CNN)Your parents may have a significant influence on how likely you are to stay healthy later in life.
Scientists have long suspected that the lifespan of parents holds clues to how long their own children will live, and now a new study reveals that parents' longevity is linked to their offspring's heart health, too.
So, long-lived parents may reduce the risk of morbidity and mortality in their kids, according to the study, which was published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology on Monday.
People who have lived to 100 share their longevity secrets
People who have lived to 100 share their secrets
"This research is important, as it shows that knowing the age at which your parents died provides information on your own risk of death and disease," said Janice Atkins, a research fellow at the University of Exeter's Medical School in England and lead author of the study.
"Although people with longer-lived parents are more likely to live longer themselves, there are lots of ways for those with shorter-lived parents to improve their health," she added. "Current public health advice about being physically active, such as going for regular walks, eating well and not smoking are very relevant, and people can really take their health into their own hands."
Parents, longevity linked
The study involved 186,151 non-adopted adults, between 55 and 73 years old, with deceased parents. The researchers analyzed health data on each participant using the UK Biobank, a health resource that collects long-term health information on volunteers.
The data were collected over eight years, and the researchers plotted the relationships between the participants' health and their parents' ages of death.
Saying 'hello' can extend your life
Saying 'hello' can extend your life 01:13
It turned out that there was an inverse relationship between the age of a parent's death and the longevity of his or her offspring. When the parents reached about age 70 and older, their offspring's risk of death dropped by about 17%, compared with their counterparts, and continued to fall the longer the parents lived.
"The risk of death was 17% lower for each decade that at least one parent lived beyond the age of 70 years," Atkins said.
Additionally, participants with longer-lived parents had overall lower incidences of heart disease, heart failure, stroke, hypertension, anemia, high cholesterol and atrial fibrillation compared with their counterparts.
"However, it is important to note that these results are group-level effects, therefore general tendencies, which do not directly apply to individuals," Atkins said. "If people are exposed to the big health risk factors, this will be more important to health than the age at which their parents died."
Such big health risk factors could include smoking, for instance. Atkins added that these findings should also be applicable to people in the United States.