YOUR LIFESTYLE, YOUR LIFE? CHANGE S AV E
By Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D.
Director, National Institutes of Health
Like many Americans, I used to eat too much and exercise too little. I couldn’t resist a plate of fresh-baked goodies, and had lots of excuses about why
there was never time to work out. But
two years ago, I found both willpower
and time upon learning that I was at risk
for diabetes.
Diabetes is not something you want to
get: It is a leading cause of heart attack,
stroke, kidney failure, lower-limb amputations, and blindness. Nearly 2 million
Americans over the age of 20 are diagnosed with diabetes each year, and that
number is rising steadily. Sadly, many
could have avoided or delayed getting
the most common form of the disease,
type 2 diabetes, by simply changing their
lifestyles.
One major risk factor for diabetes is
a family history of the disease. But you
can still be at risk even if diabetes doesn’t
run in your family. In the spring of 2009,
shortly before I became director of the
National Institutes of Health (NIH), I
had my DNA scanned to look for heredi-
tary risks of disease. I was familiar with
the scanning technologies because they
arose from the Human Genome Project,
the effort I previously led to read out
the 3 billion letters in the human DNA
instruction book. But I wasn’t expecting
the scans to reveal that I had two copies
of a specific genetic variant associated
with increased risk of type 2 diabetes.
My own lab is involved in the search for
diabetes genes, so this was sobering news.
It looked like diabetes might be in my
future unless I changed my ways.
