Dirty Genes: A Breakthrough Program to Treat the Root Cause of Illness and Optimize Your Health (Book Review)

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Title: Dirty Genes: A Breakthrough Program to Treat the Root Cause of Illness and Optimize Your Health
Author: Dr. Ben Lynch
Publication Date: 2018 (book), 2018 (audio)
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Narrated By: Kaleo Griffith
Recording time: 7 hours, 46 minutes

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

via amazon:

A leading expert in epigenetics – how genes switch on and off – provides a revolutionary, holistic, and personalized approach to better health by improving how your genes behave to prevent and reverse common ailments, chronic illnesses, and life-threatening diseases, including cardiovascular disease, autoimmune disorders, anxiety, depression, digestive issues, obesity, cancer, diabetes, and more.

Your genes have a tremendous impact on your health. In this groundbreaking book, Dr. Ben Lynch reveals that while you can’t change the genes you were born with, you can change how they affect you.

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.

An experienced researcher in the emerging science of gene abnormalities who has successfully treated thousands of clients, Dr. Lynch offers a simple questionnaire to identify which of the top seven dirty genes could be undermining your health. Then he offers targeted plans – including foods and recipes, supplements, and environmental detox – to clean up your dirty genes, eliminate symptoms, and optimize your physical and mental health.

Many of us have been taught that our genes doom us to the disorders that run in our families. But Dr. Lynch shows that you can rewrite your genetic destiny – once you know how. Dirty Genes provides a practical, personalized protocol to make the most of your genetic inheritance, now and for the rest of your life.

THE REVIEW

Dirty Genes is a fascinating book, and given a swelling of interest on this topic from the American public, it is highly relevant to the public policy discussions that will occurring in Washington D.C. in the coming months. American citizens and its leaders are vowing to get to the bottom of the chronic disease epidemic sweeping the country. This book points a lot of the blame at environmental toxins, processed foods, and bad lifestyle habits. On the plus side, though, with problems identified, the book also suggests solutions.

This is a topic that I really care about. I am a very even-keel person, but to the extent that I can be radicalized, coming to understand the extent of U.S. government malfeasance regarding nutrition got me as far in that direction as is possible. Nearly everyone in charge on these topics lied, for decades, about nearly everything. They spent decades marketing bowls of sugar to children as a healthy breakfast option while simultaneously demonizing eggs. American food has petroleum products all over it, disguised by chemical names printed in tiny letters on the label. The standard of care seems to be something along the lines of “if it doesn’t kill or cause cancer immediately, its fine.” Our leaders told multiple generations of Americans that if they eat the same types of diets that ranchers give cattle to fatten them up that they were eating a well balanced diet.

To some extent, the information presented in Dirty Genes is not new. Dr. Lynch’s message is to eat right, exercise, and avoid or purge environmental toxins. However, what sets the book apart from that template message is that he explains in detail what eating right actually looks like, why what is right for one person might look different than what is right for someone else, and he uses epigenetic science to provide the details. It’s one thing to know an answer generally, but it is far more helpful to know in detail how and why certain things are happening. Knowing the how and why can be highly motivating.

The book focuses on seven different genes and how either in-born or environmental “dirtying” of each impacts your health. It’s very comprehensive, with the effects of such dirtying ranging from ADHD symptoms, to weight gain, to leaky gut, to sleep issues, to the early graying of one’s hair. Lynch provides initially a list of symptoms to give the reader a guide as to which (if any) of their own genes might be dirty. Each of the seven genes gets its own chapter for greater in-depth discussion, with the doctor pointing out that because each of these genes are a part of a whole, they should each be considered when doing self-evaluation. Changes to one thing might impact one of the others. The goal of the book is to help patients obtain improved health to the extent possible without resorting the pharmaceuticals.

The book also includes in its final section dietary, lifestyle, and environmental change suggestions depending on your symptoms and circumstances. This includes but is not limited to breathing exercises, regular sauna visits, additions to or subtractions from diet, and in some causes short-term use of supplements (though he states that the preference is that once healthy supplements be reduced or avoided.)

