How a personal DNA health guide could extend your life and how science is getting close
Personal well-being guides based on our genetic make-up that have the potential to predict disease risks are becoming increasingly possible
You may be familiar with a range of tips for living a healthy life: watch your weight, exercise, eat nutritious food and do not smoke, for example.
What if you could combine these lifestyle factors with a host of other variables to learn your risk of developing specific diseases, to help catch and treat them early or prevent them altogether?
Dr Victor Ortega, associate director of the Mayo Clinic’s Centre for Individualised Medicine, in the US state of Arizona, explains how science is drawing ever closer to making such personal health forecasts possible.
Previously inconceivable, such personal guides to well-being are becoming increasingly possible because of new and sophisticated technologies that capture data spanning entire genomes – complete sets of genetic material, or DNA – in our bodies, Ortega says.
