Genetics HAS to have something to do with it

(Bob M) #1

So, since my mother passed away, I’ve been researching genealogy. In my dad’s family (his aunts and uncles), three of them are still alive: 107, 98, 95. And one other aunt died at 99.

FOUR kids from the same family, all over 95. They had 7 kids, so that’s over 50% !!! (This family should be studied.)

And they are Italian (came from southern Italy) and all ate higher carb. Or at least I remember them eating things like pasta.

Now, I know I don’t do well with carbs, but maybe someone can explain to me why some do. I know some of it HAS to be genetics. I just don’t what genetics.

Your thoughts?

#2

I think it just comes down to what else you eat, and what you’re doing with it. A couple years ago when I was way more insulin resistant, more overweight, and way less muscle going much over 50g would make be feel like I got hit by a train, carb hangover, passing out, all of it. Now doing TKD/CKD I’m clearly eating way more and have zero issues and only benefits.

Now when I take in carbs they’re going to replenish muscle glycogen and give me energy without spilling over and being mixed with fat and storing that way, so since I can actually deal with them now I’m not becoming insulin resistant again so the negatives aren’t happening. Doing a good hand full of labs every years shows that’s maintaining.

I think it’s really individual that way and has a lot more to do with overall lifestyle than it does genetics. If my genetics were at blame before that would still all be the case.

#3

Lifestyle surely matters. My anchestors (the ones I knew about) didn’t live until 100 but they lived long and they often were healthy and active enough until their last day. They had an active lifestyle, it surely mattered. But we have good genetics, yep. Maybe many of them had a positive attitude as well, that helps with health too, mental health is pretty important and being stressed about things (beyond the amount that is normal) definitely don’t do any good to health…

They ate lots of bread, of course but sugary baked goods too. And lots of fat, some meat, I don’t know the details but they kept pigs and cows and whatnot. And grew and ate grains and fruits. They basically ate everything.
I had a HCHF diet for decades myself. I felt healthy. But it’s not for me, it’s evident now while my SO is thriving on it… He is some naturally born carb eater, it seems (of course he needs his protein too, never tried or want to try a low-fat approach though, it’s probably impossible for him just like for me) while my body tried low-carb and immediately burned the bridges and got choosy… I still can go back, for a super short visit (like a day) but that’s it. And I am fine with this. I am quite sure I could survive on high-carb if there would be no other options. It wouldn’t be ideal but my body would eventually get used to it again. But it’s just a guess. It wouldn’t make much sense if I would be too broken to survive without low-carb…

So yep, genetics have a huge role. But there are other factors as well.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #4

How much genotype dictates phenotype is a little-understood topic. Epigenetics and the inheritance of traits used to be discredited, but now we are seeing data to indicate that the offspring can inherit activated or deactivated genes, depending on the parents’ behaviour.

Then there is the whole nature-versus-nurture debate, which is a completely different ballgame.

As for genetics, my father’s mother had three siblings. Great-Uncle Howard didn’t live a particularly long life, dying in his seventies (or so I recall), and Nana also died young, at 94. Lena lived till 107, and Anna is still going strong at 106. So you never know. Obviously Howard inherited a different gene combination in the sexual selection lottery from what the girls got.

(Stickin' with mammoth) #5

Holy Wrinkle Cream, Batman, then what do you call old?

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(Rebecca ) #6

I was wondering that same thing!!

(GINA ) #7

I agree people were more active in the past and I am sure that helped, but I also think it has to do with the rise of fake food and weird ingredients. HFCS and weird vegetable oils are in everything these days. Those things are not food, but they are excess energy. So now we have twin problems of malnutrition and obesity.

I also think our constant drip-drip-drip of eating and drinking is a problem. Fifty years ago only children snacked and ‘not spoiling your appetite’ was a thing. You sat down and drank a cup of coffee, you didn’t get a 24 ounce caramel-machi-whatever to walk around with every day. I don’t think it is excess calories so much, like ‘experts’ often say, it is the constant sugar-and-insulin bath our cells are getting.

(Robin) #8

Brava! Well said.

(Bob M) #9

Let me tell you how this started. After my mom passed away January 2nd, I started looking into genealogy, and researching my dad’s family. I was stunned to realize his aunts and uncle were still alive, even though he died 10+ years ago.

Don’t get me wrong, food is important, as we have all learned.

And there’s something affecting the “younger” generation, as when you have 4/7 children living to be over 95, yet NONE of their children are, something’s up. Also, I had cataract surgery, and the doctor - who has done thousands of these surgeries - said he’s seeing people come in much younger than their parents were. Something is causing that.

