and then they got together with another
20:19
Speaker 1: researcher who was running that. You remember the framing Framinghamton Farmington.
20:25
Speaker 1: Is it farming him, farming him, framing him, framing him
20:29
Speaker 1: that the Massachusetts study, the Heart study Umber forty years
20:32
Speaker 1: long or something, right, remember Great Britain's version of It's
20:35
Speaker 1: like the Avon Longitudinal study. Okay, so this guy had
20:40
Speaker 1: a friend who had access to these these files, and
20:43
Speaker 1: what they found was that one and sixty six fathers
20:47
Speaker 1: in this study had started smoking around age eleven. Uh.
20:52
Speaker 1: And so they started looking at these these guys and
20:54
Speaker 1: found that their kids were shorter and fatter and just
20:58
Speaker 1: generally unhealthy or than other kids, even controlling for other
21:02
Speaker 1: factors as well. So smoking is a problem. Drugs are
21:05
Speaker 1: a problem. Cocaine addicted mice past memory problems onto three
21:09
Speaker 1: generations of their offspring. Yeah, it said that cocaine, especially
21:13
Speaker 1: tripp triggers epigenetic changes that affect like hundreds of genes
21:18
Speaker 1: at the same time, which because memories just such a
21:21
Speaker 1: complex process. So don't do cocaine, no, and don't smoke.
21:28
Speaker 1: It's just a bad idea, especially at a young age.
21:31
Speaker 1: And Chuck, there's a project underway, you remember, the Human
21:36
Speaker 1: Genome project, completed in March of two thousand, which is
21:39
Speaker 1: now that they're kind of like exactly. There was a
21:42
Speaker 1: did you read this time article at the end of
21:46
Speaker 1: it that the author is talking about the epigenome project.
21:49
Speaker 1: That's the big daddy, right, And he was saying that
21:51
Speaker 1: the Human Epigenome Project is going to make the Human
21:54
Speaker 1: Genome Project look like the homework that sixteenth century school
21:58
Speaker 1: kids did on their advocate this. Think about this. What
22:03
Speaker 1: they found in the Human Genome Project is twenty seven
22:06
Speaker 1: thousand genes that are mapped. Right, Um, just just fiddling
22:13
Speaker 1: with these combinations increases the map that needs to be
22:17
Speaker 1: created exponentially, right, Like Domino's Pizza has twenty seven ingredients
22:21
Speaker 1: they produces they do. I went counting, the produces eighty
22:25
Speaker 1: eight million different combinations from twenty seven I imagine twenty
22:29
Speaker 1: seven thousand ingredients. How many different combinations is that produced?
22:33
Speaker 1: This is the scope of the Human Epigenome Project that's underway. Now,
22:38
Speaker 1: what what about Pizza Hut with all their like stuff
22:40
Speaker 1: crust and eat it backwards and the ingredients are underneath
22:44
Speaker 1: your pizza and probably even more stuffed. Yeah, but I
22:48
Speaker 1: think Dominos has more pizza because they've got like the
22:50
Speaker 1: Philly cheese steak one, and they have like the cheeseburger,
22:54
Speaker 1: the bacon cheeseburger, which yeah, they did, like the Ruben
22:58
Speaker 1: sandwich pizza that would be very good, would be good.
23:01
Speaker 1: So epigenetics is changing everything I think, and it's core.
23:06
Speaker 1: It's going to it's going to point out that all
23:09
Speaker 1: of our understanding of medicine is just an odd way
23:14
Speaker 1: of describing an epigenetic change, you know, like psychology, psychiatry.
23:19
Speaker 1: I predict that our future and complete understanding of humanity
23:24
Speaker 1: is going to be a combination of sociology and epigenetics.
23:28
Speaker 1: So we we thought we were onto something with me
23:30
Speaker 1: or neurons, but forget what we said. Not just kidding,
23:34
Speaker 1: Actually I think that you could probably explain that epigenetically
23:38
Speaker 1: and with sociology as well. Have you heard of this guy,
23:40
Speaker 1: Dr Bruce Lipton. He is, he's got a documentary out
23:45
Speaker 1: called The Living Matrix, And at first I was reading
23:48
Speaker 1: and I was like, Wow, this guy's really onto something.
