104. Judith Finlayson — You Are What Your Grandparents Ate: What You Need to Know About Nutrition, Experience, Epigenetics and the Origins of Chronic Disease

The Michael Shermer Show

Michael Shermer

Dialogue, Science, Reason, Michaelshermer, Natural Sciences, Skeptic

4.4 • 921 Ratings

🗓️ 18 February 2020

⏱️ 85 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this wide ranging conversation Judith Finlayson reviews the research she writes about in her new book that takes conventional wisdom about the origins of chronic disease and turns it upside down. Rooted in the work of the late epidemiologist Dr. David Barker, it highlights the research showing that heredity involves much more than the genes your parents passed on to you. Thanks to the relatively new science of epigenetics, we now know that the experiences of previous generations may show up in your health and well-being. Shermer and Finlayson discuss:

epigenetics and the link to epidemiology
why it is so difficult determining causality in medical sciences
why correlation is not necessarily causation, but how it can be used to advise on diet and lifestyle changes
How many of the risks for chronic diseases, including obesity, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and dementia, can be traced back to your first 1,000 days of existence, from the moment you were conceived?
the association between these diseases and the experiences parents and even grandparents had
fruits and vegetables or meat and fat?
how poverty affects epigenetics, and
epigenetic exaggerations and incautious extrapolations — no miracles promised!

Judith Finlayson is a bestselling author who has written books on a variety of subjects, from personal well-being and women’s history to food and nutrition. She is a former national newspaper columnist for The Globe and Mail, magazine journalist and board member of various organizations focusing on legal, medical and women’s issues. Judith lives in Toronto, Canada.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	before I introduce today's guest.
0:01.7	I want to tell you about the offer from our sponsor,
0:03.9	The Great Courses this month, is a free month
0:07.0	of access to the Great Courses Plus app.
0:10.3	So it looks like this, you have your phone
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0:24.0	which is what I'm currently listening to and the 24 different lectures pop up now
0:30.3	if you're already in the course the lecture will just pick up wherever it is you last left off which is a nice feature or if you just want to skip around like say you want to skip from lecture 2 to lecture 13 medieval theories about the black Death, you just touch on that,
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0:53.4	Now if you don't want to do that and you decide you want to change courses in the middle, you can just do that.
0:58.0	Here's a course I already took, understanding the dark side of human nature.
1:02.6	This is 24 lectures by Daniel Breyer.
1:05.6	Anyway, you get the idea.
1:07.0	So the offer this month is a free month of access
1:11.0	to the Great Courses Plus. to do that go to the Great
1:15.4	courses Plus dot com slash salon. That's the Great Courses Plus
1:20.8	dot com slash salon. Thanks for listening. Plus. is Judith Finlason, she's a science writer.
1:34.8	The book is You Are, which are grandparents,
1:36.8	ate what you need to know about nutrition,
	...

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