The 100-Year Life Health Education and Government
Researchers at Oxford have found that environmental factors including smoking, physical activity and socioeconomic status have a greater impact on health and premature death than genes.
Environmental exposure explains 17 per cent of the variation in risk of death, according to a study in Nature Medicine, compared with less than 2 per cent explained by genetic predisposition.
The researchers used data from nearly half a million participants stored in the UK Biobank – a large-scale database that houses biological samples and health-related information.
Of 25 independent factors analysed, smoking was associated with the highest number of diseases (21), followed by socioeconomic factors such as household income, home ownership, employment status (19) and physical activity (17).
This is especially true for diseases of the lung, heart and liver. Genetic risk dominates for dementias and breast cancer.
