Your Exposome - what it is and why it matters

Yes, you have one. Here's what it is and how you benefit from considering it.

Your exposome = all of your life exposures  + the associated biological responses.

“Exposures” are all the factors which influence your health - both external (diet, lifestyle, envirotoxins…) and internal (microbiome, hormones, metabolism). While the importance of considering our exposomes is now trending in functional medicine, this concept was first presented in Ayurveda.

We knew thousands of years ago that the “container” you live in is what really determines your health. A person in a container of nutrient-rich food, safety, Nature, and social support, you’d expect that person to be healthy. The same person in a container of regular stress, fear, toxicity, and processed foods will predictably make them diseased - in the mind and body. 

And this container-dependent health is despite our genetic makeup. In reality, we differ genetically less than 1%, and what we experience energetically day to day governs how and which genes are expressed (epigenetics).

All to say, we need to really evaluate how supportive our life container is for our wellbeing. 

While it’s impossible to measure the exact effects of every exposure, I’ll offer a quick and dirty way to consider the health of your life container.  By looking at the aspects which have the greatest impact - due to the percentage of time we spend taking in their energetics - we can get a good sense of where we are at and what we need to feel better. 

Exposome Self Assessment

Focus on the qualities of the experience in your life now-ish. While looking at the past experience is helpful in understanding the evolution of your symptoms, the purpose of this tool is to have actionable targets for positive change in your life now. 

All that matters is how you experience the energetics of the various aspects of your life. Naturally, as humans, we are biased. That’s okay. Bias is irrelevant because it’s still what your body and mind are experiencing, even if someone else has a different experience with the same exposure. 

Some tips to make this tool more useful:

• Consider how your experience of each of these areas of your life feels; not what you think it is, or want it to be. For example, our experience of food can feel irregular, changing, extreme, and overwhelming even though from the outside looking in, we may seem to be “health conscious” eaters. 

• It’s also perfectly normal to have a varied experience. A relationship can feel nurturing and grounding as well as inconsistent and depleting. Most all exposures have mixed energetics.

• Consider which qualities are present a greater percentage of the time in that experience. If the relationship is more often nurturing and grounding, than it is stressful or depleting, then the exposure is more health supportive than not.

• This is for you and only you. There is no “should” here, and no judgement. Well, it’s natural to judge what you find, but try to replace that with the perspective that you are here for a reason, and it’s for your greater health, emotional well being, and spiritual growth.

For each of the four major exposures below, write down 1-4 adjectives to describe how they feel to you as energetic containers you spend time in.

work (includes householding)

Consider the pace, the movement, the people, the workspace, and the work itself. 

food

Consider the tastes, textures, and your experience of cooking and eating. 

relationships

Pick one to start, a major one. It doesn’t have to be a partner, just the person you spend the most time with. Consider both the qualities of the person, as well as of the relationship--you’re absorbing both. 

routine

Think about the flow of your day, your sleep-wake cycles, the pace, the movement, the rhythm. 

The adjectives you used are the qualities you are regularly absorbing in your exposome. Now that you can see what you are taking in from your life container - what needs to change to keep you healthy?