I do think the snacking is an issue. It was something no one did (or should do, unless you’re really hungry). I can guarantee that my great-aunts/uncle did not snack.

But I often wonder if I don’t have their genetics, and I eat as well as I can (and exercise, or whatever is actually “healthy”), would I live to be 107? I’m hesitant to think so.

And I have often wondered why some people can eat a scoop of ice cream or a tortilla (or potato) chip, or a small amount of those, and put the bag away. Is this some type of feedback I don’t have? If so, is that genetic?

I have the same ideas about the French and others who can apparently eat croissants and bread, yet be thin. By contrast, I eat croissants, and I can eat as many as I want and still be hungry. Is that mainly my Polish ancestry? Maybe the French really can eat saturated fat (+ “starch”), and they get a satiation signal, whereas the Polish don’t?

#10

Oh my, I completely forgot about those things! I am living super far from all places where those are available (I don’t even know where to find a place for them in the nearby city and I know that well) and it seems I met them online too long ago. It’s like smoking, I keep forgetting their existence…
And then I realize it again. It’s never a nice experience…

I think you are quite right, those monsters surely make some damage…

It’s surely complicated. Genes, habits, new ingredients.

In the old times, people had work and people had rest and meals, it wasn’t potential and often actual eating all the time. They didn’t wander to the office kitchen for a creamy sugary coffee and a donut. They ate when it was time/need for it and they ate mostly food. Not the most ideal food most of the time I suppose but more proper food, not snacks all the time. Even the sugary desserts weren’t 60-100% sugar…

#11

I wouldn’t think it’s genetic though probably something in our genes may help with it…?
I imagine it’s a learned thing, at least in many cases. Or the one doesn’t like the stuff enough :smiley:

I was the type who ate up everything. It didn’t completely disappear but I could train myself out of it somewhat. it helps that I am a health-conscious one and if I am sure that the item is bad for me, my interest plummets. (There are some exceptions. But I can wait a year or two.)
But it’s partially training. I form new habits.
Chips are too exotic in this household and the bags are super tiny so I would eat them up if I decided it’s fine today (my SO would eat half of it though)… But for items I have all the time since years, it’s different. It doesn’t go away and I trained with them. So I can eat 5g peanuts (sometimes half but that’s tricky. it I don’t allow 5g, I just smell it :D). But I am still addicted to them I think. It depends on the definition.

A scoop of ice cream is a lot to me (if the ice cream is rich enough. the sugary water stuff aren’t even tempting). I never even saw anybody who ate ice cream nearly in the amounts you people say here… A small box is for a family for more than one time… I am used to that. We don’t use it as food… It’s a treat after everyone is nicely satiated.

I don’t know if it has much to do with our origins but people surely are different there.
My SO can get perfectly satiated for 8+ hours with a bunch of carbs, not much fat is needed, just enough calories. His most common breakfast is oatmeal. Many people use it as breakfast and they seemingly get satiated with it. Well, my SO may have a long satiation time but he eats a big one.
And there are all the mysterious people who eat a tiny sandwich, mostly bread and they get satiated… What. If I had thought it over, I would have felt such a weirdo that it just doesn’t work for me. Poor people very often/mostly ate some super cheap carbs in historical times. I don’t even understand how they survived (well, some of them)… But how they handled hunger, they couldn’t be all the types who got satiated with some cooked corn and nothing else…? Maybe their hunger disappeared when their bodies realized it helps nothing. Mine did that when I starved for a while. I wasn’t really hungry ever. Or cold, in an unheated house in winter… Our body is amazing. But I got carried away as I so often do.

So some people can get satiated with, like, anything, it seems. At least short term, I mean a mostly carby meal shouldn’t be followed another and another as we need enough protein and fat too, there are the other nutrients as well… My SO eats lots of fat and enough protein, it’s just his first meal may be mostly carbs and it works. A low-carb first meal works the same. I tried to figure out some correlation between satiation and macros and found nothing in his case. While my body refuses to get satiation from most carbs, added fats, chicken meat… Carbs has a very serious anti-satiation effect, usually.
And I heard about people who ONLY could get satiated from sugars but I just heard that and it sounds completely insane…
But surely there are many kinds of people. Satiation is a fascinating topic to me and it seems there are no general rules, people are so different.
And we aren’t even the same all the time.

