{"product_id":"the-gene-therapy-plan-isbn-9780143108191","title":"The Gene Therapy Plan","description":"\u003cb\u003eYour genes are not your destiny: learn to prevent disease, improve brain function, and reverse the course of obesity and premature aging through easy-to-adopt nutrition and lifestyle changes that target your DNA \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e While we cannot alter the genes we are born with, we can prevent and reverse disease with foods, supplements, and lifestyle choices that turn good genes on and bad genes off. In his pathbreaking plan, Dr. Mitchell Gaynor—a renowned oncologist and pioneer in integrative medicine—focuses on obesity, heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and aging to explain what we can do to keep our bodies on their natural paths toward healthy, balanced functioning.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eThe Gene Therapy Plan\u003c\/i\u003e presents practical, evidence-based approaches to diet, including juices, recipes, and comprehensive meal plans. And it explains the cutting-edge science that is revolutionizing what we know about how our biology and our behavior intersect. Empowering and informative, with inspiring stories from Dr. Gaynor’s decades of clinical practice, this forward-looking book puts our genetic destiny back into our own hands.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003ePraise for \u003ci\u003eThe Gene Therapy Plan\u003c\/i\u003e:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “If you want to learn how to use food and nutrients to prevent and even reverse most chronic disease, read this book!” —Mark Hyman, M.D., author of the #1 \u003ci\u003eNew York Times \u003c\/i\u003ebestseller \u003ci\u003eThe Blood Sugar Solution\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Dr. Gaynor provides insight and an action plan.” —Deepak Chopra, M.D.\u003cb\u003ePraise for \u003ci\u003eThe Gene Therapy Plan\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A guide to harnessing the power hidden in food to subvert a ‘genetic predisposition for disease.’ . . . Gaynor’s informative tome is worth reading.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e —\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eThe Gene Therapy Plan\u003c\/i\u003e identifies how the lives we lead, and in particular, the foods and nutritional supplements we ingest, are a key determining factor in whether latent disease (which most people have to some degree) materialize or stay dormant. By identifying researched nutritional protocols that target specific conditions, and by providing a range of rich case studies from his practice as a leading oncologist and internist, Dr. Gaynor provides insight and an action plan into how the body operates that will benefit medical practitioners and patients alike.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e —Deepak Chopra, M.D.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “The Human Genome Project promised to create a new era of genetic medicine, new drugs, and therapies to advance human health. But the real awakening has been the understanding of food—real whole foods, herbs, phytonutrients—as medicine and how it can literally upgrade your biologic software by improving the expression of your genes. In \u003ci\u003eThe Gene Therapy Plan\u003c\/i\u003e Dr. Gaynor makes the healthcare of the future available to you today. If you want to learn how to use food and nutrients to prevent and even reverse most chronic disease, read this book!”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e —Mark Hyman, M.D., Director of the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine and author of the #1 \u003ci\u003eNew York Times \u003c\/i\u003ebestseller \u003ci\u003eThe Blood Sugar Solution\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “\u003ci\u003eThe Gene Therapy Plan\u003c\/i\u003e is a comprehensive and practical approach to the science of epigenetics—and how to apply it to your life right now. This book is a godsend that could save your life.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e —Christiane Northrup, M.D., author of the New York Times bestseller \u003ci\u003eWomen’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “A brilliant and important piece of work from one of our most distinguished and creative medical thinkers. Do yourself and your family a huge favor: Read this phenomenally important book and learn why and how you can live a healthier life.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e —Devra Davis, Ph.D., M.P.H., founder and president of the Environmental Health Trust, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Secret History of the War on Cancer\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Dr. Gaynor is a visionary healer. This is a comprehensive, coherent, practical, and easily digestible resource for all who wish to ‘tip the balance’ away from disease toward health and wellness.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e —Sheldon Marc Feldman, M.D., Vivian L. Milstein Associate Professor of Clinical Surgery, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Dr. Gaynor presents a comprehensive strategy for readers to re-orient their diet and lifestyle using everyday activities that can help one live longer, and live better. With \u003ci\u003eThe Gene Therapy Plan\u003c\/i\u003e, Dr. Gaynor brings his own integrative philosophy and practice to readers in an engaging and actionable way.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e —William Li, M.D., president and medical director of The Angiogenesis Foundation\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Dr. Gaynor has and always will be at the forefront of integrative medicine. \u003ci\u003eThe Gene Therapy Plan\u003c\/i\u003e empowers you to take control of your health and life.