A recent analysis suggests maintaining a healthy lifestyle can help offset any “life-shortening” genes you might have inherited by more than 60%.
The research, published in the BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine Journal, also suggested an unhealthy lifestyle will increase your risk of dying by 78% regardless of good or bad genes.
Though the research was observational and not definitive, there were four factors that the scientists said appeared to make up an optimal, healthy lifestyle: Never smoking, regular physical activity, adequate nightly sleep and a healthy diet.
Over 350,000 participants — all of European descent — were recruited for the multi-study analysis between 2006 and 2010 through the UK Biobank, a large-scale biomedical database and research resource.
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Participants were given a weighted lifestyle score and polygenic risk score, which calculates an individual’s disease risk based on their genes, according to the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control.
The participants' health was tracked up until 2021, according to the analysis. During that time period, 24,239 of the participants died.
The researchers said the individuals who were genetically predisposed to a short lifespan were 21% more likely to die early than those genetically predisposed to a long life, regardless of their lifestyle.
They also said participants with a high genetic risk of a shortened lifespan and an unhealthy lifestyle were twice as likely to die as those who were genetically predisposed to a long life and maintained a healthy lifestyle.
If a person has a high genetic risk of a shorter life, they could extend their life expectancy by nearly 5.5 years if they adopt healthy lifestyle changes at the age of 40, the researchers said.
The researchers in the study classified premature death as dying before 75 years of age. According to the CDC, the average American lifespan is 77.5 years for both genders and 80.2 years for women.
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