Hacking The Code

Does your genetic code hold the key to optimal health? The new science ofepigeneticssays it does...

- Helen Wallace

There’s a lot of advice out there on what to do in order to be our healthiest selves – so much, in fact, that it can become overwhelming, and you end up hunched on the couch with a box of doughnuts out of sheer confusion and frustration. (Or maybe that’s just me.) Yet there’s one thing that all the wellness fads out there forget to take into account: we are all different, with bodies that are predisposed to react to stimuli in different ways. That’s where DNA testing comes in. It may sound like the stuff of sci-fi movies but, as they say, #thefutureisnow.

Dr Heidi van Loggerenberg, who specialises in homeopathy, integrative and anti-ageing medicine, kinesiology and Neuro-Linguistic Programming, and her business partner, Margie Doig-Gander, are the founders of JoinCircles, the first company in South Africa to offer epigenetic testing to the public.

‘Epigenetics is the emerging science of how to modify gene expression, rather than altering the genetic code itself,’ explains Heidi. ‘This means that the things we expose our DNA to – like nutrition, environment and lifestyle choices – can “turn on” or “turn off” how our genes express themselves.’