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e —Mimi Guarneri, M.D., president of the Academy of Integrative Health and Medicine\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eMitchell Gaynor, M.D.\u003c\/b\u003e, is the founder and president of Gaynor Wellness and a clinical assistant professor of medicine at Weill-Cornell Medical College with more than twenty-five years of experience treating patients. His work has been featured in the\u003ci\u003e New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e,\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eand he has appeared on many national television programs, including \u003ci\u003eGood Morning America\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Dr. Oz Sh\u003c\/i\u003eow, and \u003ci\u003eThe Martha Stewart Show\u003c\/i\u003e. He lives in New York City.\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePublished by the Penguin Group\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePenguin Group (USA) LLC\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e375 Hudson Street\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNew York, New York 10014\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eUSA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003epenguin.com\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA Penguin Random House Company\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFirst published by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 2015\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCopyright © 2015 by Mitchell L. Gaynor\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePenguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGaynor, Mitchell L., 1956–\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe gene therapy plan : taking control of your genetic destiny with diet and lifestyle \/ Mitchell L. Gaynor, MD ; foreword by Mehmet C. Oz.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003epages cm\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIncludes bibliographical references and index.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eISBN 978-1-101-61848-6\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e1. Genetic disorders—Diet therapy. 2. Nutrition—Genetic aspects. 3. Cooking for the sick.  4. Diet therapy. I. Title.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eQP144.G45G39 2015\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e616'.042—dc23\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e2014038544\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNeither the publisher nor the author is engaged in rendering professional advice or services to the individual reader. The ideas, procedures, and suggestions contained in this book are not intended as a substitute for consulting with your physician. All matters regarding your health require medical supervision. Neither the author nor the publisher shall be liable or responsible for any loss or damage allegedly arising from any information or suggestion in this book.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe nutritional information in this book is not a substitute for professional medical care. Because everyone is different, a physician must diagnose and treat all health problems. All doses of supplements discussed in this book are for adults only. Always discuss your plan for supplemental nutrition with your physician before beginning any new regime.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe patients featured in this book have consented to the use of their clinical vignettes. To protect their privacy, their names have been changed.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eForeword\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eINTEGRATIVE MEDICINE IS progressively sweeping across the nation’s medical schools, hospitals, and clinics. Academic and residency programs are helping to prepare young physicians to challenge the status quo by thinking beyond the borders of how we’ve been treating patients in Western society for seventy-five years. Integrative medicine is really about treating the entire patient.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDuring my time as a medical student, the education was very traditional in the sense that students were taught to view the mind and the body separately. And a lot of this educational approach is reflected in the way medicine is practiced today, especially as we are faced with growing specialties and diminishing primary care practices. By the time I completed my training, the dogma of medical practice focused on treating the body and its organs as separate entities. I was primed to pursue a career doing the same. But life whispers to us periodically, and the wisdom of forward-thinking physicians—including my father-in-law, the pioneering heart surgeon Gerald Lemole—shook me out of this rut and opened my mind to unconventional healing approaches. I began to push against the grain of conventional medicine in order to uncover ways of treating patients that weren’t taught to me in medical school. Now don’t get me wrong—I wholeheartedly believe in the power of science. But I’ve been in practice long enough and have come across many patients from all walks of life with different healing beliefs to appreciate the treasure of integrative medicine.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFundamentally, I have been taught the importance of including the latest in cutting-edge ideas to help my patients, no matter what the source. As head of the Heart Institute at New York–Presbyterian Hospital, this includes developing the most innovative heart valve replacement approaches. As the director of the hospital’s Complementary Medicine Program, I supported the integration of Eastern medical practices such as yoga and meditation. Stretching the spectrum of potential tools also demands that we obtain a complete clinical picture so we are able to prescribe medicines or procedures as well as relaxation techniques, exercises, and even foods that can help prevent and treat health problems.