epigenetics

BRAIN GUT 7: INTRO TO YOUR GUT MICROBIOME

Many of you know I believe obesity if an inflammatory disease of the brain. Where this disease begins may surprise some of you. It begins in our gut flora. How does this happen? Read this link! Sub optimal bacteria which contain bacterial toxins called lipopolysaccharides (LPS) which are found in bacterial cell membranes. As gut LPS rises, it has been shown to cause a rise in serum leptin levels. Once leptin levels are raised high enough it stimulates SOCS 3 signaling in the hypothalamus to cause LR.

Brain Gut 3: Look In The Past To See Your Prologue

READERS SUMMARY: 1. WHAT ARE THE EVOLUTIONARY IMPLICATIONS OF A LEAKY GUT AS A POSITIVE ADAPTATION AT OUR SPECIES ORIGIN? 2. WHY DID BIPEDALISM ARISE BEFORE BRAINS IN HUMANS? 3. DID THE CLIMATE AND TECTONIC PLATES DICTATE THE EPIGENETIC CHANGES IN THOSE TRANSITIONAL PRIMATES? 4. DID RAPID CHANGES IN INNATE AND CELL MEDIATED IMMUNITY [...]

By Jack Kruse|July 4th, 2012|Breast Cancer, Cancer, Diabetes, Epi Paleo, Epigenetics, Leaky Gut / Grain Brain, Mitochondria, Optimal Pillar 2, Optimal Pillar 4, Optimal Pillar 5, Series: Brain Gut, The Optimal Paleo Diet|Comments Off

CPC #4: Evolutionary Friend or Foe?

READERS SUMMARY: WHY IS IRON IMPORTANT? HOW DOES IT AFFECT LIFE AT A 30ft LEVEL MICROSCOPICALLY HOW DOES IT AFFECT LIFE AT A 30,000 ft LEVEL IN OUR OCEANS HOW DID EVOLUTION USE IRON TO PROTECT US AND OUR SPECIES? HOW DID A PROTECTIVE EFFECT BECOME A DEADLY DISEASE IN 50 YEARS RIGHT UNDER OUR [...]

By Jack Kruse|May 19th, 2012|Cancer, Circadian Cycle, Cold Thermogenesis, Diabetes, Epi Paleo, Epigenetics, Leaky Gut / Grain Brain, Mitochondria, Nutrients and Supplements, Optimal Pillar 2, Optimal Pillar 4, Series: CPC|341 Comments

Cold Thermogenesis 9: Theory Meets Practice

Many of you may not know this, but I was asked to do to a speech in Nashville in March of 2012. I have to say with about 6 days to prepare it was rushed, but it was a lot of fun. I want to publicly say thank you to Misty Williams and Michael Hart for making this happen. In my talk, I told 1,200 people live on stage about the three thought experiments I came up with after reading, “The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari”. I actually conceptualized the Ancient Pathway soon after the reading was done but where the thought experiments came to me, was at the foot of Michelangelo's David in Florence, when I was looking at him from behind. I realized that the major difference between him and I, was the world we both were living had radically changed in 500 years. From this insight I realized that circadian biology was the the major difference in David’s perfection and my obesity. From this spark of wisdom, I realized that obesity was an inflammatory brain condition. Because it was so, I could then reconstruct a signaling sequence to confuse my hypothalamus using signals from my vagus nerve and from the foods I ate using timing. Learning how the brain rewired in neural deafness using a cochlea implant made this easy game for me as a neurosurgeon.

