Your Body Code: Personalized Nutrition WellnessProgram

By Amanda Beckner, CN, HHP, PhD

CHAPTER 1 SUMMARY

Portions excerpted from "Your Body Code"

Your "body code" is not a cryptogram, a puzzle, or a cipher. It is the unique language of wellness - the language of your body. If you learn this language, you will uncover the secrets of your body that could lead to better health and longevity.

Some secrets you may already know - how you have lived your life, what medical problems you have developed, and your genetic inheritance. Some things may be concealed from you - things that could help lead you to a better understanding about your subconscious behavior and your deeper nutritional needs.

A new book written by Amanda Beckner, CN, HHP, PhD., entitled Your Body Code is the culmination of 20 years of research into how diet, nutrition and attitude interact with behavior and genetics. Her work has resulted in a common-sense approach to nutritional methodology that has resulted in the restoration of health and wellness to thousands of people all around the world.

Dr. Beckner hopes to "spread the good news" about her methods and reach out to thousands more people who suffer from the false notion that fad diets, specially concocted serums, and elixirs are the solution to their wellness problems.

Your Body Code will show readers that decoding the language of their body is the vital first-step forward for wellness. Your Body Code guides readers toward the best way toward understanding the "code" so that they can burn fat and maintain or gain muscle mass.

"My most sincere desire is that the readers of my book will find that they can stave off diseases and illnesses that they may be exposed to through genetics," says Dr. Beckner. "I have seen many of my clients reverse the course of an existing disease from diabetes to cancer. I hope this book will also do that for readers - that they may use the ideas in this book to literally rewrite the way their body responds to their genetic code for disease."

All people have genetic traits that can leave our bodies vulnerable to disease. Some disease may show up right away; many may surface as you age. However, no matter what type of disease trait your genes may tag you with, there is only a 25% chance for a positive disease outcome. What about the remaining 75%?

In any game of chance, there's always an element of skill. In backgammon for instance, there's the roll of the dice. In poker, there's the pull of a card. In both games, the winner is the person who knows how to "play the board," or knows "when to hold 'em." As a friend once said, "The game of chance is 80% luck and 20% skill; it's what you do with the skill part that matters most."

Therefore, in the case of disease traits - the odds are actually stacked in your favor, or in gambling parlance, the house is on your side. You have all of the aces. Nearly ALL human disease is recessive. In other words, just because both parents have had a disease (e.g., diabetes, coronary heart disease, cancer) does not mean that their children are destined to get them. I'll get into recessive and dominant traits a bit later, suffice to say this is a bit of awfully good news, don't you think?

The key is exerting what control you have over disease outcome. That means gaming the "skill" side of the equation to take advantage of the 75% chance that YOU WILL NOT get the disease. Your Body Code will show you how you can game the system and forestall disease.

One way that we can game the odds, is by taking advantage of your body's natural ability to regenerate itself. As we age, our cells slough off and die. In seven years, most of the cells in our bodies are replaced using our built-in genetic 'recording' - our inheritance from our parents and ancestors. During the rebuilding process, the body also uses its reserve of proteins, nutrients, and vitamins to build the replacement cells. If the process is left alone, medical problems may surface that have a direct relationship to your genetic heritage and the way you have lived your life.

However, unlike your ancestors or other family members, you change your dietary habits and live a life with less stress, plenty of exercise, sunshine and fresh air. The result is that you will challenge that genetic trait and forestall the outcome because you did not leave the other 75% to mere chance. More than twenty years of experience has shown me that not only do you have the ability to stop and reverse many diseases, you may fix problems entirely and make all of your symptoms disappear.

The problem that I see is that medical 'management' of disease tends to allow fixable problems to grow worse. It is unfortunate but time after time, I see people locked inside the "cycle" symptom and pain. They take a medication to "manage" the pain and yes, for a short while, they ease their symptoms but they did not fix the problem. Symptoms are like the warning light on the dashboard alerting you of ongoing damage. The more pain, the more damage there is and more than likely, you will add more medication. Meanwhile, the disease spreads to other parts of your body, damage increases and new symptoms appear. That's how one medication multiplies into three, four, five, or many more prescriptions. I once had a client who was on no less than 80 prescription medications. When we completed her program, she was 100 pounds lighter and taking three vitamins - no medication. Not even over-the-counter.

When a warning light is flashing on your dashboard, you don't take your car to the mechanic to have him snip a wire to stop the light from blinking. You seek a solution that fixes the problem. Otherwise, you may be able to drive the car for a while longer but at some point because you ignored the warning light; much bigger issues will emerge down the road. The first lesson is to learn to pay attention to your body and be proactive, DO something about the signals you receive. The second lesson is recognizing that you have control.

Common sense tells us to keep track of bank account balances, important due dates, how much gas is in the tank. Why? Because we face serious consequences if we don't. Yet, we rarely pay attention to what is going on in our bodies despite the dire consequences that we know will happen. If you are like most people, you do not know if your blood pressure level is normal for your age, much less your cholesterol count. Do you know if you exercise enough? Do you know if your diet is balanced? If you don't learn how to monitor these things and work toward better wellness through your own personal actions, disease IS inevitable.

Your Body Code can help you rid yourself of habits by changing the way you think about your health and wellness by helping you 'load the deck' with knowledge and action. You are obviously on the threshold of recognizing the personal responsibility you have to yourself and the condition of your body. Just by picking up this book, you are closer to ridding yourself of the habits that prevent you from building toward your goal of better wellness, greater vitality, and improved health.

Another way to look at this situation is through what I call Your Body Code DNA&tm;#8482; Don't think 'genetic DNA' - the stuff inside your cells (we'll get to that later). Think about the DNA outside your body; the things that can have a real effect on your overall health and wellness: namely Diet, Nutrition and Attitud&tm;#8482;. We will take advantage of the very real fact that the odds are in your favor.

No matter what you may have inherited in terms of disease traits, there's a 75% chance that you can avoid most disease outcomes. Your Body Code will show you how to game the system and forestall disease. In a very real sense, we will rewrite your genetic code so that you can gain health, wellness, and vitality.