I am just back from Austin Texas, where I attended the annual international conference sponsored by the Institute of Functional Medicine. As I’ve told you many times in my writings and in my lectures, functional medicine places an emphasis on how our organs function, and how to improve our organ function to lead to better health. This is of necessity includes the use of diet, lifestyle, and nutrition to improve organ function.
This year the conference was titled the “Omics” Revolution: Nature and Nurture.
Genomics is the study of our genes and how they express themselves to contribute to making us who we are. The function of the genes is to make proteins which then create our metabolism, which determines our health and even we are finding, our mental makeup.
The study of the proteins of the body and how they make us into who we are is called Proteomics.
These proteins then create our metabolism. The study of how these proteins interface with our metabolism to create who we are is called Metabolomics. Our metabolism then creates how we look, how we digest our food, whether we are fat or skinny, and all aspects of our health.
This conference emphasized, more than ever, that our genes are “Not written in stone.” We are now learning that our diet, our lifestyle, our thought patterns and our emotional patterns are able to directly impact our genes and thereby their expression of proteins which turn into our metabolism which creates who we are.
As my colleague Jeffrey Bland PhD, has said “There are many “you’s” within you.” This is good news! We are able to control the expression of our genes by what we eat, how we think how we exercise and how we live. Our food and our thoughts talk directly to our genes!
I am happy to present this video of my colleague Dr Jeffrey Bland, who explains this idea of Omics very clearly. When you watch this short video, you will see why the Omics revolution is such an exciting thing to me as a functional medicine doctor.
What is the “Omics” Revolution? from The Institute for Functional Med on Vimeo.
In my next blog post I will talk about some of the specific things that were discussed at the conference.
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