Genetics Can Be Used As A Crutch In Order To Stay A Victim.
The following information has been gathered and compiled through personal experience, while traveling, teaching classes that include T’ai Chi, Qi Gong, herbal information, martial arts and other health related subjects. The article also contains feedback from students and anecdotal information from readers of my columns. The following are my opinions and deductions from those sources.
How Much Of Our Health Is Controlled By Genetics?
How often do we hear we have no control over many diseases because they’re genetic?
Three summers ago I was riding my bicycle through Idaho. I saw a sign that said the road ahead would be closed for three hours while the construction crew blasted rock. I figured if I hurried, I’d get there just about the time the road closed.
Part of the idea of long distance bicycle touring is to stop and smell the roses now and then. At a roadside rest area, I told a couple about the road closure. They jumped in their car and zoomed off. Half an hour later I got to the roadblock. The road had been closed one half hour early and sitting well back in line was the couple I’d talked to. There was no way I could have made it even if I’d been Lance Armstrong. During the wait I talked to many different people including the couple from the rest area.
The man was a geneticist at Cal-Poly. I asked his opinion about the importance of genetics in the overall health picture. His first answer was in the thirty percent range. A month or so earlier, I’d read a pile of research, some from Cal-Poly, which said differently. I pressed the issue. Eventually, we agreed that the overall figure was more like six to eight percent if all things are taken into consideration. And, that brings me to the main subject which is diabetes.
A lot of people say they have no control over diabetes because they’re genetically at risk. “At risk” is probably true because they eat and do what others in their family have always eaten and done. When we were living in Hawaii, the harbormaster on Kauai had a twin brother. The harbormaster died from diabetes after many years of sickness, including amputation of both feet. The brother had been diagnosed with diabetes two years earlier than the harbormaster. When we moved back to the mainland the brother was still very much alive, active and well. The difference? The brother changed his diet and stuck to it. The harbormaster had told me his brother raised all his own vegetables, ate lightly and meat was a minor item in his overall diet. One well-known alternative doctor calls diabetes “the knife and fork disease.”
There are overwhelming amounts of research and real life instances that indicate the genetic predisposition toward diseases can often be broken if a person changes the patterns connected with lifestyle choices involved. It’s never too late to change, but sooner is better.
Food is almost a religion. If we eat differently than our peers, we can find ourselves on the perimeter of groups and conversations. What we have to ask ourselves is, what’s more important: being part of the group, continuing the downward spiral of un-health, accepting the choices of others as our own, or being the master of our own ship while choosing quality and quantity for our life?
It’s a rare person who can change everything at once and stick with it. It’s easier to transition little by little. We’re creatures of habit and there’s the law of momentum.
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