23:50
Speaker 1: But then I started reading other people saying this guy's
23:52
Speaker 1: a quack. Oh yeah, yeah. He basically he's a big
23:54
Speaker 1: epigenetics guy. But he thinks that your brain can essentially
24:00
Speaker 1: change your genetic expression by manipulating the epigenome, like concentrating.
24:05
Speaker 1: He thinks the placebo effect could potentially be explained by this,
24:08
Speaker 1: and like spontaneous remission and cancer, spontaneous combustion. Spontaneous remission
24:14
Speaker 1: obviously is when you go into remission with no known cause,
24:18
Speaker 1: not from you know, any treatment. And he says this
24:21
Speaker 1: is explained because you're you have a profound change in
24:24
Speaker 1: your perception of your life and what life is all about,
24:28
Speaker 1: and that can potentially alter the epigenome. Well, you could
24:31
Speaker 1: also make a case that this guy, what this guy
24:33
Speaker 1: is talking about is decreasing stress, which stresses freaks havoc
24:38
Speaker 1: on us and could create methtyal tags and alter gene expression.
24:42
Speaker 1: So maybe he's just using a quacky way of describing
24:48
Speaker 1: lowering your own stress levels by increasing self confidence. It's
24:52
Speaker 1: interesting when you see these people, though, and you watch
24:54
Speaker 1: a YouTube video and you think, oh my gosh, that's
24:56
Speaker 1: the secret to the future, and then you see all
24:58
Speaker 1: these other people go that guy is such a quack. Yeah,
25:01
Speaker 1: but at the same time you could you could say, well,
25:03
Speaker 1: maybe those other people are unmagenitive. Good point. So if
25:27
Speaker 1: you want to learn more about epigenetics, I strongly recommend
25:31
Speaker 1: University of Utah's website it Um, have you been on
25:34
Speaker 1: a chuck Why didn't you recommend that to me? Did
25:37
Speaker 1: you see it? I don't think so. I did. There's
25:41
Speaker 1: like a month ago when uh, yeah, you can turn
25:44
Speaker 1: up gene expression turn it down. It's like, um, a
25:47
Speaker 1: lot of foods that you should eat if you want
25:49
Speaker 1: to alter yourself epigenetically, especially if you're pregnant. Or go
25:54
Speaker 1: to YouTube and watch the Ghost in your Genes PBS.
25:57
Speaker 1: It is literally mind blowing, well not literally, people always
26:00
Speaker 1: say literally. It's figured talk about changing your genetic expression.
26:07
Speaker 1: And if you want to read some very beautiful prose
26:10
Speaker 1: on epigenetics, uh shock full of flight simulator references, read
26:16
Speaker 1: uh how epigenetics works by typing epigenetics in the handy
26:19
Speaker 1: search bar at how stuffworks dot com, Which means it's
26:22
Speaker 1: time for listener mail. Yes, indeed, Josh, Josh, you remember
26:29
Speaker 1: Sarah the amazing eleven year old fan it's not eleven anymore,
26:33
Speaker 1: who captured our hearts when she first emailed early on
26:36
Speaker 1: in the days of podcastings to do like she was
26:38
Speaker 1: one of the first fans. Actually, yeah, Sarah the amazing
26:42
Speaker 1: eleven year old fan is now Sarah the amazing thirteen
26:45
Speaker 1: year old fan. Gosh, I feel so old. Now. We
26:48
Speaker 1: shouldn't do this a while? Well, yeah, and we should
26:50
Speaker 1: keep like once a year, we should update people on
26:52
Speaker 1: Sarah's age. And then when she graduate, if we're still
26:55
Speaker 1: doing this in five years, when she graduates college, we
26:57
Speaker 1: should go like a high school. Yeah, you should go
27:00
Speaker 1: to her graduation ors, we should give the commencement speech.
