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The Life Quiz · 32 questions · about 5 min

Why your habits matter more than your genes

Why it matters

How long you live is mostly not written in your genes. Twin studies put the heritability of lifespan at about 25% [1], and family-tree data suggest it is lower still [2]. The rest is habits and circumstances: lifelong smoking costs about ten years of life [3], while meeting the activity guideline is linked to about 3.4 extra years [4].

Sources

  1. [1]Herskind AM, McGue M, Holm NV, et al., Hum Genet 1996 Evidence: Low
  2. [2]Ruby et al., Genetics 2018 Evidence: Low
  3. [3]Jha P, Ramasundarahettige C, Landsman V, et al., N Engl J Med 2013 Evidence: Low
  4. [4]Moore SC, Patel AV, Matthews CE, et al., PLoS Med 2012 Evidence: High