By way of spoilers, Dr. Lynch recommends that everyone stop eating foods containing folic acid, prioritize sufficient sleep, drink filtered water, avoid food that has contacted plastics, avoid artificially scented things, and do whatever is possible to make sure the air in one’s home is clean and breathable. The book recommends a 4 week program, with the first two being an effort to eat, drink, and breathe cleanly, and then next two being an attempt to “spot clean” particularly troublesome epigenetic barriers that need additional attention. The latter makes sense. If you have abused yourself in some particular way, for decades, you might not entirely undo that work overnight.

This was a relatively short but also an extremely dense read, with a lot of sections feeling as though the text was throwing acronym after acronym at me. I recommend going through it slowly and with your full attention, otherwise I am not sure you will get out of it what you should . That said, despite the density of the material, I found the information relatively easy to follow once I was focused and I will definitely undertake to make a few of the recommended changes to see how I do.

I highly recommend Dirty Genes to anyone struggling with chronic illness of any kind. My family went on this journey about a decade ago after Mrs. Reviews had a bone marrow failure caused by an auto-immune disorder (and I was happy to read that Dr. Lynch agreed with many of the changes we have already made.) Something here might work for you, too. It is far better to make long-term health improvement with simple lifestyle adjustment than through pharmaceutical relief which might deliver adverse effects. It is also better to make those changes when the problems are still small and solvable. It seems very likely to me that this material has a strong chance to provide some degree of relief for you, almost regardless of your health situation, if you follow its suggestions. The advice within is on the leading edge of health and nutrition science and even if you don’t know much about this topic yet, you are likely to start hearing more and more about it in the years to come – probably whether you would like that to be the case or not. A lot of processed foods, seed oils, and food dyes are going to be getting a lot of scrutiny in the near future. Things are changing. This book will allow you to keep up and hopefully also help you to become healthier.

Have you read Dirty Genes? If so, what did you think?

About the Author

via drbenlynch.com

Official Biography 

Dr. Ben Lynch is the best-selling author of Dirty Genes®️ and President of Seeking Health, a company that helps educate both the public and health professionals on how to overcome genetic dysfunction. He received his doctorate in naturopathic medicine from Bastyr University. He lives in Seattle, WA with his wife and three sons.

How I Became a Genetic Pioneer

I first discovered the power of epigenetics in 2008.  That was it for me—I never looked back.  At the time, I was a Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine, graduate of Bastyr University, with a special interest in environmental medicine—helping people recover from the assaults of industrial chemicals, heavy metals, and other environmental toxins.  When I discovered what a big role genes played in this whole process, I began eagerly reading every scientific paper I could get my hands on.

I quickly realized that there was a huge gap between what the geneticists published in their research papers and what the medical providers practiced in their offices.  The scientists were ridiculously far ahead of doctors and nurses, who often had no idea how to help their patients respond to genetic abnormalities or even to follow the basics of good gene health.  Nor did practitioners have any idea how to create a targeted program geared to specific genetic issues.

I made it my mission to bring that cutting-edge science right into the doctor’s office.  I threw myself into genetic research, chasing down any article or paper that could shed any light on what we regular folks could do to improve our health. I began working with individuals whose health-care providers just weren’t giving them the help they needed.  And I started to give seminars, webinars, workshops, and talks so that practitioners could learn how to help their patients.

In a remarkably short time, I had established myself as the go-to guy on treating genetic abnormalities through diet, supplements, and lifestyle.  See here for some of the nationally recognized practitioners and best-selling authors who have come to me for help and endorsed my work.

In 2011, I founded Seeking Health, a research-based company producing high-quality supplements targeted to particular health issues.  I’m proud to say that in 2015, I was named Number 37 in Inc.’s list of 500 Entrepreneur Superstars from America’s fastest-growing private companies and Number 1 in Washington state.  In 2016, I made the list again.

I also established Seeking Health Educational Institute (SHEI), now operating as drbenlynch.com a website for both health professionals and lay people who want to learn more about nutrigenomics and methylation. Drbenlynch.com is now one of the most trusted resources on genetics for health professionals and laypersons worldwide.

In 2015, I developed StrateGene, a unique approach to helping people develop natural strategies for overcoming genetic abnormalities.  People who were getting their genetic challenges from websites like 23andMe or Genos Research were receiving massively confusing documents with wildly contradictory information.  My system zeroes in on the genetic abnormalities that pose the greatest challenges in people’s health and then provides comprehensive plans for overcoming those challenges through diet, environment and lifestyle.