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What is the secret of a long life? This study shows that your choices are more important than your genes
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What is the secret of a long life? This study shows that your choices are more important than your genes

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One of the most sustainable questions that people have is how long we will live. This raises the question of how much of our lifespan is formed by our environment and choices and how much is determined in advance by our genes.
A study that was recently published in the prestigious journal Nature Medicine has for the first time tried to quantify the relative contributions of our environment and lifestyle versus our genetics in how we get older and how long we live.

The findings were striking, which suggests that our environment and lifestyle play a much greater role than our genes in determining our lifetime.

Biological age versus chronological era

This study used data from the British Biobank, a large database in the United Kingdom that contains in-depth health and lifestyle data of around 500,000 people. The available data include genetic information, medical records, imaging and information about lifestyle.
A separate part of the study used data from a subset of more than 45,000 participants whose blood samples underwent something that is called “proteomic profiling”.

Proteomic profiling is a relatively new technique that looks at how proteins in the body change over time to identify the age of a person at a molecular level. By using this method, researchers were able to estimate how quickly a person’s body actually grew older. This is called their biological age, in contrast to their chronological age (or years of lived).

The researchers assessed 164 exposure to the environment and the genetic markers of participants for diseases. Environmental bastards include lifestyle choices (for example, smoking, physical activity), social factors (for example, living conditions, family income, employment status) and early lifetime factors, such as body weight in childhood.
They then searched for associations between genetics and the environment and 22 important age -related diseases (such as coronary arteries and type 2 diabetes), mortality and biological aging (as determined by proteomic profiling).

With these analyzes, the researchers were able to estimate the relative contributions of environmental factors and genetics in aging and prematurely die.

The debate ‘Nature versus Nurture’

If it concerned disease -related mortality, as we would expect, age and gender declared a considerable amount (about half) of the variation in how long people lived. However, the most important finding was for environmental factors that together accounted for about 17 percent of the variation in the lifespan, while genetic factors contributed less than 2 percent.
This finding is very clearly coming down to the upbringing side in the debate “Nature versus Nurture”. It suggests that environmental factors influence health and lifespan to a much greater extent than genetics.
Not unexpectedly, the study showed a different mix of environmental and genetic influences for different diseases. Environmental factors had the greatest impact on lung, heart and liver disease, while genetics played the greatest role in determining the risk of a person on chest, ovary and prostate cancer and dementia.
The environmental factors that had the most influence on earlier death and biological aging were smoking, socio-economic status, physical activity levels and living conditions.

Interesting is that longer at the age of ten was associated with a shorter lifespan. Although this may seem surprising, and the reasons are not entirely clear, this corresponds to earlier research that bigger people die earlier.

Wearing more weight at the age of ten and smoking mothers (if your mother smoked in the late pregnancy or when you were a newborn) also turned out to shorten the lifespan.
Probably the most surprising finding in this study was a lack of link between food and markers of biological aging, as determined by proteomic profiling. This flies in the light of the extensive proof of evidence that the crucial role of dietary patterns in the risk of chronic diseases and a long service life is demonstrating.
But there are a number of plausible explanations for this. The first can be a lack of statistical power in the part of the study that looks at biological aging. That is, the number of people studied may have been too small to enable the researchers to see the true impact of diet on aging.
Secondly, the nutritional data in this study, which was reported and only measured on a one -off point, will probably have been of relatively poor quality, which limits the ability of the researchers to identify associations. Thirdly, since the relationship between food and lifetime is probably complex, disrupting nutritional effects of other lifestyle factors can be difficult.

So despite this finding, it is still safe to say that the food we eat is one of the most important pillars of health and lifespan.

What other restrictions should we consider?

The most important exposures (such as diet) in this study were only measured at a single time and not followed over time, so that potential errors were introduced in the results.
Since this was an observational study, we cannot assume that associations represent causal relationships. Only because life with a partner correlated with a longer lifespan does not mean that this ensures that a person lived longer. There may be other factors that explain this association.

Finally, it is possible that this study has underestimated the role of genetics in lifetime. It is important to recognize genetics and the environment does not work separately. On the contrary, health results are formed by their interplay, and this study may not have fully recorded the complexity of these interactions.

The future is (largely) in your hands

It is worth noting that there were a number of factors, such as family income, home ownership and employment status, associated with aging diseases in this study that are not necessarily under the control of a person. This emphasizes the crucial role of tackling the social determinants of health to ensure that everyone has the best possible chance of leading a long and healthy life.
At the same time, the results offer a powerful message that a long service life is largely formed by the choices we make. This is great news unless you have good genes and hoped they would do the heavy work.
Ultimately, the results of this study reinforce the idea that although we can inherit certain genetic risks, how we eat, exercise and involve the world with the world is more important to determine how healthy we are and how long we live.
Hassan Vally does not work for, consult, in his own shares or receives financing from a company or organization that would benefit from this article and has not announced relevant ties with their academic appointment.

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