By Jack Kruse|April 9th, 2012|Circadian Cycle, Cold Thermogenesis, Diabetes, Epi Paleo, Heart Disease, Hormones & Methylation, Leaky Gut / Grain Brain, MS - Multiple Sclerosis, Optimal Pillar 2, Optimal Pillar 4, Series: Cold Thermogenesis, The Leptin Prescription|Comments Off

Cold Thermogenesis 7: ENVIRONMENT TRUMPS NUCLEAR GENOME

CT-7 is about how we are shaped by our environment by the evolutionary erosion of time that our ancestors faced. All life on this planet is shaped by two major variables in our environment: the sun and the seasonal changes. No matter the place present on earth, there are always alterations in these two factors that are cyclic, and always accounted for by all living organisms at some fashion. In some mammals, like man, it is accounted for centrally in the brain and peripherally in our organ ultradian clocks. This is why we have different patterns of aging in certain organs. From an evolutionary perspective, this makes a tremendous amount of sense because life is using the “knowns” of its environment to construct a reality that will ensure its survival. This is the basis of epigenetic signaling that we now know to be the major genetic modifier of the genome of all animals. The major signal transducer in Epigenetics is found in the cellular signaling in our cell membranes that interact with the environment and our inner hormones that signal our epigenetic switches sitting on our genes inside the nucleus. Since it is clear that our cold adapted pathways use sensory afferents to signal to open the Ancient Pathway, I think it is time we just have a blog in the CT series that discusses what a normal 24 hour day is like in a human circadian biology.

By Jack Kruse|March 21st, 2012|Circadian Cycle, Cold Thermogenesis, Diabetes, Epi Paleo, Epigenetics, Heart Disease, Hormones & Methylation, Inflammation, Leaky Gut / Grain Brain, Menopause / Andropause, Optimal Pillar 1, Optimal Pillar 2, Optimal Pillar 3, Optimal Pillar 4, Optimal Pillar 5, Series: Cold Thermogenesis, The Importance of Sleep, The Leptin Prescription, The Optimal Paleo Diet, Thyroid|Comments Off

Cold Thermogenesis 5: Biologic magnetism

My first encounter with thermoplasticity in human biology I first became aware of this seeming paradox as a neurosurgical resident in my first year of training. We were doing a real "gnarly" brain surgery case. It was a young mother who had a massive basilar tip aneurysm. Back in the mid 90's before endovascular coiling procedures we use today, this was the most risky operation that existed in all of medicine. I spent a month prepping for this case. We had to enlist the cardiovascular surgeons to come in and surgically open the patients chest wide open to stop her heart on purpose temporarily and place her on complete cardiopulmonary bypass to stop all the blood flow to her brain. We had less than 20 minutes to then place a clip across the aneurysm to save her life. To complete this herculean surgical task, we had to fill her entire chest cavity with ice to preserve her heart muscle and cool her core temperature so that we could have 20 minutes to complete the brain surgery. Simultaneously, we would open her skull and split the Sylvian fissure in the brain and approach her basilar artery in the geographic center of her head and attempt to put a clip on it without disturbing any of her surrounding anatomy. The best mental image I can give you for this is the ultimate game of "Operation" you used to play as a kid. You must avoid hitting the sides or the nose lights up!!!! One problem in this case, in this game there was live bullets. This maneuver was deadly if not performed correctly the first time. This is one of the most delicate surgeries one can do on a human. Moreover, even if we were successful with the clip obliteration of the aneurysm, we had to restart her frozen heart, get her off cardio pulmonary bypass without an air embolus and awake. In this case everything went well until the last part and this taught me a lesson I would never forget. She died after the operation was a complete success. Her head was already closed up surgically and dressed, the intraoperative angiogram looked awesome, and we restarted her heart and got her off cardio pulmonary bypass without any evidence of a stroke and then she died suddenly. She received two units of cooled banked blood because our surgical team felt she lost some ability to carry oxygen in her blood because several of the monitors showed she had a low oxygen carrying capacity of her hemoglobin. This concerned us because we were worried about her risk of having a stroke because of low oxygenation due to her loss of blood flow for 20 minutes when she was on full bypass. So we did what any surgeon would do. We gave her blood to restore her oxygen carrying capacity and the oxygen monitors showed her oxygenation had totally returned to normal. We were all happy until I noticed her pupils were fixed and dilated when I was putting on her dressings. She also had blue fingers. And then all of a sudden she got a fatal heart rhythm, and she died right there in my arms. I was devastated. I will never forget talking to her family later that day.

