Heredity and cellulite
Is cellulite hereditary? Are my genes responsible for my cellulite?
Like any other health and aesthetic condition cellulite has both genetic and lifestyle components. With the exception of a few severe diseases, genes do not absolutely determine your health and appearance but they merely act as a guides that merely influence your health and appearance towards one way or another.
In fact, lifestyle factors switch certain genes on and off throughout our life. Typically a healthy lifestyle will switch "good genes" on and leave "bad genes" dormant, and vice versa an unhealthy lifestyle will switch "bad genes" on and may turn "good genes" off.
Furthermore, if a condition depends on more than one gene, then lifestyle becomes even more important because little lifestyle nuances will turn certain good genes on/off whilst other lifestyle changes will switch bad genes on or off too, thereby creating thousands of possible outcome combinations.
Most conditions belong to that category because they are controlled by sometimes hundreds of genes. Weight maintenance is said to be controlled by as many as 300 genes, probably more, and this is why it is so difficult to find one pharmaceutical answer to the problem of overweight and obesity.
Cellulite (being a combination of not just fat accumulation but also water retention, skin looseness, connective tissue deformity, inflammation and toxin infiltration) is controlled by a vast number of genes which are switched on or off in myriad ways according to small variations in your lifestyle. This is why there are so many different types of cellulite and it is one of the reasons why it is so difficult to treat cellulite with non-personalised approaches.
Don't blame mum!
So next time you see your mum don't blame her for your cellulite - she only gave you her genes, but you are the one who switches these genes on or off. Every day you stay inactive, every time consume excessive or unhealthy food, alcohol or stimulants, every time you smoke, even when you use hormonal contraception you switch on the expression of "bad", cellulite and disease-producing genes and switch off the expression of your good, health and appearance-enhancing genes. Vice versa, every time you exercise, eat healthy food and generally respect your body, you switch on the good genes that protect you from disease, ageing and cellulite. The same applies each time you receive a good cellulite treatment or you apply a potent cellulite cream - these interventions may switch certain genes on/off at a local level, in the same way that foods end exercise switch genes on/off at the whole body level.
Cellulite is not what nature originally intended for the human beings and it has no evolutionary meaning. The only reason women have cellulite today more than ever before is because their lifestyle today is more sedentary, artificial and "calorific" than ever before in history. Cave women certainly did not have cellulite and similarly if you lived all your life as naturally and actively you would not have any cellulite either - no matter what kind of genes your mum gave you.
If lifestyle is so important then why is it that models have no cellulite?
Who said that models have no cellulite? I have treated dozens of glamour models and fashion models and most of them do have some degree of cellulite or pre-cellulite. Quite often the cellulite is pretty pronounced but fortunately for them (and unfortunately for the self-esteem of the readers) it is airbrushed in the published photos in magazines.
The only difference between models and "mere mortals" is that models develop cellulite a little bit later in life, due indeed to their good genes. But these good genes can only protect for so long. After several years of unhealthy lifestyle cellulite eventually catches up with everyone, whether they are "gifted" or not. It is just that the gifted ones escape for a little bit longer, but they definitely do not escape for ever.













