Exercise alters gene expression in fat tissue

None of the videos from that 2012 conference are working (others include Robert Anda, Bruce McEwen, Jack Shonkoff)! I'll contact them tomorrow. Thanks for the heads-up, Chris.

Oooo, Jane, thank you so much! This really helps! Unfortunately, I couldn't connect to the video you posted but I found some of his videos here if anyone else has the same problem. He is really great. And it helped me when he said it can get very complicated. :)

According to people who study this, methylation can change genes hundreds of times a minute. Methylation acts more like a dimmer switch on genes. Apparently, if the environment stays a particular way for a while, then the gene switches on or off. This seems to work positively and negatively....i.e., in the case of this finding of the effects of exercise, as well as the effects of chronic trauma. Here's a video of Moshe Szyf, who's a leader in this field.

This is so interesting b/c just tonight I asked myself how often epigenetic changes occur in an organism's lifespan. I found this off Wikipedia:

"Epigenetic changes are preserved when cells divide. Most epigenetic changes only occur within the course of one individual organism's lifetime, but, if gene inactivation occurs in a sperm or egg cell that results in fertilization, then some epigenetic changes can be transferred to the next generation."^[15

I'm confused. I think I need to read up on methylation.