Unless someone swipes one of President Trump’s used forks from the Mar-a-Lago dining room and sends it to 23andMe for DNA analysis, the world will simply have to guess what the White House physician meant when he told reporters…that Trump “has incredible genes, I just assume.”
“Incredible genes” may seem like hand-waving, but there’s no question some genetic variants protect against heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, and other killers. And Trump chose his parents well: His father died of pneumonia at 93 after developing Alzheimer’s disease but apparently avoiding cancer and heart disease. His mother lived to 88…her only known ailment was osteoporosis.
His genetic inheritance might explain how Trump can get by with only four or five hours of sleep, which supposedly raises the risk of hypertension, and yet have blood pressure of 122/74 without anti-hypertensive medication. (At 71, Trump is in the age group for which the systolic target, the first number, is 130.)
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His luck might not last, however. “Even if Trump has been dealt a good genetic hand, he’s certainly not helping himself” with an unhealthy lifestyle, said Dr. Sekar Kathiresan, a cardiologist and geneticist at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute who has done seminal work in protective DNA variants. People whose genes lower their risk of disease “can mess that up.”
Read full, original post: Trump’s doctor says he has ‘incredible genes.’ Will they keep protecting his health?