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe Gene Therapy Plan educates both patients and healers to accomplish this comprehensive goal. Dr. Mitchell Gaynor focuses on how we can use food to promote health. But more than just being about eating foods that are healthy for us, this book is about harnessing the power hidden in foods to change our genetic predisposition for disease, drawing from a branch of genetic study called ecogenetics. Ecogenetics is a growing field that applies the philosophy of personalized medicine by using specific substances to target a patient’s genetic profile for developing diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. By focusing on bioactive nutrients such as apigenin in pomegranates, EGCG in green tea, and curcumin in curry, physicians will be able to prescribe foods that operate at the level of your DNA to promote health. What’s interesting is that once you put into practice consuming foods that target your gene expression, you progressively begin to lose those cravings for foods that are bad for you—such as highly refined carbohydrates.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eI met Dr. Gaynor years ago, when a patient of his approached me about a heart operation. I was confused by the request since the chart clearly outlined metastatic cancer that would kill him within months. The patient smiled and asked me to check the date in the chart again. The cancer diagnosis was over five years old! I found out that my patient had been cured by Dr. Gaynor, and I have been sending him challenging cases ever since, including friends and family. Mitch is the founder and president of Gaynor Integrative Oncology, and he serves as a clinical assistant professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College. As a renowned specialist in the field of oncology and integrative medicine, he has dedicated his career to combining medicinal practices with proven complementary therapies to treat his cancer patients, which makes him well positioned to write this book on the nutritional aspects of disease prevention.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePart of Dr. Gaynor’s success as a well-respected cancer specialist is his ability to treat the entire person through a combination of allopathic approaches and alternative therapies. The Gene Therapy Plan offers practical advice as well as supplemental and juicing recipes that are easy to incorporate into your life. This book provides insight into the evolution of medicine by showing how ecogenetic food changes your genetic blueprint. The book provides scientific data to support age-old practices and alternative therapies, which is an important component to bridging the divide between Eastern and Western medicine. This is a key stepping point toward the globalization of medicine using conventional Western and unconventional alternative treatments with proven results together to treat the whole patient.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMehmet C. Oz, M.D.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eVice Chair and Professor of Surgery, NYP–Columbia University\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCoauthor, You: The Owner’s Manual health book series\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIntroduction\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT,” my mother always told me. But it wasn’t until after I’d finished my medical training and become a cancer specialist that I learned just how profoundly right she was.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMy mother started teaching me about food and health when I was six. She had just been diagnosed with breast cancer, and she wanted me to be able to look after myself. Like most parents, she was concerned that I not load up on Cheetos and potato chips, but, more than that, her diagnosis had brought her into the movement toward unprocessed foods and vitamin supplements launched by Adelle Davis. So she taught me how to make nutritious snacks, and how to blend fruit and vegetable juices to achieve the most healthful effects with a taste I’d like. She also taught me how to prepare nutritious meals, and when she had to be in the hospital for long periods I’d be the one to make dinner for my father and older brother.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eUnfortunately, our lessons in nutrition were cut short by my mother’s death when I was nine. Her conversion to wholesome foods and supplements may have been too little, too late, but the odds were stacked heavily against her: during her pregnancy with my brother twelve years earlier, she had been treated with DES, a synthetic form of estrogen that we now know is associated with a much greater risk of breast cancer.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe loss was devastating, of course, but it also gave me a clear purpose in life. When my mother died, I made up my mind that I was going to find out why people’s cells turned against them, as hers had, to cause debilitating, even fatal diseases. I also determined that I was going to do something about it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eI went to medical school, then took specialized training in hematology, the study of blood, and in oncology, the study of cancer, which included doing research at Rockefeller University to study molecular biology. This is a relatively new field that explores the fundamental building blocks of life at the physical and chemical level, especially the processes of genetic control. What I learned from Rockefeller’s cutting-edge researchers gave me an entirely new perspective on the role of genes in determining health outcomes across the life span. And this new view of how genes function showed me that my mother’s emphasis on the role of nutrition in health was absolutely on target.