Category Archives: Human Longevity

Dogs live forever, right? Right!? Unfortunately, like humans, dogs are mortals. Anyone who has lost a pet knows how heartbreaking it is to say goodbye. They are truly family members. If youre someone who hates goodbyes or simply wants a companion for as long as possible, look into the longest-living dog breeds. On average, domesticated dogs live about ten years, but the dogs on our list have been known to live well into their teens. Youll notice most of these pups are on the smaller side. While breed alone isnt going to tell you how long your dog will live, it can give you a pretty good idea.

You may have heard that if a dog is one year old, shes actually seven in human years. Wrong! While canines definitely age faster than humans, this simple calculation is misleading. According to the American Veterinary Medical Association, dogs actually hit infancy, childhood and adolescence all in their first year. Thats a lot of rapid growth (and part of the reason large breeds like Great Danes could get injured if over-exercised as puppies, because their joints arent fully equipped to handle all of their body weight). Most breeds reach adulthood between one and three years old. Dogs ages six through ten are considered senior citizens. When a dog turns seven, theyve effectively entered the geriatric phase of their life.

Theres some conflicting data on whether or not a breed directly impacts a dogs lifespan. Other factors seem to matter more when it comes to longevity. One 2018 study out of Budapest, Hungary, found that purebred dogs (dogs whose parents and ancestors are all the same breed) did not live as long as mixed breeds. Purebred pups in this study also developed health issues earlier than their mixed breed counterparts. Even the purebred dogs in the studys oldest dog group were younger than the mixed breeds in the oldest dog group.

On the other hand, a 2019 U.S. study did not find significant evidence that mixed breed dogs outlive purebred dogs. The researchers noted dogs with a more varied genetic background (aka, a mix of various breeds) lived roughly three to six months longer than dogs bred from one specific line; however, the same study found that dog size is a better indicator of lifespan than breed. Canines from the Mountain ancestral group (like Bernese Mountain Dogs and Great Pyrenees Mountain Dogs) were found to live 3.5 to 4.6 years less than other purebred groupslikely an unlucky combination of size and purebred status.

As mentioned, most of the longest-living dog breeds are small-sized pups. Scientists have determined this is basically because large dogs age more quickly than small dogs. Large breed bodies wear out sooner. Some researchers surmise cancer appears in large breeds more often (and sooner) because of their rapid growth spurts early in life.

Theres no secret to tiny canine DNA that makes them live longer. However, there are many things dog owners can do to extend the lives of their beloved pupsno matter their breed or height.

Without fail, the one thing researchers agree on when it comes to doggy longevity is the importance of maintaining a healthy weight. Dogs who are overweight have a much higher chance of developing health issues like respiratory problems, heart disease and kidney failure. Keeping your dog at a healthy weight through diet and exercise is the single best thing you can do to ensure a long, happy life.

Beyond that, regular dental checkups can drastically improve your dogs overall health. Avoid smoking around your dog or inside your home; secondhand smoke is linked to early signs of aging in canines.

Play with your dog regularlyespecially if you have an intelligent or working breed who needs mental stimulation. Happy dogs tend to live longer! In fact, the Hungarian study mentioned above says understanding past traumas your dog has experienced and preventing similar situations from happening in the future can improve overall health.

Finally, dont ignore strange changes in a senior dogs behavior or appearance. Almost half of dogs over the age of ten who pass away die from cancer. Cancer can manifest in visible tumors or atypical behavior like lethargy or loss of appetite.

RELATED: 12 Chinese Dog Breeds That Are Some of the Oldest and Rarest Breeds on Earth

Height: 12-16 inches

Weight: 12-16 pounds

Personality: Affectionate, curious

Activity Level: Low to Moderate

Shedding Factor: Hypoallergenic

Life Expectancy: 14-16 years

The American Hairless Terrier is one of many tiny breeds on our list who act a lot like cats. Full of affection for their families and inquisitive little buggers, these dogs can go from cuddly to playful at the drop of a hat. American Hairless Terriers dont have insane exercise requirements and are hypoallergenic due to the whole not-having-a-coat thing. An excellent choice for homebodies.

slowmotiongli/Getty Images

Height: 15-18 inches

Weight: 17-23 pounds

Personality: Loyal, lively

Activity Level: Moderate to High

Shedding Factor: Hypoallergenic

Life Expectancy: 11-16 years

Bedlington Terriers are also hypoallergenic sweethearts! Though wary of strangers and other dogs, Bedlingtons enjoy protecting and playing with their people. Keep their bodies and minds engaged with agility trainingtheyre great athletes.

Vincent Scherer/Getty Images

Height: 7-11 inches

Weight: 4-8 pounds

Personality: Smart, Loving

Activity Level: Moderate

Shedding Factor: Low

Life Expectancy: 16 years

As one of the newest participants in the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, the Biewer Terrier is a delightfully loving pup. They are smarties with a penchant for playtime. Biewer (pronounced Beaver) Terriers also know how to be mellow when the time comes. One thing to watch out for: sensitive tummies and digestion issues.

