The remote, snow-swept expanses of northern Sweden are an unlikely place to begin a story about gene science. The kingdom's northernmost county, Norrbotten, is nearly free of human life; an average of just six people live in each square mile. And yet this tiny population can reveal a lot about how genes and food work in our everyday lives.
Norrbotten is so isolated that in the 19th century, if the harvest was bad, people starved. The starving years were all the crueler for their unpredictability. For instance, 1800, 1812, 1821, 1836 and 1856 were years of total crop failure and extreme suffering. But in 1801, 1822, 1828, 1844 and 1863, the land spilled forth such abundance that the same people who had gone hungry in previous winters were able to gorge themselves for months.
In the 1980s, Dr. Lars Olov Bygren, a preventive-health specialist who is now at the prestigious Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, began to wonder what long-term effects the feast and famine years might have had on children growing up in Norrbotten in the 19th century — and not just on them but on their kids and grandkids as well.
So he drew a random sample of 99 individuals born in the Overkalix parish of Norrbotten in 1905 and used historical records to trace their parents and grandparents back to birth. By analyzing meticulous agricultural records, Bygren and two colleagues determined how much food had been available to the parents and grandparents when they were young.
We have had a long-standing deal with biology: whatever choices we make during our lives might ruin our short-term memory or make us fat or hasten death, but they won't change our genes — our actual DNA. Which meant that when we had kids of our own, the genetic slate would be wiped clean.
What's more, any such effects of nurture (environment) on a species' nature (genes) were not supposed to happen so quickly. But Bygren and other scientists have now amassed historical evidence suggesting that powerful environmental conditions (near death from starvation, for instance) can somehow leave an imprint on the genetic material in eggs and sperm. These genetic imprints can short-circuit evolution and pass along new traits in a single generation.
Bygren's research showed that in Overkalix, boys who enjoyed those rare overabundant winters — kids who went from normal eating to gluttony in a single season — produced sons and grandsons who lived shorter lives.
Once Bygren and his team controlled for certain socioeconomic variations, the difference in longevity jumped to an astonishing 32 years.
Later papers using different Norrbotten cohorts also found significant drops in life span and discovered that they applied along the female line as well, meaning that the daughters and granddaughters of girls who had gone from normal to gluttonous diets also lived shorter lives.
The data suggested that a single winter of overeating as a youngster could initiate a biological chain of events that would lead one's grandchildren to die decades earlier than their peers did.
We know from the research, what you focus on, effects your present happiness. It is unproved, if what you focus on effects your children and grandkids, but it is a possibility. This is why we offer the Secret of Joy Workshop every fall.
The Secrets of Joy Workshop - Nov 3 – 5, 20010 - Eagle Crest Resort - Bend, Oregon
Why is joy and happiness important?
Medicine today tends to focus primarily on: drugs, surgery, genes, germs, microbes, and molecules. However, there isn’t any other factor in medicine – not diet, not smoking, not exercise, not stress, not genetics, not drugs, not surgery – that has a greater impact on our quality of life, incidence of illness and premature death from all causes than loneliness and isolation. Most people do not know what to do about it, WE DO!
Numerous studies demonstrates that changes in lifestyle can change our health. There are four areas these studies are concern with:
1. Diet
2. Exercise
3. Stress Management
4. Love & Intimacy
Diet, Exercise, and Stress Management are things you can accomplish on you own.
Love & Intimacy involves OTHER PEOPLE.
You cannot do it alone.
You have to learn to work with other people.
There is very little information how to do this, how to have more Intimacy, how to be connected, how to be satisfied with life, how to have a meaning life,or a sense of well being that is not religious base.
This is why the divorce rate would not be over 50%.
We do not know how to have the things we want the most - Love & Intimacy.
Our workshop will demonstrate how to do it.
Our Workshop is not about Diet or Exerice, it is 6 days of understand how to have more Love and Intimacy in your life.
Any kind of intimacy can heal. It's a basic human need that often goes unfulfilled in our culture. It matters not only in the quality of life, but in the quantity. It's a need as basic as eating and breathing and sleeping. When we don't know that, there are serious consequences that threaten not only our well-being, but also our survival. Studies show that people who feel isolated are three to five times more likely to die prematurely and get sick than those who don't.
This web site is about on how to increase your Love & Intimacy and improve your life satisfaction.
Have you ever wondered from makes you tick?
Why are some people always happy and other always sad? Why are some people are very agreeable and other like to argue.
For sake of argument, we call the patterns people have –
Temperaments. You can call it what ever you want. Your life’s strategy, your style, your way, your nature or “just the way you are.”. It makes no difference what you call it, it exists and we can define nine
Temperaments Types.
Would it surprise you to learn that you were born that way? You were born with a fixed
Temperament Type. It is in your genes. You inherited your
Temperament Type from your ancestors. Yes, your
Temperament is fixed as you were conceived, before you even started your life’s process. It is nearly impossible to change your fixed
Temperament Type, but you can learn to “manage it.”
The research from
Positive Philosophy shows that 50% of your happiness is determined by your
Temperament Type. That means that 50% of being loved, having Intimacy, being connected, being satisfied with life, having a meaning life, and a sense of well being is a function of your genes you were born with. But:
1. The better you “manage” your
Temperament, the happier you can be.
2. The better you “manage” your
Temperament, the better you will understand yourself, your family, your friends, your customers, and the culture in you live.
3. The better you “manage” your
Temperament, the more successful you have with money, marriage, family, health and the society in which you.
Our genes may determine our
Temperament, but they do not control our Fate.
Connection is the root of sickness and health. It is what makes us well, what causes sadness and what brings happiness, what makes us suffer and what leads to healing. If a new drug had the same impact, virtually every doctor in the country would be recommending it for his or her patients. It would be malpractice not to prescribe it -- yet, with few exceptions, doctors do not learn much about the healing power of love, intimacy, and transformation in our medical training.
The question is how to have more connections? How do increase your love and intimacy? If you alreadyknew how, you would have already done it. Attendance at our Workshop will give you new methods and proven techinque to help you. The methods and techinques were developed from the research from Positive Philosophy.
The Secrets of Joy Workshop - Nov 3 – 5, 20010 - Eagle Crest Resort - Bend, Oregon
Just Wait Foundation, the organizer of this workshop is not affiliated with the Dr Dean Ornish or the Preventive Medicine Research Instute, nor is trained or certified by them.
