Genes matter, not?

[trinity_papa]

Discussions have been on nature vs nurture. Well i think i can’t control the nature part much but at least i can control the nurture side and in turn influence our genes. Sounds funny??

GD likes to say its all about nurture, afterall we are all human and all of us are from the same gene pool as lernado davinci. IE we are all human, change a very very small part i think less than 1% and we would be no different from apes and rats.

Of course that would be the extreme case, but what we are really asking is, "is there really such a thing as born gifted. " And my diagnosis is yes. But is it purely genetics, answer is no.

Lets see where i am coming from.
Looking at history, thousands of years back. Looking at circumstances and events past. Egypt was quite advance 5000 yrs ago, and several thousand yrs ago china was a great nation, it build cities and what have you. But how is it that they have fallen that badly? Anglo-saxons, history tells us was still stone-age, but they have developed so far especially the last few hundred yrs. If genetics were at play … the intelliegence genes didn’t last. But then again, my great grandparents came from a war torn china, uneducated, and poor. But yet today i have several tertiary degrees. So genes … isn’t that strong an argument.

However, what we do, what we choose to do, can affect our genes and the generation after us. War, femine, disease, chemicals can affect our genes and hence our future generations. Affect, in the sense blocking certain functions of our genes, causing illnesses, chemical imbalance, or making us more adaptabile to hostlie environment, or simply causing us to develop cancer or carry on such problems to future generations, we can call it hereditary problems. Our genes or DNA decides who we are physically, our actions, thoughts, and choices decides who we are truly.

[trinity_papa]

Given an opportunity to learn, and expand our vast knowledge, we learn how to nurture our children. Knowing nurturing awakens them. Hence we do all this infant teaching etc. However, there is another part that we can help our children, and that is by giving them good genes. (or should i say uncorrupted genes)

Sounds confusing? Well you see, we are now aware, but not that much, we know we have to give them an early start and lots of exposure. But they still need good set of genes, genes in the sense a better set of DNA or less corrupt or better signals. We can influnce that from ourself. We must take care of our bodies, avoid chemicals, avoid smoking, avoid drugs that may harm our body, through time and maybe even generations, a more higher quality set of genes that is less corrupted would come of it. I won’t call it pure form or higher form or even superior genes, rather its one that is less corrupted, this will also mean giving our future generations, a healthy body, a chemically well balanced DNA structure, and this also means healthier minds and mental alertness, which all contributes to better concentration and learning.

Ie healthier living, healthier choices can affect what we past down to our children, and our children’s children.

I hope i make sense here. This comes form the idea that cells like all living organism has memory.

[Trinity]

I agree Trinity Papa. There is also the concept of Epigenetic Inheritance. the environment that our grandparents grew up in affects how our DNA is expressed. This article explains it pretty well http://www.i-sis.org.uk/epigeneticInheritance.php.

[trinity_papa]

Step 2.

While the father part is important, the most important role fortunately or unfortunately falls on the mother. (some may get offended, some may understand.) Afterall, its the mother who carries the baby for 3 semester.

6-12mth before pregnancy, the woman has to purify the body, detox is you will. No substance abuse, no nicotine, no high levels of alcohol. During pregnancy, i know alot of woman uses the word hormonal imbalances, to explain their erratic behaviour, lost of memory etc etc. But it is also at this stage that the fetus are highly developing, and highly dependent on the mother to be at her best, to make right critical decision for the proper growth of the fetuses. According to shichida, the fetuses is recieving signals all the time from the mother, it feels what she is feeling, it knows its thoughts and pleasures. It even listens to the mother, and may even follow instructions from the mother if the bond is strong enough. As such, at this stage especialy after the mid 2nd semester, the mother must control her feelings without much emotional outburst, be aware of her thoughts and feelings…etc. Because this signals, according to shichida, or the feelings that you feel, fear, anger, upset, releases chemicals into the bloodstream, and in turn blood carries this chemicals or signals to the unborn fetuses. In turn pre-determinng the characteristics of the baby even before it is born.

Hence, why they say a happy healthy mother is important for a happy healthy baby. And a happy healthy mother is highly dependent on the choices and actions of the mother, and hence being aware of ones thoughts and feelings is important. Yes it may sound unfair but you have a chance to influence the outcome of your child’s behavioural tread. And i think its such an esteem sacrifice and gift the mother can offer thier unborn child. And i hope their hubby would help and support their wife. But unfortunately, or fortunately, all this still depends alot on the mother.

