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Originally Posted by AutoBike
I'm the opposite. My Italian relatives live well into their 90's. My Scottish relatives, Dad's side, almost all died before the age of 50. My father, his brother and mother all died at 46. I figured I must have gotten a good dose of the Italian genes, because I'm almost 57 and still in good health. Go Mom!!
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Your story reminds me of my father's best friend. His Italian friend married a scottish woman and they had two sons.
Let me first say that genes should not be important if you eat a totally healthy diet. It's only when people eat a poor diet that genes for disease get triggered.
So, to continue my story: There were two sons from an Italian father and a scottish mother. No one could know which side of the family they got their genes from. But there's one way to find out: Have both of them eat a poor diet and see which one dies first. What a great experiment!! There was no heart disease on the father's side but I'm not sure about the mother's side.
Anyway, the father went into the fast food business and it was a family business. They all worked at it and grew fond of eating their own fast foods that they sold. Even at home they liked eating lots of fatty meats with plenty of butter on everything. Even though they all had excess weight on them, they all appeared to be healthy.
But one day the oldest son (in his early 40s) was climbing stairs to get to his second floor appartment and he just dropped dead from a sudden heart attack. That's a tough way to find out that you have a predisposition for heart disease.
If he had eaten a healthy diet low in saturated fat and processed foods he might have lived into his 70s or 80s. (Some people are born with few cholesterol receptors while others have more than enough.) The point is this:
If you don't know for sure what diseases you have a predispoition for, the best thing you can do is eat a totally healthy diet, thereby lowering your risk for all diseases.