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 considerably reduces mortality. The evidence in this regard is so solid that, in times of fake news, this seems a truth safe from any conspiracy theory. But what about people who are genetically predisposed to having a shorter life? According to data from research carried out 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 there are preventive or therapeutic measures available. In these cases, can a healthy lifestyle also have enough impact to reverse this predisposition?
This question was answered by a study recently published in the scientific journal BMJ Evidence-Based Medicinebased on data from over 350,000 UK Biobank participants followed for an average of 13 years, has shown that genetics and lifestyle have an independent impact on people’s life expectancy; but that lifestyle has the ability to compensate for genetics and significantly extend the life of people predisposed to a shorter life.
Specifically, according to the research results, 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. life. For its part, 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 genetic risk of premature death can reduce that risk by approximately 62% and see their life expectancy extended by approximately 5.22 years when they turn 40.
“This is the first time that research has been conducted to understand to what extent a healthy lifestyle can counteract genetics,” Professor Xifeng Wu, a member of the Department of Big Data in Health Sciences at the Faculty of Medicine at Zhejiang University (China), explains to EL PAÍS. He highlights that the results of the research demonstrate the importance of “focusing on developing and maintaining healthy habits, regardless of what our genes say.”
“It is a very interesting study because it makes a joint assessment of genetics and lifestyle habits, to show that genetics, although it is a factor that acts independently on life expectancy, does not have everything to say,” analyses Almudena Beltrán de Miguel, specialist in internal medicine and member of the Check-up Unit of the Clínica Universidad de Navarra, who believes that this type of study offers medical professionals a “pathway” 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 of these factors can significantly offset the genetic risk of a shorter life expectancy, but we identified an optimal lifestyle combination that offered the best 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 great 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 make little impact on it in consultation,” says Almudena Beltrán. His 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 food and, especially, on the consumption of sugars: “We are witnessing the increasingly common appearance of type 2 diabetes in people aged 50, when previously this disease debuted at age 65.”
Based on the results of the study, which show that a healthy lifestyle is “crucial” to prolong life expectancy and improve people’s quality of life, Xifeng Wu believes that policy decisions regarding public health should focus “ “in promoting health education, encouraging preventive medical check-ups, and providing personalized health management to high genetic risk groups to reduce risk and improve public health.”
Ángel Gil de Miguel also focuses his demand on health education, who believes that we should 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 as a child, that marks and remains recorded. And yes, it is possible that from 18 to 35 you act wild, but from 40 onwards what you learned as a child comes back,” reflects the professor.
An opinion shared by Almudena Beltrán, who points out that this education in preventive medicine is essential so that, when the disease has not yet developed and very unfavorable lifestyle habits are being carried out, “a person realizes the need to change these habits to reverse all the inflammatory and oxidative substrate that precedes the disease, which will put them in a much more favorable position in life. It is never too late to change lifestyle habits.”
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