A study led by researchers from Oxford Population Health has shown that a range of environmental factors, including lifestyle (smoking and physical activity), and living conditions, have a greater impact on health and premature death than our genes.

New research highlights how lifestyle and living conditions can substantially increase risk of early death and disease

A range of external factors, including exercise and smoking, was almost 10 times more likely than genetic risk factors to explain premature mortality, scientists from the University of Oxford and Massachusetts General Hospital said in the Nature Medicine journal.