Your Cells Before You

Picture Credit: Lakshmi Ambady

“The dream of every cell is to become two cells.”- French Biologist Francois Jacob.

The history of your cells began long before you were conceived. From a biological perspective, your life did not begin at birth, or even at conception. The cellular lineage that became you started forming generations earlier.

During foetal development, a female foetus already forms most of the eggs she will carry for her lifetime. This means that when your mother was in your grandmother’s womb, the egg that would later become you was already present in your mothers’ ovaries. In this very literal sense, a part of your cellular history existed inside your grandmother. This means that before you were even born, your mother, your grandmother and the earliest races of you were all in the same body. Three generations sharing the same biological environment. Your inception can similarly be traced by your paternal side also. The precursor cells of the sperm you developed from were present in your father when he was a foetus in his mother’s womb.

But there is a biological distinction in the evolution of the egg and sperm. Your father’s sperm continued to multiply when he reached puberty and thereafter whereas your mother was born with a limited lifetime supply of eggs. Once her egg cells were formed in your grandmother’s womb, that cell line stopped its division. So, from the age of 13 to 45 or so years later when your mother began and stopped menstruating, one of those eggs fertilized by your father’s sperm eventually developed into you.

So, your body is not only shaped by two parents, but by a biological chain that spans at least three generations. This fact alone reframes individuality. You are not an isolated biological event. You are part of a continuous cellular lineage.

Epigenetics shows that genes may carry Information, but experience shapes their expression. You inherit DNA from your parents — the genetic code that guides how proteins are built and how cells function. But genes are not rigid instructions. Their activity is regulated by chemical modifications known as epigenetic marks. The most studied of these is DNA methylation, where small chemical groups attach to DNA and influence whether certain genes are turned “on” or “off.” These marks do not change the genetic code itself, but they affect how strongly genes are expressed. This has been studied by the cell biologist Bruce Lipston who demonstrated that signals from the environment could operate through the membranes of a cell, thus controlling the physiology of the cell which can turn on or off a gene.

Crucially, epigenetic patterns are sensitive to the environment, especially during early development. Factors such as maternal stress, malnutrition, toxin exposure, illness, emotional stress can all influence epigenetic programming in the developing foetus. Your cells, therefore, do not only reflect inherited genes — they also reflect how those genes were tuned by past conditions. The nervous system is especially sensitive during prenatal life and early childhood. During these periods, the brain is rapidly wiring itself in response to the environment. The mothers’ emotions can biochemically alter the genes of her foetus. During pregnancy, nutrients in the mothers’ blood provide food and nutrition to the foetus through the placenta wall. But with these nutrients, her body also releases hormones and information signals generated by the emotions she experiences. That’s why in many cultures it is practiced that a pregnant woman is treated with utmost love and care. Because what she feels, her baby will.

When stress hormones cross the placental barrier, they cause the blood vessels of the foetus to be more tightened in the visceral organs, hence preparing the unborn child for a fight or flight response. So in this way a child who went through a stressful utero habitat because the mother was stressed, abused, malnourished, not taken care of, did drugs or alcohol or underwent anything that produced an internal stressor passed on that chemical marker to her unborn baby, and when that child grows up there can be a reaction to a similar stressful event. When it comes to the father, research shows that because the male sperm continues to develop throughout adolescence and adulthood, his sperm continues to be susceptible to traumatic imprints up until the point when you are conceived.  This means that traumatic imprints from a father are crucial and stronger in foetal progress. This is called epigenetic inheritance. This states that during prenatal life and early childhood the brain is rapidly wiring itself in response to the environment. Key systems that are shaped early are the Hypothalamic (hypothalamus region in the brain)–Pituitary( the pea sized pituitary gland at the base of the brain)–Adrenal ( glands above the kidneys), also called the  (HPA) axis, which regulates stress hormones like cortisol, the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS), which controls fight, flight, freeze, and rest states and the limbic circuits involved in emotion and threat detection, such as the Amygdala and Hippocampus in the brain.

If the early environment is marked by high stress, unpredictability, or lack of safety, these systems may become calibrated toward vigilance and threat. If the environment is relatively safe and responsive, they are more likely to calibrate toward flexibility and recovery. Once established, these patterns tend to persist and repeat. The nervous system learns what the world is like before conscious memory exists. This is one reason why emotional tendencies — such as anxiety, shutdown, or low mood — can feel “built in” rather than learned later in life.

But here comes in the beauty and miracle of biology. Although early and ancestral influences are powerful, they are not permanent. Both the brain and epigenome remain plastic across the lifetime of a human being. Psycho-Somatic therapy can alter brain connectivity and stress responses, Yoga and breathing practices can shift autonomic balance, Exercise increases neurotrophic factors that support neural growth, supportive and safe relationships regulate cortisol and immune systems, and environmental change can modify epigenetic patterns.

In other words, with the awareness of one’s present experience, and by not going back to the past repeatedly, one can continue to shape cellular and neural functioning.  You can change the way you move, respond, breathe by being present in the body and not by instructions of the mind which are historical texts of the brain designed to keep you alive. Your mind-body is not only a record of the past. It is also a system that updates. Scientifically then, it can be said that your life is essentially a biological continuum, and not a blank beginning. Your cells emerged from a lineage of cells. Your stress systems are tuned by early environments. Your gene expression reflects past conditions. Your nervous system carries implicit expectations learned before words. But you are a living continuation of biology adapting through time. Because biology is not destiny. It is history — and history can be revised by experience. And re-written by you so your children do not repeat what you have.

“I am a Jedi. Like my Father before Me.”- Luke Skywalker in Return of the Jedi.