- Scientists say they have found a big indicator of how long you’ll live.
- The data suggest that genetics may be the biggest influence on lifespan.
- Experts stress that a healthy lifestyle still matters.
Lifestyle factors play a large role in living a long and healthy life, but scientists say new research may have found a big indicator of how long you’ll live.
The study, which was published in the journal Science, analyzed lifespan and genetics in individual sets of identical and fraternal twins across Denmark, Sweden, and the U.S. They then compared how well those factors matched across many sets of twins.
Because older records didn’t clearly state what people died from, the researchers had to estimate which deaths were caused by outside factors (like accidents or disease) and separate them from natural, internal…