Pandora’s box has been opened. There are concerns that the epigenetic effects arising from exposure to chemicals and electromagnetic fields in the womb may set up a trajectory of illness later on in that person’s life that may be difficult to curtail. The Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DoHAD) is consequently gaining considerable attention amongst researchers who are linking early life exposure to environmental hazards with chronic diseases later in life.
GENETICS LOADS THE GUN, THE ENVIRONMENT PULLS THE TRIGGER
The Human Genome Project was going to be the greatest scientific breakthrough in human history, a revolution for medicine, a headache for ethicists, and a pot of gold for the insurance companies. It was however none of these. Completion of the human genome project in 2003, and failure to associate genes with the epidemic of chronic illnesses plaguing western societies, inadvertently put the environment at center stage and validated what many, including the father of medicine -Hippocrates- had stated centuries before: ‘that what you eat, your lifestyle, and the place in which you live affects your health’. We now know that gene mutations play only a minor role in chronic diseases, and gene variants (single nucleotide polymorphisms or SNPs like MTHFR), become relevant only when understood in context with your lifestyle, diet, and environmental exposure.
Let me give you an example. Whilst the cause of breast cancer is not fully understood, there are several well known risk factors including the age a woman begins her period, the age she gives birth to her first child, the timing of menopause, the length of time she breast feeds, whether she is overweight, if she has taken the oral contraceptive pill or HRT, how much or little exercise she undertakes, as well as alcohol intake and cigarette smoking.86,87 A family history of breast cancer and in particular, the presence of gene mutations - BRCA1 and BRCA2 are a low risk factor accounting for only 5.3% and 3.6% respectively.88 Similarly, the presence of gene variants (SNPs) in detoxification pathways have been shown to only slightly increase the risk.89-94 However, when you combine these gene variants with environmental factors like exercise, diet, and chemical exposure, the risk increases significantly.95-97 This may explain why US born Asian women have an almost two-fold higher incidence of invasive breast cancer than foreign-born Asian women,98 because the gene variant (MTHFR C677T) commonly found in Asian women92 makes them susceptible to toxicants in the diet and the environment. Many of the gene variants that are being discovered, appear to be insignificant if you have a healthy diet, lifestyle, and home!
An important part of my PhD thesis was to determine who in the population was susceptible to environmental chemical exposure, and to determine the most relevant biomarkers. This involved interviewing the top environmental medical doctors in Australia and New Zealand, many of whom specialized in environmental sensitivities like Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, Fibromyalgia, Electromagnetic Sensitivities, and Mold Illness.
After analyzing the interviews, it quickly became obvious that environmental chemical assessment is fraught with challenges in clinical practice. It is time consuming, expensive for patients, and requires extensive knowledge about the source and impact of environmental exposures and their relationship to a patient’s genes, lifestyle, diet, and place, which doctors are not taught in medical school. One of the most interesting findings was their take on the Canaries, i.e. those people in society who are especially vulnerable to chemical exposure.
As one doctor put it:
Sensitivity to smells and sensitivity to sound, to all of the senses out of a group has an extraordinary advantage: that you hear the tiger, you know the poison in the plum, you become, effectively, the early warning radar.