Your Environment, DNA, & Longevity | Ted Smith PhD

Your Environment could be more important than Your DNA to Your Health Ted Smith PhD., is an associate professor of environmental medicine and deputy director of the Envirome Institute at the University of Louisville School of Medicine. Smith is also the director of the Envirome Institute's Center for Healthy Air, Water and Soil. Theodore R. Smith, Ph.D. Associate Professor Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology The human envirome is made up of all the environmental conditions that affect us. Both genetic and environmental factors contribute to a person’s wellbeing and disease risk. Until now, the environmental effects on health has not been studied. There is no framework to understand our environment as a whole (the envirome) or the interactions between the natural, social, and personal domains. To understand how the environment increases or decreases risk for developing heart disease we must understand the impact the envirome and its specific domains have on health.Read the entire manuscript here. The envirome is made up of everything around us. Natural Environment: everything that is not man-made like the weather, mountains and rivers, and plants and animals. Social Environment: how we organize ourselves into a society and build cities. Personal Environment: the lives we to build for ourselves, where we live, what we eat, and whether we chose to exercise or smoke. The Envirome is made up of three inter-related types of environment – the natural, social, and personal domains of the external environment. Our characteristics come from interactions between our genes and our environments- both our envirome now and past enviromes that shaped our ancestors. The envirome shapes everything about a person, from their mental and physical development to disease risk and life span. Natural Environment The Natural environment includes cycles of night and day, rhythms of the seasons, altitude, latitude, and variations in exposure to sunshine and greenspaces profoundly affect human health and well-being. Social Environment The influence of the natural environment features is deeply transformed by urbanization through the social environment. The social environment includes the built environment, agricultural and industrial activities and pollution as well as culture, economic activities, and social networks. Through exposure to traffic, pollution, and occupational hazards, urbanization limits human health and creates disease risk. Moreover, large social networks cause disease inequities and health disparities by influencing access to healthcare, social cohesion, and socioeconomic status.  Personal Environment Within the social environment, individuals create personal environments through individual lifestyle choices that improve their status or provide protection from threatening natural and social influences. Every personal environment is different, characterized by income, education, and lifestyle choices relating to nutrition, physical activity, sleep, and the use of recreational drugs, alcohol, and tobacco.  Why it Matters The interactions between genetic and environmental factors enable human development and contribute to a person's wellbeing and disease risk. But, until now, how the environmental effects health has received little attention. Evaluation of environmental determinants of disease is limited by the lack of comprehensive omics approaches for integrating multiple environmental exposures. Hence, to understand the effects of the environment as a whole (envirome), it is important to delineate specific domains of the environment and to decipher the relationships between these domains, and how they individually and collectively affect human health. We are guided by a hierarchical model of the structure of the human envirome; defined by 3 consecutively nested domains, consisting of natural, social, and personal environments. Extensive evidence suggests that features of the natural environment such as