Genetics? We like to blame everything on genes. Is that realistic?

Below is an excerpt from the text of the book that is guiding me through the healing diet I’ve started pursuing, Gut and Psychology Syndrome. The GAPS diet website is here.

I want to remind folks that while this book concentrates on children that are dealing with autism and other conditions that are labeled psychiatric, that I came to this diet through the auto-immune disease communities. The author is working on a rewrite that looks at this diet from the perspective of adults with all manner of chronic illness. People with greatly diverse serious illnesses from Crohns disease to Rheumatoid arthritis have been profoundly helped and in many cases made completely free from life-long disease with the aid of this diet. I’ve met some of these folks now as well through internet health groups.

The fact is that much of today’s chronic disease is linked. Psychiatry and it’s medicines add to the toxic burden that Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride is suggesting in the below excerpt.

When it comes to the distress that gets labeled with psychiatric terms the below is likely to be only part of the picture. The fact is our psycho/social living conditions matter profoundly as well. It’s pretty clear that sometimes that is the biggest source of an issue. Being that we are holistic creatures, if we can support people from a multitude of angles,  thus supporting all aspects of body, mind and spirit, we might find that more and more people are able to get better.

The word genetics is mentioned a lot in connection with the GAPS conditions. Now and then we see articles in various journals where some part of some gene has been found, which may have something to do with autism, or schizophrenia, or ADHD/ADD, or dyslexia, or dyspraxia or depression. We are assured that scientists are working on it and that the genetic cause of these conditions will be found! Not that it will help the patients or their families, but it will put our minds at rest that our children were meant to be disabled and there was nothing we could do about it!

In our modern world genetics is a popular concept. Almost every health problem is commonly blamed on genetics. We pollute the water we drink, the food we eat, the air we breathe with industrial and nuclear wastes and when we get ill we blame it all on genetics. We deplete our soils of minerals and other nutrients and replace them with pesticides, organophosphates, weedkillers and lots of other chemicals, we grow our crops on these soils, we eat these crops, we get ill and blame it all on genetics. We damage our children’s immune systems with vaccinations and antibiotics and blame it all on genetics. We regularly consume processed foods with virtually no nourishment for the body and full of chemicals, detrimental to health, and when we get ill we blame it all on genetics. We regularly intoxicate ourselves with alcohol, tobacco and drugs and when we get ill we blame it all on genetics.

If we look at all the epidemics of degenerative disease we have in our modern times, which are blamed on genetics, it is easy to come to the conclusion that we all must have very poor genetics indeed! In fact I don’t know how human kind survived for millennia with such poor genetics! According to the scientific establishment genetics are to blame pretty much for every misery we suffer. We have epidemics of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, psychological and psychiatric maladies, learning disabilities, autoimmune disorders, obesity, etc. etc., the list is very long. These are all conditions which doctors very rarely encountered 100 years ago. Have our genetics changed so quickly to cause these epidemics?

Well, for the last few decades genetic research or molecular biology has received the most money in the western world. A lot of laboratories, which used to do basic science, have been converted into genetic research. Billions have been poured into this area in every western country. So, if every other scientist works in genetics that that is what they know and that is what they are going to think about when it comes to identifying the course of any disease. As the old English proverb states: “If the only tool you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail.” Obesity? Don’t worry about your eating habits. Just wait, we will find a gene to blame for it!…Cancer? Do not torment yourself with questions about your lifestyle, we will pinpoint a gene which caused it!…Learning disabilities? Oh definitely must be genetic!

Genetics are a very convenient scapegoat. It is something we are born with, there is nothing we can do about it at the moment. So, wouldn’t it be wonderful not to worry about our food, environment or our life-styles? Wouldn’t it be so convenient to just put all the responsibility for our state of health on our genetics? (pages 330 and 331 of the newest edition)

Most western chronic disease can be healed with diet. It’s a rather stunning fact and one most people don’t want to face. It gets very complex because our food supply right now is supplying us with toxic “food.” A nutritionist friend calls processed food “phood.” Not really food at all.

On a different note:

I think about marrying methods such as utilized in Gut and Psychology Syndrome with the psycho/social methods used in Western Lapland in Finland where recovery from serious forms of mental distress is around 85% and I think that perhaps we can shoot for 100% recovery in mental health!