I wanted to jump up and yell "I think you're leaving out the alternate hypothesis: running marathons and eating junk food isn't healthy!" But instead I suffered quietly through what ended up being an inane yet informative presentation.
His lab looks for gene variations that affect blood pressure (BP). There's a huge amount of money and research going into this. His lab and others have come up with two classes of mutations:
- Common allele variants that have an insignificant but measurable effect on blood pressure.
- Rare genetic mutations that have a significant effect on BP. The most common affects 1 in 2,000 people in the US.
There is certainly a genetic component to hypertension, but it is only expressed in an unhealthy environment. Hypertension is tightly linked to lifestyle. It's a quintessential aspect of the "disease of civilization". It's highly responsive to carbohydrate restriction, as a number of clinical trials have shown. Remember the Kuna? They don't get hypertension when they live a non-industrial lifestyle (despite eating more salt than the average American), but as soon as they move to the city their hearts explode. It's been demonstrated in a number of other similar cases as well. Genetics are clearly not responsible.
Don't get me wrong, I do think genetics can modify a person's response to a poor lifestyle. But when the lifestyle is healthy, the vast majority of these differences fade away. I have a more thorough discussion of this point here.
If you give just the right dose of poison to a group of animals, 50% will die and 50% will survive (called the EC50 dose). You might then conclude that genetics had determined who lived and died. You wouldn't be wrong, but you'd be missing the point that what killed them was the poison.
The thing that really bothers me about this thinking is it's disempowering. The presenter suggested that the reason for the difference between Fixx and Churchill was their genes. If genes have us in such a tight grip, why bother trying to live well? The only logical solution is to pop hypertension pills and eat cake all day.
My guess is that if they had lived a more natural lifestyle, Fixx would have made it to 90 and Churchill would have been fit and lean.
9 comments:
hey stephen, do you think genes determine how poisonous a modern diet is for some people? like can some people get away with it just fine and not others. i see your point though. the poison example stands out.
Hi Mike,
Yes, I do think genes can affect how well people resist a poor diet/lifestyle. But ultimately there are not many people who really do well long-term.
My grandfather lived a long and relatively healthy life eating baguette with every meal. Some people get CVD and croak at 55 on the same food. But I think almost everyone can be extremely healthy given an optimal diet/lifestyle. Studies of hunter-gatherers suggest that.
have there been any studies of ppl from western populations switching to a hunter gatherers diet and how it affects them over a long term?
Churchill, by all accounts, drank like a fish too.
But then again, he was a legend in his own life-time. Public esteem has to translate to self-esteem, which in its turn is an antidote for stress.
Many politicians seem to be long-lived.
I've noticed also a paradoxical inverse relationship of depression to longevity. Churchill was a sufferer, as have been various long-lived novelists.
Mike,
Yes, but the studies so far have been small. They need to be replicated more rigorously. They're promising though. Take a look at this one:
http://www.staffanlindeberg.com/DiabetesStudy.html
Chainey,
It's interesting to note that CVD mortality goes down with increasing alcohol consumption. The more you drink, the less your CVD risk. It's one of the strongest associations they've come up with in the Framingham heart trial. It blows the effect of saturated fat out of the water. The problem is that if you have more than 2 drinks a day (for men), your all-cause mortality goes up because of accidents and cancer.
A common criticism of western medicine is that it focuses on the symptoms of illness and not the root causes. As has been discussed before on this blog, root causes are often lifestyle diseases or diseases of civilization. Unfortunately it seems the minority of the population who most benefits from the current system (primarily bureaucrats and upper echelons of corporate conglomerates) would be the least motivated to modify it or even admit to its shortfalls. This could partly explain why massive amounts of funding goes to research that often does little more than help us cope and adapt to a failing system.
Reid,
I agree that conventional medicine is too focused on treating symptoms. I would argue that other forms of medicine are as well though. Acupuncture and herbs won't change the fact that a person has a poor lifestyle any more than drugs will.
I also agree that people are too vested in this system that makes people sick. Capitalism is based on growth, but how can you make more money off a tomato than you did last year? Whole, natural foods aren't a growth industry. You have to modify them by processing or genetic means to grow profits. They call it "value-adding" but I call it paying more for inferior food.
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