Want to live longer? Healthy lifestyle may be able to ‘cheat’ your genes, study suggests

A healthy diet was one of the four key lifestyle factors. Stock image. Photo: Getty

Eilish O'Regan

Long life is not all about inheriting the right genes – a healthy lifestyle may offset up to 60pc of the cards we are dealt by our parents, research suggests today.

Analysis of the findings from several large long-term studies published in the journal BMJ ­Evidence-Based Medicine points to the way people might cheat the health risks that run in families.

While genes and lifestyle seem to have an additive effect on a person’s lifespan, an unhealthy lifestyle is independently linked to a 78pc heightened risk of dying before one’s time, regardless of genetic predisposition, the research, led by Professor Xifeng Wu and Dr Xue Li of Zhejiang University School of Medicine in Hangzhou, China, reveals.

The polygenic risk score (PRS) combines multiple genetic variants to arrive at a person’s overall genetic predisposition to a longer or shorter lifespan.

Lifestyle – tobacco use, alcohol consumption, diet quality, sleep quota and physical activity levels – is a key factor.

But it is not clear the extent to which a healthy lifestyle might offset genetic predisposition to a shortened lifespan, the researchers said.

To explore this further, they drew on a total of 353,742 adults recruited to the UK Biobank between 2006 and 2010, and whose health was tracked up until 2021.

A PRS was derived for long (20pc of participants), intermediate (60pc), and short (20pc) lifespan risks, using data from the LifeGen cohort study.

During an average tracking period of nearly 13 years, 24,239 participants died.

Those genetically predisposed to a short lifespan were 21pc more likely to die early than those genetically predisposed to a long life, regardless of their lifestyle.

Similarly, those who had an unfavourable lifestyle were 78pc more likely to die before their time than those with a favourable lifestyle, irrespective of their genetic predisposition.

Four factors in particular seemed to make up the optimal lifestyle combination: not smoking; regular physical activity; adequate nightly sleep; and a healthy diet.

This is an observational study, and as such, no definitive conclusions can be reached about cause and effect, added to which the researchers acknowledge various limitations to their findings.

Those at high genetic risk of a shortened lifespan could extend their life expectancy by nearly 5.5 years at the age of 40 with a healthy lifestyle, they suggest.