April 19, 2025 02:51 am (IST)
Follow us:
facebook-white sharing button
twitter-white sharing button
instagram-white sharing button
youtube-white sharing button
Andhra student dies in accident in US' Texas days before her graduation | Karnataka students allegedly forced to remove sacred threads at CET exam centre, sparks outrage | Bengal BJP leader Dilip Ghosh marries party colleague Rinku Majumdar in an intimate ceremony today | Narendra Modi, Elon Musk discuss Indo-US tech collaboration | 'Focus on protecting rights of own minorities': India slams Bangladesh's remark on Murshidabad riots | Gangster Harpreet Singh, alias Happy Passia, responsible for Punjab terror attacks arrested in US | No change in 'waqf by user' for now till next hearing: Supreme Court to Centre | Supreme Court rules Bengal govt teachers 'not identified as tainted' in SSC scam can continue till fresh appointments | 'Yogi sabse bada bhogi hai': Mamata Banerjee slams Uttar Pradesh CM over Murshidabad riots remark | Uttar Pradesh: 11-year-old speech and hearing impaired girl brutally raped, accused nabbed

Learning and staying in shape key to longer lifespan, finds study

| @indiablooms | Oct 16, 2017, at 01:49 am
New York, Oct 15 (IBNS): People who are overweight cut their life expectancy by two months for every extra kilogramme of weight they carry, research suggests.

A major study of the genes that underpin longevity has also found that education leads to a longer life, with almost a year added for each year spent studying beyond school.

Other key findings are that people who give up smoking, study for longer and are open to new experiences might expect to live longer.

Scientists at the University of Edinburgh analysed genetic information from more than 600,000 people alongside records of their parents’ lifespan.

Because people share half of their genetic information with each of their parents, the team were able to calculate the impact of various genes on life expectancy, read the University of Edinburgh website.

Lifestyle choices are influenced to a certain extent by our DNA – genes, for example, have been linked to increased alcohol consumption and addiction.

The researchers were therefore able to work out which have the greatest influence on lifespan.

Their method was designed to rule out the chances that any observed associations could be caused by a separate, linked factor.

This enabled them to pinpoint exactly which lifestyle factors cause people to live longer, or shorter, lives.

They found that cigarette smoking and traits associated with lung cancer had the greatest impact on shortening lifespan.

For example, smoking a packet of cigarettes per day over a lifetime knocks an average of seven years off life expectancy, they calculated.

But smokers who give up can eventually expect to live as long as somebody who has never smoked.

Body fat and other factors linked to diabetes also have a negative influence on life expectancy.

"Our study has estimated the causal effect of lifestyle choices. We found that, on average, smoking a pack a day reduces lifespan by 7 years, whilst losing one kilogram of weight will increase your lifespan by two months," Peter Joshi , Chancellor’s Fellow, Usher Institute of Population Health Sciences and Informatics.

The study also identified two new DNA differences that affect lifespan. The first – in a gene that affects blood cholesterol levels – reduces lifespan by around eight months.

The second – in a gene linked to the immune system – adds around half a year to life expectancy.

The research, published in Nature Communications, was funded by the Medical Research Council.

 

Image:Wikimedia commons

Support Our Journalism

We cannot do without you.. your contribution supports unbiased journalism

IBNS is not driven by any ism- not wokeism, not racism, not skewed secularism, not hyper right-wing or left liberal ideals, nor by any hardline religious beliefs or hyper nationalism. We want to serve you good old objective news, as they are. We do not judge or preach. We let people decide for themselves. We only try to present factual and well-sourced news.

Support objective journalism for a small contribution.
Close menu