The Perfect Gene Diet Based on Apo E Genotype

by Pamela McDonald, NP

Backpack or Bedpan, Health is a Choice

I believe that we almost always have a choice between health and chronic illness. We can choose to be healthy and be out backpacking, or we can choose to be sick, possibly living out our days in an institution using a bedpan, our independence lost as a result of chronic illness.

Keep in mind that chronic illness does not just “show up” one day to cause problems. Some diseases take decades to develop, and many of them develop silently, often with few or no symptoms. Understanding this, and knowing that you do have a choice of taking action—or not—to safeguard your health, is the first step in preventing many chronic diseases from gaining a foothold. It’s much better to live your life in a way that will prevent disease, rather than learning that you have developed an illness after it’s too late to reverse the accumulated damage.

To do this, we need to become more focused on both our wellness and disease prevention—to look a little deeper than we have in the past, asking questions that will change our lives by enhancing our health and wellness. I hope the information contained in this book will do just that.

Diabetes, insulin resistance, glucose intolerance, and heart disease can be well established without giving any major warning signs. Sometimes the first knowledge of such a condition arrives with a full-blown heart attack or stroke.

Being overweight or obese is one of the most obvious signs that one or more of these diseases is present (although even thin people can be over-fat). Keep in mind—being overweight is not only about your body image. Being overweight is a symptom of a serious underlying problem, not the problem itself. Many of us think we know what to do to be healthy, yet cannot seem to accomplish this goal. Why? Have you ever wondered why you have not been able to stay with a low-fat diet along with a rigorous exercise program? It could be that your body does not have the genetic makeup to be able to tolerate a very low-fat, or a low carbohydrate, or even a high-protein diet.

Remember, we have choices where our health is concerned, and we need to connect our lifestyle with its direct health outcomes. Some of these choices depend on our own individual genetic makeup, tests for which I will be describing in this book.

I am committed to helping you become the healthiest you can be and also being a role model for my patients. Personally, when I reach 75, I want to be outside backpacking, hiking, biking, or skiing with my children and grandchildren, not spending my days institutionalized, needing help getting to the bathroom.

Historically, health recommendations focus on what is right for the general public (such as: “Eat a low fat diet”), not for the individual. Therefore, when you read the information in this book and ask, “Should I get these tests?” Make your decision with the assistance of a medical practitioner who is skilled in these areas rather than following guidelines believed to be good for the health of the general population. You do not want your health to be evaluated on the “average scale,” because what you will end up with is the “average” heart attack.

As you will learn in this book, you will likely cause a chronic illness for yourself if you consistently create the wrong body chemistry through the wrong diet and wrong exercise regimen for whichever of the six different Apo E genotypes you happen to be. That’s why general diet recommendations such as “Eat a low-fat diet” or “Eat a low-carbohydrate diet” are not right for everyone.

For some Apo E genotypes, a low-fat diet can actually create heart disease. So, a logical solution is to learn about the Apo E gene and how it matches your diet and lifestyle.

Diet and Gene Interactions Shape
the Potential for Health or Disease

With our new understanding of the human genome and the arrival of DNA testing, it is possible to recognize interactions between what we eat and how our genes function, and how these interactions may contribute to disease. Diet can change how different genes will express themselves and how they will adapt to different environments. Coupled with the existence of polymorphism, or the presence of several different “blueprints” of genes in different individuals, environment then plays a specific role in either reducing or increasing the risk of certain diseases. One example of this phenomenon is the variations of the Apo E gene, a major subject of this book.

We now have the technological capability to look at our genetic type in order to determine the likelihood of our developing a chronic disease. If we know our genotype, we can make fundamental decisions for preventing the development of a particular chronic disease. While we don’t yet understand the purpose of all of the genetic information in our bodies, we know enough to apply how certain gene traits interact with particular dietary regimens. This will improve our health today, rather than waiting decades until a disease announces itself with a health crisis.

I will highlight some common tests that may help prevent certain chronic illnesses. While by no means a complete list, they are important examples that have been used successfully for disease prevention. It is extremely important to remember that the passageways to illness vary from person to person, based on each person’s combination of genes and the dietary factors that influence them.

When it comes to our personal daily chemistry requirements—mainly our food—we are unique individuals in every way, and each of us has specific individual dietary needs. Research clearly shows that the same food can be either a nutritional medicine or a toxic irritant, depending on your particular genotype. So to help remember that everything you eat influences what goes on in your cells, I’ve created the expression “From Your Plate to Your Cells.™”

Genetic Risk and Family History

The unique body that is “you” is a combination of genes passed down from your ancestors. A look back at your family’s medical history can offer clues to inherited disease patterns as well as steps that will prevent them.

