Twelve years ago when I was writing Eat Right For Your Type I used to Google (although there was no actual Google at the time; I used Excite) the phrases personalized medicine and personalized nutrition. At the time there were virtually no references. Now they number in the tens of thousands. However, Eat Right For Your Type was among the first books to ever use this concept.

With the The GenoType Diet, I've been instead googling the phrase Intergenerational Medicine and seeing about as much. Mark my words: in ten years you will see this phrase also appearing in the tens if not hundreds of thousands.

I often quote these citations when I lecture. Of course it would be most interesting to eventually learn what the author of the last abstract might consider an enriching experience.

Environmental influences can be inherited even without any mutations in the genes themselves. If genetic mutations are ‘typos' and relatively easy to test for, epigenetic changes are analogous to the formatting of the text (e.g. font, size, and color) and are much less well understood.

• Montague T. A New Way to Inherit Environmental Harm. Synthesis/Regeneration 39 (Winter 2006)

Mother rats exposed to hormone-mimicking chemicals during pregnancy gave birth to four successive generations of male offspring with significantly reduced fertility. Only the first generation of mothers was exposed to a toxin, yet four generations later the toxic effect could still be detected .

• M. Anway, A. Cupp, M. Uzumcu, and M. Skinner, Epigenetic Transgenerational Actions of Endocrine Disruptors and Male Fertility, Science Vol. 308, June 3, 2005, pp. 1466–1469.

Conceivably the cancer you may get today may have been caused by your grandmother's exposure to an industrial poison 50 years ago, even though your grandmother's genes were not changed by the exposure… or the mercury you're eating today in fish may not harm you directly, but may harm your grandchildren. These inherited traits can continue to influence the onset of diseases like diabetes, obesity, mental illness and heart disease, from generation to generation.

• Montague T. A New Way to Inherit Environmental Harm. Synthesis/Regeneration 39 (Winter 2006)

Global decrease in methylation levels is commonly observed in aging cells, as well as in neoplasia (early event.) The causes of this hypomethylation are not known. Contributes to chromosomal instability in cancer and to increased expression of selected affected genes. Unlike defective genes, which are damaged for life, methylated genes can be demethylated. And, methyl tags that are knocked off can be regained via nutrients, drugs, and enriching experiences.

• Asim K. Duttaroy Evolution, Epigenetics, and Maternal Nutrition 2006 Darwin Day Celebration.