What I want to relay to you is that your health is in your hands and within your power. Your genes are not your destiny. How many of us have heard or spoke the phrases – “everyone in my family gets heart disease, everyone in my family has diabetes or cancer?” and it said as though you are just waiting until the day your medical provider confirms what you already knew was going to happen? In actuality only 3% of all cancers are genetically related and only 20% of chronic diseases. The rest are lifestyle related. You know what you inherit from your parents in addition to your genes? The foods you eat, the culture of eating, how active you are, etc. These are the things that contribute more to your health destiny.
Genes are a “suggestion.” The environment for those genes to be expressed happens when we don’t provide our bodies with the nutrients they need to protect it. Our bodies are amazing and given the right circumstances they can heal themselves. Hippocrates (who is considered the father of modern medicine) said “Let food by thy medicine.”
It is not what is in your genes, it is what is on your plate. There is a disconnect that people understand taking a pill has an effect on your body but not the same thing for food. You wouldn’t take a pill if it was labeled poison but we do that everyday with what we eat. Food is the original pill and everything you put in your body effects it.
When diet is wrong, medicine is of no use. When diet is correct, medicine is of no need.
– Ayurvedic proverb
Deirdre Sweeney, Plant-Based Health 