Leveraging the Science of Epigenetics to Evolve Into a Better Athlete4
By Boak Ferris, Sports-Coach, Neuroscience-Researcher, and Fitness-Writer
The Old Argument
Are you a “victim” of your DNA?
Perhaps you have had the following conversation, as did I recently, watching novices compete at our favorite sport. My friend and teammate Curtis and I spectated, as a couple of beginners played handball alongside more experienced and accomplished competitors at our local club.
Curtis said, in reference to one “slow-improver,” “He’ll never get much better. He has no talent.”
I answered, “You don’t think he can learn enough to improve, and move up several levels?”
“Talent and ability are real. It’s in your DNA. You either have it or you don’t. He may learn a few things, but he’ll never get any better than he is. He’s not a natural athlete.”
“So, Curtis, you think we are ‘prisoners’ to our DNA?”
“Yep.” [Note for the record: this conversation underwent editing for dramatic effect.]
Now, Curtis is an experienced teacher as well as a champion handballer. He may have been thinking some other thoughts, like “This guy we’re watching doesn’t really want to learn, and he’s happy where he is.” So Curtis’ formulas for success or innate talent may include having initiative, attitude, and a strong desire to practice, drill, learn, and improve.
Still, I had heard versions of his argument many times over the years. His words resonated with much more severe words I had heard from well-respected coaches and elite athletes over the decades. “Athleticism, talent, and skill are indeed innate, in your DNA. If a person starts with “unathletic” DNA, that person can never become a top athlete, let alone an elite competitor.” (Well, try telling that to someone like “foot-slow” David Chapman, The Great One.)
Enter The Epigenome!
Well, I’ve got old news for laypeople who still believe DNA rules. Welcome to the science of epigenetics, a science that has been around for 30 years, and today has lots of data and proof behind it. Not only do we have a genome, our well-known DNA, but we also develop an epigenome by making daily lifestyle choices, and then by living according to these choices. In addition, this constantly updating epigenome is also dynamically altered by environmental factors!
Geneticists in the early 1990’s accepted that some kind of epigenetic editing of our fundamental DNA genome was going on, but around 2005 or so, they realized that the epigenome was a type of “scaffold.” This scaffold casts editing loops around portions of DNA in the body’s differing, specialized cell-types. Think of the epigenome as a superstructure that reaches out with “tentacles” to loop around select parts of the DNA helices within the differing cell-types in your body.
From Wikipedia, we read, “the epigenome is involved in regulating gene expression, development, tissue differentiation, and suppression of “transposable elements” within DNA. Unlike the underlying genome, which remains largely static within an individual,” . . . “the epigenome is dynamically altered by environmental conditions.”
While epigenetic “tentacles” do not alter the DNA, they do modify the instructions made by DNA.
In short, as you live, eat, breathe, decide—and train and compete—throughout your lifetime, your body responds by constructing this epigenome, which, in turn, conveys new instructions for parts of the DNA within your body’s various cell types to carry out. This process of building an epigenome depends 100 % on the activities of your endocrinological system, the system that engages and measures out the hormones by which you think, live, breathe, eat, drink, and survive. Such hormones include cortisol and adrenaline, the stress hormones; dopamine and endorphins, the pleasure hormones; and many others, especially insulin, the hormone most implicated in the metabolic processes by which your cells get and make and recycle energy. As you stimulate such hormone production by experiencing stress or pleasure, or by selecting a consistent diet and exercise, or lack thereof, the epigenome builds and starts editing the “local cellular” DNA.
(Your body can better manage insulin, for example, according to yesterday’s research, simply by standing instead of sitting, implying once again an epigenetic lifestyle link to physical exertion and physical stress to improved hormone management. Reference available on request.)
THE ROLE OF HORMONES IN CONSTRUCTING THE EPIGENOME
Some mystery remains about the order in which hormones influence the construction of the epigenome, but nonetheless, an evolving epigenome results from their influence. Either hormones directly alter epigenetic “instructions,” which then alter DNA instructions, or else hormones directly influence the DNA, which causes a rebound effect to build and evolve the epigenome.
Thus, hormones, including insulin, work by changing gene expression in all the specialized cells. Such cells include muscle cells which need to make energy, and bone cells, which need to become denser in response to stress. Or consider the functions and numbers of your lung-cells, required for both aerobic and anaerobic fitness. In the case of steroid hormones like estrogen and testosterone, for instances, the hormones bind to their receptors and then the receptors enter the nuclei of the specific cell-types and bind to the local DNA to alter gene expression in a hormone-specific manner. When the hormone receptor binds to either the epigenome or the DNA, (or perhaps both), it evolves and modifies the epigenome, and thus alters each unique cell’s gene expression (DNA).
