Food, pheromones, and EEDs (epigenetically effected diseases)

The epigenetic effects of nutrients and pheromones contribute to epistasis and to diseases.

A psychiatry-research yahoo group participant asked if there is a term for diseases related to lifestyle: “lifestyle diseases” – and how individuals can lead lives that harm them. He noted that these diseases “…are the the stuff of psychiatry– to better identify them is to identify a huge chunk of psychiatry’s field.” He asked:  “What do we call these lifestyle diseases?”

See for example: All In Your Head? by Robert C. Bransfield, M.D.

Excerpt: “Complex, poorly understood diseases are often considered to predominately have a psychological basis until proven otherwise. Tuberculosis, hypertension, and stomach ulcers were once considered to be psychosomatic.”

My comment: Rather than continue to use vague terms like psychosomatic or somatopsychic that do not address cause and effect, I proposed that lifestyle diseases be categorized as epigenetically effected diseases (EEDs). Specific designations under this broad based categorization would include disorders involving nutrient stress (e.g., the absence of nutrients or excess) and social stress (e.g., the absence of conspecifics or presence of potentially harmful conspecifics).

Consumption of too many or too few calories falls under nutrient stress. Lack of social interactions or negative interactions with others fall under social stress.

Physical stress due to bad diet, drugs and lack or occasionally excess of exercise is easier for doctors to understand. Social stress associated with “troubled lives/lifestyles”  –  styles of work, love, and family life can cause major psychological stress and simultaneously cause physical stress that may even result in cancer and other autoimmune diseases.