27:02
Speaker 1: She should I call valedictorian. Well yeah, and then the
27:06
Speaker 1: prince would be like, who are you guys? Can we
27:08
Speaker 1: get security in here? We'll say I'm the valedictorian. He's
27:11
Speaker 1: a salutatorian. What do you mean? Uh? So this comes
27:14
Speaker 1: from Sarah. She checked someone that's from time to time,
27:16
Speaker 1: and she's still just as cute at thirteen. She's not
27:18
Speaker 1: all bratty now that she's a teenager. Hello to some
27:22
Speaker 1: of my favorite people. Today, I earned some strange looks
27:25
Speaker 1: from people about my knowledge of legos or Lego bricks.
27:29
Speaker 1: I also tried making a sphere of Lego, but I
27:32
Speaker 1: couldn't figure it out. Also, today's my birthday. I'm really
27:35
Speaker 1: excited that I'm finally a teen Yahoo. Do you remember
27:38
Speaker 1: what I asked for and what she asked for? She's
27:41
Speaker 1: got a blog now, and she asked if one of
27:44
Speaker 1: us could comment on her blog. And I went to
27:46
Speaker 1: her blog and commented. And her blog is basically her
27:50
Speaker 1: and her little friend talking back and forth to each
27:53
Speaker 1: other about stuff. It got their eyes with hearts. No, well,
27:56
Speaker 1: I don't think you can do that, but it is really,
27:58
Speaker 1: really cute, and I'm actually gonna encourage people to go
28:02
Speaker 1: to her blog. I hope she gets mad traffic and
28:04
Speaker 1: her blog Josh is Sarah loves Australian commercials dot webs
28:09
Speaker 1: dot com. And here's the clincher. It is s A
28:12
Speaker 1: s A r w h. There's no www right now
28:16
Speaker 1: and she missed spells Australian all over the place. Um
28:22
Speaker 1: she spells it A U S t r A I
28:26
Speaker 1: l I A n. So it's like OUs trail I
28:30
Speaker 1: N hey I A n right, so spell the whole
28:33
Speaker 1: U r l h t t P colon slash slash
28:38
Speaker 1: s A r A h l O v E s
28:42
Speaker 1: A U S t r A I l I A
28:47
Speaker 1: n c O M M E r c I A
28:51
Speaker 1: l s dot webs w e b s dot com.
28:56
Speaker 1: And I hope people come right there and check it out.
28:58
Speaker 1: I hope so too. Um. So she turned thirteen, she says,
29:01
Speaker 1: by the way, can you please not tell Kristin, Molly
29:04
Speaker 1: or Katie that I think you guys are better than them.
29:07
Speaker 1: I think that would be kind of like bragging. It
29:10
Speaker 1: would be kind of like bragging, which is why we
29:12
Speaker 1: would never do. We would never tell them, and they
29:14
Speaker 1: I'm sure they don't listen to our shows, so they'll
29:16
Speaker 1: never know. And then she closes and this is Emily
29:19
Speaker 1: just thought, this is the cutest thing ever. Well, so long, farewell,
29:23
Speaker 1: our al vetter saying goodbye, a do a do to
29:26
Speaker 1: you and you and you, and then in print the
29:28
Speaker 1: scene she says, in case you didn't know, that was
29:30
Speaker 1: from the sound of music. Ye, so long farewell. Yeah,
29:34
Speaker 1: and that's one of Emily's favorite Well, you should sing
29:37
Speaker 1: the rest of it. Do a doe doe do? You?
29:41
Speaker 1: And you and you so Sarah, happy birthday. You're awesome.
29:45
Speaker 1: You're a dedicated fan. We just think you're super cool.
29:48
Speaker 1: And good luck with the blog if you do learn
29:51
Speaker 1: how to doe eyes with heart. We want to know, Sarah,
29:54
Speaker 1: Happy birthday to you. If you want to become a
29:58
Speaker 1: fan who's captured our arts, send us something interesting. We
30:02
Speaker 1: want to uh, we want another super fan and be
30:05
Speaker 1: a cute little kid. Otherwise you're not gonna culture that
30:07
Speaker 1: helps as well. Broken English doesn't hurt too true. Uh.
30:10
Speaker 1: You can send an email to stuff Podcast at how
30:15
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands
30:22
Speaker 1: of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Want
30:26
Speaker 1: more how stuff works, check out our blogs on the
30:28
Speaker 1: house stuff works dot com home page