Longevity Secrets: How to Live to 100

Experts predict that the number of centenarians, meaning people who live to be at least 100 years old, will continue to rise in the coming decades. While Hereditary It plays a huge role in health agingPhysical activity, social support, diet and where you live can also affect your chances of living a very long life.

Sister Andre, a French Catholic nun born Lucille Radon, who was the oldest living person in the world, passed away recently at the age of 118. The two oldest surviving people are now believed to be María Moreira, a 115-year-old Spanish woman born in the US, and Fouza Tatsumi, who lives in Osaka, Japan, who is also 115 days old but 52 days younger than Moreira, according to the data. The database is from the Gerontology Research Group.

Based on a 2022 estimate by the United Nations, there are 593,000 centenarians worldwide – a rapidly growing age group. The United Nations predicts that by 2050 there will be 3.7 million centenarians alive.

Experts who study human lifespan extension believe that the reason a person can live to be more than 100 years old begins with their DNA — the genes they inherited from their parents. “You can’t get this far without actually winning the genetic lottery at birth,” Jay Olshansky, a professor of public health at the University of Illinois at Chicago, told The Washington Post. “So rule number 1 is genetics.”

Experts say the older your parents are, the more likely you are to live a longer, healthier life. Luigi Ferrucci, scientific director at the US National Institute on Aging, confirms that children who reach the age of one hundred years usually live healthier and longer than their peers. “It’s likely not a single gene, but rather a profile, a combination of genes,” he adds.

changes in retirement

Nir Barzilai, director of the Institute for Geriatric Research at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, has studied the lives of hundreds of centenarians, married couples, and their children. It is noted that children of centenarians are “about 10 years healthier” than their peers. It collects data on 10,000 centenarians, their children, and a control group from the general population in order to identify different genes that contribute to longevity. People who have a particular mutation in their growth hormone, for example, Barzilai notes, are “very likely to live longer” because their cells spend more energy maintaining existing ones, not growing new ones. The plan is to use artificial intelligence to help find genes and develop drugs from them. “We really want to find all the longevity genes,” he concludes.

Olshansky and his colleagues are preparing to launch a platform in February where users can upload data from a genetic testing service to determine whether they have genes “associated with extraordinary longevity” so they can plan financially for their retirement. “I am a carrier of, for example, two sets of genes associated with longevity,” Olshansky says. “For scheduling reasons, I should probably delay my retirement.”

Environment and lifestyle

Experts disagree on how much genes influence a person’s lifespan versus lifestyle. But most experts say good genes will only get you so far. Some research has shown that genes are responsible for about 25 percent of longevity, says Jimmy Justice, assistant professor of gerontology at Wake Forest University. The remaining 75% has to do with your environment – where you live, what you eat, how often you exercise and your support system through friends or family.

He adds that for those of us not gifted with a promising set of genes, the goal is not to push the boundaries of human life expectancy. Instead, researchers want to understand how people can live full, healthy lives with the time they have. “The goal is not necessarily to live to be 118. It is to live well in these years. What are the individual things that we do so that we can really benefit from our health and live a healthier life in the years we are given?” He concludes. Of course, a good public health system “cannot be underestimated. If you have a better health care system, you will have a higher life expectancy.”

Where one lives — a war zone, a place with access to good health care, a heavily polluted country, a developed country where people sit a lot — plays an important role in longevity. Researchers have recently found that “life stressors directly affect some of the biological mechanisms of aging,” Ferrucci asserts, adding that our exposure to various types of pollution can also harm our health in general. Healthy older adults tend to stay physically active, spend time outside, and have strong bonds with friends and family.

“Just walking makes a big difference,” he affirms.

printed editionnews»