In this context, “inherited” means much more than just the physical, genetic components of your body. It includes the entire scope of your family’s culture—beliefs, customs, practices, social behavior, and attitudes. It is helpful to be aware of how strongly you accept the elements of your family’s culture, as well as what other beliefs, customs, behaviors, etc., you have picked up on your own. All of these elements influence your journey through life and will affect your body, mind, spirit, emotions, and internal and external environments.

You probably know at least a little about your family’s medical history, and even this can be helpful. Perhaps you know that your maternal grandfather was a hardworking farmer and lived to be 97, even though he ate all the “wrong things,” at least according to what we believe today. So you assume he had “good genes.”

That could be true, but it also could be true that while he had a genetic predisposition to heart disease, his lifestyle of hard physical labor for many years kept their expression in check. He may even have had the worst possible genetic traits for developing heart disease—a positive LDL Pattern B trait, Lp(a), and an Apo E 4/3 (which you will learn about later in this book)—but still remained healthy thanks to his lifestyle.

So, have you inherited his gene—one that could predispose you to heart disease if you eat the wrong diet? Many of us have these genes and don’t know we have them, but if we have a gene unsupportive environment (GUE) we can develop a silent disease. What has changed is our food environment, and as long as we have a terrible nutritional environment in this country, we are at risk for turning on these silent diseases.

We must consider that the environment we live in today is completely different from that of just two generations ago, with much less physical activity and far fewer whole, healthy foods readily available. If you share Grandpa’s genetic traits relating to heart disease, but live today’s high-stress, nutritionally manipulated, and chemically exposed lifestyle, you probably will not be so lucky.

For now, know that many people have unrecognized hereditary cholesterol factors that can increase their risk of heart attack, even at an early age. Eighty percent of heart disease is said to be genetic, so genetic testing is crucial to knowing your own health status. Just as important as knowing that a family history of heart disease is the most powerful element you and your medical practitioner can use in determining how to reduce your risk. There is no way to know for sure without genetic testing.

What Exactly Do We Mean by Genes?

When you want to build a house, you have an architect draw blueprints. Your builder then looks at the blueprints to know exactly what to build. The same process occurs with the body—only our genes are the blueprints for our body. And, unlike a house, the body is being rebuilt every second of every day.

Besides the builder and the blueprint, another major factor in house building is the quality of the materials used. When built with poor-quality materials, buildings deteriorate rapidly. When built with high-quality materials, structures such as St. Paul’s Cathedral in London can stand for hundreds of years. Your body follows the same process—if you use high-quality materials, it will last much longer.—This book is about choosing the right materials to go with your specific blueprint.

What Is the Apo E Gene?

The human body has 23 pairs of chromosomes. Each chromosome is made up of many genes. We will look mainly at a particular gene on chromosome 19—the Apo E gene (Apo is short for apolipoprotein—see box, page 11), which was discovered in the early 1970s. We single out this gene because certain variants of the specific pair of—Apo E genes you inherited from your mother and father influence your predisposition to certain illnesses.

There are three Apo E gene variations, or genotypes, that occur naturally in humans: Apo E 2, Apo E 3, and Apo E 4. Since genes come in matching pairs—we each have two copies of every gene—one from each parent, there are six possible combinations of pairs. If you received an Apo E 2 from each parent, the shorthand description would be E 2/2. The other five combinations are E 2/3, E 3/3, E 4/2, E 4/3, and E 4/4. The most common gene, Apo E 3/3, is found in approximately 64 percent of the population. It is considered the “neutral” Apo E genotype.

Combinations that include either the Apo E 2 or Apo E 4 are considered “alternative” expressions of the more common Apo E 3 pairing; and they process foods differently from the way in which an Apo E 3’s will.

For optimal health, you need to match your particular genotype with the most gene-supportive environment (GSE) you can create. You do that through what you eat, how you exercise, and how you respond to stress, which is largely determined by how you think.

1 Derivation of apoli-poprotein: Apo•lipo•protein. Apo = separated from or derived from; lipo = fat; proteins are made of amino acids and essential to all cellular structures. The apolipoproteins are the protein components of lipoproteins that remain after the lipids to which the proteins are bound have been removed.

What Does
Apo E Mean?

Our body has evolved a very complex biochemical method of moving fats around inside it. Why all this complexity? You already know that oil and water don’t mix. That’s what our body (water-based) is up against when it must absorb and use fats (oil-based).

Our blood is a water-based solution for transporting nutrients and oxygen to the cells. Any fats that need to travel in it wouldn’t dissolve; they would just clump up and clog the system. To get around this inconvenience, our body has created a wonderful method of packaging the fats and oils in molecular “suitcases” that keep the fats from coming in contact with the water of our blood.

