Clean living can slash your risk for heart disease even if your genes are heavily stacked against you. A large study finds that people with the most inherited risk cut their chances of having a heart attack or other heart problems in half if they didn’t smoke, ate well, exercised, and stayed slim.
The opposite is also true: You can largely trash the benefit of good genes with unhealthy habits.
“DNA is not destiny, and you have control,” said the study leader, Dr. Sekar Kathiresan, genetic research chief at Massachusetts General Hospital. “Many people assume that if your father had a heart attack, you’re destined to have a problem,” but the results show that’s not the case, he said.
If genetics has dealt you a bad hand, can you overcome that? The simple answer is yes.
, Center for Human Genetic Research, Massachusetts General Hospital
