You may have scoffed at medicos and nutrition experts who tell you how important it is to adopt a healthier diet. It’s my choice, you say It doesn’t affect anyone else. But now, there’s evidence that consequences of your dietary habits can be passed on to later generations…
You are what you eat! An so are your kids, and their kids…
A study focused on protein deficiency has revealed some shocking news. The consequences of your bad eating habits can persist for any generations after you’re gone…
Grim legacy…
And you thought leaving all your money to the cat was the most vexing thing you could do, from the grave, to aggravate your ungrateful, entitled kids. Not so, say researchers at Tulane University. They’re now warning that health issues caused by your poor dietary choices could persist through at least four future generations of your descendants.
What they did
The team wanted to study the affects of a famine be passed on to later generations, even if those descendants had access to decent food and proper nutrition and medical advice.
They ran parallel experiments in which two identical groups of mice were tracked through four gen-erations. The first generation of one group was fed a protein-deprived diet while parallel group was fed normally. Following generations were both fed the same normal diet.
What they found
Researchers found that offspring of the protein-deprived group over the next four generations had lower birthweights and smaller kidneys, leading risk factors for chronic kidney disease and hyper-tension.
“It’s like an avalanche,” says study lead author Dr. Giovane Tortelote, assistant professor of pediatric nephrology at Tulane University School of Medicine. “You would think that you can fix the diet in the first generation so the problem stops there.” But that logical, intuitive notion turned out to be com-pletely wrong.
“[E]ven if they have a good diet, the next generations – grandchildren, great grandchildren, great-great grandchildren – they may still be born with lower birth weight and [kidney issues] despite never facing starvation or a low-protein diet.”
The mother’s diet is, of course, of first importance. But the TU team also found some evidence that there’s something epigenetically passed from the father that governs proper kidney development.
The takeaway
“If you’re born with [kidney issues], you are more prone to hypertension. But the more hypertension you have, the more you damage the kidney,” Tortelote observes. “So, it’s a horrible cycle, and a public health crisis that could affect people across 50 to 60 years if we apply this to humans’ lifespans.”
Even thought the mouse-based experiments are only a very early fist step in exploring this troubling finding, Tortelote reminds us that mice and humans share many fundamental similarities, and the results of mouse studies frequently translate directly to humans. There are two main questions, now, he says: “Can we fix it, and how do we fix it?”
My take
This story immediately reminded me of the one last last week, about how a tendency toward obesity can be passed on from parents to offspring, without any actual changes to genes, themselves.
All of which suggests, to me at least, that a concerted effort should be launched to explore the pos-sible roll of epigenetics in other health-related issues – such as diabetes, cardiovscular disease and auto-immune conditions…
~ Maggie J.