Category Archives: Genetics

A ripe old age

March 23, 2015 6:23 AM , Leave a Comment ,

A few months back one of my friends that regularly eschews all health related advice was discussing longevity.  Someone pointed out that some simple lifestyle choices may help him live a longer life.  He retorted “maybe it wasn’t that he would live longer but rather that it would seem longer.”  Meaning of course that he would have to get rid of all the enjoyable parts of life and live a pretty dismal existence just to get in a few more years of life.

The reason I thought about this conversation was that I saw a couple of news articles the other day.  One was about a 100-year-old woman who celebrated her birthday by skydiving and the other article was about a 104 year old that drank 3 soft drinks a day.

How is it that some people can live seemingly reckless lives and still feel vital in their later years while others practice control and are careful and may be lucky to reach 70?

Certainly genetics plays a large role in this.  Research has shown that some people are not only genetically predisposed to live longer but also may be predisposed to sidestepping certain congenital diseases such as cancers or heart disease.

Lifestyle will of course count somewhat in how you fare in your later years.  No matter how lucky you are in the genetic lottery mistreating your body is still a terrible idea and mistreating your body to the point that you cause it severe damage is just a bad overall strategy that may mean that you will not be able to enjoy all the benefits of your body into your later years.

But I suppose the main crux of my friend’s argument is that making sacrifices for the long haul just isn’t so appealing if in the long run you have nothing to look forward to but a bland existence.  In that I think he misses the point.

Just because you don’t go out and party every night when you’re young doesn’t have to mean that you are doomed to a spartan existence for the rest of your life. Rather, living a more regulated and moderated lifestyle gives you chances to do more down the years.

I feel lucky that I have survived my younger and wilder years fairly unscathed and that I am now more serious about my health.  I look forward to many years of exploiting my continuing health to try out more experiences, do new things, and savor what the future may bring.

Sure I get frustrated when someone on social media posts about a new restaurant or when someone tells me about a hot new bar or whatever place that they went to.  I would love to do more of these things.  But then again I also hear about their hangovers and having to go to the doctor for stomach problems or having to refill prescriptions that I have thus far avoided.  They won’t get to look forward to some of the things that I will get to enjoy later in life.

As long as I can keep my moderated lifestyle going I think that over time I will be the one that enjoys life more.

Posted in: aging, diet, exercise, genetics, health, life in general

Is beauty necessary?

February 15, 2015 11:21 AM , Leave a Comment ,

[Author’s note:  This is the next in a series of writing challenges first proposed to me by Leslie Farnsworth.  Leslie has organized and expanded the challenge to include a larger group of excellent blog writers.  Once per month, one member of the group will propose a topic and we will all give our own unique take on the subject.  This latest installment was proposed by Rebecca Harvey.  You may want to look at the other bloggers listed below to see what they came up with:]

My thinking on this topic began with meditating on the topic of beauty itself.  Why does it exist in the first place?  Why are some things beautiful and some things ugly and how do we make the distinction?

We all have our preferences in life.  No matter what the subject is, no matter how public or personal, we know what we like and what we don’t like.  Generally these things have to do with the more basic and primal aspects of our being.  Those aspects that determine our survival.

Throughout evolution the beauty aspect has helped the individual find that member of the opposite gender that presented the best possible chance that one’s offspring would not only survive but prosper.  As environmental conditions change or a species moves into a new territory sometimes the requirements for surviving changes and beauty standards may change as well.  As a tangent line of thought, this may also be where fashion originates, but that’s something to think about another day.

For humans and our immediate predecessors, beauty standards dictated that our potential mates be in generally good physical condition, be larger than other potential mates, and have some advantageous adaptation to the local environment.

Of course this standard varied from situation to situation and from time to time.  Cultural norms have come to play a huge role in what we consider to be beautiful.  Some cultures will accentuate or even exaggerate some body part that is considered desirable.  Those cultures would use clothing, make up, or body modification to achieve the desired look.  These practices can of course be carried to extremes.  In certain cultures around the world being fat and having poor or no teeth was considered beautiful as it meant that the particular individual had access to excess food supplies and in particular access to sugar which for a very long time was a luxury food item.  Even though having poor dental hygiene is in fact a sign of bad health the practice continued on until the improvement of economic situations in these cultures made this a less desirable beauty trait.

As I said previously culture plays a big role in what we consider to be beautiful.  Wealth is an aspect of culture that can dictate how we or other people live their lives.  Whether we measure wealth by number of farm animals we own, or land we control, or pieces of paper we have in a bank.  Money represents power and power has always been beautiful whether we like it or not.

