Leading a healthy lifestyle can slow down the genetic body clock and add an extra five years to life, a first-of-its-kind study has found.
The groundbreaking research found people genetically predisposed to a shorter life improved their odds of survival by engaging in regular exercise, a healthy diet, getting enough sleep and not smoking.
Scores of studies have pointed to the longevity benefits of living well.
The latest research confirms these findings while giving hope to those who carry a high genetic risk of a shorter life.
Never smoking can increase odds of survival in those predisposed to die early
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Meanwhile, people with unhealthy lifestyles have a 78 percent increased chance of early death, regardless of their genetic risk.
The study also found that having both an unhealthy lifestyle and shorter lifespan genes more than doubled the risk of early death compared with people with luckier genes and healthy lifestyles.
However, researchers found that people did appear to have a degree of control over what happened.
Their findings showed that the genetic risk of a shorter lifespan or premature death might be offset by a favourable lifestyle by around 62 percent.
They said: “Participants with high genetic risk could prolong approximately 5.22 years of life expectancy at age 40 with a favourable lifestyle.”
The “optimal lifestyle combination” for a longer life was found to be “never smoking, regular physical activity, adequate sleep duration, and healthy diet.”
Published in the journal BMJ Evidence Based Medicine, the study followed people for 13 years on average, during which time 24,239 deaths occurred.
People were grouped into three genetically determined lifespan categories including long (20.1 percent), intermediate (60.1 percent), and short (19.8 percent), and into three lifestyle score categories including favourable (23.1 percent), intermediate (55.6 percent), and unfavourable (21.3 percent).
Other scores looked at whether people smoked, drank alcohol, took exercise, their body shape, healthy diet and sleep
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Researchers used polygenic risk scores to look at multiple genetic variants to arrive at a person’s overall genetic predisposition to a longer or shorter life.
Other scores looked at whether people smoked, drank alcohol, took exercise, their body shape, healthy diet and sleep.
The research reflects public health advice. According to the NHS, the building blocks of “living well” include eating a balanced diet, healthy weight, exercise, quitting smoking and drinking less alcohol.
The researchers in the new study included staff from Zhejiang University School of Medicine in China and the University of Edinburgh.
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