If this story doesn't make you feel good, you've probably lost that capacity.

By February, the high-priced New York Knicks had fallen apart. Their record had dropped well under .500, and their two $18 million superstars, Amar'e Stoudemire and Carmelo Anthony, had just sustained injuries that would keep them from playing at least the next half dozen games.The Knicks' season seemed lost until a 6-3 Taiwanese-American who had previously been cut by two NBA teams started scoring like Kobe Bryant and passing like Steve Nash.The Knicks preceded to win five in a row, and a player who had been making less than 1/20th of either of the injured superstars and sleeping on his brother's couch became such a national sensation that he made the cover of Sport Illustrated two weeks in a row, an honor no New York-based team athlete has ever earned. Now whether or not Jeremy Lin continues to play at such a high level, I can't say for sure, but I am about to make a bold prediction about the first player to ever record at least 20 points and seven assists in his first four NBA starts.Jeremy Lin will never, I repeat, never, suffer from Alzheimer's disease.That's because by tirelessly honing his basketball skills, Lin learned another: to impose his lifestyle upon his genetics. Lin didn't care that no other Taiwanese-American had ever played in the NBA or that his college team that powerhouse called Harvard had last produced an NBA player in 1954, the year of SI's inception.He realized something that Stuart Lipton, professor at Stanford-Burnham Research Institute, has said about Alzheimer's, the dreaded disease that robs the elderly of memory, intellect, and social skills: "A myth exists that if the Alzheimer's gene is in your family, you're going to get it. But that only affects 1 percent of cases."What matters most is how you superimpose your lifestyle on top of your genetic background."Lipton can say that because recent research has discovered that the primary risk factors for developing the disease are all lifestyle elements fully under your control. You and you alone determine whether you're going to become obese enough to develop metabolic syndrome and allow that to progress to type 2 diabetes.Research has found diabetics are two to three times more likely to develop Alzheimer's than people who haven't, and the reason why makes perfect sense: continual excessive production of insulin and high blood sugar levels have been found to not only add fat to the body but also breakdown the brain.But superimposing your lifestyle on top of your genetics does more than stave off this one single disease. It's the key to developing the mindset that makes you believe that healthy habits positively influence your long-term health.For example, if you aren't genetically blessed and find exercise challenging yet can find a way to talk yourself into doing it, you get benefits beyond the ones that result from the actual exercise.A review published in Obesity Reviews by a team of researchers from Spain and the United States suggests that regular exercise makes it far easier to eat healthy foods because regular exercise restructures the brain. The end result is that the exerciser has a greater command of a mental process called executive function.According to the National Center for Learning Disabilities, "people use executive function to perform activities such as planning, organizing, strategizing, paying attention to and remembering details, and managing time and space" all of which are helpful in regulating self-behavior, including dieting. Prior to this review, the calories expended during a workout had been seen as the biggest exercising benefit to regular workouts for those on a diet.While those expended calories can not be discounted, this new review suggests that exercise's positive effect on executive function helps the dieter be more aware of the body's cues that it's full, as well as help keep in check the impulsivity that often causes a dieter to fall under the spell of an enticing smell or sight of food and disrupt a diet.Improvements in executive function will improve other aspects of life. Many in the field of education, for instance, feel that executive function, even more so than innate intelligence, determines success in the classroom.This makes sense when you consider that executive function is the mental process that the NCLD says allows us to "make plans, keep track of time and finish work, keep track of more than one thing at once, meaningfully include past knowledge in discussions, evaluate ideas, change our minds, ask for help or seek more information when we need it, engage in group dynamics, and wait to speak until we're called upon."Improvement in these areas are certain to help any student, especially those with learning disabilities. So if you believe in a healthy lifestyle and don't let your genetic disposition get you down, you might just be able to finally stick to that diet, get better grades, or even do something as amazing as what Jeremy Lin has accomplished.