If you have followed my journey over the past five or more years and my story I shared in “LIFE IS NOT A RACE”, you know I was a competitive age group long distance/endurance triathlete, cyclist and runner. Since my dramatic change in my energy, body weight and mood change in 2013, I have been on a mission to figure out WHY this happened to ME!
After taking coaching programs to gain more knowledge as a health coach over the years including:
- CHEK Holistic Lifestyle Coach
- Ben Greenfield’s Superhuman Coach Program
- Nutritional Therapy Practitioner Program
- KION Coach program with Ben Greenfield
- DNAFit Coach
I have now started to put the pieces of the puzzle together for MY individual root cause(s) to my “adrenal exhaustion” plus multiple other internal issues as liver detoxification, gut dysbiosis, hormone imbalance- hypothyroid and more. After reading Dr. Panda’s Circadian Code and Dr. Ben Lynch’s Dirty Genes, then taking my 23andMe results (raw data) into Genetic Genie, StrataGene and DNAFit, I am experiencing this huge “ah ha” moment. Genetics influence our individuality and our environment (lifestyle, stress, nutrition, exericise…) determine our health- our individual epigenetics. How our genes are expressed is partially determined by our individual interactions in our environment.
For myself, N=1 experiment, I was running my own fitness studio business by myself (STRESSOR), training at a competitive level for Ironman Triathlons (plus marathons and other endurance events) throughout the year and changing what I eat (or not eating as LCHF and fasting which too much can become a stressor at the level of training), as well as lack of sleep trying to fit in too much into one day so waking up too early and going to bed too late- which leads to rushing/racing through the day to (“living life as a race”).
Ironman Hawaii in 2012 I was feeling super strong, lean and fit then fast forward to March 2013 where I was tired, fat, slow and depressed.
Why can some people handle more stress than others? Why did I break down and feel exhausted when others can live life as a race without falling apart?
Genetics.
Recently, after learning about DNAFit (and taking their coaching program, becoming a KION Coach with Ben Greenfield and reading Dr. Ben Lynch’s book DIRTY GENES, I became curious… “do my genetic mutations and lifestyle contribute to my adrenal exhaustion/HPA Axis dysregulation”?
Of course they do! Chronic Stress impacts our Performance…but why does it impact one person differently than another? Our genetic mutations and phenotype (genes x environment) determine out outcome. If we are living life in a stressful environment, then which of our genetics would cause an internal domino effect of our body systems? It makes sense right?
But why didn’t anyone ever help me with looking at my epigentics as 23andMe has been around for many years but people looked at their results to find their ancestors instead of their genetic mutations. Epigenetics is relatively new but I just figured it out this year (2019) as it impacts our risk for “chronic stress diseases” or “adrenal exhaustion” or HPA-Axis Dysfunction (hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis).
I will begin writing a series of blog posts (future book?) sharing my own genetic mutations and the basics of the main gene functions. The funny thing is that my The WHOLESTIC Method 5-day and 30-day total transformation program is pretty similar to the program Dr. Ben Lynch shares in his DIRTY GENES book for his CLEAN GENES PROTOCOL so at least I have been on the right track in cleaning up my own body from the inside out at a cellular level without understanding the genetic component.
The genes that are related to chronic stress and too much exercise include:
- MTHFR
- COMT
- DAO
- MAOA
- GST/GPS
- NOS3
- PEMT
Stay tuned in to my blog and podcast to join my journey if you want to transform The WHOLE Athlete from the inside out to improve performance in life and sports!
The WHOLESTIC Method Coach,
Debbie Potts
