My answer to Is low blood sugar genetic?
Answer by Connie b. Dellobuono:
20:80 is my guess. Our genes affect us 20% of the time while our environment and lifestyle affects us 80% of the time (epigenetics).
Each person metabolize glucose or drugs or food in the liver differently. Pharmacogenetic tests classified these into 4 groups of people.
We have to choose good carbohydrates from whole foods (colored greens, fibrous whole foods) and avoid toxins (alcohol, soda, aspartame, processed foods, burned BBQ meat, etc). We sleep before 10pm and exercise 30min every day. We destress and be proactive with our own health.
In mammals the response to dietary glucose is more complex because it combines effects related to glucose metabolism itself and effects secondary to glucose-dependent hormonal modifications, mainly pancreatic stimulation of insulin secretion and inhibition of glucagon secretion. In the pancreatic β cells, glucose is the primary physiological stimulus for the regulation of insulin synthesis and secretion. In the liver, glucose, in the presence of insulin, induces expression of genes encoding glucose transporters and glycolytic and lipogenic enzymes.
Although insulin and glucagon were long known as critical in regulating gene expression, it is only recently that carbohydrates also have been shown to play a key role in transcriptional regulation. DNA sequences and DNA binding complexes involved in the glucose-regulated gene expression have been characterized recently in liver and β cells.
Regulation of gene expression by nutrients in mammals is an important mechanism allowing them to adapt to the nutritional environment.
In-vivo and in-vitro experiments have demonstrated that the transcription of genes coding for lipogenic and glycolytic enzymes in liver and/or adipose tissue is upregulated by glucose.
In order for glucose to act as a gene inducer, it must be metabolized.