Masters of Our Own Fates

As this open access paper illustrates, the future of our health is largely in our hands - the vast majority of us are not fated by our genes, but instead by how well we look after our health: "The study sample consisted of 24,043 participants (49.7% women) consisting of 11,186 complete same-sex twin pairs ... Information on retirement [events], including disability pensions (DPs) with diagnoses, was obtained from the Finnish nationwide official pension registers. Correlations in liability for [twins] and discrete time correlated frailty model were used to investigate the genetic liability to age at disability retirement. ... A moderate genetic contribution to the variation of disability retirement due to any medical cause was found. The genetic effects appeared to be stronger at younger ages of disability retirement suggesting the increasing influence of environmental factors not shared with family members with increasing age." Largest amongst those "environmental factors" are, I suspect, levels of exercise and calorie intake over the years.

Link: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid=2566596

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