Health News

Could “Viking Blood” Spell The End Of Disease?

An island of icy glaciers and natural wonder lies undisturbed from the rest of the world. Its inhabitants are virtually immortal, ageless and untouched by disease, descended from ancient warriors who came by sea more than a thousand years ago.


Since the Vikings came ashore and settled in these icy regions more than 1,200 years ago, Iceland has mostly remained isolated from the world. This has resulted in an extremely homogenous gene pool, with as much as 90% of its people considered to be pure Icelandic.

Blessed by Odin himself?


Interestingly, most Icelanders can trace their lineage to a single Viking settler.

And according to a genetics expert, a lucky 1% of the island’s people might have been blessed by Odin himself due to their natural immunity to a wide variety of killer diseases that we face today.

Neurologist and geneticist Karl Stefansson returned home after 20 years abroad with the ambitious goal of mapping the genome of the entire country.

No mean feat, even with its relatively small population of approximately 332,000 people.

He founded a company called deCODE for this very reason, and what they discovered could soon mean the end of disease as we know it.

"We discovered a variant a few years back, maybe three or four years back, that confers protection against Alzheimer's disease," explained Stefansson. "It's a rare (gene) variance found in about 1% of the Icelandic population, and if you carry that variant, you are almost completely protected against Alzheimer's disease.


While deCODE does the legwork and publishes its scientific findings, parent company Amgen aims to use this information to create drugs and cures based off genetic information.

According to Sean Harper, head of research and development at Amgen: “What's amazing about the human genetics is, they can actually establish causality of the link of these genes with disease.”

But is it merely genetics, or is there more to Icelanders’ near mythical aversion to disease?

In other studies, researchers have found that perhaps divine intervention may have had a hand in Iceland’s unusual longevity after all.

Here’s a hint … it begins with something that harkens back to the old testament, think fire and brimstone.

Learn more about this island and its biblical influences in the video below.


References:

  1. http://edition.cnn.com/2017/03/16/health/iceland-genes-genealogy-alzheimers-exp/
  2. http://www.newsweek.com/2015/07/31/vikings-might-slay-cancer-354895.html
  3. https://www.livestrong.com/article/441274-how-does-sulfur-help-the-body/