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGenes, the microscopic bundles of DNA that reside in the nucleus of each cell, control all cellular processes, including cell division. (Cancer, perhaps the most feared disease of all, develops when normal cell division—the process that allows children to grow bigger and healthy tissues to renew themselves—goes haywire.)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWe inherit our genes from our parents and—according to what I’d learned in medical school—each person’s genetic endowment was pretty much determined at the moment of conception and then remained stable throughout life. If the DNA you inherited from your parents made you robust and healthy, then—according to this theory—you were all set. If your genes made you susceptible to cancer, or obesity, or arthritis . . . well, that was just your fate. In this old way of thinking, health was largely the result of a genetic lottery, and there was nothing you could do to change the odds.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBy the time I got to Rockefeller, though, advances in molecular biology had turned this static and predetermined view of health on its head. The new research showed that illness or health was not solely a matter of a “genetic destiny” coming from “good genes” or “bad genes” passed along from Mom or Dad. The picture that emerged was actually much more subtle and complex, and it gave each of us a much more active role to play in directing our own health outcomes through our nutritional and lifestyle choices.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMolecular biology teaches us that the individual’s entire complement of more than twenty thousand genes—called his or her “genome”—contains myriad bits of information that instruct the cells to carry out essential functions. But not all of these genes are active all the time. Many are dormant, and the question of whether or not they become active and begin to influence our biology—either by making us more robust or by making us ill—is called “gene expression.” The primary influence on gene expression is the environment in which we live, which is where our opportunity to exert a positive influence through nutrition enters in.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the twenty-first century, our environment bombards us every day with an onslaught of pesticide residues, carcinogenic chemicals, large quantities of foodlike substances, which include refined sugar and dangerous fats. These substances in our food, in our air, and in our water interact with the genes in our cells, turning some on and some off. The worst of these chemicals can transform healthy cells into tumors, which is in large part why one in three Americans will develop cancer. In fact, 90 to 95 percent of cancers are linked to environmental toxicants.1 But it is not just cancer that is caused by this chemical stew in which we live. Today we have an epidemic of thyroid disease, especially among middle-aged women, which almost always originates as an autoimmune condition triggered by environmental toxins. Nearly 20 percent of our children have a learning, emotional, or developmental disability, and the incidences of diabetes and asthma are skyrocketing. The environment’s effect on our genes is implicated in all of these conditions as well.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBut this dark cloud also contains a silver lining. We may have limited control over the level of toxins in our external environment, but each of us can exercise enormous control over what we introduce into our internal environment—which is to say, what we eat. By being more thoughtful and deliberate about our nutritional choices, we can not only reduce or eliminate many of the toxic influences interacting with our genes to cause disease, we can influence our genetic expression to activate the enzymes that can neutralize or remove toxic substances from our tissues, to stimulate cellular processes to boost our immune system, and to reverse the progression of disease, including cancer.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eUsing nutrients in this strategic way to combat disease and promote good health is called “nutrigenetics,” and it is the core principle of the Gene Therapy Plan. Nutrigenetics is actually a subset of a broader approach called “ecogenetics,” which is focused more broadly on how we live in our environment and how the environment as a whole interacts with the individual’s genome to produce either health or disease. Our level of physical activity, for instance, may encourage (or discourage) the production of more inflammation-suppressing enzymes. Meanwhile, whether we are fat or lean affects whether we send out weaker (if we are lean) or stronger (if we are obese) signals to suppress cancer-killing substances.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe Gene Therapy Plan takes all these interactions into account. It is designed to help you combat the most prevalent and troubling diseases of our time, and it does so in the context of promoting overall health and well-being through weight control, stress reduction, and exercise.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eI’ve based the recommendations of the Gene Therapy Plan on my nearly thirty years of broad clinical experience. After my fellowships in hematology and oncology, I became director of medical oncology at the Strang Cancer Prevention Center, where I continued the study of nutrient-gene interactions I’d begun at Rockefeller. I also continued my exploration of toxicogenomics, the study of how environmental toxins affect gene expression. What I found was that many of the same underlying cellular functions that play a role in cancer—inflammation, signaling proteins, transcription factors, hormone regulation, toxin metabolism, the immune response—were factors in a wide spectrum of other diseases as well. More to the point, these functions could be influenced at the cellular level by the strategic use of nutrients regardless of the disease in question. This is precisely how my practice began to expand in scope.