But do we still need the old beauty standards of good health and attractive features?  In the urban situation where most humans live,  where we no longer have to hunt for food or run away from predators or scavenge and go hungry for weeks or months at a time and where physique is no longer as important, is it still valid to judge others with those old beauty standards?  Surely if you are searching for a potential mate and you take into consideration their ability to earn wealth then a potential mate is to be judged by their ability to think, plan, and create content and thus participate in the idea economy rather than by their physical development and their ability to chop wood, or plow a field, or hunt.

That would be true in an ideal world but one thing we have begun to discover is that this human built environment has its own challenges.  Sedentary lifestyles now represent the largest danger to those living in cities.  We have access to too much food and little need to exert ourselves as vigorously as we once did.  Heart disease, diabetes, and cancers are the biggest killers of all these days.  Diseases that were previously kept in check by harder and more physical lifestyles.  Those individuals that work out and keep fit are still considered beautiful as they seem to reject the sedentary lifestyles that lead to these diseases.

A secondary consideration relating to our new economy is that you may have the best ideas in the world but if you can’t convey those ideas to large groups of other people then your idea won’t be successful.  As our means of communications are becoming more and more visual and as our minds respond better to beautiful things, even if just sub-consciously, then  we turn again to the old beauty standards.  We trust the beautiful, we listen to the beautiful, we envy the beautiful.  The ugly, not so much.  One famous example was the Kennedy-Nixon debate.  Those that listened to the event on radio gave the debate to Nixon as the more persuasive speaker but the vast majority of the population that saw the event on TV gave the debate to the younger and more attractive Kennedy.

So is beauty necessary?  I wouldn’t call it necessary as I would call it a factor to be aware of and something to take into consideration. I think we have to be aware that beauty does play a factor in our lives however much we may eschew this and even think this a banal consideration it does exist and does have the power to alter our decision-making process.

Posted in: blogs, culture, fashion, genetics, ideas, life in general, psychology, relationships, thought

male vanity

July 10, 2014 6:48 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Social media lives from the advertising revenue that they generate.  I can usually block most of it on my desktop or laptop but it comes straight through on my tablet and smartphone.  Ads for local businesses, for services, and for goods.  I try to ignore most of it.

Lately though they’ve been bombarding me with ads for hair restoration products and services.  Maybe it’s due to my age bracket or maybe their advertising algorithms are sophisticated enough to note my receding hairline on my profile picture.  Whatever the case may be, it finally made me curious enough to look into it.

I’ve known for a long time that it was genetically probable for my hairline to recede as it’s a prevalent condition for the men on both sides of my family. My nephews however seem to have escaped the curse so if I had a son he would have probably escaped this as well.

Oh well.

As I said I always figured it would be inevitable.  So I’ve pretty much expected it and learned to accept it.  My hair has never been all that important to me anyways.  I’ve always kept my hair trimmed short as it never looked good long.  Nowadays it looks even worse if I let it go for too long.  So I’ve learned to ask for the simple short back and sides and to trim up the top.  Other than that I really don’t care all that much about my hair.

When I was growing up hair restoration consisted mainly of elaborate toupees and wigs and very primitive hair transplant operations.  Minoxidil came along in the early 90s and gave limited but definite results.  All of these options were horrendously expensive and seemed impractical to me, so I ignored them.

Things in this field have changed in the last 20 years so I decided to do some independent research.

Firstly are wigs, weaves, and toupees.  Basically artificial covers for bald spots.  Some groups claim that they’re undetectable, some people snicker and say no hairpiece is ever totally undetectable.  I’ve seen ads and actual people and to me they look terrible.  They need regular maintenance and replacement and some say they actually promote balding, though they’re not too clear on how.

Next is surgery.  Transplants used to look horrendous, even in “successful” transplants back in the early days.  The technique has been refined and results do look better nowadays.  After some operations you will actually lose hair at first before it starts growing again.  The whole process can take between 6 months to a year.  And of course as it is a surgical procedure it is extremely expensive.

Then there are the drugs.  Minoxidil and Propecia.  Minoxidil seems to be the more widespread of the two.  The effects are limited.  I mean you won’t have flowing locks of hair sprouting overnight.  The effects usually take about 4 months to occur and you may actually lose some hair in the intervening time.  You will most likely get some results but they won’t be overwhelming.  The main problem however is that if you stop taking the drug then the effects wear off in a month or two.  So you’re stuck taking this for life.  I priced the drug and found that at best it would be $120 per year for life.

I look at my hairline in the mirror and see what I have left.  Not great but not the worst either.  All of this new information pretty much reinforces my previous belief that I am going to leave things as they are and let nature take its course.  Once my hairline recedes too far back I may even get rid of the rest and go totally bald.

