Science has long demonstrated that a healthy lifestyle improves people’s quality of life, increases life expectancy, reduces the prevalence of certain chronic diseases, and significantly decreases mortality. The evidence is so solid that, in times of fake news, this seems to be a truth safe from any conspiracy theory. But what about people who are genetically predisposed to having a shorter life? According to data from a study conducted in Iceland, it is estimated that around 4% of the population carries what are known as actionable genotypes, that is, genotypes associated with a shorter life because they increase the risk of suffering from a disease for which preventive or therapeutic measures are available. In these cases, can a healthy lifestyle also have a sufficient impact to reverse this predisposition?
This question has been answered by a study recently published in the scientific journal BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine, based on data from more than 350,000 participants in the UK Biobank who were followed for an average of 13 years. This study has shown that genetics and lifestyles have an independent impact on people’s life expectancy; but that the latter have the ability to compensate for genetics and significantly lengthen the lives of people with a predisposition to a shorter life.
MORE INFORMATION
Specifically, according to the results of the research, people with a high genetic predisposition to a shorter life expectancy have a 21% higher risk of premature death compared to those with a low genetic risk, regardless of their lifestyle choices. On the other hand, an unhealthy lifestyle would be associated with a 78% higher risk of premature death, regardless of genetic determinants. And most importantly: thanks to a healthy lifestyle, people with a genetic risk of premature death can reduce that risk by approximately 62% and see their life expectancy extended by approximately 5.22 years at the age of 40. “This is the first time that research has been conducted to understand to what extent a healthy lifestyle can counteract genetics,” explains Professor Xifeng Wu to EL PAÍS, a member of the Big Data in Health Sciences department at the School of Medicine of Zhejiang University (China), who highlights that the results of the research demonstrate the importance of “focusing on developing and maintaining healthy habits, no matter what our genes say.” “It’s a very interesting work because it makes a joint assessment of genetics and lifestyle habits, to demonstrate that genetics, although it is a factor that acts independently on life expectancy, does not have everything to say,” analyzes Almudena Beltrán de Miguel, a specialist in internal medicine and a member of the Check-up Unit at the University of Navarra Clinic, who considers that these types of studies offer medical professionals an “access route” towards a more participatory medicine “in which the patient is encouraged to take the reins of their own health.”
What is meant by a healthy lifestyle? The study evaluated several aspects related to a healthy lifestyle, including not smoking, maintaining moderate alcohol consumption, engaging in regular physical activity, maintaining a healthy body weight, ensuring adequate sleep duration, and following a healthy diet; and from them, the study participants were grouped into three lifestyle categories: favorable, intermediate, and unfavorable. “In the study, we saw that all these factors can significantly compensate for the genetic risk of a shorter life expectancy, but we identified an optimal combination of lifestyle that offered better benefits for prolonging human life and that contained four lifestyle factors: not smoking, engaging in regular physical activity, maintaining adequate sleep duration, and following a healthy diet,” explains Xifeng Wu. “There is a lot of work to be done on sleep, because until now almost no one included it as a healthy lifestyle habit. And as this study shows, it is, both from a physical and psychological point of view. My feeling is that we take little care of sleep hygiene and that we do little to emphasize it in consultation,” says Almudena Beltrán. Her opinion is shared by Ángel Gil de Miguel, professor of Preventive Medicine and Public Health at the Rey Juan Carlos University of Madrid, who also highlights the need to “insist much more” on diet and, in particular, on sugar consumption: “We are witnessing the increasingly frequent appearance of type 2 diabetes in people aged 50, when before this disease debuted at 65.” Based on the results of the study, which show that a healthy lifestyle is “crucial” for extending life expectancy and improving people’s quality of life, Xifeng Wu believes that public health policy decisions should focus on “promoting health education, encouraging preventive medical check-ups, and providing personalized health management for high-risk genetic groups to reduce them and improve public health.”
Ángel Gil de Miguel also focuses his claim on health education, considering that it would be necessary to start “a little earlier each time” to talk about what healthy lifestyles are. “You have to start from school to create those habits, because what has been seen in other studies is that, if you are trained in good habits from a young age, that marks and is engraved. And yes, it is possible that from 18 to 35 you go wild, but from 40 onwards what you learned as a child comes back,” reflects the professor.
Almudena Beltrán shares this opinion, pointing out that this education in preventive medicine is basic so that, when the disease has not yet developed and very unfavorable lifestyle habits are being carried out, “a person becomes aware of the need to change those habits to reverse all the inflammatory and oxidative substrate that precedes the disease, which will put them in a much more favorable life position. It’s never too late to change lifestyle habits.”
