Stress. Diet. Sleep. Poor Air Quality. Environmental Exposures.

All are known to produce epigenetic effects, leaving chemical marks on and around the DNA, which changes how the DNA is 'read' by the body. This changes all sorts of things -- like which genes are transcribed and how much protein is made.

It's not just external environmental exposures. Two people can be sitting in the exact same room -- yet have very different experiences -- due to bullying and other factors. This new field is called social epigenetics.

Read:

• Dobbs, D. (2013). The Social Life of Genes. PSMag. Published Sept 3, 2013; Updated June 14, 2017 https://psmag.com/social-justice/the-social-life-of-genes-64616

• Shields, A. E. (2017). Epigenetic signals of how social disadvantage “gets under the skin”: a challenge to the public health community. Epigenomics, 9,(3), Published Online:22 Feb 2017 https://doi.org/10.2217/epi-2017-0013
  Get PDF via Future Medicine.

Watch:

• Epigenetics and public health (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxKl0sOinYk). Note: Sorry for the audio quality -- my computer set-up had some trouble during the recording; I will re-record in time.