Looksmax Was it really all genetics? An in-depth thread on gene expression and genetic determinism. [MEGA THREAD] (3 Viewers)

[orbitex]

lots of gpt

 

[zaza]

Suck my cock

 

[puro]

Was it really all genetics? An in-depth thread on gene expression and genetic determinism.


Often I hear many people say that looksmaxxing is 100% genes, the despairing philosophy of genetic determinism is often predicated on the forum with little ways to avoid it, but in this thread I will attempt to provide insight on how this isn't that trivial and the argument that your looks are 100% genetic is false. I'd like to first walk through every step to arrive at the conclusion I did.

Spoiler: 1. What even are genetics?

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Your genome is roughly 3.2 billion base pairs of DNA encoding approximately 20,000–25,000 protein coding genes. Think of it as a massive instruction manual, but here's the part most people miss: having an instruction in the manual does not mean it gets executed. Your genome is not a fixed program running deterministically. It is a library. What gets read, when, and how loudly is a separate question entirely.

Your genes encode potential. They set a range, a ceiling, and a floor for traits like bone density, jaw development, skin quality, hormonal output, and fat distribution. But where you land within that range is not written in the DNA itself. That distinction is everything.

Spoiler: 2. How are genes expressed?

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Gene expression is the process by which information encoded in a gene is used to produce a functional product usually a protein. The pathway is:

DNA → mRNA (transcription) → protein (translation).

That protein then does something: builds tissue, regulates a hormone, signals a cell to divide.

But not every gene is transcribed at all times in all cells. Your liver cells and your osteoblasts (bone-building cells) contain identical DNA, yet they behave completely differently. This is because transcription factors proteins that bind to specific DNA sequences that act as switches, turning genes on or off in response to signals from inside and outside the cell.

Those signals come from your environment.

This means gene expression is dynamic, not static. It changes daily based on what you eat, how you sleep, whether you train, your stress levels, and dozens of other inputs. .

Spoiler: 3. How does your environment affect your gene expression and to what degree?

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More than most people assume. The environment to expression pipeline works through several well documented mechanisms:

Nutrition. Micronutrients like zinc, vitamin D, vitamin K2, and retinol are literal cofactors for gene transcription. Vitamin D, for example, binds to the Vitamin D Receptor (VDR) a nuclear receptor that directly regulates over 1,000 genes, many of which govern immune function, bone mineralization, and hormonal synthesis. If you are deficient, those 1,000+ genes are being underexpressed.

Mechanical loading. Bone and cartilage respond to mechanical stress through a process called mechanotransduction. Osteoblasts detect physical force and upregulate bone formation genes (RUNX2, SP7). This is why athletes have denser bones than sedentary individuals with identical genetics. The force is the signal and the signal changes expression.

Sleep. During deep sleep, growth hormone (GH) is pulsed from the pituitary at its highest daily levels. GH upregulates IGF-1, which drives cellular repair, collagen synthesis, and soft tissue maintenance. Chronic sleep deprivation measurably suppresses GH output you are literally underexpressing your anabolic signaling cascade every night you sleep poorly.

Hormonal environment. Testosterone, DHT, cortisol, and insulin all function as signaling molecules that interact with gene expression at the nuclear level. Chronically elevated cortisol suppresses testosterone synthesis and promotes catabolic gene programs meaning your muscle, bone, and skin tissue are being broken down faster than rebuilt. Stress is not just psychological. It has a direct genomic footprint.

The degree of influence varies by trait and by developmental stage. During growth, environmental influence on skeletal morphology is substantially higher. In adulthood, the levers shift, but they do not disappear.

Spoiler: 4. Epigenetics the layer between genes and environment

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This is where the argument really crystallizes. Epigenetics refers to heritable changes in gene expression that do not involve changes to the underlying DNA sequence. Your genome stays the same. What changes is the annotation on top of it, chemical tags that tell the cell's machinery whether to read a given gene or ignore it.

The two primary mechanisms:

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DNA Methylation. Methyl groups (–CH₃) attach to cytosine bases, typically at CpG sites. When a gene's promoter region is heavily methylated, transcription is silenced. When it's demethylated, the gene can be expressed. Diet directly feeds the methylation cycle folate, B12, choline, and methionine are all methyl donors. If your diet is poor, your methylation patterns are dysregulated. This is not abstract, it shows up in measurable phenotypic differences.

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Histone Modification. DNA is wound around proteins called histones. How tightly it's wound determines whether transcription machinery can access the gene. Acetylation loosens the winding (gene on); deacetylation tightens it (gene off). Exercise, diet, and stress all directly alter histone modification patterns.

The landmark proof of concept: the Överkalix studies and Dutch Hunger Winter data showed that environmental conditions experienced by grandparents produced measurable phenotypic changes in grandchildren through epigenetic inheritance. The environment does not just affect you. Under certain conditions, its marks persist across generations.