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhen I first began incorporating nutrigenetic concepts into patient care, nutrition was barely on the radar for most physicians. Most medical schools and residency programs offered a few lectures on nutritional deficiencies and their associated diseases, but that was about it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSo what I was doing was considered highly unorthodox, yet I was a cancer specialist with mainstream training—I even had an academic appointment at one of the country’s best medical schools—so physicians began to refer patients to me, often those patients for whom traditional treatment methods had been exhausted. And because the results I was able to achieve through a nutrigenetic approach were often astonishing, the referrals increased and my practice grew.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eConsider, for instance:\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e   • The patient mentioned by Dr. Oz in the foreword to this book who approached him for a heart operation five years after the diagnosis of cancer that was supposed to have killed him within months. My nutrigenetic approach had brought about the complete remission of his disease.\u003cbr\u003e   • The dentist (who happened to be my father) who developed hepatitis C after accidently pricking himself with a needle. Before interferon therapy, at a time when there were no medical treatments for hep C, I treated him with a regimen of common Chinese herbs, seaweeds, and juices, and no trace of the virus remained or ever returned.\u003cbr\u003e   • The woman with melanoma I began to treat after her oncologist had directed her to hospice for end-of-life care. Her cancer, which had started on her heel, had spread upward and the lesions became infected, making her left leg four times the diameter of her right. The disease had also metastasized to her lungs and abdomen. I treated her with low-dose chemotherapy, immune pharmacological therapy, green tea, and magnolia, and within three months she was in complete remission.2\u003cbr\u003e   • The young man from Turkey with autoimmune hepatitis and liver failure. The Mayo Clinic had put him on high-dose steroids and told him he needed to be on the list for a liver transplant. I put him on glutathione, resveratrol, turmeric, alpha lipoic acid, and omega-3 fatty acids and his liver function began to normalize. He regained all the weight he had lost and within three months he was back in school. His autoimmune hepatitis resolved and he never needed a transplant.\u003cbr\u003e   • The woman with stage IV pancreatic cancer whose oncologist told her she had four to six months to live. I put her on a dietary regime of cruciferous vegetables, supplements, and juices, combined with chemo, and she went into complete remission and has remained so for nearly twenty years.\u003cbr\u003e   • The woman with the rare dermatologic condition perforating collagenosis, which led her to leading academic medical centers throughout the world before she found her way to me. She had diffuse, severely painful red skin lesions all over her arms, legs, and back, and they were spreading despite large doses of steroids and ultraviolet light therapy. I treated her for underlying inflammation, allergies, and immune imbalance. Within a few months the skin lesions on her arms had resolved and those on her legs had improved by 80 percent.\u003cbr\u003e   • The twenty-three-year-old newlywed who developed severe psoriasis on her face and neck. She had been treated by several dermatologists with courses of prednisone, which temporarily helped, but the disease came back worse each time she was tapered off the drug and it was beginning to cause scarring. I treated her with targeted nutrition, and after one month all the lesions resolved, with no recurrence after five years.\u003cbr\u003e   • The sixty-one-year-old barber who gained a significant amount of weight after a knee injury and became diabetic. On my nutrigenetic diet plan he lost seventy pounds over one year and is now taking only a small dose of metformin rather than insulin.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eToday I divide my time equally between Gaynor Integrative Oncology, a practice focused on treating cancer patients, and Gaynor Wellness, in which I apply the same ecogenetic principles to treating people with a variety of concerns, ranging from general health maintenance and disease prevention to weight loss, insomnia, chronic fatigue, dermatological diseases, and Parkinson’s.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBoth practices incorporate meditation, music therapy, guided imagery, and cognitive behavioral therapy in concert with activities such as restorative physical therapy, yoga, aerobic exercise, and qigong as well as nutritional counseling based on the same principles presented here in the Gene Therapy Plan. My aim is always to treat the entire person in a way that acknowledges the complex nature of chronic illness, and to work at every level of the body’s healing processes—physiological, genetic, psychosocial, and spiritual—to create an optimal state of well-being.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe recommendations in this book, with their powerful and targeted ability to influence genetic expression, actually lead us to a new definition of what we mean by health. In this new view, we should see ourselves not as being merely “healthy” or “ill,” but as being ecogenetically “well managed” or “poorly managed” across the life span. This is especially true as new developments in disease diagnostics make the distinction between being healthy and being sick no longer black and white, but more a shade of gray. In other words, we all have the seeds of illness within us. The question is whether that potential for disease will become active or will remain dormant.