- Researchers are still working to crack the code of aging to help people live a longer, healthier life.
- Past studies show that a variety of factors play a role in how long we live, including both lifestyle behaviors and environmental factors.
- A new study provides more evidence of how lifestyle and environmental factors influence how we age, including smoking status, physical activity, and living conditions.
For many years, researchers have been working on cracking the code of aging to help people live a
Past studies provide evidence that a variety of factors play a role in how long we live, including
Now, a new study recently published in the journal
For this study, researchers analyzed medical data from almost half a million participants of the UK Biobank to determine the impact of 164 different lifestyle and environmental factors on aging, age-related diseases, and premature death.
“Our field has long inferred from genetic studies that aging and lifespan must be more environmental than genetic, but we realized early on in our project that studying the exposome might give us the ability to test that directly in large population data,” Austin Argentieri, PhD, research fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital and first author of this study explained to Medical News Today.
During the study, scientists used a unique aging model called an “aging clock” to help determine which environmental factors influenced aging the most.
What is an ‘aging clock’?“An ‘aging clock’ estimates a person’s biological age based on molecular markers in their body, rather than just their chronological age (how many years they’ve lived). Think of it like a stopwatch that measures how your body is aging internally, not just counting the years.”
— Austin Argentieri, PhD
“In a
“We used the proteomic aging clock in this current paper because we wanted to identify exposures that are important for aging, and so we decided that we would only select exposures that were associated with both mortality and the proteomic age clock in consistent directions,” he continued.
“If an exposure was associated with mortality and the proteomic clock in different directions … then we would have excluded that exposure because it is implausible that an exposure could both increase risk of mortality but slow down aging (or vice versa). So in essence we used the proteomic aging clock to get a better sense of biological plausibility for each of the mortality-associated exposures,” he added.
At the study’s conclusion, Argentieri and his team identified 25 lifestyle and environmental factors — 23 that they reported are modifiable — that were associated with mortality and proteomic aging, as well as aging biomarkers and major disease risk factors.
These include:
- Cheese consumption
- Ease of skin tanning
- Education years
- Employment status
- Ethnicity
- Frequency of feeling tired
- Gym use
- History of financial difficulties
- Household income
- Physical activity
- Sleeping hours
- Smoking status
- Type of housing (i.e. house, apartment, mobile home, etc.)
- Using an open fire for heating
- Weight and height at 10 years old
Researchers found that smoking, socioeconomic status, physical activity, and living conditions were the factors that had the most influence on mortality and biological aging. Smoking alone was associated with 21 diseases, and socioeconomic factors and tiredness frequency with 19 diseases.
“This means that a few fundamental aspects of our environments and lives could possibly have a profound influence on whether we live a long healthy life. In a time when there is lots of attention paid to fancy new trends in wellness, it reminds us that getting back to basics will still possibly have the largest and most strategic impact on improving population health,” Argentieri explained.
Overall, researchers attributed 17% of the variation in risk of death to environmental factors, compared to less than 2% explained by genetic predisposition for 22 major diseases.
Scientists also found that environmental exposures had a greater effect on lung, heart, and liver diseases, while genetic risk still dominated for dementias and breast cancer.
“This [d]emonstrates that our environments and lifestyle are almost 10 times more important in explaining mortality risk than our genetic predisposition for major diseases causes of death. It means that we have the power to have a major impact on preventing early mortality if we focus on improving our environmental and economic conditions.”
— Austin Argentieri, PhD
“This research should give us all hope that aging is not fully predetermined in our genes, but it is something that is shaped in our environments. This means that we have the power to take our own health in our hands preventatively through not just changes to lifestyle but also through policy and intervention efforts aimed at reducing our exposures to harmful environments,” Argentieri said.
MNT had the chance to speak with Cheng-Han Chen, MD, a board certified interventional cardiologist and medical director of the Structural Heart Program at MemorialCare Saddleback Medical Center in Laguna Hills, CA, about this study.
“This population-based study found that environmental factors — such as physical inactivity and socioeconomic factors — play a much bigger role than genetic factors in the development of disease and early death. These findings reinforce what we understand about the significant health implications of many harmful environmental exposures such as smoking.”
— Cheng-Han Chen, MD
“As most of the identified lifestyle and environmental factors are considered to (be) modifiable, there is a tremendous opportunity to reduce the global burden of disease by addressing and ameliorating these risk factors,” Chen said.
“The environmental factors in this study explained only about 17% of the variation in the risk of death. There are clearly many more as-yet-unidentified risks to be addressed. Future research could utilize these study’s techniques to investigate other possible environmental risk factors (such as chemical exposures) for their contribution to disease,” he added.
MNT also talked to Wael Harb, MD, a board certified hematologist and medical oncologist at Orange Coast Medical Center in Fountain Valley, CA, about this research. He said quantifying the extent to which modifiable factors impact biological aging and premature mortality underscores the importance of preventive strategies.
“This study provides compelling evidence supporting the long-held understanding that lifestyle and environmental factors play a crucial role in determining health outcomes, often outweighing genetic predispositions. The finding that environmental exposures account for 17% of mortality risk compared to less than 2% from genetics is particularly striking and highlights the significant potential for public health interventions.”
— Wael Harb, MD
“The next logical step would be to dive deeper into the specific mechanisms by which key environmental factors accelerate aging and contribute to disease. Longitudinal studies focusing on intervention strategies — such as smoking cessation programs, physical activity promotion, and improvements in socioeconomic conditions — would help validate whether modifying these exposures can indeed slow biological aging and reduce premature mortality,” Harb said.
“Additionally, integrating multi-omics data — genomics, proteomics, and metabolomics — could offer a more comprehensive view of how environmental and genetic factors interplay, leading to more personalized approaches to preventive care,” he added. “It would also be valuable to replicate these findings in diverse populations to ensure the conclusions are broadly applicable.”