For looksmaxxing purposes, the implication is direct: your lifestyle is actively writing annotations on your genome. Better inputs produce a more favorable expression profile.

Spoiler: 5. The phenotype vs. genotype distinction

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Genotype is the DNA sequence you were born with. Phenotype is the physical outcome what you actually look like. The relationship between them is not 1:1.

The cleanest evidence: identical twin studies. Monozygotic twins share ~100% of their DNA. Yet studies consistently show divergence in facial morphology, skin quality, muscle mass, and body composition over time driven entirely by lifestyle differences. Same genotype, different phenotype. The variable is expression.

A 2012 study in Genome Research showed that identical twins in their 50s had significantly different methylation profiles compared to twins in their 20s and those differences correlated with lifestyle divergence over the decades. The longer they lived differently, the more differently their identical genomes were being expressed.

This is the empirical death blow to hard genetic determinism. If your phenotype were purely genetic, identical twins would look identical at 50. They don't.

Spoiler: 6. Developmental plasticity vs. adult plasticity

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Intellectual honesty requires acknowledging that plasticity is not uniform across time. There are critical and sensitive periods during development particularly in utero, early childhood, and adolescence where environmental inputs have outsized effects on skeletal morphology, facial structure, and hormonal axis calibration.

Mewing, for instance, has a much stronger mechanistic basis in developing skulls than in fully ossified adult bone. Nutritional deficiencies during puberty have permanent downstream effects that cannot be fully corrected after growth plate closure.

But adult plasticity is still substantial in the domains that matter:

• Skin quality responds to sleep, hydration, sun exposure, and diet on a timescale of weeks to months
• Muscle and fat distribution shift significantly with training and diet
• Hormonal profiles which drive skin, libido, energy, and secondary sexual characteristics are highly sensitive to lifestyle inputs at any age
• Posture changes alter perceived facial structure, neck development, and overall physical presentation

The honest framing is: genetics sets the range, development narrows it somewhat, and adult lifestyle determines where within the remaining range you actually land. That remaining range is not trivial.

Spoiler: 7. What genetic determinism gets right

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A credible argument requires engaging with the strongest version of the opposing view.

Genetic determinism is correct that:

• The ceiling and floor on traits like height, bone structure, and facial geometry are real and largely set by your polygenic score
• High-heritability traits (height ~80%, facial bone structure ~60–70%) leave genuinely limited room for environmental modification in adulthood
• Some people are starting from a significantly better genetic baseline, and no amount of looksmaxxing fully closes that gap
• The effect sizes for most adult interventions are moderate, not dramatic

The determinists are pointing at a real phenomenon. Where they go wrong is in the leap from "genetics is a major contributor" to "environment is irrelevant." That leap is not supported by the science. Heritability estimates measure variance within a population under similar environmental conditions they do not tell you how much a single individual can change by shifting their environment substantially.

Spoiler: 8. Practical takeaways

If gene expression is partly environmentally driven, the looksmaxxing hierarchy should be organized by mechanism what actually moves expression, and by how much.

Tier 1: Foundational (large effect, well-documented mechanism):

• Sleep 8–9 hours consistently. GH pulse, cortisol regulation, skin repair.
• Fix nutritional deficiencies. Vitamin D, zinc, K2, retinol. These are transcription factors, not supplements.
• Train with resistance. Mechanotransduction, testosterone upregulation, body composition.
• Manage chronic stress. Cortisol suppresses every anabolic pathway you care about.

Tier 2: Moderate effect, context-dependent:

• Sun exposure (vitamin D synthesis, melanin expression, circadian entrainment)
• Posture and oral posture (structural signaling, especially if still developing)
• Diet quality beyond deficiency correction (inflammation, skin turnover)

Tier 3: Small marginal gains:

• Specific skincare
• Advanced supplementation
• Cosmetic procedures

The framework matters because most forum discussion inverts this hierarchy obsessing over Tier 3 while ignoring Tier 1. If your sleep is broken and your vitamin D is 18 ng/mL, you are arguing about paint color on a house with a cracked foundation.

Spoiler: Conclusion

The argument that your looks are 100% genetic fails at every level of biological analysis. Genetics provides the range. Gene expression regulated by epigenetics, environment, nutrition, mechanical loading, hormonal milieu, and lifestyle determines where within that range you land. The mechanisms are documented, the twin study evidence is clear, and the practical levers are real.

Genetic determinism as a philosophy is seductive because it is unfalsifiable in practice you can always attribute any outcome to genetics after the fact. But it is not scientifically accurate, and more importantly, it is strategically useless. You cannot change your genome. You can change your expression profile starting today.

That is the actual game.

If you got to the end of this forum without dnring I appreciate any comments or input you guys may have, I wanted to cover AAS and other compounds and how they may affect genes, but that would make the thread much longer. Again, thanks for reading!

water but high effort post bhai

 

[orbitex]

water but high effort post bhai

yeah I realized