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Alison Gannett was an organic farmer & professional extreme skier travelling the world competing, when one day she was cooking bacon at home and it caught on fire.  Her husband walked in to see her admiring the flames and realised they were really in trouble.  After a CT scan  found an orange sized tumour in her brain, she was diagnosed with terminal malignant brain cancer. That was in 2013.  It was a type of terminal brain cancer and they reckoned she had around 6 months to live.

She refused to take this lying down. After having a partially successful surgery, Alison Gannett found Dr. Nasha Winters, who utilized a metabolic approach and new treatments to reverse the root causes of her cancer. The radical changes to her diet and lifestyle produced stunning results that confounded her doctors.

She has reversed her insulin resistance via dietary interventions and today the brain tumour is gone and at 56 she says she feels better than when she was 20.

Alison now specializes in personalized nutrition and lifestyle coaching, and  provides adjunct support to prevent, manage, or conquer a variety of conditions using DNA, blood chemistry, health history and molecular tumor pathology.

Her science-based, personalized diet and lifestyle coaching is designed to reduce inflammation, insulin resistance, toxin exposure, and stress while balancing hormones, boosting the immune system, encouraging detoxification, improving sleep/mood/energy, increasing nutrient density, and optimizing overall health and wellness.

Her main focus these days is on teaching people about how their DNA can have a profound effect on their health.  She identifies certain genes that could be causing problems and then how tweaking your diet and lifestyle can negate the effects of these genes.

She goes into detail about a few genes like the ones that affect the processing of things like dairy, lactose in particular, coffee, chocolate and the ApoE4 that affects how we processes saturated fats and how people carrying that gene are more inclined to develop Alzheimer’s.

She also touches on the study of epigenetics where we can learn how to turn certain genes on or off, again, through diet and lifestyle changes.

You can reach her through her website and you can find a list of resources she’s provided here:

Resources:
  • APOE: APOE genotype and stress response – a mini reviewJanina Dose-Patricia Huebbe-Almut Nebel-Gerald Rimbach – https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4960866/
  • APOE: Age, APOE and sex: Triad of risk of Alzheimer’s disease.B Riedel-P Thompson-R Brinton – https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26969397
  • APOE Alzheimer’s Saturated fat: Nutrition and prevention of Alzheimer’s dementiaArun Swaminathan-Gregory Jicha – https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4202787/
  • APOE: Better Memory and Neural Efficiency in Young Apolipoprotein E ε4 Carriers | Cerebral Cortex | Oxford AcademicChristian Mondadori-de -F.-Andreas Buchmann-Henrietta Mustovic-M. Wollmer-Conny Schmidt-Peter Boesiger-Christoph Hock- Roger Nitsch-Andreas Papassotiropoulos-Katharina Henke – https://academic.oup.com/cercor/article/17/8/1934/319393/Better-Memory-and-Neural-Efficiency-in-Young#ref-76
  • APOE saturated fats Alzheimers: The interaction of amyloid-beta with ApoE. D Carter – https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15709483
  • Dairy APOE: The predominance of this genotype during the hunter-gatherer era also gives a clue into the optimal diet for those with the APOE-ε4 genotype. Much of the Paleolithic period would have had few grains and zero dairy, and hunter gatherers would have experienced longer fasting times. A high carbohydrate diet from grains would appear to be most problematic for this genotype. The amount and type of fat best for the E3/E4 and E4/E4 genotype is currently debated, however high amounts of saturated fats appear problematic. It is recommended you look at your fat metabolism genes in this report to determine fat intake.
  • Caffeine CYP1A2: Womack CJ, Saunders MJ, Bechtel MK, et al. The influence of a CYP1A2 polymorphism on the ergogenic effects of
    caffeine. J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2012;9(1):7.
  • COMT: (catecholamine methyltransferase) shares a pathway with MAO-A and is the gene for dopamine, estrogen, adrenaline and catecholamine metabolism. This pathway requires magnesium, vitamin C and copper as co-factors. COMT -The AA genotype can also create a sensitivity to catecholamines (coffee, black tea, green tea, red wine, chocolate), especially in a stressed state. However, green tea has been found to be beneficial for breast cancer prevention in the AG and AA genotype because these individuals retained the polyphenols the longest. Other genetic variants involved in dopamine transport and receptor function also influence this magnitude.
  • Dairy: Niu K , et al. “Low-fat Dairy, but Not Whole-/high-fat Dairy, Consumption is Related with Higher Serum Adiponectin Levels in Apparently Healthy Adults. – PubMed – NCBI.” National Center for Biotechnology Information, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22648202.
  • Saturated Fats: APOA: Corella D, Peloso G, Arnett DK, et al. APOA2, dietary fat, and body mass index: replication of a gene-diet interaction in 3
    independent populations. Arch Intern Med. 2009;169(20):1897-906.
  • Saturated Fats: PPAR-alpha: The PPAR-alpha gene plays a vital role in fatty acid metabolism and ketosis, and is considered one of the most critical targets for ameliorating abnormalities with triglycerides, HDL, LDL, VLDL, and ApoB. Effect of obesity on the association between common variations in the PPAR gene and C-reactive protein level in
    Chinese Han population.S Gu-D Chen-Z Guo-Z Zhou-X Hu-M Wu – https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24599720
  • Polyunsaturated fats: Diet and disease – The Israeli paradox: Possible dangers of a high omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acid diet.
    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/14247804_Diet_and_disease_-_The_Israeli_paradox_Possible_dangers_of_a_
    high_omega-6_polyunsaturated_fatty_acid_diet
  • Saturated Fat Intake and Alcohol Consumption Modulate the Association Between the Apoe Polymorphism and Risk Of
    Future Coronary Heart Disease: a Nested Case-control Study in the Spanish Epic Cohort.
    D Corella-O Portolés-L Arriola-M Chirlaque-A Barrricarte-F Francés-J Huerta-N Larrañaga-C Martínez-P Martinez- Camblor-E Molina-C Navarro-J Quirós-L Rodríguez-M Sánchez-E Ros-N Sala-C González-C Moreno-Iribas – https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20688498
  • Chocolate/Olive Oil: SIRT1: polyphenols of olive oil and resveratrol of cacao improve:  230. Dietary Activators of Sirt1Joanne Allard-Evelyn Perez-Sige Zou-Rafael Cabo –
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2727669/
  • Coffee: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271023050_Association_of_coffee_consumption_and_CYP1A2_polymorphis
    m_with_risk_of_impaired_fasting_glucose_in_hypertensive_patients
  • Coffee: Pereira, M. A., E. D. Parker, and A. R. Folsom. “Coffee consumption and risk of type 2 diabetes mellitus: an 11-year
    prospective study of 28 812 postmenopausal women.” Archives of internal medicine. U.S. National Library of Medicine,
    26 June 2006. Web. 19 Apr. 2017.
  • Coffee: Associations between coffee consumption and inflammatory markers in healthy persons: the ATTICA study. A Zampelas-D Panagiotakos-C Pitsavos-C Chrysohoou-C Stefanadis – https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15447891

 

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