Science is now proving what we all knew intuitively - that how we live, the quality of our relationships, the food we eat, how we use our bodies, and the environment that washes over us and determines much more than our genes ever will.

The decoding of the human genome at the dawn of the millennium carried the hope and promise of the beginning of the end of human suffering. However, after more than a decade of intense exploration of the human genome the burden of human disease and suffering has only increased across the globe. Heart disease, cancer, and diabetes as well as allergic and autoimmune disorders have all continued to skyrocket. Hope has given way to disappointment as scientists have recognized that, other than in single gene disorders likes Down's syndrome, your genes don't determine your fate.

In November of this year a review on Genomics, Type 2 Diabetes, and Obesity in the New England Journal of Medicine(i) sadly reported on how little correlation exists between obesity, diabetes, and your genes. There are associated patterns that confer small risks, but the authors lament the lack of stronger connections between genetic makeup and the biggest disease epidemic of our time (obesity and diabetes) with refrains such as "modest effect size", "relatively few successes", "remains far from clear", "poorly captured by existing biologic knowledge."

The story of your health is much more complex than genetic programming. It is ultimately determined by the dynamic interplay of the environment washing over genes creating the "you" of this moment. The good news is that this has been the year of discoveries about "omics" - epigenomics, exposomics, nutrigenomics and microbiomics, and toxigenomics - that do, in fact, hold the key to unlocking our health and disease mysteries.

The adrenal glands sit on top of the kidneys, and are the chief glands in the body responsible for the body's response to stress. In short, when our brain senses stress it signals the adrenal glands to produce hormones such as adrenaline (ephinephrine) and cortisol. These hormones allow the body to respond to stress. Once the stress is gone, the adrenals will generally reduce their hormone production and are then, we hope, ready to respond to the next challenge.

I was interested to read of a recent study which looked at the cortisol levels in adolescents suffering with 'behavioral problems' [1]. Here, in essence, are the findings of the research:

If the behavioural problems started relatively recently, cortisol levels tended to be high.

If the behavioral problems started some time ago (in earlier childhood), cortisol levels tended to be low.

The idea put forward to explain this is that, over time, the body learns to down-regulate the production of cortisol from the adrenal glands.

Does the thought of a steak, bacon and eggs, or real milk make you cringe thinking you're instantly clogging up your arteries? How many times have you seen physicians and nutritionists write "artery clogging saturated fats"? For the last 40 years the dietary instructions from governments and other authoritative bodies have told us to avoid all animal fats.

Americans took the message seriously and complied. Average fat consumption decreased, average blood cholesterol levels decreased but their rate of heart disease has continued to rise; the cost of its treatment has continued to rise. Now, in 2011 we have 24 MILLION people diagnosed with diabetes and another 65 million with pre-diabetes and an epidemic of obesity now afflicting over 65% of the population.

The evidence continues to mount that there's no benefit and probable harm from a low fat diet. Two recent examples, the Women's Health Initiative which studied 48,835 women demonstrating no benefit from a low fat diet in terms of heart disease or breast cancer.¹

The Nurses' Health Study which has followed 90,000 female health professionals, once again demonstrated no reduction in heart disease or cancer, from a low-fat diet.²

Even the famous Framingham study now admits there is no association between dietary fat and heart disease and indeed the association of elevated cholesterol and heart disease is limited to a small segment of the study population.³

The January 2009 American Heart Journal reported that of the 137,000 people admitted to over 500 hospitals in the United States with heart attack, nearly 75% had "normal" LDL cholesterol levels, that is below 130 ( see cholesterol converter for mg / dL to mmol / L conversion).

The dietary concerns of too much fructose is well documented. High-fructose corn syrup has become the sweetener most commonly added to processed foods. Many dietary experts believe this increase directly correlates to the nation's growing obesity epidemic. Now, new research at Oregon Health & Science University demonstrates that the brain -- which serves as a master control for body weight -- reacts differently to fructose compared with another common sweetener, glucose.

The research is published in the online edition of the journal Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism and will appear in the March print edition.

"We know from animal models that the brain responds uniquely to different nutrients and that these responses can determine how much they eat," said Jonathan Purnell, M.D., an associate professor of medicine (endocrinology, diabetes and clinical nutrition) in the OHSU School of Medicine.

"With newer technologies such as functional MRI, we can examine how brain activity in humans reacts when exposed to, say, carbohydrates or fats. What we've found in this case is that the brain's response to fructose is very different to the response to glucose, which is less likely to promote weight gain."

A British study claims to have found the "first glimmer of hope" for those battling with Alzheimer's. Researchers believe that vitamin B supplements could half the rate of brain shrinkage or atrophy and stop memory loss by 500%.

Oxford University researchers studied 168 volunteers suffering from mild memory loss called MCI (mild cognitive impairment) that affects around 16% of people aged over 70 worldwide, and which could degenerate into Alzheimer's within 5 years for almost 50% of the cases.

