March 25, 2013
Your diet has a huge impact on your health, particularly influencing your risk for things like heart disease, the leading cause of death worldwide. Your genetics equally contributes to your risk for heart disease the same as your diet, your environment and overall lifestyle does. 23andMe looks at 15 [...]
January 30, 2013
There are lots of things we can't change, but our lifestyle isn't one of them. Good thing, too — our weight, nutrition habits, and exercise behaviors impact us beyond whether we look good in a swim suit. They also influence our risk for many different diseases. In the same way, our DNA also contributes [...]
August 1, 2012
Positive, helpful, and upbeat. These aren’t words you would expect to describe someone about to start another round of chemo treatment. However, in the case of Suzan Mickey, they are very apt. Mickey is a participant in the 23andMe and Genentech InVite study on bevacizumab (also known as Avastin®) and [...]
May 6, 2012
Last week we quizzed our readers on traits associated with BMI among 23andMe’s customers. Congratulations to Suellen, the winner of the quiz! She got all three answers correct and will receive an Amazon gift card. So what were the correct answers? Read on... Which physical trait is most associated with [...]
April 26, 2012
Besides height and weight, can you guess what feature is most strongly correlated with body mass index (BMI)? Over the next few months, we’ll be testing your knowledge of some of the most interesting associations we’re seeing in the 23andMe database. Guess right, and you could win cool prizes, including [...]
March 21, 2012
Like many people around the world, the health content team at 23andMe rang in 2012 with resolutions of staying healthy and it seemed fitting to delve into the genetics underlying response to diet and exercise, eating behavior and cholesterol levels. As we eased in to the new year, we segued into reproduction, [...]
November 22, 2011
For some, eating a doughnut every morning is a recipe for heart attack. For others, the doughnut doesn’t seem to matter—it’s almost as if certain individuals can’t get heart disease even if they try. The flip side is that people who are predisposed to heart disease can make lifestyle changes, in this [...]
December 4, 2009
We all know people struggling with weight issues. Maybe they’re overweight and can’t seem to lose the pounds no matter what new diet or exercise regime they try. Or, maybe they’re underweight and have a hard time bulking up no matter how many donuts they consume or weights they lift. Clearly, there’s [...]
February 13, 2009
Generally when you think about what separates humans from other species, features like upright walking, large brains and language come to mind. But diet has actually played an enormous role in human evolution. Today at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a panel [...]
July 22, 2008
Last week in the Spittoon we reported on a new study that identified an interesting genetic trade-off — a genetic variant known that has one effect on a person's vulnerability to malaria, and the opposite on susceptibility to HIV infection. The "Duffy negative" version of the gene, which is common among [...]