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #12

I think genetics is not fate. But it’s predisposition. There’s also recessivity. All your immediate relatives may exhibit dominant trait ‘A’ but you exhibit recessive trait ‘X’. Just because it happens. We’re not all clones because it’s evolutionarily advantageous not to be.

(Bob M) #13

Something like this is what I’m thinking:

This was a study where they did something to a gene. But maybe some people already have this gene switched off?

@Shinita I got fat eating ice cream (and drinking beer and eating pizza). I went in the military, went through basic training, and went into a school. Promptly gained 15+ pounds…eating ice cream.

Since I was young, it was no problem for me to lose that.

@amwassil I see this argument all the time. It’s a “predisposition”. But it’s a hell of a predisposition. My mother had 15 siblings. (Yes, 15.) I have not seen all of them, maybe 10, but of those 10, ALL of them were obese (oddly, except for my mother). ALL of them. On my mother’s side, both my grandmother and my grandfather were obese. Massively so. I think my grandfather had a 50+ inch pants size.

And if anyone read “Good calories, bad calories”, he has two sets of pictures of naked women twins. The two thin women looked exactly alike, as did the two really obese women.

Can you fight against that? Maybe so. Is it ridiculously challenging? I have found it to be.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #14

On a low-carb diet, this is possible. A high-carb diet, such as the U.S. government recommends, is a different matter, because the high blood sugar it causes results in turn in high insulin. And elevated insulin blocks the receptors in the ventromedial hypothalamus that are supposed to receive the leptin secreted by the adipose tissue to tell our brain we don’t need more food. This is why the recommendation is now three large meals and three small meals a day, so as to help people deal with the constant hunger pangs.

In evolutionary terms, this effect of insulin on satiety is a leftover from the mechanism that allows mammals to put on weight in the fall, to feed them while they hibernate. If you are trying to load up on berries, you don’t want to stop being hungry and stop eating.

So going low-carb lowers blood sugar and therefore insulin, and satiety then returns to being a reliable guide to how much to eat, at least for most people.

(Jane) #15

Interesting article. I wonder if fasting regularly would fall under the “restrict calories” category. They had their participants reduce their calorie intake by 14%. I never “feast” before or after I fast - just eat my normal portions, so I reduce my calores on the weeks I fast - just not sure by how much but maybe I could do a quick calculation over 7 days.

May not have the same effect as redcuing your overall calories 14% all the time, but an interesting thought.

(Robin) #16

All good questions. It’s like we are playing several different lotteries at once. Win at one, lose it all on another.

(Jane) #17

Ok, so using 2000 calories as a non-fasting day and fasting 60 hours during a week (Mon dinner to Thu lunch) I would have to fast 22 weeks a year to reduce my calorie intake for the year by 14%. Twice a month for the first 10 months then once a month during Nov and Dec.

That’s a lot of fasting…

#18

In France many people still eat food made from real ingredients. In the USA, you seem to process everything. Even keto: you need keto ice creams, keto bars, keto candy, keto breads with lots of weird ingredients.

You powder your eggs, your butter… I didn’t even know this existed. You make come your ingredients in a box, from far, by mail. No local market, seasonal ingredients.

You need something, you can’t eat it: you need it to come from a box, processed, in a pill. And you think that’s normal, that it’s ok. Even though the aim was to eat like our ancestors, millions of years ago, before big supplement existed.

Your stomach is never empty: you even walk around with drinks. You “need” your coffee, even when you’re telling yourself you’re fasting. Your stomach is never really empty.

Take a look at a coffee cup in Italy. It’s the tiniest thing. In France it is a bit bigger. But it is still a cup, in porcelain, small. In the USA, you drink in monstrosities made to allow for walking, driving and drinking, huge amounts. Your stomach is always full.

You know how a big coffee is called in Italy? Cafe americano.

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #19

I did not mean to imply that predisposition is not dominant. Of course, your chance of sharing the predisposition is far greater than not. But the odds are not 100% - there’s variability due to recessive traits both good and bad.

I had a younger sister who died of cystic fibrosis. Neither I nor any of my other siblings and their children, neither my father, mother nor their immediate families had/have it either. In fact, no one on ether side of my family has ever had cystic fibrosis - or anything that suggested he/she did so - as far back as anyone on either side of the family could ever recollect.

So I would guess that NOT having cystic fibrosis was a pretty strong ‘predisposition’ in my family until my unfortunate younger sister arrived.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #20

There is also the issue of mutation. Many of the descendants of Queen Victoria of England have been haemophiliacs or carried the gene. But the condition was not in the family before Victoria. It apparently resulted from a spontaneous mutation in Victoria herself.