Scientists Have Figured Out the Longest You Could Possibly Live
Yes, we’re living longer than previous generations, but researchers have concluded that we won’t be breaking any of the “oldest people alive” records to date.
According to a new study published in the journal Nature, the total number of birthdays we can hope to celebrate are 115 — and this milestone was achieved back in the 1990s.
Longevity investigators analyzed the mortality and population data from more than 40 countries. While it’s estimated that babies born today can live to age 79 (a huge increase from the year 1900, where Americans were expected to check out at the age of 47) and that our maximum duration of life — meaning the absolute oldest age we can reach — has gone up, our maximal lifespan has hit a plateau.
“We were not surprised by these findings,” senior study author Jan Vijg, PhD, the Lola and Saul Kramer chair in molecular genetics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, tells Yahoo Beauty.
He explains that scientific consensus on maximum human lifespan had been somewhere around 100 —“based on some sort of average of a top percentile of oldest humans”— to 122 years old —“the age of Jeanne Calment when she died [in 1997], as the oldest human individual who ever lived,” says Vijg. “Our average maximum lifespan fits in with this.”
So being that that he and his colleagues have determined our topmost age, Vijg is hoping that future research will focus on how to enhance our limited time on this earth.
“Perhaps resources now being spent to increase lifespan should instead go to lengthening healthspan — the duration of old age spent in good health,” he says. “New developments may suggest that we can fight aging itself, which would fight all age-related diseases simultaneously. This would promote health in old age.”
Vijg refers to the FDA approved drugs metformin (for Type 2 diabetes) and rapamycin (an immunosuppressant), which “are being studied to determine if they can extend our healthspan,” he says. “These treatments may increase our average life expectancy and how long we remain healthy during that time, but I do not think they would change our maximum lifespan.”
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