That’s where this strange word “Apo” with an “E” attached to it comes in. Apo is short for apolipoprotein.1 It has the letter “E” because it’s one of a whole series of apolipoproteins—A, B, C, D, etc. The Apo E gene gets its name from the fact that it’s the part of the blueprint in charge of synthesizing apolipoprotein E, an important component of cholesterol metabolism.

In a larger sense, the Apo E gene is involved in the energy system of the body—and energy is key to every system in the body. Apo E can be found in many places: blood, spleen, liver, intestine, brain, kidney, and other peripheral parts.

Making Connections: Genotype, Gene-Supportive Environment, and State of Health

The Apo E gene can provide good health if the body is given the correct foods and other gene-supportive environment (GSE) factors for its Apo E type. On the other hand, the Apo E gene can impair good health if the body is given the wrong foods and other gene-unsupportive environmental (GUE) situations.

The Apo E gene is the key to making the right match. Here’s where knowing your Apo E genotype can help determine the environment that will best support you in developing and maintaining a safe, optimal level of cholesterol in your system.

Before we go any further, let me clarify what I mean by “environment.” Everything that surrounds or goes into your body or mind is an element in your environment and subsequently impacts your health. This means your thoughts become as much a part of you as the food you eat. So while your food intake is an important element in your environment, you are much more than just the food you eat.

Your environment, so defined, largely determines your health. More specifically, it consists of:

• what you eat
• the way you move and exercise your body
• the quality of your mental and emotional experiences (including
• how you deal with stress and emotional energy)
• the strength and quality of your intention for what you want
• what you think others want from you
• the physical environment that surrounds you—is it pleasing or stressful?
• your spiritual beliefs

With today’s affordable technology for analyzing people’s genotype, we can easily learn a person’s Apo E genetic recipe. While we have a lot to learn about what each of the thousands of genes we have in every cell actually does, we can make excellent use of the ones that we do understand—like the Apo E gene—to make recommendations for the ideal gene-supportive environment for any individual.

Inflammation: A Poor Match Between Environment and Genotype

Chronic diseases such as diabetes, obesity, gouty arthritis, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, multiple sclerosis, chronic kidney disease, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and cancer all have in common the long-term presence of low-grade cellular inflammation that is largely the result of a poor match between environment and genetic makeup—the gene-unsupportive environment (GUE) that I described above. I will describe the mechanisms of inflammation in detail in a later chapter, but for now, it’s important to know that when a normal, healthy cell is exposed to an inflammatory environment over a long period of time, the cell becomes aplastic (unable to replicate properly). How this dis-ease state manifests in your body can range from high cholesterol levels, cardiovascular disease, and vascular dementia, to cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and more.

In most cases these degenerative killer diseases are the result of imbalances of the body’s ability to regulate its processes that are usually present for 30 or more years before they are noticed. Some can even begin before birth, in a toxic womb environment.

Put simply, the wrong environment for a particular Apo E genotype can push the body to produce high levels of cellular inflammation as it attempts to fight the effects of its environment. This can result in chronic illnesses, including cancer.

Remember, it’s about the gene and the environment the gene is exposed to. The body knows what to do when it has an occasional or brief imbalance. But when it becomes chronically overwhelmed and unbalanced from consistent exposure to an unsuitable environment, it cannot function as it should. Such an imbalance between genotype and environment will likely lead to chronic illness.

This means that while you may, over many years, be eating a “health conscious” diet like the popular low-fat diets and never develop a disease, another person may follow the very same diet and develop a serious illness. Could this be, in part at least, because the so-called healthy diet advocated by the media may not be right for everyone?

We are unique individuals in every way, even when it comes to our personal daily dietary requirements. Knowing this, food can be used as nutritional medicine if we eat the appropriate foods in the correct amounts. This is why I developed a diet based on the Apo E gene. My experience has shown me again and again that one diet does not fit all.

You Are What You Eat

The foundation of an individual diet recommendation, and your optimal gene supportive environment, is a nutritional plan that focuses on eating the optimal percentages from The Big Three food categories—carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. There is a unique optimal combination of these that creates the ideal diet for each of the six Apo E genotypes. Creating this optimal balance in your diet is a prerequisite of good health.

Why? The Apo E gene has been shown to be the number one factor affecting how your body uses The Big Three, and this influences the likelihood and severity of your developing some diseases. It is very important to eat the right balance of The Big Three.

We have all heard the saying, “You are what you eat.” Now, more than ever, research shows this to be true. The food you eat today becomes the cellular makeup of your tissues tomorrow—food that goes into your body becomes your body. Eating the right diet for your Apo E genotype is one of the best investments you can make in your health. A healthy diet can be delicious and health promoting, supplying the nutrition your body needs, based on your current health and Apo E genotype.