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Living long: what’s in your hands LIVING LONG: WHAT’S IN YOUR HANDS
Though family history is a strong indicator of the diseases that may be in your future, it is far from the last word, Dr. Pyeritz says. "Two people can, have the same high-risk gene mutation, and one will get the disease and the other will not. It's hard to know one way or another when we're talking about one gene among 99,999 other genes that also have some influence," he says.
But the greatest influence is exerted by the lifestyle choices-some small, some large-that you make every day: whether you smoke, how much you drink, what you eat, whether you exercise.
The following are some tips that experts offer for taking your health into your own hands.
Know your tree. "You should retrieve all the information you can about your family history and what diseases run in your gene line," Dr. Mulvihill says. "When it comes to fighting disease, knowledge is power. When we know what we're up against, we can keep on the watch for it and do all we can to prevent it. A good example of how helpful this can be is the skin cancer called melanoma.
"If you've inherited a mole pattern on your skin that contributes to melanoma, you're not going to change that," Dr. Mulvihill continues. "But before we started identifying people with this risk pattern, the death rate was much higher. Now that we know what to look for, some of these folks may still get the disease. But we catch it in stage one, so people don't die from it."
Keep a running tab. Knowing you're at risk does you little good if you don't bother watching for signs of disease. That's why Dr. Ken Goldberg of the Male Health Institute recommends keeping tabs on yourself, including performing a monthly testicular self-exam, a skin exam for changes in moles or unusual markings, a quick check of your glands for swelling, a heart-rate check, and a scan for lumps around your chest. If you have high blood pressure or have had a high blood pres sure reading, you should also have your blood pressure checked monthly. And if you have a family history of or are at risk for diabetes, you should have your blood glucose measured monthly as well, says Dr. Goldberg. If your blood pressure and blood glucose are normal, you need have them checked only once a year, he adds.
Recognize your inherited habits. Bad habits often can run as strongly down the family lines as bad genes, says Dr. James Enstrom of the University of California, Los Angeles.
Take an inventory of your habits, Dr. Enstrom says. Do you smoke? Do you exercise? Do you sleep enough? How much do you drink? Do you eat too much? While these things are important for all of us, they're particularly important for folks who have a history in their family of poor health, he says.
Don't pull that trigger. Once you've tracked down your disease profile, learning the common environmental factors that trigger that disease and avoiding them is your best line of defense, Dr. Mulvihill says.
People who are at high genetic risk for colon cancer may be able to lower their risk for polyps by following a low-fat, high-fiber diet because they're staying away from known triggers, Dr. Mulvihill says.
Likewise, diabetes is often a case of genetic tendency meeting an environmental trigger, says Dr. Mulvihill. Genes that predispose many people to adult-onset diabetes were probably survival genes for our ancestors to help them store energy during prolonged periods of near-starvation. Today, when these genes are combined with the typical sedentary Western lifestyle and high caloric intake, we end up with obesity, insulin resistance, and adult-onset diabetes. The answer again is to control what you can, Dr. Mulvihill says. And that's how you live. It's well-known that avoiding high-fat, high-sugar fare is a good way not only to keep off excess pounds but also to avoid adult-onset diabetes.
Finally, when it comes to beating your odds for heart attack,
I there's still nothing better than giving your lifestyle a good spring cleaning, says Dr. Ichiro Kawachi of the Harvard School of Public Health.
"Things like not smoking cigarettes, eating less fat and junk food, eating more fruits and vegetables, exercising, and relieving stress are a whole lot more important than worrying about your genes," Dr. Kawachi says.
Genes or no genes, the incidences of heart disease and stroke have decreased markedly during the past 30 years because people have been taking their health into their own hands, says Dr. Pyeritz.
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