You have a great deal of control over the course of your future health: how healthy you're likely to be, and how long you're likely to live. The unexpected always happens, but you can greatly influence the odds. Your actions over the years can move your life span across decades, just through simple lifestyle choices and good health practices, and even without the expected advances in medicine that lie ahead. An illustration:

A Finnish study of identical twins has found that physical inactivity and acquired obesity can impair expression of the genes which help the cells produce energy. The findings suggest that lifestyle, more than heredity, contributes to insulin resistance in people who are obese. Insulin resistance increases the chance of developing diabetes and heart disease.

And more:

Here's some very good news: your genes are not your destiny. Earlier this week, my colleagues and I published the first study showing that improved nutrition, stress management techniques, walking, and psychosocial support actually changed the expression of over 500 genes.

Taking up exercise and a sane diet rapidly changes the way your body operates at the cellular level, and for the better. The body is a complex machine of regulated processes, interactions and feedback loops, and like all machinery, it will fail and malfunction more rapidly if run poorly and without maintenance.

Amazing medical technologies will arrive in the next few decades, with the promise of repairing the biochemical damage of aging and rejuvenating the old. The more you run yourself down, however, the lower your chances of living to benefit from the future of longevity medicine. Why risk it?

Posted by Reason at June 19, 2008 4:54 PM | TrackBack (0)