Dr. Mark Hyman

The question really is, how do you influence your genes and how long does it take to influence your genes through lifestyle changes that will improve your baby's health in the long term?

How do you set yourself up with the right gene expression, in other words, to conceive and have a healthy baby?

So what are epigenetics?

Well, you know what genetics are.

You've got 20,000 genes.

You've got 23 pairs of chromosomes, which all have all these genes on them.

Those are fixed.

They're not changing.

They're like keys on a piano, right?

You've got 88 keys on a piano, but your epigenome means above your genes.

Now, think of the epigenome like the piano player.

It can play anything.

Jazz, ragtime, rock, classical, you name it.

You can play whatever you want on that thing because it's the control of those keys that determines the songs that get played, the song of life that gets played for you.

And so everything you do modifies your epigenetics and in turn will get passed on to your baby.

And the good news is that you can change your epigenetics quickly.

It can happen within weeks.

We do this with now epigenetic testing for biological age.

It's how we measure age because we can see where the things are not going well and we can actually test those and they correlate with a different biological age that's different than your chronological age.

So for example, I did when I was 62, I did my biological age and I was 43.