How long you can live: Determination through the genes! DO YOU KNOW YOUR FOXO3 VARIANT?

Many patients that I meet these days stress during my interview with them that their own parents died of "old age".  Meaning that there seems to be a certain finality to life of humans.  There will be a time when despite good care and prevention, human life will end.  Patients deny their parents died of heart failure, stroke or any other cause but "old age" as if at some point we are doomed to a programmed death.  Inquisition into people who live longer (more then a hundred years) point to the existence of a gene, a particular variant FOXO3 (see below).  DO YOU KNOW YOUR FOXO3 VARIANT?
Evidence abounds now that how long we shall live is encrypted in our genes, but no one seems to rush to offer this option of an approach to care because it is not as simple as that!  But I still believe that for proper "advance directives" preparation of this information should be included as we gauge our sens of survival!   At the individual cellular level, basically this FOXO3,4,6 upregulates BIM and PUMA (wild animal in us keeping us alive!) and downregulates (FLIP) to slow programmed cellular death (Apoptosis).  The interesting thing is this FOX ability to work is very tightly linked to energy!  Yes, when you touch the FOXO, Galactose and Insulin metabolisms come right at you! As if telling you if you monitor me closely (as in Biomarkers) you may know what FOXY is doing.  In other words, the GALT gene is a good Biomarker of FOXO3.  And may tell you the status of cancer cells! (think carefully) during and after treatments!"
A variant of FOXO3 has been shown to be associated with longevity in humans. It is found in most centenarians across a variety of ethnic groups around the world.^[7][8] The homologous genes daf-16 in the nematode C. elegans and dFOXO in the fruit fly are also associated with longevity in those organisms."
DAF-16 is the sole ortholog of the FOXO family of transcription factors in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans.^[1] DAF-16 is notable for being the primary transcription factor required for the profound lifespan extension observed upon mutation of the insulin-like receptor daf-2.^[2] Moreover, the tractability of C. elegans as a model and interest in teasing out this conserved aging-associated genetic pathway allowed the intricacies of Insulin and Insulin-like growth factor (IGF) Signaling (IIS) to be thoroughly characterized primarily through studies using this model organism.^[3]wikipedia

 "The expression of GALT is controlled by the actions of the FOXO3 gene. The absence of this enzyme results in classic galactosemia in humans and can be fatal in the newborn period if lactose is not removed from the diet. The pathophysiology of galactosemia has not been clearly defined.^{[1]wikipedia"}

Challenge with diet and food supplements

It is nice to understand the potential activity or mechanism of action of food supplements and act on it. Example: "Vitamin C: MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia

www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002404.htm

Function. Vitamin C is needed for the growth and repair of tissues in all parts of your body. It is used to: Form an important protein used to make skin, tendons, ..."

That knowledge empowers you and helps you take action.  You run to the store and buy a good supply of vitamin C and take it for now and the future.  What the information can not tell you is just as important.  How much Vitamin C you need to actually have the benefit described? How long you should be doing this?  Is your body just getting rid of the extra or all of it?  Based on your chromosome heterogeneity, was it safe for you to have done it?  Are you missing a critical enzyme to process the vitamin?
The NIH is finding out that things that are promised by food supplements, when put to the test and scientific scrutiny, do not deliver a clearly evident output.  "Taking an apple a day" (low methionine food item) will prolong your life.  While the scientific evidence as to how this is possible is established:  Does it really happen? No.  Why? Because what is left out is even more important.  How many apples  a day should you eat, what type of apple, what else should accompany this practice to make this goal achievable (low calory diet)? And so on and so forth. We all know that food supplements can impact some of the signal transduction pathways in our cells and, as a result, they could potentially impact our lives in some beneficial ways.  But is it safe to constantly be bothering our signal transduction pathways?  Do you believe it is right to do so constantly?  Who said this pathway needs to be switched on all the time?  What guarantees you that the body will not respond and shut it off anyway as it always reacts to action that we deliberately impose upon it!
Keeping a pathway on all the time may impact another pathway all the time, and if you just happen to have the wrong gene for this particular game, you may start on some road you should not be on!  So please, just because it may make sense, it does not yet mean that it is true and relevant for YOU!