Of course this is on top of the usual pre-natal stimulations.

I hope i have not offended anyone, i am just sharing my thoughts on what i think about the game of nature vs nurture.

[KL]

You know, I never quite understand this nature vs nurture debate. I find it quite inconsequential.

See, to me it’s so obvious that genetics (nature) plays a large role.

However, it doesn’t matter how much of a role genetics plays, because it is equally obvious that we can make a very big difference in what we do (nurture).

I personally like to say that it’s probably like 50/50, but hey, even if nurture can only account for 20% difference, THAT’S STILL A LOT!!

So, it doesn’t matter whether nurture or nature plays a larger role, nor exactly how much of a role they play.

The only thing that matters is that we, by our actions, CAN make a big difference in the abilities of a child, and that’s all that matters and the only thing we should focus on. Until the day you tell me we can do things to change our genetic makeup, then I’m not going to waste time on something I cannot change. It’s like crying over spilt milk or keeping your attention on past events which you can’t do anything about.

[trinity_papa]

yes trinity … that’s right … thx.

KL, yes understand what you said, and your actions unfortunately can determine the genetic outcome of your child. (Not the physical sense but healthier sense, less migrain, less emotional problem due to chemical imbalances etc)

For ourselves, it maybe too late for what we are at least physically, but not so for our children.

Be it 50/50 or not, the basic idea is, we must take care of our health, what we consume, and not abuse it. Say we abuse substance, before or during pregnancy, that would affect the physical, emotional, psychological makeup of the child, and this affects its the fetuses body, mental, genetic makeup or what have you. I mean you would agree that there would be harm. And this harm would be passed on to future generations, until it wears out somewhere in the next few generations.

Therefore what we can do, is to gradually filter out this harmful substances that may or may not be there, avoid further damage, and hopefully our child with less of this chemicals or damaged genes, would result in better healthy body, and hence brain matter, chemically well balanced, and therefore less emotional problems due to certain birth defects, etc, and hence easier to teach, better concentration, emotionally more stable or mature, all this is what we can control both prior to pregnancy and during pregnancy.

That is why i said the qn should be “is there really such a thing as born gifted”, and not genetics per se.
And this gift is having a healthy body, a strong stimulated brain, and when born they have ability to learn things easily, better concentration etc. And can we by our choices and action control it and give this gift to our children. The answer maybe yes, thru proper care of our body, thru proper diet, thru pre-natal stimulation etc. And that is how we may control for the nature part. Then saying leave it to …, regardless of our action.

Like i say we cannot control nature, but we by our action, thoughts, and choices can determine the outcome… to let it be or to improve it. (Sounds abit like environmentalist doesn’t it?? haha)

(maybe the word genetic isn’t quite apropriate word since it conjures different meaning or degree of meaning to different people.)

[trinity_papa]

Actually this part goes into very very abstract science. I read somewhere before, that cells have memories, even our ancestors memories are encoded into our cells. Each cells contains our DNA, past down from our ancestors. This DNA are evolving, and ever changing, absorbing new info and discarding or make redundent old ones. Or they have been there all along but are changing according to our environment. Most of this info are deactivated and stored within our genes. Lets just say all the genes are there that makes us human and more, just that most of these switches(good or bad) are off.

By chemical reaction or exposure to radiation good or bad we turn this stored genes on or off. And suddenly a healthy person suffers from cancer and … very quickly. Or that a person suffers from hyperthemia or asthama caused by environment, this weakness would be transmited to our children via our genes, which recieved this signals or chemicals and activated some negative switches in us. Our children would then be born with 50/50 chance of suffering the same sickness as us. The probablility goes up, if both parents suffers from the same illnesses. In this case we won’t exactly know which would be the dominant gene, that would show prominance in our child. There is also the saying “skipping a generation”, refering to certain physcial attributes or habits, or characters, or gene thread that is seen in the grandparents and the grandchildren only. Ie the information is stored in the children’s DNA code, but was not switched on.

The basic idea therefore, is to study enough and understand that it can be influenced, and decide how we want to influence the possible outcome of it for our children. Eg if i have asthma then i must find a cure for it, (Chinese medicine has a cure, but not western) or reduce it occurance, before i have children. And since apple and its juice for toddlers can help reduce asthma probabilities, and if you succesfully remove asthma from occuring in your children you have succesfully influenced the outcome, and without asthma, your nuturing would be more succesful.

