“Your perspective is always limited by how much you know. Expand your knowledge and you will transform your mind.”
― Bruce H. Lipton PHD
So, what are epigenetics, and how is our view outdated?
It Starts With Shifting Perspective…
Genetics are a long complex code that says how to make the proteins that make all the tissues that create our body.
They are simply a sequence that the reading mechanisms of our cells use to create the right proteins the body needs to function.
But the process of reading, interpreting and building from the code is lead by epigenetics.
They are the ones who decide which codes are used and which aren’t…
Epigenetics do not actually change the genetic sequences but they control what genes are turned on and off or “expressed”.
And this doesn’t just happen in utero, it happens throughout our lives, from going through trauma, to finding peace and happiness in our lives, we are always enabling or disabling gene expression.
And as an added bonus, the genetic expressions our grandparents changed in their lives, influence our lives, and the ones we change in ours influence our children’s epigenetic expression.
For example,
Studies have found that the children of people who lived through extremely traumatic events like the gas chambers of auschwitz , the assimilative schools of north america, the genocide of africa or even just alcoholism and depression in families were more apt to have higher stress responses.
This is very different from our old model where genetics were simply read and used in a seemingly random order.
Of which, your actions never made a difference to what hand of cards your children might be given, and once given, would never change.
Epigenetics are the conscious and subconscious minds ancestral memory
Epigenetic changes can be passed down for generations and studies on rats have found that,
“In the pups of inattentive mothers, they found that genes regulating the production of glucocorticoid receptors, which regulate sensitivity to stress hormones, were highly methylated; in the pups of conscientious moms, the genes for the glucocorticoid receptors were rarely methylated.”
This methylation process “gums up the works” and created an environment where the stress response doesn’t work like it should and instead creates “nervous wrecks”.
Instead, the conscientious attentive mothers children were much calmer and less reactive to stress.
For migraineurs, this not only creates a safer environment but also raises our threshold and how much tolerance we have to stress before we become triggered.
Is it Nature + Nurture?
No longer is the battle going to be nature + nurture as two separate entities in our battle to be free of pain.
As science advances we are starting to find the grey area to get bigger and bigger and epigenetics actually taking over.
It isn’t nature because we can make changes every day in how we think, feel, act and the patterns we create to alter our genetic expression.
And it isn’t nurture because our parents, grandparents and ancestors all played a part in the code we get and how it’s read but we end up making the choices to heal those wounds or perpetuate them.
It comes down to the decisions, environments and feelings we choose to experience right now.
We call this the exposome.
“The exposome can be defined as the measure of all the exposures of an individual in a lifetime and how those exposures relate to health. An individual’s exposure begins before birth and includes insults from environmental and occupational sources.”
So how does this influence our migraines?
Well first off our migraines are not as genetically predestined and locked as previously thought.
As we are seeing with the root cause, functional, integrative and holistic medical healthcare revolution there are many many migraines that simply are not a genetic coffin.
Because we have the ability to change much of our nature, nurture and exposome we need not feel like migraines are forever.
We play a part…
We simply can’t look at ourselves as victims in this game of life if we are to make the changes we need to overcome not only our epigenetic predispositions, but also our children’s.
And homeopathy has known this for a long time, long before the science of epigenetics.
When homeopathic medicines are given properly according to strong principles and the miasmatic layers of the disease are peeled back, future generations are also freed from following the same disease path.
Just like we play a part in eating the foods that trigger our migraines, we play a part in the emotions and environments we put ourselves in that contribute to the stress and sickness that causes them to come back again and again.
When we become conscious of this we are able to respond and not simply react to life’s stimuli…
Now to make the changes for us and our families.
When we want to go about changing our health we have to know what we are changing first.
This is #1.
Our health begins with our thoughts, beliefs and attitudes and how they play out every day in the things we do, the job we work, the foods we eat and the stresses we put ourselves under.
If we are going to change we need to know what we want, how we want to feel, what we want to think, what kind of attitude we want to have and how we react to our stresses.
It all begins with having the north star that guides us through our conscious efforts of what we do but also through our subconscious efforts of how we think, believe and feel.
We have to be honest with ourselves if we are not healthy, and what we are doing that is putting us in that situation.
How do we maintain the balance of forces in our lives?
#2 is making sure we know of, are aware of and can respond to the two forces that balance our lives.
In the simplest description this is yin/yang
Yin is the female energy of cooling, moistening, regenerating, energy building, anabolic, night, working in, desire and silence.
Yang is the masculine energy of heating, drying, breaking down, energy expending, catabolic, day, working out, pursuing and language.
It is between these two forces that all life has been created and all life balanced between.
When we get too much of one or the other in our lives we become ill.
But this also means we can use the opposite of the one we are overdoing(or under doing) to heal ourselves and create the balance in our bodies to recover.
When we can effectively know what our north star is, and use the two forces to balance us out and keep us on the road, we can get there faster, smoother and healthier.
But not without making the 3 choices.
Our decision making needs to be conscious of the 3 choices we get to create the environment we want
#3 is the ability to discern between optimal, suboptimal and neutral decisions in our lives.
Optimal is the best long term decision for all parties involved that gets us closer to our dream and balances our forces.
Suboptimal usually still gets us closer to our dream but may do it by bringing more awareness into our lives in the form of learning from mistakes.
Suboptimal decisions are usually not the best for all parties involved and can be short term solutions for long term pain.
Neutral decisions are seen as the worst because no learning happens and you do nothing.
It is basically apathy and provides no place for you to move to and learn from in life.
We need to be honest with ourselves and empathetic of the ones around us to know how to make optimal decisions and get everyone on our dream team closer to the dream goals while balancing the 2 forces.
When we can follow our dream, balance the forces that keep us on the straightest road there and make the optimal choices that support everyone around us then our ability to heal from the pain and darkness of migraines is greatly accelerated.
But not without regular check ups from the 4 doctors.
We have to check in with the 4 doctors of health on a regular basis to maintain our balance and know when we are getting out of touch with an area of foundational health hopefully before things go wrong
#4 is Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, Doctor Movement and Doctor Happiness
They are simple to explain but harder to tune into with our busy 21st century lives.
The word “Doctor” comes directly from Latin and means “to teach”.
Doctor Happiness teaches you how to check in and know you are happy and find balance between the essential and non essential of life.
Doctor Quiet is the chief physician and teaches you how to go into that space where you can listen and receive the knowledge your body has for you as to how to heal and be healthy.
Doctor Diet shows you how to tell how nutrition is affecting you and how to gauge on a meal by meal basis what foods you should and shouldn’t be eating for optimal health and healing.
Doctor Movement is the teacher of putting things into action at the right time and using movement as a method of detoxification, growth and expression.
It is between these 4 doctors that we learn the essential foundations of being healthy and healing our bodies anywhere from migraines to cancer.
Without them our body will struggle to keep its energy levels, nutrition, detoxification, movement, emotions and thoughts on a clear and high enough level to get the health we need to live the lives we want.
But when we have these under control and we are still experiencing disease in our lives we have to look at supporting the underlying structures that may be too damaged to heal themselves and need support.
This is when homeopathy and using integrative functional medicine really shines.
It helps boost our body’s healing mechanisms in the right directions with the energy we have available.
It’s as simple as 1 – 2 – 3 – 4.
Are your migraines passed inherited?
What have you connected them to?
