People tend to blame their genetics because they are lazy to make the real changes they need to make in life. The medical community tend blame genetics because now they don’t have confront their patients, throw the medication at them, and continue their own bad lifestyles. Fact is, healthy lifestyle improves health across the entire continuum despite genetic “risks”.

Analyzing 35,759 US health professionals for 902,386 person-years of follow up from the Nurses’ Health Study (1 and 2) and the Health Professional Follow-up Study, researchers found that a healthy diet is linked to lower diabetes risk across all levels of genetic risk. Without regard to genetic risk, a low diet quality increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes by 30% compared to a high quality diet.

The found that the the risk of type 2 diabetes attributed to the combination of increased genetic risk and low diet quality was approximately the same to the sum of the risks associated with each factor independently. In other words, poor diet choices caused diabetes no matter how much you want to blame your parents or grandparents.

High quality diet included diets high in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts and legumes, polyunsaturated fatty acids; moderate in alcohol; and low intake of red and processed meats, sugar sweetened drinks and fruit juices, sodium, and trans-fat.

It’s really easy to blame genetics and culture for the shitty food you’re eating and not put in the work to make the changes you need to make to live a healthier life that feels good and beg medical science for a drug, but the reality is medical science has no cure for diabetes or to prevent it and you have to put in the work. Good health is earned, not gifted. Be a man. Do the work.

J Merino et al. Polygenic scores, diet quality, and type 2 diabetes risk: an observational study among 35,759 adults from 3 US cohorts. PLOS Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1003972