Happiness Genes

Unlock the Positive Potential Hidden in Your DNA

James D. Baird, Laurie Nadel

• Publisher: RWW New Page Books
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781601631053
• eBook ISBN: 9781601637352
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Genetics & Genomics

How the science of epigenetics reveals that we're wired for natural happiness—includes a 28-day plan to create a biological cascade of well-being.
 
Happiness Genes explores the surprising link between science and spirituality—and makes it clear that happiness can't be bought. It's actually at our fingertips—or more precisely, in our DNA.
 
The new science of epigenetics reveals that there are reserves of natural happiness within your DNA that can be controlled by you—your emotions, beliefs, and behavioral choices. This book examines the nature and source of happiness, from ancient times to the present. It presents the epigenetic and other biological research that shows that DNA contains genes for natural happiness and your ultimate well-being. Then it details the 28-Day natural happiness program—to show you how to switch on your own happiness genes.

Part I:
The Genes Made Me Do It

chapter 1
Your Genes Awaken

Our relationship to DNA is probably one of the greatest frontiers which is being blown open right now.

—Gregg Braden

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories (CSHL), a research institute for molecular biology and genetics, spreads across 130 acres of well-groomed waterfront property on the prestigious northern shore of Long Island, New York. An inlet to Long Island Sound, a ribbon of quiet water, punctuates the property. The town of Cold Spring Harbor for which the institute is named is a former whaling port that Native Americans, its original residents, named Wawapex, meaning “Good Little Water Place.”

Since 1890, when a group of wealthy local investors founded the institute, the laboratory at Cold Spring Harbor has produced seven Nobel Prize winners. Some 85 Nobel laureates have worked here at some point during their illustrious careers.¹ It was here, in 1953, that James Watson gave his first public lecture on the double-helix structure of the DNA molecule. Nine years later, he and colleague Francis Crick won the Nobel Prize in Physiology of Medicine for identifying the structure of DNA.

Today, some 120 years after the laboratory was founded, genetics researchers from all across the globe come to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories for conferences and symposia on multisyllabic topics pertaining to microscopic phenomena that include genes and cancer research, neuroscience, and plant biology. Bioinformatics, a new field that examines biological data and statistics using state-of-the-art computer programs, is one emerging field of study. Another is epigenetics, which we will get to in just a moment.

a historical perspective

If you have ever visited the old city of Philadelphia, or colonial Williamsburg, you can get a sense, during a walking tour, of what occurred in the past. In a similar fashion, the history of science was made in Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories. Nobel Prize–winners walked these paths on their way to lunch, thinking deeply about their scientific projects. Even a non-scientist taking a walking tour of the facilities cannot quite escape the energetic presence of great scientific minds, past and present.

With the official opening of the Carnegie lab building in 1905, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories became one of the first genetics research institutions in the world. The Carnegie building now houses historical documents, including an outline that helped to launch the Human Genome Project, an international program that mapped all the genes in the human body.

Nearby, the Jones building is the country’s oldest biology lab in continuous use. A look inside reveals an original floor-to-ceiling fireplace, and a few scientists studying rat neurons under microscopes. The open space hums with activity, although the giant steel pods encased in glass are designed to result in a vibration-free facility. Jones has won several architecture awards for “adaptive re-use” of an old building for contemporary needs.

After peeking inside one or two labs, you may be wondering what a campus full of science geniuses would look like. Picture, if you will, some 400 versions of Dr. Gregory House: brilliant, analytical, and relentless in their commitment to solving complex problems.

To an observer, interaction among colleagues is not what you would expect. Whether engrossed in their lab work or walking to the dining hall, scientists on campus rarely make eye contact with each other, much less with a visitor on tour. Their eye movements dart upward and sideways, indicating that they are focusing more attention on their ideas than on the person who is speaking. Although their conversations are subdued in volume, they are animated in pace and intensity. From time to time, a scientist will flash an inscrutable smile as his or her eyes light up in a moment of “aha!” just like House when he has figured out what’s wrong with his patient. But there are 400 brilliant minds on the premises, cogitating like mad to come up with genetic solutions to diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s. At the turn of the 19th century, genetics research was primarily focused on eugenics, a field of research that has since fallen out of favor. Eu- is the Latin prefix for “good,” and genics refers to shared traits. Eugenics was believed to work by “encouraging reproduction by persons presumed to have inheritable desirable traits,” and discouraging reproduction by those who had inheritable traits that were not so desirable.² (Carried to extremes, Hitler’s so-called master race was predicated on the eugenics model.)

