Routine environmental stress can damage more than one million independent sites on your DNA daily

Friday, March 21, 2014 by: David Gutierrez, staff writer
Tags: DNA damage, mutations, environmental stressors

(NaturalNews) In a process essential to keeping you alive that proceeds entirely unseen, your body is continuously finding and repairing damage to your DNA.

A myriad of everyday environmental stressors, from ultraviolet radiation to environmental toxins to normal metabolic functions, create as many as one million separate sites of damage to your DNA each day.

In the best-case scenario, such changes might cause a cell to die without being able to replicate itself. While this might not be a problem in only one cell, imagine it happening to a million cells a day!

Many changes caused by DNA damage are even more sinister, however. Such changes, called mutations, actually change the way a gene functions.

While some of these mutations end up being beneficial and are the driving agents of evolution, the vast majority are harmful and may produce cancers or other health problems.

Considering the high stakes, it's no wonder that the body is so good at finding and repairing DNA damage!

Sources:

http://science.naturalnews.com