The pesticide on your fruit or from your neighbor’s yard may leave long lasting changes on your immune system, possibly on your yet-to-be-born children’s immune system. We live in a toxic fishbowl of our own making, especially when we choose to participate in the self-delusion. Yet, we keep asking ourselves, our neighbors, and our medical system, “Why do I keep getting sick, so often?” Well, functional medicine has been talking about epigenetics and the adverse effects of toxins for a long time. This article of interest offers actual mechanisms by which various life experiences and exposures can shape our immune resilience through epigenetics.
Technically, with thousands of toxins surrounding us, there are many, many different mechanisms by which they alter our ability to fight off infections. Other research has identified how toxins can alter the numbers of different immune cells or alter the function of different immune cells. This research looks at one epigenetic mechanism which can work both short-term and long-term changes.
A quick introduction to epigenetics is worth mentioning here. Normally we think of genetics as passing down inheritable traits from parents to children, with things like hair color, eye color, height, personality traits, and more coming to mind. These genes do not change in the child and are shared by all the cells of the body (except for mutations). Epigenetics begin in either prior generations or the present one when a chemical marker is placed on the DNA. This chemical marker then influences whether or not a particular trait is expressed in the first generation and can be passed on to the next generation.
In short, a chemical exposure or some experience right now can cause a mark to be placed on your DNA, including your germline DNA that is passed through mom’s eggs or dad’s sperm to their children. For you, that DNA marker may turn up, turn down, or turn off immune processes, changing how you respond to a given infection. If passed on to children, their immune system is similarly changed.
In this study, researchers looked at 110 people with a variety of exposures including: “HIV-1, MRSA, MSSA, and SARS-CoV-2 infections; anthrax vaccination; and exposure to organophosphate pesticides.” They then compared 4 major immune cell types involved in everyday immune function. From this study, they were able to separate the epigenetic changes into those passed down from parents and those experienced by the present person based on where the marker was placed on the DNA strand.
They are using this information to build a database which could help predict a person’s responses to different infections. We have much to learn, but this understanding moves us towards a more personalized approach to optimizing immune health. It also supports the functional medicine viewpoint that our exposome, the combination of all toxins to which we are exposed, plays a major role in our health. We therefore look forward to the day we can plug our patient’s data into something like this, determine what their risk factors are, and advise them on personalized action steps. For now, we continue to emphasize the importance of limiting toxin exposures in general as we help our patients pursue a healthier, more abundant life.
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Original Article:
Wenliang Wang, Manoj Hariharan, Wubin Ding, Anna Bartlett, Cesar Barragan, Rosa Castanon, Ruoxuan Wang, Vince Rothenberg, Haili Song, Joseph R. Nery, Andrew Aldridge, Jordan Altshul, Mia Kenworthy, Hanqing Liu, Wei Tian, Jingtian Zhou, Qiurui Zeng, Huaming Chen, Bei Wei, Irem B. Gündüz, Todd Norell, Timothy J. Broderick, Micah T. McClain, Lisa L. Satterwhite, Thomas W. Burke, Elizabeth A. Petzold, Xiling Shen, Christopher W. Woods, Vance G. Fowler, Felicia Ruffin, Parinya Panuwet, Dana B. Barr, Jennifer L. Beare, Anthony K. Smith, Rachel R. Spurbeck, Sindhu Vangeti, Irene Ramos, German Nudelman, Stuart C. Sealfon, Flora Castellino, Anna Maria Walley, Thomas Evans, Fabian Müller, William J. Greenleaf, Joseph R. Ecker. Genetics and environment distinctively shape the human immune cell epigenome. Nature Genetics, 2026; DOI: 10.1038/s41588-025-02479-6
Thanks to Science Daily:
Salk Institute. “Scientists discover how life experiences rewrite the immune system.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 11 February 2026. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/02/260210040608.htm>.
Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.
Dr. Eric Potter graduated from Vanderbilt Medical School and then went on to specialize in internal medicine (adult) and pediatric care, spending significant time and effort in growing his medical understanding while caring for patients from all walks of life.
