PHILADELPHIA (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- The obesity spike is expected to
double the number of people with diabetes in the next 25 years. At the same
time, the number of people with Alzheimer's disease will nearly quadruple.
Science can't eliminate chance, bad choices or bad luck … but can science change
your genes or your DNA destiny? Taking control of your genetic fate may be
simpler than you think.
Shannon Seitz is trying to stay ahead of a disease that could slowly steal her
memory and take her life.
"You know exactly what you are going to lose," Seitz told Ivanhoe. "You know,
step-by-step, so that's very frightening."
Seitz watched Alzheimer's ravage her 50-year-old mother's mind and body.
"The darkest moment was when we had to place her into a facility and just walk
away for the first time, and the Alzheimer's facilities are locked from the
inside because a lot of patients wander," Seitz said. "Just knowing that my
mother was locked behind this door…"
Seitz could not save her mom. Now she's focused on saving herself, but wonders
if everything she's doing -- training for a marathon, eating right, staying
stress-free and playing brain games -- will actually change what she was born
with.
"Actually, you can beat your genes," says Emile Mohler, III, M.D., director of
vascular medicine at the University of Pennsylvania Health System in
Philadelphia.
Whether it's Alzheimer's or heart disease, doctors say do you have control. New
research shows something called the epigenome makes it possible. It's a complex
network of chemical switches that surround your DNA and turn genes on or off.
Your epigenome interacts everyday with the environment. That means everything
you come into contact with or put into your body has the power to turn genes on
or off.
"There are secrets to success to prevent heart attack and stroke," Dr. Mohler
said.
We know smoking takes 10 years off your life. Even inhaling secondhand smoke on
a regular basis will damage cells.
"Even one cigarette causes the platelets to stick in the artery and can cause a
clot and heart attack, and it also raises blood pressure," Dr. Mohler said.
The American Institute of Cancer Research reports that even with a family
history, 45 percent of colon cancers, 38 percent of breast cancers, 69 percent
of esophageal cancers would never occur if Americans ate better, weighed less
and exercised more.
"It may sound trite, but my advice to everybody is use it or lose it," Lewis
Lipsitz, M.D., director of the Institute for Aging Research at Hebrew SeniorLife
in Boston, Mass., told Ivanhoe. "If you're sitting in front of your television
watching this, get up afterwards and exercise."
Although Seitz is doing everything right, she still worries.
"Every time I forget someone's name, or if I change rooms and I forget where I
was going, I'm terrified for an instant that I have Alzheimer's."
A woman taking action so her family's past doesn't become her future.
The FDA already approved the first drug that acts on the epigenome. Called
azacitidine, it treats leukemia by activating tumor-suppressing genes. While
scientists are still learning more about the epigenome, about 30 other
epigenetic drugs are in development around the world.
