What you inherit is not nearly as significant as your present lifestyle. The medical literature has many reports where someone leaves one country, where they are not eating foods high in saturated fat, trans fat and dietary cholesterol, and moves to America. Their cholesterol levels increase, resulting in a significant rise in the rate of heart attacks and strokes.
A study showed Japanese men who moved from Japan to California or Hawaii ended up with a much higher cholesterol level, as well as a higher incidence of heart disease — than Japanese men living in Japan. The Japanese men who moved to the United States carried the same genes they had in Japan, but their eating lifestyle changed to one that elevated their cholesterol level, which resulted in a higher incidence of heart disease. The more animal foods they ate, the higher their cholesterol became. They began eating steak and eggs. A lot of food had cheese added. Ice cream became routine. And a large percentage of what they ate was fried. It wasn’t in their genes that made the difference; it was in what they ate.
Medical statistics show that what you eat is the controlling factor of your physiological age. One report studied more than 1.5 million healthy adults who ate mainly whole grain cereals, fruits, vegetables, nuts, pasta, fish, rice and poultry. This group had a reduced risk of overall mortality and cardiovascular mortality, as well as a reduced incidence of cancer and death from cancer. Here is the good part I liked — they also found a reduced incidence of Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease.
Another study was performed on how many servings of fruits and vegetables you should eat. Is five a day better than one a day? Here is what was found in relation to stroke. Eating more than five servings of fruit a day reduces the risk of stroke by 25 percent, as compared to those who ate less than three servings a day. Those figures make you want to place more fruits in your refrigerator for breakfast and snacks.
“Genetics” photo courtesy of www.freedigitalphotos.net
