How often have you pondered your dad’s diabetes or the heart disease that runs in the family and thought, “Am I going to get that? Is it inevitable?”
With all we’ve learned about genetics, it seems reasonable to think that some of our health outcomes will be determined by those invisible forces buried deep in our DNA. But a new study has shown that how long we live has more to do with our behavior than with our genes, implying that our choices may have a much more profound impact on our longevity than we may have thought.
The Study
The authors of the
study, published in the Human Kinetics Journal, sought to analyze the relationship between physical activity and sedentary behavior, and their associations with mortality based on a score that evaluated genetic risk factors. The study involved 5,446 post-menopausal women 63 years of age or older. The women were put into three groups based on their genetic risk factors. These risk factors were measured by a “small selection of single-nucleotide polymorphisms” that are well-known to affect longevity.
