If your father, uncle and grandparents all had diabetes, are you doomed to get diabetes as well? Are today’s leading chronic diseases mostly due to genetics or our lifestyle?

Lifestyle medicine recognizes what science is revealing about the role of our genes and lifestyle in chronic disease: while we may have genetic predispositions, its lifestyle that really determines whether you get the disease or not. Knowing this can make all the difference in the world: you have the power in your own hands - in the way you live - to largely determine your health destiny.

Links

Changes in prostate gene expression in men undergoing an intensive nutrition and lifestyle intervention (PNAS)

Your genes are not your fate (TED Talk)

The Lifestyle Is Medicine podcast is produced by Pathways to Wholeness Lifestyle Medicine in Toronto, Canada. Pathways is a medical centre that promotes wholistic health through lifestyle medicine. Pathways provides compassionate, evidence-based medical care at two clinics in Toronto: the North York Lifestyle Medicine Clinic and Junction Lifestyle Medicine Clinic. Learn more at: www.pathwaystowholeness.ca

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Have you ever tried to tell a kid not to do something unhealthy - like eat that extra piece of cake or candy - just to be rebuked by a well-meaning adult who tells you, "it's ok! They're just kids!" Is that true? Is it ok for kids to do unhealthy things just because they're kids. In this episode, we explore startling research that shows that many of the diseases we thought only adults get - such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease - are popping up in teenagers and even young children! Chronic disease starts at a young age and here's what we can do to prevent that.

Links

Give kids lifestyle medicine (DrGeorgeCho.com)

Prevalence of prediabetes and its association with clustering cardiometabolic risk factors and hyperinsulinemia among U.S. adolescents: National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2005 – 2006 (Diabetes Care)

Prevalence of Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes among children and adolescents from 2001 to 2009 (JAMA)

Prevalence and extent of atherosclerosis in adolescents and young adults (JAMA)