May 1, 2025
ByAnthony L. Komaroff, MD,
Editor in Chief, Harvard Health Letter;Editorial Advisory Board Member, Harvard Health Publishing
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Q.What’s more important in determining my health: my genes or my <a re both important and, although you can't do much about the former, you can do a lot about the latter. In addition to <a s adverse effects. As you might expect, scientists are trying to identify the protective genes that centenarians have.
We know a lot about the adverse effects of specific lifestyle choices – like smoking, lack of exercise, and eating lots of processed red meat – as well as specific genes – like the genes that cause some families to have very high cholesterol levels. But you’re asking a broader question: what is the relative <a s mother was a smoker when the person was young, and whether the person's reported birth weight was greater than average.
This remarkable study highlights the importance of both genes and lifestyle/life circumstances in influencing a person’s health. Despite remarkable new gene editing techniques (like CRISPR) that we’ve discussed in these pages, our ability to alter our genetic destiny is likely to be pretty limited for the next several decades. So, it remains true that just as you can’t choose your parents, you also can’t escape the influence of the genes that you inherit from them.
The recent study underlines the fact that our lifestyle choices can profoundly influence our health, for better or worse. Mitigating the negative effect of life circumstances – such as poverty and living alone – requires our society to invest in effective social support services.
About the Author
Anthony L. Komaroff, MD,
Editor in Chief, Harvard Health Letter;Editorial Advisory Board Member, Harvard Health Publishing
Dr. Anthony L. Komaroff is the Steven P. SimcoxPatrick A. Clifford/James H. Higby Distinguished Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, senior physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, and editor in chief of the …
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