as any CSI fan knows…

DNA is to today’s TV crime shows what Desdemona’s handkerchief was to Shakespeare’s Othello. Desdemona’s dropping her handkerchief became the key to understanding the events that unfolded; likewise, a perp’s DNA in this week’s episode of Law and Order or CSI, serves as a biological tag that helps pathologists to identify crime victims and perpetrators. Like a fingerprint, every human’s biological tag is unique. According to DNA.gov, “DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is the fundamental building block for an individual’s entire genetic makeup. It is a component of virtually every cell in the human body.”³

DNA is a code. Massive groups of DNA make up your genes, and your genes are like instructions that can activate a sequence of code for heritable traits embedded in a microscopic strand of DNA. The DNA contains the words and structure of the language that is used for a particular set of instructions. Your genes can unlock the code within your DNA, not the other way around. A few paragraphs from now, We will give you an example of just how this works.

Your 3 billion DNA molecules are encased in protein sheaths. Certain genes, called regulatory genes, contain the instructions to wrap or unwrap the protein sheath. This, in turn, can activate or stop the DNA code from going into effect. In searching for genetic-based cures for certain diseases, researchers are interested in finding out which genes can “lock” or “freeze” the activation of DNA codes for those illnesses. If you can switch off those genes, the DNA code will not be able to execute that particular disease’s program. Scientists believe that, when they discover the gene mechanisms that control the disease’s DNA, they may be able to develop or design molecules that will be able to turn off those genes and halt the onset of a specific disease.

A molecule that switches off a regulatory gene is creating a change in the biochemical environment. Temperature, toxins, and pollutants can also produce environmental changes that alter the activation of certain genes and, subsequently, specific strands of DNA as well.

what you learned in high school about DNA is outdated

If you have ever undergone an EEG test, you would have seen your mind’s output as a series of waves on paper: Your brain’s output is measured in electromagnetic waves. Your variable heart rate produces a measurable magnetic field as well, and these magnetic signals are another type of environmental trigger that can affect how your genes behave. Studies now prove that you can deliberately and consciously change your baseline emotional level and thoughts so as to change your body’s measurable magnetic output—in a way that can affect whether or not your genes go into action to instruct strands of DNA that contain certain codes. Every cell in your body contains DNA, and the structure of your DNA does not change. However, the genes made up of masses of DNA can be altered by the external physical environment, and by your mind and your emotions, your internal environment.

That’s not what I learned in high school/college/graduate school/on TV! you may well be thinking.

No, it is not. Those concepts are outdated. Remember: People used to believe that the Earth revolved around the sun and that evil spirits, not bacteria, caused disease. The spirit of science is about searching for truth and discarding old beliefs in the light of new facts that prove those beliefs to be no longer valid.

As you are about to see, new discoveries in the lab challenge what you learned in your high-school biology class. There are millions of DNA molecules in your body serving an uncountable myriad purposes. Some of these have been studied according to rigorous standards of science and found to be affected by your internal environment.

From a mind/body perspective, this brings good news and bad news: The old model let you blame your circumstances on your genes, as in “It’s not my fault. I have lousy genes.” The bad news is that you can no longer make excuses for your unhappiness by blaming your DNA, but the good news is that you can discover new ways of directing the flow of your emotions and thoughts to improve your quality of life while creating powerful biophysical changes at the genetic level.

