This year’s recent Functional Medicine conference was illuminating and energizing, as always. One study utterly blew me away, involving a little animal called the Agouti mouse. This particular mouse is often used in research because it is genetically overweight, making it naturally more susceptible to diabetes, cancer, and a shorter lifespan than its mouse relatives.

This particular researcher gave pregnant Agouti mice a diet high in folic acid and Vitamin B12 — two nutrients critical to healthy genetic activity. The children these mice gave birth to were thinner than their parents, and had lower incidents of cancer and diabetes. Perhaps most astonishingly, they lived longer!

The essence of integrative medicine lies in the belief that one’s health improves by improving certain influential factors – nutrition, energy systems. toxicity, activity level. But this study seems to paint an even more compelling picture – that improving our own health might have positive effects on our children genetically. This is truly astounding.

I was taught in medical school that genes were like old books of conduct – static and immutable. It looks as if the actual truth is closer to the old Iroquois law, that our actions (in this case, those affecting our health) will affect the seventh generation after us.

Wow.