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eImaging technologies like MRIs and CAT scans, as well as more finely grained autopsy studies, show us that the more sensitive our instruments for detecting disease become, the more disease we will find, and at earlier stages. For a long while we have been finding these seeds of serious illness in the surprisingly young. For example, fully 45 percent of soldiers killed in action during the Korean War and 77 percent of those killed in the Vietnam War showed early signs of heart disease. Even children under three years old—sometimes even fetuses—can have these early indications. And the case is the same for almost any disease you choose to look at closely.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt is now plausibly estimated, for instance, that almost 100 percent of people, if they had their thyroids dissected for examination by the newest methods, would show signs of cancer or precancerous mutation. And no matter how finely you slice the tissue, there may always be smaller tumors that fit into the spaces between the slices. The same is true for prostate cancer. Almost 50 percent of men between sixty and seventy would show signs of the disease if examined in this way. Almost 40 percent of women between forty and fifty would show signs of breast cancer under the new microscopes.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe unsettling reality, once again, is that every one of us has these signs of illness in dormant or slow-moving precursor forms. But that doesn’t make us passive victims. Not when we are able to exercise control over what we eat, and thereby significantly influence how our genes express themselves to affect our health. The fact is, for good or ill, we are all practicing gene therapy on ourselves all the time. We breathe in the smoke from a cigarette, we gulp down a soda, we train for a marathon. In each case, we are participating in a process that involves the regulation of our own genetic status.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOnce we grasp the implications of being able to influence gene expression, and once we align that fact with the prevalence of disease precursors well before symptoms appear, the case for the Gene Therapy Plan becomes incredibly compelling.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAll diets have their goals. Some are focused on losing weight, others on reducing risk of heart disease. Some have a vague wish to “detoxify,” or purge the body of harmful toxic buildup from pollutants and metabolic waste.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe Gene Therapy Plan can achieve those objectives, but its purpose is much more basic and comprehensive. It is designed to keep dormant disease dormant, and to help active disease go back to being dormant. And it does so in an integrated way that keeps a multitude of health variables in proper balance.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eToo many eating plans promote one kind of virtue (for example, weight loss) at the expense of others (such as cancer prevention). But it doesn’t make much sense to slim down if in the process we incur a higher degree of total-body inflammation, which can lead to other problems. In the same way, it makes little sense to eat for heart health while ignoring the possibility of cancers. The Gene Therapy Plan weaves all these elements into a consciously holistic picture of total human wellness that also addresses all the microscopic dormant and precursor conditions that could, given the wrong ecogenetic influence, turn into illness.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBy far the biggest causes of death in the United States are heart disease and cancer, accounting for around 50 percent of all deaths each year. Diabetes is another major killer. Obesity, systemic inflammation, and exposure to environmental toxicants are contributing factors to all these and many other disease conditions. Aging is a process we all undergo, and while its effects can’t be avoided entirely, they can be managed in order to optimize quality of life.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTaken together, these conditions and processes are among the most significant obstacles to health and happiness. They are, therefore, necessarily the primary targets of ecogenetic nutrition and the Gene Therapy Plan.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe plan is designed to help you:\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e   • resist cancer\u003cbr\u003e   • resist heart disease\u003cbr\u003e   • resist diabetes\u003cbr\u003e   • maintain a healthy weight\u003cbr\u003e   • reverse low immunity\u003cbr\u003e   • ameliorate the effects of aging\u003cbr\u003e   • remove toxins from the body\u003cbr\u003e   • promote energy\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eAnyone who wants to improve his or her health can benefit from the diet simply by following its general guidelines for better nutritional choices. There’s no rigid formula. You don’t have to sign on for a complicated program with steps and levels and layers. At the same time, though, anyone with specific concerns can follow the diet’s more directed recommendations and use it preventively to lower the risk of a specific disease long before any symptoms become apparent. And those hoping to reverse specific disease processes can\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Penguin Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48233671262437,"sku":"NP9780143108191","price":24.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780143108191.jpg?v=1767739481","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-gene-therapy-plan-isbn-9780143108191","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}