United States: When it comes to a person’s health, doctors contend that genetics are not destiny, and a research seems to back up that claim. Researchers discovered that leading a healthy lifestyle can counteract the impact of genes that reduce life by more than 60 percent.
Lifestyle vs. Genetics
Results shows that the people who are at high genetic risk of a curtailed lifespan can live longer and their life expectancy by nearly 5.5 years if they’ve adopted a healthy lifestyle by the age of 40, that’s what the results shows.
Apart from that an unhealthy lifestyle is linked with a 78 percent of increased risk of an early death regardless of a person’s genetic predisposition.
Leading the research team at Zhejiang University School of Medicine in Hangzhou, China, Dr. Xue Li’s Center of Clinical Big Data and Analytics of The Second Affiliated Hospital concluded that the study underscores “the pivotal role of a healthy lifestyle in mitigating the impact of genetic factors on lifespan reduction.”
Prolonging Lifespan
The researchers concluded that public health initiatives aimed at promoting healthy lifestyles would be effective means of reducing the impact of hereditary variables on life expectancy and enhancing conventional healthcare.
Researchers examined information from around 354,000 participants in the UK Biobank genetics and health project for this study. During an average follow-up of about 13 years.
Each person was scored on the base of their inheritable pitfalls and they also entered a score regarding the wholesomeness of their life.
Unhealthy Habits Impact
Experimenters defined a healthy life as abstaining from smoking, drinking in temperance, exercising frequently, maintaining a good body shape, getting enough sleep, and following a balanced diet.
Based on those parameters, about 23 percent led a perfectly healthy lifestyle, 56 percent led a fairly healthy lifestyle, and 22 percent led an unhealthy lifestyle.
Regardless of lifestyle, the likelihood of individuals with a genetic predisposition to a short lifespan was 21 percent higher than that of those with a genetic predisposition to a long life.
Regardless of heredity, however, those who led unhealthy lifestyles were 78 percent more likely to pass away before their time.
Overall who are combined with bad genetics and unhealthy lifestyle were twice as likely to die as those with good genes and who lives a healthy lives results show.
In the end there are four factors which particularly contributed to the healthy living made a difference in a longevity are not smoking, regular exercise, good sleep and a healthy diet.