{"id":19551,"date":"2025-01-08T09:00:02","date_gmt":"2025-01-08T10:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=19551"},"modified":"2025-01-08T10:28:20","modified_gmt":"2025-01-08T10:28:20","slug":"what-matters-more-for-longevity-genes-or-lifestyle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=19551","title":{"rendered":"What Matters More for Longevity: Genes or Lifestyle?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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It depends on what your goal is.<\/p>\n

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When Dr. Nir Barzilai met the 100-year-old Helen Reichert, she was smoking a cigarette. Dr. Barzilai, the director of the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, recalled Mrs. Reichert saying that doctors had repeatedly told her to quit. But those doctors had all died, Mrs. Reichert noted, and she hadn\u2019t. Mrs. Reichert lived almost another decade before passing away in 2011.<\/p>\n

There are countless stories about people who reach 100<\/a>, and their daily habits sometimes flout conventional advice on diet, exercise, and alcohol and tobacco use. Yet decades of research shows that ignoring this advice can negatively affect most people\u2019s health and cut their lives short.<\/p>\n

So how much of a person\u2019s longevity can be attributed to lifestyle choices and how much is just luck \u2014 or lucky genetics? It depends on how long you\u2019re hoping to live.<\/p>\n

Research suggests<\/a> that making it to 80 or even 90 is largely in our control. \u201cThere\u2019s very clear evidence that for the general population, living a healthy lifestyle\u201d does extend the life span, said Dr. Sofiya Milman, a professor of medicine and genetics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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One study<\/a> published last year, which analyzed the lifestyles of more than 276,000 male and female United States veterans, found that adopting eight healthy behaviors could add up to 24 years to people\u2019s lives. They included eating a healthy diet, getting regular physical activity, sleeping well, managing stress, having strong relationships, and not smoking, abusing opioids or drinking to excess.<\/p>\n

If the veterans adhered to all eight behaviors, the researchers calculated that they could expect to live to about age 87. To most people, that probably sounds pretty good; after all, it\u2019s almost 10 years longer than the average U.S. life expectancy<\/a>. But to Dr. Milman, who was not involved in the study, the results showed that \u201ceven if you do everything right,\u201d you still can\u2019t expect to live to 100.<\/p>\n

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It depends on what your goal is.When Dr. Nir Barzilai met the 100-year-old Helen Reichert, she was smoking a cigarette. Dr. Barzilai, the director of the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, recalled Mrs. Reichert saying that doctors had repeatedly told her to quit. But those doctors had all died, Mrs. Reichert noted, and she hadn\u2019t. Mrs. Reichert lived almost another decade before passing away in 2011.There are countless stories about people who reach 100, and their daily habits sometimes flout conventional advice on diet, exercise, and alcohol and tobacco use. Yet decades of research shows that ignoring this advice can negatively affect most people\u2019s health and cut their lives short.So how much of a person\u2019s longevity can be attributed to lifestyle choices and how much is just luck \u2014 or lucky genetics? It depends on how long you\u2019re hoping to live.Research suggests that making it to 80 or even 90 is largely in our control. \u201cThere\u2019s very clear evidence that for the general population, living a healthy lifestyle\u201d does extend the life span, said Dr. Sofiya Milman, a professor of medicine and genetics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.One study published last year, which analyzed the lifestyles of more than 276,000 male and female United States veterans, found that adopting eight healthy behaviors could add up to 24 years to people\u2019s lives. They included eating a healthy diet, getting regular physical activity, sleeping well, managing stress, having strong relationships, and not smoking, abusing opioids or drinking to excess.If the veterans adhered to all eight behaviors, the researchers calculated that they could expect to live to about age 87. To most people, that probably sounds pretty good; after all, it\u2019s almost 10 years longer than the average U.S. life expectancy. But to Dr. Milman, who was not involved in the study, the results showed that \u201ceven if you do everything right,\u201d you still can\u2019t expect to live to 100.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19553,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19551"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19551\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19554,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19551\/revisions\/19554"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}