Cold Thermogensis 2

Now that you understand that I believe cold environments were how life first evolved, what implications does this hold for all life and humans today? I think with this thought experiment we need to begin to talk about another aspect of evolution to fully conceptualize how cold works for biology. Let’s talk about sleep for 4 short minutes. First, I want you to watch this video before you proceed. Recently, one of my readers pointed out he was confused by Dr. Gamble when she said the normal pattern of sleep in a natural environment had two cycles. He wanted to know why her version and my version for sleep as written in my post “Rx for the Leptin Rx” were not congruent. It was a great question that really opens the discussion to the idea of evolutionary mismatches. These mismatches occur in many modern systems of biology, and they are actually increasing in frequency and severity as time elapses. The reason is quite simple. Evolution is constantly getting faster as time goes on, relative to the current state of our genome. This is really how the “cellular theory of relativity” is currently affecting our own genome today. The speed of evolutionary change has far out stripped the ability of our paleolithic genes to catch up. This mismatch causes major problems for modern humans. When they further exacerbate the system with choices not congruent with our biology, the results are magnified in disease incidence and prevalence. She also mentioned in passing, early in her talk, that people who went deep into the ground have been found to be “very productive” while in a cold dark environment. She did not expand on this concept at all, but I would strongly suggest you remember this as the cold thermogenesis series progresses on. There is a deep biologic reason this occurs. As we use this pathway, lots of things improve that we do not expect.

By Jack Kruse|February 22nd, 2012|Alzheimer’s, Circadian Cycle, Cold Thermogenesis, Diabetes, Epi Paleo, Epigenetics, Heart Disease, Inflammation, Leaky Gut / Grain Brain, Optimal Pillar 1, Optimal Pillar 4, Series: Cold Thermogenesis, The Importance of Sleep, The Leptin Prescription, The Optimal Paleo Diet|Comments Off

TO B OR NOT TOO B……..OR IS IT PROTEIN?

READERS SUMMARY: 1. WHY IS PALEO PROTEIN CRITICAL TO CARTILAGE AND TENDON REPAIR? 2. HOW DOES PROTEIN HELP REPAIR CARTILAGE IN INJURY AND DEGENERATION? 3. WHY ARE B VITAMINS CRITICAL TO THE PALEO TEMPLATE? 4. WHY A PALEO TEMPLATE IS BEST FOR A PREGNANT MOM OR A YOUNG CHILD? Today, we are going to go [...]

By Jack Kruse|October 5th, 2011|Autism, Cancer, Depression, Diabetes, Epi Paleo, Epigenetics, HIIT - Heavy Weights, MS - Multiple Sclerosis, Nutrients and Supplements, Optimal Pillar 4, Optimal Pillar 5, Series: Miscellaneous, The Optimal Paleo Diet|45 Comments

Your Gut, Neurotransmitters, and Hormones

READERS SUMMARY: 1. HOW YOUR GUT BRAIN AND RESPONSE OF YOUR BRAIN ARE ALL TIED TOGETHER? 2. WHAT ARE THE 4 MAIN NEUROTRANSMITTERS? 3. WHAT DO THEY DO AND MEAN? 4. WHAT AFFECTS THEIR PRODUCTION? 5. HORMONES ARE THE BRAINS ENDOCRINE SECRETION THAT TELLS YOU HOW YOUR EPIGENETIC SWITCHES ARE SET. 6. HOW WE USE [...]

PALEO 3.0, MEET EPIGENETICS

READERS SUMMARY: 1. What dietary context really means. 2. What is epigenetics? 3. How a thread can help thousands of people? 4. Sharing thoughts can really help us all out. 5. How did grandma and mom turn off or turn on your metabolism? And what have you done to it recently? The Quilt took me [...]

By Jack Kruse|July 9th, 2011|Epi Paleo, Epigenetics, Mitochondria, Optimal Pillar 4, Series: Leaky Gut, The Optimal Paleo Diet|Comments Off