Why is Lifestyle is More Important than Your Genes? Aging is in Your Hands...

July 22, 2025

What the Study Shows
Why Are These Results Important?
What Happens in Your Body When You Change Your Lifestyle?
What Can You Do?
Why Is This Study Relevant to You?
Conclusion: Your Daily Life Determines Your Aging
Original Publication
References

A new study shows: Your daily life influences your biological age 10 times more than your genes.

Smoking, exercise, nutrition, sleep, and stress directly affect your cellular health and life expectancy.

Of the 25 most relevant factors, 23 are controllable...

Lifestyle and environment largely determine your aging and disease risk.

Why do some people age faster or get sick more often than others? For a long time, genetics was considered the main factor for health and longevity. But a recent large-scale study from Oxford challenges this paradigm—and delivers impressive numbers: Your environment and lifestyle are about ten times more important for your life expectancy and biological age than your genes.

In the study, published in Nature Medicine, researchers analysed data from nearly half a million people from the UK Biobank. They examined 164 environmental factors as well as genetic risk profiles for 22 common diseases and tracked them over more than 12 years. The goal was to find out what has the greatest impact on aging processes and the risk of premature death.

What the Study Shows

The results are clear: Our lifestyle and environment play a much larger role in our health and life expectancy than our genes. Specifically, the study showed that 17% of the risk for early death is influenced by factors such as smoking, physical activity, nutrition, income, living conditions, and mental health. At first glance, 17% may not sound like much. But in health and longevity research, such numbers are enormously significant. They show that almost one-fifth of the risk for early death is directly influenced by our lifestyle and environment—factors we can actively shape ourselves. For comparison: Genetic predisposition explains less than 2% of the risk. This means our daily behavior—exercise, nutrition, stress management, and social conditions—has a 10-fold greater impact on our health than our genes.

Of the 25 identified key factors, 23 are modifiable—including daily exercise habits, sleep quality, stress management, and nutrition. Smoking had a particularly strong effect: it was associated with 21 different diseases. Socioeconomic factors were linked to 19 diseases, and physical activity to 17. Interestingly, even early life conditions such as body weight at age ten or the mother’s smoking during pregnancy influenced aging and disease risk decades later.

Why Are These Results Important?

The study shows that it’s not single, isolated factors that are decisive, but the combination of many small burdens and habits over the years. This whole is referred to as the exposome—the sum of all environmental factors we are exposed to throughout our lives.

While genetic risk remains more relevant for diseases like dementia or breast cancer, environmental and lifestyle factors are the dominant influences for heart, lung, and liver diseases, as well as many metabolic and inflammatory diseases. This insight opens up opportunities for prevention and healthy aging strategies—regardless of your genetic starting point.

What Happens in Your Body When You Change Your Lifestyle?

Our cells respond daily to our choices. Nutrition, exercise, sleep, and stress affect your mitochondria—the power plants of your cells—as well as inflammatory processes, oxidative stress, and repair mechanisms.

Inflammation regulation: Exercise and nutrient-rich nutrition reduce silent inflammation that can accelerate aging and disease.
Oxidative stress: Antioxidants from plant-based foods neutralize free radicals and protect cell structures.
Mitophagy: Exercise promotes the removal of damaged mitochondria and supports the formation of new, efficient cell power plants.
Epigenetics: Your lifestyle influences which genes are activated or deactivated—regardless of genetic makeup.

These mechanisms are not abstract or theoretical—they happen daily and affect how efficiently your cells produce energy, how well your immune system works, and how resilient your body remains.

What Can You Do?

The study offers no empty advice, but a clear message: The combination of exercise, nutrition, sleep, social stability, and stress management can measurably influence your aging processes. You can actively influence your biological age by using these levers:

Exercise: Daily activity strengthens your mitochondria and reduces inflammation.
Nutrition: Plant-based, nutrient-rich foods provide antioxidants and cell-protective substances.
Sleep: 7–8 hours of sleep per night promote cell repair and regeneration.
Stress management: Breathing exercises, meditation, and nature breaks lower cortisol levels.
Social factors: Community and emotional stability support your resilience.
Smoke-free living: Quitting smoking is one of the most important levers for healthy cells.

What matters is not perfection, but continuity: Even small, regular changes add up to a big effect on your health and cell function.

Why Is This Study Relevant to You?

Responsibility for your health largely lies with yourself. You can actively promote your energy, mental performance, and vitality through your daily life—regardless of your genetic predisposition.

Conclusion: Your Daily Life Determines Your Aging

This research represents a powerful shift in understanding aging: it’s not just about genetics, it’s about lifestyle. You can actively shape how your body ages by making conscious choices—what you eat, how you move, how well you sleep, and how you manage stress.

Biological age is not fixed. Every walk you take, every healthy meal you eat, every night of good sleep and every moment of mindful calm nudges your cells toward greater vitality. You have the power to influence your future health, energy, and longevity—starting today.

Aging is not fate. It's a process you can influence.

Original Publication

Argentieri MA, Amin N, Nevado-Holgado AJ et al. Integrating the environmental and genetic architectures of aging and mortality. Nature Medicine. 2025 Feb 19.

References

Back to blog