To put it a simpler way, the repetitive exchange of hormones over time causes an “exterior” epigenetic “scaffold” to take shape, and to surround, and subsequently to affect DNA genomic expression of each specialized cell in the body.
THE SKINNY
In short, when you stress your body with training or competition, by diet or exercise, or when you pleasure your body, with training or competition, or by diet or exercise, the resultant hormones produced build an epigenome for any cells involved in escalating or affecting athletic prowess: muscle cells, blood cells (involved in oxygen-transport), nerve cells, skeletal cells, organ-cells (skin, pancreas, liver, etc.), and brain-cells, my favorites, those neurons that make executive decisions and that will you to act, now!
Imagine, if you will, each muscle-cell’s individual DNA having a structured epigenetic scaffolding around it, and next visualize how this external scaffolding sends out special “spools” to wrap around various sequences of the muscle-cell’s DNA, and then how these spools send out messages to alter the DNA expression-instructions for these muscle-cells! The muscle cell activities modify, and change, while demands for muscle cells increase, and they multiply!
According to a textbook (like, say, The Molecular Biology of the Cell, by Alberts, et. al), each cell type in your body develops a unique epigenome, as influenced almost entirely by your will and lifestyle! By how your will is manifested in your lifestyle choices. (“I think I’ll weight-train today, or hit the machine for intervals, or enter a competition, or eat right.”) Since your will represents the activity of your mind, your will is in effect determining which endocrinological (hormonal) processes will most influence the evolution of each cell-type’s epigenome.
Furthermore, your body’s endocrinological processes continue to modify and rewrite this epigenome, as you evolve or change your lifestyle and daily habits. What this means is that your muscle cells have an evolving epigenome, while your neurons have a secondary evolving epigenome, your bone-cells a third, blood-cells a fourth, and so on.3
So, how does the specialized epigenome of each cell-type work, and what does it do?
You yourself have likely seen evidence of the power of the epigenome, and its influence on human bodies and performance. For example, if you watched the Olympics recently, and paid attention to the swimmers’ physiques, you noticed how their bodies have become unique, when contrasted with non-swimmers’ bodies. “That’s a professional swimmer’s body. No one else would have that body type.” Their torsos have lengthened, the ratios of their shoulders to their chests to their waists have become modified, and altering the clear physical dimensions we ordinarily attribute to everyday physical gender-differentiation, for example. Their bodies have responded to the daily stresses or pleasures of swimming workouts, to the stresses and pleasures of mental and physical training, and to the biochemical modifications in the body caused by living according to an entire competitive-athlete lifestyle and diet.
Similarly, you recognize the unique, almost inhuman musculature of a gymnast’s unique body, or that of a Pilates hobbyist or athlete, whereby the muscles have actually lengthen
YOU NEED SCHEDULED AND CHRONIC STRESS AND/OR PLEASURE ACQUIRED BY COMPETITION, TRAINING, OR BOTH IN ORDER TO BUILD YOUR DESIRED ELITE ATHLETE’S EPIGENOME!
To repeat, then, elite athletes’ bodies require stresses and pleasures endured in competition and training in order to stimulate production of endocrinological biomolecules, such as cortisol, adrenaline, norepinephrine, along with dopamine, endorphins, and native oxytocin, which, in turn, will build the unique epigenetic scaffoldings around their various muscle, energy, and neural cells. All cells can erect an epigenome-scaffold to modify their native specialized DNA.
And though every cell in your body has the same copy of your overall DNA, each cell-type controls the genes encoded in its particular type in specified ways, so that the differing cell types remain differentiated by function. For instance, a neuron differs from a muscle cell, because different bits of its identical DNA-sequence are utilized (methylated) in different ways. So, all cells have a differentiated epigenome, one that differs among the body’s different cell-types.
NOW SEEKING COMPETITION, TRAINING, OR BOTH! THE TEMPORAL FACTORS
Please note how very recent research and experimentation by geneticists has uncovered how the epigenome changes over time to govern the changing needs of specialized cells. The amount of time needed to restructure the epigenome may be quite short, though the research is sparse, so far, but analysts can venture some predictions suggested by the current research.