Half of the volunteers taking part in the 2 years trial were given daily a vitamin tablet containing four times the recommended daily amount of folic acid, 300 times the recommended daily amount of B12 and 15 times the recommended amount of B6, and the other half were given a placebo with no active ingredients.

Richmond, Vt. - Just a week after a fast-moving bat-killing disease was discovered for the first time in Indiana, the disease has now been confirmed for the first time in North Carolina. The deadly bat illness known as white-nose syndrome, or the pathogenic fungus associated with it, has now been found on bats in 16 states and two Canadian provinces, from New Hampshire to Oklahoma. Two years ago, biologists estimated that more than 1 million bats had been killed by the disease. Mortalities have continued to mount since then.

"Winter is when this disease hits bats the hardest, and this winter is shaping up as the most destructive and heartbreaking yet," said Mollie Matteson, conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity. "If we're going to limit the damage and have any hope of stemming the spread of white-nose from coast to coast, these latest cases must serve as a wake-up call for federal agencies to take action now."

Wildlife officials confirmed on Wednesday that infected bats at two sites in western North Carolina have been found. One of the sites was a non-operational mine and the other a cave that hosts, among other species, the federally endangered Virginia big-eared bat. Two other endangered bat species, the Indiana bat and the gray bat, also reside in North Carolina. The Indiana bat has suffered severe mortality since the initial appearance of white-nose syndrome in 2006 in upstate New York.

The disease leaves a telltale white fungus around the muzzle of the bats that die. In some caves, mortality rates have reached 100 percent. Scientists worry that the disease, left unchecked, could drive some bat species extinct. Biologists also fear a ripple effect from the loss of bats, which eat millions of pounds of night-flying insects each year and help keep in check bugs that are problematic for agriculture and forestry.

A medical expert, Dr Soji Ige has said that the increase in the rate of asthma in United States of America by 8.2 per cent was a reflection of the asthma epidemic in other continents of the world.

In a reaction to a survey by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention which found that the rate of asthma has slowly rising, Dr Ige declared that all over the world, asthma was becoming more common and severe in nature.

Asthma involves chronic attacks of impaired breathing. Asthma symptoms include coughing, wheezing, and chest pain. Also, asthma can be fatal.

According to Dr Ige, a recent hospital survey conducted in Nigeria over a seven-year period, which evaluated the changes in prevalence of symptoms of asthma, found that cases of wheezing had increased significantly in the 13 to 14-year age group.

He remarked that although there was no clear explanation for the apparent surge in cases of asthma and its severity, the trend could possibly be ascribed to a general improvement in living standard and "doctors are looking for it more and are better at detecting it".

When cooking with collards by spicing up the traditional "mess o greens."

It's not surprising that collard greens are one of the oldest members of the cabbage family. They simply look tough. Maybe that's why they've stuck around for millennia.

Collards date back to prehistoric times, and I think they've really hung on to that leathery reptile sort of look. That is, except for the delicate baby collards I found at the Bloomfield Farms' stand this week. All their greens seem to be sweet and newborn.

I asked Bloomfield Farms' Karen Collins how her greens achieved their "youthful" look. She says it's all in the heirloom seeds.

"We buy all of our seeds from Baker Creek Seed Company. This kid started selling seeds out of his bedroom at 17!" Collins said about the company's founder, Jere Gettle.

Baker Creek now carries the largest selection of heirloom seeds in the United States, and has played a large role in preserving our agricultural and culinary heritage. The Missouri-based company has a branch in Petaluma, selling seeds and supplies to local gardeners and farmers out of an old bank building, as well as through its website.

Vera is one of my dearest patients. As an immigrant, she has worked hard her whole life, committing herself to both husband and son. In the face of his incredible health challenges, she and her husband stood by their son and raised him to be a wonderful young man.

She enjoys the simple pleasures in life -- a movie with friends, a hot cup of tea and beautiful art -- and she takes pleasure in thinking of others. I've lost track of the many sweet things she has given my daughter.

Some of my most generous, gracious and genuinely happy patients do not have a lot of money, but like Vera and her family, they live a life rich in value. They give more than they take. They are thankful for what they have, and they appreciate what others do for them.

Sabin's oral vaccine is actually causing new outbreaks of the disease.

We've been waiting a long time for the eradication of polio. Since the World Health Organization's 1988 decision to eliminate polio from nature, as it once did smallpox, billions of dollars have been funneled into this long war. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation alone has contributed more than $1 billion since 1999 to the effort, and it recently pledged an additional $119 million. The massive campaign has included armies of eradicators, mountains of research and the dedication of numerous governments and NGOs.

These efforts have spared perhaps 400,000 children a year worldwide from paralysis or death. But we're not done with polio yet. There's a bitter irony hidden at the heart of the eradication campaign: The primary tool eradicators have used to combat the virus - the oral polio vaccine created by Albert Sabin in the late 1950s - is itself causing outbreaks of the disease.