How often do you eat (1) fresh vegetables; (2) fresh fruits; (3) fresh or frozen berries?
If your answer is ‘‘daily or several times a day’’ for at least two of these three questions, then you are on the right track towards combating heart disease.
There were many interesting research and development in the area of the Therapeutics LifeStyle Changes and how it affects the genes in the past few years. In October last year, big title such as “Raw vegetables and fruit 'counteract heart risk genes'” and “Fruit and veg 'stops inherited gene' that causes heart attacks” made its way to the headlines at BBC news (1) and NHS website (2). These articles described about a study conducted by McGill University, Canada, published in medical journal Public Library of Science (PLoS) Medicine (3) and gained a lot of public attention.
Back to the Basics: Combating Heart Risk Genes with Raw Vegetables and Fruits
The study by Ron. Do et. al. investigated the effects of diet towards the risk of heart attack of 3820 patients who possessed certain risk of genetic predisposition towards heart diseases. The study subjects were extracted from 5 ethnicities- Europeans, South Asians, Chinese, Latin Americans and Arabs, whom had had a non fatal heart attack. The main analysis was separated into 2 parts. Firstly, the effect of 4 genetic variations in a region of the chromosome called 9p21 on the risk of heart attack. And secondly, how does this risk influenced by smoking, activity level and diet.
The diet focus on 19 food items which were grouped into three dietary categories:
1. Oriental (soy sauce, tofu, pickled foods, green leafy vegetables, eggs and low sugar),
2. Western (eggs, meats, fried and salty foods, sugar, nuts and desserts)
3. Prudent (raw vegetables, fruits, green leafy vegetables, nuts, desserts and dairy products).
Here comes the interesting part, the result shows that all the four genetic variations increased the risk of heart attack by about a fifth, with South Asians at the highest risk among all other ethnicity (The application of this study to the general population is likely to be high as about 50% of the ethnic groups tested carried one of the four risk variants). The risk was further affected by whether or not the study subject had a prudent diet pattern and which specific genetic variation he possessed. For example, those with rs2383206 (4) variant (which increases the risk of the heart disease), but ate a good diet in fruit (such as berries) and raw vegetable, had the same risk as those without the risk variant.
However, the study shows that effect of these four genetic variations on the risk of heart attack was not influenced by physical activity level or smoking.
What Does This Means to You?
To put it in a layman term, some of us are born with inherent risk towards certain diseases such as heart disease. This inherent risk is in the form of genetic variations i.e. change/s in genetic sequences which is quite impossible to be altered / treated in today’s clinical settings. However, this does not spell doom for the person. Various studies had shown that lifestyle, diet and environmental factors can help to reverse or stop the effect of these genetic variations.
To believe that our health is predetermined because we are “born this way” is out-dated (except for those with rare monogenic disease). We may not know how much of what we are is determined by DNA (Nature) or by the external factors such as lifestyle and environment (Nurture), but we do know that both play a part. Knowing how your genes may impact your health can help you to pro-actively plan to intervene and to manage the health risk. And this involves simple steps of ordering an appropriate genetic test to determine the risk of disease predisposition, and subsequently adopt a healthy lifestyle which can be tailored according to the risk level.
In short, Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes (TLC) is definitely not a rocket science, a simple action such as to consume fresh vegetable and berries everyday helps to keep heart disease away!
(1) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-15254471
(2) http://www.nhs.uk/news/2011/10October/Pages/fruit-vegetables-counter-heart-risk.aspx
(3) http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001106
(4) http://snpedia.com/index.php/Rs2383206
Submitted by Susan Ong Su Ming, Product Portfolio Manager
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