What this all means, of course, is your daily choices, if adhered to over time, will continue to modify or maintain your epigenomes, and can be influenced by your will and lifestyle choices to maximize your DNA-potentiality—NO MATTER YOUR AGE.
But why would the epigenome change at all, once it gets established and scaffolds around your DNA? Well, it turns out that the fluctuating hormonal environment in your body continues to modify and evolve the epigenome. In short, the epigenome, per cell, responds to daily, monthly, yearly alterations in your hormonal “profile.”
If you lay off tournaments, and competition, and training, your epigenome rebuilds, and your special-cell DNA instructions alter accordingly. Perhaps the worst decision a long-term, intended elite athlete might make is “to take a break, to refresh or restore, or to enjoy lifestyle habits that counteract owning a perfect athlete’s epigenome.”
Similarly, athletes who lay off tournament schedules, in order to “rest” or restore their bodies, may be negatively affecting—or actually subtracting all—the gains made over maintaining rigorous and consistent tournament and training schedules. They will have to weigh the benefits and disadvantages, of the anticipated time required to restore the highest-octane epigenetic functioning of each cell type.
You all know how your timing can disappear, within a one-week layoff. Your neurons, and nerve-responses, as associated with the epigenome for these specified cells, are modifying rapidly! Conversely, if you begin a modified diet, reducing dependencies on sugar, intensifying training, and adding tournaments to your yearly schedule, you will benefit if your goal is to achieve new levels of skills—and championships.
SEPTEMBER 25 UPDATE: EPIGENOME IMPLICATED IN CANCER
This latest research confirms suspicions held by epigeneticists, that harmful dietary, sedentary, smoking, drinking, and othe addictive lifestyle choices may influence shaping the epigenome, which in turn modiy DNA in specific cells to initiate cancer.5
SAMPLE MODERN REFERENCES and NOTES
1.Kristine Williams, Germán D. Carrasquil
2.Yuan Wen, Cory M Dungan, C Brooks Mobley, Taylor Valentino, Ferdinand von Walden, Kevin A Murach. Nucleus Type-Specific DNA Methylomics Reveals Epigenetic ‘Memory’ of Prior Adaptation in Skeletal Muscle. Function, 2021.
3. [The epigenetic “scaffolding” wraps coils around some of the genetic code within your native DNA, and alters the way the DNA constructs proteins. The consequences of these processes are enormous for athletes with sharp goals, despite their so-called “DNA starting position” in life.]
4.Disclaimer: This article represents a layperson’s modern understandi
5. Toshikazu Ushijima, Susan J. Clark, Patrick Tan. Mapping genomic and epigenomic evolution in cancer ecosystems. Science, 2021; 373 (6562): 1474 DOI: 10.1126/science.abh1645
When Boak grew up overseas, Boak’s dad insisted he learn martial arts while attending boarding schools, and so Boak studied Boxing (his dad’s sport), Aikido, and a bit of Kendo over a period of twelve years. He also competed at tennis, golf, soccer, swimming, and handball between elementary school, and then in High School competed at Handball and Track. During College, Boak competed at the hurdles and long jump with the track team, and took handball courses. Moving forward in time, in 1989, Boak first befriended David Chapman, without involvement in any coaching. In 1991, Boak was recruited as a faculty mentor into CSULB’s TEAMWIN project to help university athletes excel in sports and academics. Among his university clients, he coached various members of the university’s tennis, water-polo, and volleyball teams, as the university directed to him, about 16 in all, including James Cotton in basketball and Jered Weaver in baseball—both of whom enrolled in Boak’s courses. Among his topics of engagement, he included sports psychology, cognitive psychology, analytical skills, and lifestyle issues. The TEAMWIN project, though successful, lapsed as a result of a loss of funding, about 1995. Around 1991, Boak also engaged in contributing coaching tips to Steffi Graf’s team and agency, while also becoming a persistent friend and spectator at David Chapman’s matches. Starting in 1994, Boak began his own handball career, independently traveling to 8 venues (dates and locations available on request) where David competed in national championships, and spectating at David’s matches until about the year 2000. By 1994, David began including Boak as a “sounding-board,” one of the very small duties a coach may have when supporting one of the world’s most elite athletes. By about 2000, however, David’s travel schedule became too hectic for Boak, who had since been promoted to Coordinator of Graduate-Required Testing and Evaluation of CSULB students. He last supported David at the 2009 USHA Nationals in Austin Texas. Today, Boak is a number-two ranked handball competitor in the USHA Veteran Super Masters Division, and has six handball clients, ranging from 16 up to 70 years of age.