Sure it can. Type 2 diabetes is both hereditary and lifestyle/behavioral influenced . Same with cancer, if you have cancer in your family your risk of getting cancer is higher. I would say most medical issues are both. Heart disease, gout, obesity, hypertension,strokes,asthma etc.

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duskwuff 6 days ago | parent [-]

Let me put this a bit differently: Type 2 diabetes is both genetic and can be acquired during one's life (e.g. through bad dietary choices). But a man who develops diabetes does not acquire genetic T2D by doing so - he cannot pass it on directly to his children.

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bsder 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

> But a man who develops diabetes does not acquire genetic T2D by doing so - he cannot pass it on directly to his children.

Epigenetic changes absolutely can be passed to children even over multiple generations--this is already proven.

Which epigenetic changes are caused by T2D and whether they predispose the next generation to T2D would be the question.

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fooker 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

You could get a Nobel prize or two by proving this statement.

How we pass on acquired traits to offspring is not well understood at all. We know there’s a mechanism, but not how it works or how selective it is.

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CamperBob2 5 days ago | parent [-]

So having rehabilitated the Luddites, HN is now moving on to Lysenko. Peachy.

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fooker 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

You not knowing something doesn’t make it not exist.

https://www.cuimc.columbia.edu/news/study-shows-how-effects-...

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4377509/

https://www.brown.edu/news/2016-12-12/famine

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CamperBob2 5 days ago | parent [-]

Confusing the effects of starvation with Lamarckian inheritance is a fundamental category error. If starvation affected every cell in your body except for the gametes, that would be worth investigating.

	▲	fooker 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		> with Lamarckian inheritance is a fundamental category error Would you believe that things are more complex than neat categories discovered in 1850 that you learn in fifth grade? Starvation is just the most studied aspect of this as it is easier to find control groups. However, you could easily search and find others, which you don't seem to be willing to do for some reason. This is not groundbreaking research, this has been known for a while. The current focus is to understand possible non-genetic pathways for this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics

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Der_Einzige 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

The average health literacy of the HN crowd leaves me to believe that the median HN user is grossly overweight, among other things…