We know that eating a very healthy diet appears to make heart disease less likely, but now that even goes for people whose genes put them at a higher than normal risk of heart trouble.
"A diet high in fruits and vegetables appears to mitigate the genetic risk of a heart attack," says researcher Sonia S. Anand, MD, PhD, professor of medicine and epidemiology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
The finding, if it bears out, could affect many people at risk for heart disease because of a genetic variant that researchers have only recently linked with heart attack. It could also call into question the suggestion that you can't help your genes. "In general, around 20% of people carry at least one copy of the bad gene," Anand tells WebMD.