change your inputs, change how you feel
If your tests are “fine” but you still feel below par, its time to look at your inputs. Your genes are the blueprint; your daily exposures tell them what to do. Change the signals you give your genes and you change how you feel.
THE PLAN FOR SUNDAY RESETS
I’ve just completed the Applying Functional Medicine in Clinical Practice (AFMCP) course run by the Institute for Functional Medicine. Over the coming weeks I’ll take one core idea taught on the course, translate it into plain English and give you a simple plan you can try. The aim is simple: help you move from surviving to thriving, one small change at a time.
Big idea: the exposome and gene regulation
One of the strongest messages in Chapter 1 of AFMCP is that, for most of us, most of the time, genes are NOT the sole determinants of our health. They set the possibilities. What we do each day decides which possibilities become real. I like this line: genes load the gun; the environment pulls the trigger.
Functional medicine uses the word exposome to describe the totality of everything you have been exposed to from conception to present day. Food and drink. Sleep and light. Movement and stillness. Stress and recovery. Air and water. Medications. Microbes. Household and workplace chemicals. Social and work routines. These inputs add up. They nudge your biology towards repair and balance, or towards friction and flare. The primary way that your exposome influences your health is by regulating ‘gene expression’, turning up some genes and the proteins they code for and turning down others.
Genes are the blueprint of your body, but regulation controls how the body reads the blueprint. The DNA is the same. What changes is which proteins get produced, and how many of each. Meals, movement, light, sleep and stress turn genes up or down. Adjust the inputs and, over time, the outputs shift: energy, mood, digestion, weight, pain, immunity.
Your body is a set of interconnected systems
Your body doesn’t work in silos. Systems talk to each other all day. When one drifts off course, others feel it. (This is one area where I feel conventional medicine misses a trick, by dividing the body into individual organs and focussing attention there we miss the subtle interplay between the connected systems).
In the AFMCP we are taught that functional medicine practitioners view the body through the lens of 7 key systems:
- Energy: how your cells make and use energy. Tiredness, brain fog, post-exertion slumps live here.
- Digestion and absorption: stomach, intestines, enzymes, microbiome. Bloating, reflux, bowel habits.
- Defence and repair: immune balance and inflammation. Frequent infections, allergies, autoimmunity, slow healing.
- Communication: hormones and neurotransmitters. Mood, cycle changes, thyroid, stress chemistry.
- Transport: blood, nutrients and fluids moving around. Circulation and blood sugar swings.
- Structure: muscles, joints, connective tissue. Aches, stiffness, injuries that don’t settle.
- Mind and mood: focus, memory, sleep quality, stress response.
Because these systems are connected, one imbalance causing exposure can ripple across many areas.
One cause, many effects / One disease, many causes
A single trigger can disturb several systems at once. For example in my case being exposed to gluten caused joint pain, chronic fatigue, gut symptoms and mouth ulcers. One root cause. Many signs across different systems. Removing gluten was a a simple change that genuinely changed my life forever. A massive step forward.
The flip side of this coin is that one disease can come from many different roots. Take metabolic syndrome as an example. Drivers often include exposures to an ultra-processed diet and excess sugar, low daily movement, poor sleep, chronic stress and regular alcohol. Genes and age play a part too. The mix of exposures and how our bodies react differs from person to person, which is why targeted lifestyle changes beat one-size-fits-all plans.
Roots before leaves: the functional medicine approach
Functional medicine practitioners often use the analogy of a tree to describe their approach. The leaves of the tree are symptoms and labels. The roots are the exposome, all the inputs that your body is exposed to. As any gardener will tell you if you have a plant that has brown unhealthy leaves you don’t start by trying to paint them green, you start by looking at the soil and the roots.
If you want to get healthy and start thriving then start by restoring the basics: food quality, sleep timing, regular movement, stress management, and a steady daily rhythm. Do this first. Fine tune later.
