“Dirty Genes” and the repurposing of epigenetics

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I wasn’t sure where best to put this buy while looking through some audiobooks at my library I came across the book “Dirty Genes” by a Dr Ben Lynch a partial description of which is:

When your genes are working properly, you feel energized and healthy. But when your genes are “”dirty,“” or not functioning optimally, your health suffers. Some genes are “”born dirty“” - they have certain variations that can cause you problems. Other genes merely “”act dirty“” in response to your environment, diet, or lifestyle. You can optimize both types of dirty genes by cleaning them up through healthy eating, good sleep, stress relief, environmental detox, and other holistic and natural means.

Full description here.

The author has a website and a bio which can also be found here.

In short he’s a naturopath so it’s alternative medicine and a lot of the familiar pseudoscience and wellness stuff. But I found the language and the repurposing of genetics and in particular epigenetics interesting.

There may even be lessons here on how people do this or how the public respond to it which may be useful for countering misunderstanding and misrepresentation of the results of genetic studies like DecodeME. Or at least in being aware that just having genetic findings doesn’t immediately mean all the problematic views and arguments go away.