Epigenetics: the genius of life.

Every advance in genetic research bears witness to the complexity and the profoundly unique and talented nature of the human body, in its most subtle components.

A few decades ago, medicine was engaged in decoding DNA and reading the human genome, in the context of treating certain major viruses, autoimmune diseases, or rare genetic diseases known as orphans.

The long-standing approach was based on the hypothesis that DNA was an inimitable signature of each of us, drawn in a unique and remarkable way, transmitted by the anteriority of family histories, recent or much more distant, in a sort of inevitable determinism.

Everything could therefore be inscribed, defined, explained, and understood by a DNA strip that for a long time was thought to be frozen by the certainties that mark all scientific demonstration… until the contrary was proven.

This is how Science, the real one, advances, the one that knows that there is never a fixed truth but a reality of the moment, and acted and explained demonstration, an understanding at a very special moment of the mystery of Life.

In the 2000s, Mr. Joël De Rosnay, with his recognized scientific curiosity and his great enthusiast of human nature, was one of the first to mention the importance of the environment in which we live, of nature, of beliefs, of thoughts, of our diet, of our family environment, on our genetics,

Nearly 20 years later, he published “The symphony of life”, a reference book that shows with simplicity and clarity how epigenetics can change a life.

This talented scientist reminds us of the importance of “managing one’s body”, of studying the epigenome and its regulation in order to understand and counteract physical and cerebral aging and to fight against the development of certain so-called incurable diseases

The biological sciences have gradually opened up to this great genetic revolution of the 21st century. In 2012, a chair in ‘epigenetics and cellular memory’ was created at the Collège de France, followed by the launch of the European ‘Epigenome’ program.

For a long time at the center of the theory of heredity that marked 19th-century biological research, genes are no longer immutable data transmitted from generation to generation.

Epigenetics teaches us that even in the embryonic state, every human life form carries precise and complex trans-generational information while being infinitely receptive to environmental, chemical, and physiological modifications. This new approach brings a new wind to biological research and scientific determinism.

A belief can become a certainty for many of us. Until the age of about 7, beliefs and prejudices are anchored in our brain… until an event, a shock, or a simple awareness transforms our cellular heritage and memory in depth.

Recent work in the field of hypnosis attests to the impact of this approach on the genetics of patients and on the upheaval of their lives and their DNA.

Thus, modifying one’s unconscious, changing a well-established habit, teaching the body to undergo physical training and then to enjoy it, and radically changing the way it eats, are all levers for DNA evolution.

The degree of empathy in a child’s family environment can have an impact, years later, on the child’s parasympathetic system.

Laughter and its endorphin shot, gestures of affection and their procession of oxytocin, the regular practice of cardiac coherence, meditation, all this, and a thousand other tiny or large-scale upheavals define who we are, well beyond our personal, family, or collective history.

The link between the psyche and biology is then made and we understand that the perception of the environment by the smallest cell controls its behavior. This same perception will have an impact on genes, even rewriting them.

Epigenetics invites us to take responsibility for our lifestyles, our behavior, and our thoughts. It also calls us to act in awareness of the infinite human potential of which we are all, but in a unique way, carriers.