Two questions that unlock progress
One thing I love about functional medicine is whilst you can deep dive into incredible science and the endless complexity of the body, the core of the approach can be boiled down to 2 questions, elegant and simple. What do you need more of? And what do you need less of?
Reflect on these now:
1) What should you remove?
Examples: late caffeine, nightly alcohol, a refined snack, grazing after 9 pm, an ultra-processed lunch.
2) What should you add?
Examples: protein at breakfast, 30 g fibre, a 10-minute walk after your main meal, a fixed sleep window, 5–10 minutes of morning light.
Food first (a safe, high-yield place to start)
There are so many things you can think about changing it can sometimes be difficult to know where to start. The most important changes will vary for each individual, but food and nutrition is often a great place to make simple changes which have big impact. Food hits every system, every day. Start here.
As an example for me, going gluten-free changed everything. Helpful additions for many people:
- ¼ cup mixed nuts twice a day to support cardiometabolic health. PMC
- More insoluble-leaning fibre from leafy veg, brassicas and seeds to feed a healthier microbiome and improve regularity. See this review on fibre and short-chain fatty acids. PMC
- A 10-minute post-meal walk to steady blood sugar. Evidence suggests timing matters, and even very short walks can help. PubMed
your sunday reset: a 10-minute inputs exercise
This week we’ll try to answer one question. Grab a bit of paper and write down your answer to this:
What is one thing that if you could change it, would lift your overall health and wellness the most?
Examples: wake with more energy, fewer afternoon slumps, calmer stomach, better sleep onset, fewer aches.
Next make two columns, write ‘Remove’ at the top of one and ‘Add’ at the top of the other. Then spend a few minutes to think of the top 1-3 things that you could add to or remove from your daily exposure that would move you towards the change in your wellness you wrote down above. Here are some categories and examples to stimulate your thinking, feel free to choose your own:
- Food & drink
Remove: nightly alcohol, refined snack, ultra-processed lunch.
Add: protein at breakfast, 30 g fibre, 1 fermented food daily. - Sleep & rhythm
Remove: screens after 9 pm, late caffeine.
Add: fixed 8-hour sleep window, 5–10 minutes of morning light. - Movement & recovery
Remove: all-day sitting.
Add: a 10-minute walk after your main meal; two short stretch breaks. - Stress & environment
Remove: doom-scrolling in bed, strong fragranced cleaners.
Add: a 5-minute breath drill mid-afternoon; fresh air while you make tea.
Now, make a plan about how you are going to implement the change(s), here are some techniques you might want to use (taken from Atomic Habits – more on that in later posts, an unbelievably good book, get your copy here).
- Write an implementation intention: “Tomorrow at 6:30pm, when I have finished dinner, I will walk for 10 minutes outside.”
- Habit stack it: “After I make my morning tea, I’ll stand in my garden for light.”
- Design the environment: make good habits easy, make bad habits hard. Shoes by the door; nuts pre-portioned; biscuits out of sight.
- Use the two-minute rule to start tiny. When starting a new habit to start with just do it for 2 minutes total. Build up from there.
- Add friction to the old habit: log out, move it, make it awkward.
Finally track one signal, daily for 7 days:
Rate the thing you care about from 0 to 10. E.g. Energy on waking, bloating, sleep onset or cravings.
See what happens if you can successfully modify your daily exposure.
If you want a PDF worksheet to complete this exercise drop me a line here and I’ll send one over!
If you want more like this
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References at a glance
- Exposome concept: definition and scope. See this overview and 20-year reflection. PubMed+1
- “Genes load the gun…”: early usage in obesity research. PubMed
- Fibre → SCFAs → gut and immune tone: systematic review. PMC
- Nuts for cardiometabolic health: review and meta-analysis. PMC
- Post-meal walking: timing and short-walk evidence. PubMed+1
- Metabolic syndrome has many drivers: overview and lifestyle links. PMC+1
Disclaimer
This article is for education, not medical advice. Speak to your clinician before making significant changes, especially if you take medication or have a diagnosed condition.
