Healthy lifestyle can offset life-shortening genes by 62%, add 5 years to your life: Study

According to the first study of its kind, leading a healthy lifestyle can counteract the effects of heredity by over 60% and extend your life by an additional five years.

It is commonly known that certain individuals have a genetic predisposition that causes them to live shorter lives. It is also commonly known that lifestyle choices, particularly those related to food, exercise, smoking, and alcohol use, might affect longevity.

But up until today, no research has been done to determine how much a healthy lifestyle can compensate for heredity.

According to results from multiple long-term studies, leading a healthy lifestyle can add up to five years to your life and 62% counterbalance the effects of life-shortening genes. The findings were released in the BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine publication.

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Regardless of lifestyle, individuals with a high genetic risk of a shorter life had a 21% higher chance of dying young than those with a low genetic risk, according to a study involving 353,742 participants from the UK Biobank.

In the meanwhile, regardless of genetic risk, those who lead unhealthy lives have a 78% higher probability of dying young, according to study from the University of Edinburgh and Zhejiang University School of Medicine in China.

According to the study, the probability of dying young was more than doubled for those with shorter lifespan genes and poor lifestyles compared to those with luckiest genes and good lifestyles.

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Researchers did discover, though, that people did seem to have some influence over what transpired. A healthy lifestyle can counteract the hereditary risk of dying young or having a shortened lifetime by roughly 62%, they discovered.

The best lifestyle combination for a longer life was discovered to include quitting smoking, engaging in regular physical activity, getting enough sleep, and maintaining a nutritious diet.

In the course of the study, which tracked participants for an average of 13 years, 24,239 fatalities had place. Three genetically defined lifespan categories—long (20.1%), intermediate (60.1%), and short (19.8%)—as well as three lifestyle score categories—favourable (23.1%), intermediate (55.6%), and unfavourable (21.3%)—were applied to the participants.

In order to determine a person’s overall genetic inclination to a longer or shorter life, researchers looked at several genetic variants using polygenic risk scores. Additional metrics included body form, good food, sleep patterns, and whether or not a person smoked, drank alcohol, exercised, or both.