The Gene Therapy Plan: Taking Control of Your Genetic Destiny with Diet and Lifestyle - Hardcover

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First published by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 2015

Copyright © 2015 by Mitchell L. Gaynor

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Gaynor, Mitchell L., 1956–

The gene therapy plan : taking control of your genetic destiny with diet and lifestyle / Mitchell L. Gaynor, MD ; foreword by Mehmet C. Oz.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-101-61848-6

1. Genetic disorders—Diet therapy. 2. Nutrition—Genetic aspects. 3. Cooking for the sick. 4. Diet therapy. I. Title.

QP144.G45G39 2015

616'.042—dc23

2014038544

Neither the publisher nor the author is engaged in rendering professional advice or services to the individual reader. The ideas, procedures, and suggestions contained in this book are not intended as a substitute for consulting with your physician. All matters regarding your health require medical supervision. Neither the author nor the publisher shall be liable or responsible for any loss or damage allegedly arising from any information or suggestion in this book.

The nutritional information in this book is not a substitute for professional medical care. Because everyone is different, a physician must diagnose and treat all health problems. All doses of supplements discussed in this book are for adults only. Always discuss your plan for supplemental nutrition with your physician before beginning any new regime.

The patients featured in this book have consented to the use of their clinical vignettes. To protect their privacy, their names have been changed.

Foreword

INTEGRATIVE MEDICINE IS progressively sweeping across the nation’s medical schools, hospitals, and clinics. Academic and residency programs are helping to prepare young physicians to challenge the status quo by thinking beyond the borders of how we’ve been treating patients in Western society for seventy-five years. Integrative medicine is really about treating the entire patient.

During my time as a medical student, the education was very traditional in the sense that students were taught to view the mind and the body separately. And a lot of this educational approach is reflected in the way medicine is practiced today, especially as we are faced with growing specialties and diminishing primary care practices. By the time I completed my training, the dogma of medical practice focused on treating the body and its organs as separate entities. I was primed to pursue a career doing the same. But life whispers to us periodically, and the wisdom of forward-thinking physicians—including my father-in-law, the pioneering heart surgeon Gerald Lemole—shook me out of this rut and opened my mind to unconventional healing approaches. I began to push against the grain of conventional medicine in order to uncover ways of treating patients that weren’t taught to me in medical school. Now don’t get me wrong—I wholeheartedly believe in the power of science. But I’ve been in practice long enough and have come across many patients from all walks of life with different healing beliefs to appreciate the treasure of integrative medicine.

Fundamentally, I have been taught the importance of including the latest in cutting-edge ideas to help my patients, no matter what the source. As head of the Heart Institute at New York–Presbyterian Hospital, this includes developing the most innovative heart valve replacement approaches. As the director of the hospital’s Complementary Medicine Program, I supported the integration of Eastern medical practices such as yoga and meditation. Stretching the spectrum of potential tools also demands that we obtain a complete clinical picture so we are able to prescribe medicines or procedures as well as relaxation techniques, exercises, and even foods that can help prevent and treat health problems.

The Gene Therapy Plan educates both patients and healers to accomplish this comprehensive goal. Dr. Mitchell Gaynor focuses on how we can use food to promote health. But more than just being about eating foods that are healthy for us, this book is about harnessing the power hidden in foods to change our genetic predisposition for disease, drawing from a branch of genetic study called ecogenetics. Ecogenetics is a growing field that applies the philosophy of personalized medicine by using specific substances to target a patient’s genetic profile for developing diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. By focusing on bioactive nutrients such as apigenin in pomegranates, EGCG in green tea, and curcumin in curry, physicians will be able to prescribe foods that operate at the level of your DNA to promote health. What’s interesting is that once you put into practice consuming foods that target your gene expression, you progressively begin to lose those cravings for foods that are bad for you—such as highly refined carbohydrates.

I met Dr. Gaynor years ago, when a patient of his approached me about a heart operation. I was confused by the request since the chart clearly outlined metastatic cancer that would kill him within months. The patient smiled and asked me to check the date in the chart again. The cancer diagnosis was over five years old! I found out that my patient had been cured by Dr. Gaynor, and I have been sending him challenging cases ever since, including friends and family. Mitch is the founder and president of Gaynor Integrative Oncology, and he serves as a clinical assistant professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College. As a renowned specialist in the field of oncology and integrative medicine, he has dedicated his career to combining medicinal practices with proven complementary therapies to treat his cancer patients, which makes him well positioned to write this book on the nutritional aspects of disease prevention.

Part of Dr. Gaynor’s success as a well-respected cancer specialist is his ability to treat the entire person through a combination of allopathic approaches and alternative therapies. The Gene Therapy Plan offers practical advice as well as supplemental and juicing recipes that are easy to incorporate into your life. This book provides insight into the evolution of medicine by showing how ecogenetic food changes your genetic blueprint. The book provides scientific data to support age-old practices and alternative therapies, which is an important component to bridging the divide between Eastern and Western medicine. This is a key stepping point toward the globalization of medicine using conventional Western and unconventional alternative treatments with proven results together to treat the whole patient.

Mehmet C. Oz, M.D.

Vice Chair and Professor of Surgery, NYP–Columbia University

Coauthor, You: The Owner’s Manual health book series

Introduction

“YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT,” my mother always told me. But it wasn’t until after I’d finished my medical training and become a cancer specialist that I learned just how profoundly right she was.

My mother started teaching me about...