How both your genes and lifestyle alter risk of age-related diseases

Does your lifestyle play the biggest role in determining your risk of age-related conditions, or does the influence of your genes dominate? Thanks to the largest study of its kind, we now have our most comprehensive view yet of how these two factors influence the chance of developing 22 conditions, including dementia and heart disease.

Prior studies have linked a wide range of environmental factors to ageing more quickly. But these have involved just a few thousand people and didn’t look at the risks of specific…