Others included trying not to fall sick during pregnancy, as the drugs and anti biotics could influence the fetuses, overweight pregnancy will cause birth complications, which may lead to fetus distress etc, or older woman having thier first baby, resulting in higher probability of down syndrome etc. I know some of this are not hereditary, but are caused by circumstances, environment etc, but when the child suffers it, it is encoded in his genes, and may pass on to his chldren. And that’s where the chain of event starts. Some may occur only in one generation others may take several generations to wash out, or turned off.

Also I know of someone whose children could not read, they have problems seeing words, its the way their eye brain link works, they are perfectly normal etc, as long as they don’t handle reading. It is known the father suffers from the same problem when young. Of course i am not sure if he still suffers from it, but if they had known about it earlier they could have done something about it, instead of letting their children struggling through school now. If medication doesn’t help and their children still suffers from it, then the 3rd step would be thru shichida method of pre-natal suggestion and visualization. Failing which, or best coupled with the 4th step (nurture), which is right mind training, to activate the right brain to reconnect the nerves between the eyes and the brain. This is where the power of right mind comes in. This in turns helps influence the switches in our genes to turn on or off.

Others, as long as we are perfectly normal, then everybody has perfect pitch ability and its a matter of nurturing it.

I am sorry, this is way way too much to put into words, and i am not sure if i know how to put into words too, the materials i have goes into thousand and thousands of pages, some i don’t even remember where i put it, but its stored in the grey matter somewhere. So i guess i will just end it here. Doubt i will make much sense to anybody anyway.

[trinity_papa]

http://forum.brillkids.com/prenatal-education/prenatal-stress-and-effects-on-baby/15/

i like this link … it is in a way what i was refering to … it changes what we past down to our children …

[KL]

@trinity papa post:6

yes trinity … that’s right … thx.

KL, yes understand what you said, and your actions unfortunately can determine the genetic outcome of your child. (Not the physical sense but healthier sense, less migrain, less emotional problem due to chemical imbalances etc)

For ourselves, it maybe too late for what we are at least physically, but not so for our children.

Be it 50/50 or not, the basic idea is, we must take care of our health, what we consume, and not abuse it. Say we abuse substance, before or during pregnancy, that would affect the physical, emotional, psychological makeup of the child, and this affects its the fetuses body, mental, genetic makeup or what have you. I mean you would agree that there would be harm. And this harm would be passed on to future generations, until it wears out somewhere in the next few generations.

Therefore what we can do, is to gradually filter out this harmful substances that may or may not be there, avoid further damage, and hopefully our child with less of this chemicals or damaged genes, would result in better healthy body, and hence brain matter, chemically well balanced, and therefore less emotional problems due to certain birth defects, etc, and hence easier to teach, better concentration, emotionally more stable or mature, all this is what we can control both prior to pregnancy and during pregnancy.

That is why i said the qn should be “is there really such a thing as born gifted”, and not genetics per se.
And this gift is having a healthy body, a strong stimulated brain, and when born they have ability to learn things easily, better concentration etc. And can we by our choices and action control it and give this gift to our children. The answer maybe yes, thru proper care of our body, thru proper diet, thru pre-natal stimulation etc. And that is how we may control for the nature part. Then saying leave it to …, regardless of our action.

Like i say we cannot control nature, but we by our action, thoughts, and choices can determine the outcome… to let it be or to improve it. (Sounds abit like environmentalist doesn’t it?? haha)

(maybe the word genetic isn’t quite apropriate word since it conjures different meaning or degree of meaning to different people.)

Oh I see… Yes, I think we were talking about slightly different things. What you call ‘nature’ (you mentioned prenatal stimulation etc.) I would call ‘nurture’. As I said, for me, nature is something you cannot change (genes), and nurture is everything that you can change.

[trinity_papa]

Hi yes i was refering prenatal stimulation linking it to nature … but i would agree with you its more nurturing … but …

I would put nature … as biological … from our own body on the pre-conception period to pregnancy and birth … so if you want to have a smarter baby, genes otherwise, we can take more omega3, have folic acid to prevent congenital problems, having a balanced diet etc to help nature along … the growth of the brain cells etc … well its stimulation and therefore should be nuturing, but can also be naturing …

I also believe in naturing in the sense, giving the baby right diet avoid presevatives, colourings, or basically addictives …, have sufficient omega 3 too …basically helping nature move along …hahah

As for nurture, anything else that you can do to nurture the growth … from stimulation cards, to music, to guidance, to playgroup …