Are you ready to see how it can work?

a landmark study on switching off cancer genes

At the University of California, San Francisco, Dr. Dean Ornish and his research team studied a group of men with prostate cancer who had chosen not to have surgery, radiation, or chemotherapy. For three months, the subjects walked for half an hour every day, ate vegetables, soy, and whole grains, and practiced meditation for stress reduction. The results of the study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in June 2008, showed that, in addition to lowering their blood pressure and losing weight, the men’s genes for prostate and breast cancer had shut down. He noted, “It’s an exciting finding because so often people say, ‘Oh, it’s all in my genes, what can I do?’ Well, it turns out you may be able to do a lot.”⁴

welcome to the field of epigenetics

The study of gene interactions is called epigenetics. Epi- is the Greek prefix meaning “above” or “higher than,” as in epidermis, the scientific term for your skin. Conrad Waddington gets credit for coming up with the term epigenetics to describe a model of how genes interact with their surroundings. But the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BC) referred to epigenesis as the development of “an individual organic form from the unformed.”⁵ Thomas Jenuwein, an Austrian scientist, likens the difference between traditional genetics and epigenetics to “the difference between writing and reading a book. Once the book is written, the text [DNA] will be the same in all the copies.… Epigenetics would result in different read-outs.”⁶

One of the hottest fields of science today, epigenetics explores how your genes behave when their environment changes. As the Ornish study shows, a regulatory gene for cancer can be switched on and off by environmental modifications. “DNA is just tape carrying information, and a tape is no good without a player. Epigenetics is about the tape player,” observes British scientist Bryan Turner.⁷

The majority of epigenetics research looks at chemical interactions that alter how your genes behave. With funding from pharmaceutical companies, scientists are being paid to look for molecular magic bullets. But, as you will see shortly, psychological shifts can modify gene behavior as well.

Changing a gene’s environment can trigger a type of molecule called a methyl group. The methyl group can stop or start the gene from activating its set of instructions. According to genetics researchers at Duke University, methylation can be compared to “putting gum on a light switch…the switch isn’t broken, but the gum blocks its function.”⁸

In his groundbreaking book The Biology of Belief, Bruce Lipton describes how he discovered that the membrane of a human cell contains a transmitter and a receiver for messages in the form of electromagnetic signals from other cells. Electromagnetic signals can communicate instructions to such molecules as a methyl group. In turn, a methyl group can act upon a gene so as to interrupt its normal behavior. “DNA is like a program in your computer. It contains instructions,” says Dr. Lipton. “It is not—repeat—not the hardware.”

when rats make bad mothers

From a layperson’s perspective, genetics and epigenetics raise a basic question: nature or nurture?

“We can no longer argue whether genes or environment has a greater impact on our health and development, because both are inextricably linked,” said Randy Jirtle, PhD, a genetics researcher in Duke’s Department of Radiation Oncology. “Each nutrient, each interaction, each experience can manifest itself through biochemical changes that ultimately dictate gene expression, whether at birth or 40 years down the road.”⁹

At an epigenetics conference sponsored by Duke University in October 2005, Moshe Szyf, PhD, professor of pharmacology and therapeutics at McGill University in Montreal, and his colleague, Michael Meaney, studied maternal grooming behaviors in rats. Baby rats that were not licked by their mothers produced more stress hormones as adults than baby rats who received proper nurturing for their species. Dr. Szyf found that the gene that releases the protein responsible for regulating the production of hormones linked to stress had less methylation! In other words, the mother rat’s lack of proper nurturing behavior limited her offspring’s genetic ability to produce enough proteins to lower the offspring’s stress hormone levels. “We’re showing that it’s the maternal behavior that counts, not just the genetic baggage,” he said. “Behavior can clearly affect the chemistry of DNA.”¹⁰

a behavioral epigenetic link between child abuse and suicide

Scientists may have left the Duke University epigenetics conference wondering whether epigenetic factors would have similar effects on humans. In fact, after examining the brains of 12 suicide victims who were abused as children, Dr. Meaney proved, four years later, that abuse during one’s childhood can damage an individual’s genetic ability to produce a normal flow of stress hormones. Autopsies of the victims’ brains, plus brains of other suicide ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Part I: The Genes Made Me Do It
• Part II: Love That Feeling
• Part III: Making Happiness Happen
• Afterword Welcome to the Revolution!
• Appendix I: Behavioral Science and Epigenetics in Depth
• Appendix II: Self-Hypnotic Induction
• Notes
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Internet Resource Directory
• Index
• About the Author