I have more important things to worry about than this.

Posted in: aging, genetics, life in general

Underneath the skin

January 19, 2014 9:13 AM , 2 Comments ,

I came out of the Alamo drafthouse last night around 9:30 and walked to my car when I heard the familiar whistle of my Gmail account.  Something had come in.  Wireless signals inside the movie house are terrible and this email had just now caught up with me.  To my surprise it was an email from 23andme.com.

My results were in.

Back in late October I had heard about this service that was offering low-cost genetic testing.  After a couple of weeks of vacillating I finally decided to try it.  They sent me a testing kit by mail.  I had to fill up a small tube full of saliva and I mailed it back.  I had begun to give up hope of hearing back from these folks and I certainly didn’t expect it on a Saturday night.  I rushed home and logged in and spent the next 2 hours reviewing the results.

I should add a little background here.  23andme provides several different types of genetic tests.  They can test for inherited diseases, traits, genetic ancestry, probable blood type.  Just all sorts of things that your DNA can reveal about you.  For somewhat debatable reasons the FDA claims that this type of genetic testing of your health risks is “dangerous to the public”. I feel that this has more to do with vested interests in the health industry not wanting people to take charge of their own health but that’s a subject for another blog.

They threatened to drag the company into court if they did not stop providing this service.  As a consequence of this 23andme no longer does health screenings by genetic testing.  They only provide testing for ancestry now.  I bought my testing kit just before the FDA restraining order came into effect so I still get my health screening.

So onto what you guys are looking for, the results.  So obviously we are going into the health risks first. I will say up front that I am not going to post my entire health report online.  Firstly it’s private and I don’t feel like I want to share it all.  Secondly the results do not tell me that I have a certain condition, they only give me the probability that I may develop a condition.  I see it not as a definitive test but as something to be on the lookout for.  Lastly, it’s pretty dull.

The results are not too surprising to me given my family history.  I have a slightly higher risk for heart disease and diabetes.  Nothing new to me.  What was surprising was that I am at a higher risk for celiac disease.  To me this just reinforces my belief that I need to exercise more and watch my diet closer, specially as I become older.

higher risk for Asthma.  I did have some childhood asthma

slightly higher risk for Alopecia.  dodged that bullet.

Two things that worried me were actually lower risks.  Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.  Now, you can certainly develop Parkinson’s from environmental factors and the test makes it clear that this does not mean I won’t develop these but it does mean that I am at less of a risk for these.

Lower risk of Melanoma.  I am darker skinned after all but I’m not going to lay out in the sun all day long.

Lower risk of multiple sclerosis.

Lower risk of colorectal cancer.  That doesn’t mean I can go out and party though.  Of course there’s many other results.

Onto traits. One of the more interesting results is something that I have suspected for a while.  My body is less responsive to exercise than the average person.  This means I derive less benefit from the same workout that others are doing.  I need to increase my workout to get the same benefit.

Based on my genetics my muscle response is more similar to a sprinter than a long distance runner.  So while I can do long distance races I would probably do better in the short track events.  So much for my 2016 Olympics marathon aspirations.

Male pattern baldness?  typical odds.  I would have thought higher odds.

Longevity?  Higher than normal odds of living to 100 years.  True, specially in my father’s side.

Freckling. typical

eye color. tends to brown

hair. tends to curlier

food tendency.  more towards sweet foods.  Need to watch that.

Blood type,  A+

Dozens of other traits here.

Moving onto ancestry.

I was somewhat disappointed that I only carry 2.6% neanderthal ancestry.  Actually slightly lower than the average 2.7%

In molecular evolution, a haplogroup is a group of similar haplotype that share a common ancestor having the same single nucleotide polymorphism mutation in all haplotypes.

On my mother’s side I come from the B2b sub group, a subset of the B4’5 haplogroup,  This is an older group that originated in Asia about 50,000 years ago and migrated across the Pacific to the west coast of the Americas.

On my father’s side I come from the J2b2* subgroup, a subset of the J2 haplogroup.  This group originated in Anatolia and the Caucasus mountains around 18,000 years ago.

My complete ancestry composition is not ready yet so I don’t have all that ready to review but it’s not that consequential to me.  I’m here already after all.

So what does it all mean?  Mainly that I am a pretty average American suburbanite.  Not specially gifted in any significant way but then again not too burdened either.  I need to keep a close eye on my health and become more regimented in my lifestyle choices but odds are that I will live a fairly full and long life.

Was it a worthwhile exercise?  I think so.  If nothing else it opens up my eyes to what’s going on inside of me and gives me a better handle of what I can do to improve my life.

 

 

 

 

Posted in: family, genetics, health, life in general