Science believes you could live longer than you expect

It’s surprising just how far the strength and conditioning of athletes has come today. Case in point: Tom Brady just won the Super Bowl at the age of 43. Serena Williams is still going strong despite knocking on 40, and Joe Biden recently clinched the US presidency at 78, (even though he’s not an athlete). Perhaps as a species, we’re gradually beginning to understand the concept of aging. Today, older people are staying healthier, living longer, and accomplishing achievements that were previously reserved for the young and energetic. If ever there was a time that the phrase “age is nothing but a number” resonates deeply, then it’s now. But it’s not just athletes, aristocrats, and the bourgeoise that are purportedly “drinking from the fountain of youth.” According to data from the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), the number of people aged over 85 years that were disable dropped by one-third between 1982 and 2005. As for the disabled who were institutionalized, the percentage slashed in half. Generally, scientists distinguish between our chronological age—that is, how old we are in terms of calendar years—and our biological age—how old our body is in terms of biological markers as well as organ functioning. And it turns out that these two can vary a lot depending on the person. In fact, a recent study conducted on a pool of 1,000 New Zealanders showed that the slowest aging people aged by about 0.40 biological years in correlation to their chronological age. On the other hand, the fastest aging person clocked 2.44 additional biological years for every chronological year. This depended greatly on factors such as lifestyle, environment, and genetics. As a country, Americans are aging slower than ever before. In fact, according to a joint study carried out by E. Levine from Yale, and Eileen M. Crimmins from the University of Southern California, they found that men aged 60 to 79 from the period of 2007 to 2010 aged four biological years slower than the same age group from 1988 to 1994. Reason being? Improvements in medication and lifestyle. This shows that people are not only living longer, but staying healthier, too! But increase in population longevity is not a recent thing. For example, in the 1900s, the life expectancy in the United States was 47 years. Today, it’s an impressive 78 years, but that’s not the only advancement in the field of longevity. In fact, we might be onto something much greater. At the start of the 20th Century, medicine mainly addressed the issues of longevity by battling diseases. Innovations mostly centered on developing inoculations and vaccines that prevented young people from dying from communicable diseases. But once the second half came, the focus shifted towards enhancing modern lifestyle and developing breakthroughs against conditions resulting in middle-aged deaths such as cardiovascular disease and cancer. So while you’re most likely to live to the age of 65 in this day and age, things may start to go downhill once you surpass this threshold. And even if you do beat ravaging illnesses like lung cancer, your body’s super-fast deterioration may make you meet your end much faster. Case in point: most 80 to 90-year-olds tend to suffer from multiple conditions. In fact, you’ll be shocked to know that even if we were to find a potent cure to all cancers, it would add less than 3 years to America’s average life expectancy of 78 years. And that’s why we must continue to focus on longevity. But longevity alone isn’t enough. We also need to factor in the process of aging, and all the risk factors that it brings to us later in life. According to Dr. S. Jay Olshansky—a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Illinois Chicago—we have to start by defining what aging is at its core. It is “the accumulation of random damage to the building blocks of life—especially to DNA, certain proteins, carbohydrates, and lipids—that begins early in life and eventually exceeds the body’s self-repair capabilities.” Now the question is: can we intervene and eventually beat the aging process? Well, the consensus is that we might be on the verge of a transformation. As we age, we accumulate more “senescent” cells in our bodies that secrete inflammatory molecules that consequently speed up the aging process. But in 2011, researchers were able to successfully remove these senescent cells in mice, thereby extending their lifespans. Human clinical trials on the procedure began in 2018. But the turning point of anti-aging is when we will finally develop and roll out treatments for aging that will make life expectancy rise exponentially over the years. That being said, it’s crystal clear that Americans, for now, are living much longer and healthier than their counterparts did 50 years ago.