Purple Collar Pet Photography/Getty Images

Height: 5-8 inches

Weight: 6 pounds

Personality: Charming, independent

Activity Level: Moderate

Shedding Factor: Low

Life Expectancy: 14-16 years

Chihuahuas are certainly charmers who know how to get their way. Theyre also intelligent and can be trained well if its done early. Unfortunately, they arent touted as great with kiddos. Chihuahuas have been around for centuriesto keep them going, wrap them warmly in cold weather and have the vet check their eyes and hearts annually.

Robbie Goodall/Getty Images

Height: 11-13 inches

Weight: 8-12 pounds

Temperament: Lively, loving

Shedding Factor: Non-shedding/Hypoallergenic

Activity Level: Moderate to High

Life Expectancy: 13-18 years

Another ancient breed! Chinese Crested pups are absolute darlings. They love everyonekiddos includedand play well with other dogs. To keep these pups and other hairless varieties safe in the sun, apply a dog-friendly sunscreen. Though they may not look super cuddly, Chinese Crested pups make excellent therapy dogs.

Height: 10-12.5 inches

Weight: 8-10 pounds

Personality: Energetic, proud

Activity Level: High

Shedding Factor: Moderate to High

Life Expectancy: 12-16 years

Miniature Pinschers are goofballs with stubborn streaks. They enjoy activity and need plenty of exercise, though they may find training to be below them. Some look exactly like the large Doberman Pinscher, while others are rust- or red-hued. Min Pins, as theyre called, are pretty healthy pups as long as they have an energy outlet.

Michael Robbins/Getty Images

Height: 9-10 inches

Weight: 11-12 pounds

Personality: Alert, adaptable

Activity Level: High

Shedding Factor: Moderate

Life Expectancy: 12-16 years

These rascals were bred to hunt rodents and guard the home. So, while they make friends easily, they arent afraid to bark at potential prey (keeping them on leash is key to preventing a sprint towards a squirrel). Norfolk Terriers enjoy being in on the action and can adapt well to new situations.

Height: 8-11 inches

Weight: 5-10 pounds

Personality: Happy, Outgoing

Activity Level: High

Shedding Factor: Moderate

Life Expectancy: 14 to 16 years

If youre looking for a long-lived companion dog, look no further than the smiling Papillon. These tiny pups are intelligent and friendly. They work well with kids and love showering their favorite humans with affection. Papillons take well to training, too. Its wise to puppy-proof your house with a Papillonstairs and tall furniture could lead to bad falls and broken bones.

Height: 23-28 inches

Weight: 45-75 pounds

Personality: Athletic, sweet

Activity Level: High

Shedding Factor: Moderate

Life Expectancy: 12-17 years

If youre not prepared to provide ample exercise time and space to a Pointer, dont get one. These athletes loveand needto run around and do things. Theyre actually quite even-tempered pups, but their energy levels are through the roof. High prey drive and hunting instincts aside, Pointers are loving, sweet dogs.

IzaLysonArts/500px/Getty Images

Height: 6.5 inches

Weight: 5 pounds

Personality: Lively, Adaptable

Activity Level: Moderate to High

Shedding Factor: Moderate

Life Expectancy: 12 to 16 years

On the other hand, Pomeranians have almost no prey drive whatsoever. Theyre fluffy dogs with a penchant for announcing themselves to strangers. City dwellers and country folks alike do well with Pomeranians, as these dogs adapt to just about every environment.

Tara Gregg/EyeEm/Getty Images

Height: 15 inches

Weight: 40-70 pounds

Personality: Intelligent, active

Activity Level: High

Shedding Factor: Hypoallergenic

Life Expectancy: 10-18 years

The biggest dog breed on our list is the Standard Poodle, though Miniature and Toy Poodles have equally lengthy life spans. These are smart animals. When you exercise their bodies, youve got to exercise their minds. Honestly, Poodles have it all: affectionate natures, friendly dispositions, hypoallergenic coats and three sizes to choose from.

Kristina Jackson/Getty Images

Height: 10-13 inches (miniature), 13-18 inches (standard)

Weight: 10-25 pounds

Personality: Curious, loving

Activity Level: High

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These Are the 15 Longest Living Dog Breeds, Because You Want as Much Time as Possible with Fido - PureWow

If immigrants to the United States formed their own country, their pre-COVID-19 life expectancies would exceed or match those of the worlds leaders in longevity Swiss men and Japanese women.

A new study byPrinceton UniversityandUniversity of Southern Californiaresearchers estimates that immigration adds 1.4 to 1.5 years to U.S. life expectancy at birth. In 2017, foreign-born life expectancy reached 81.4 and 85.7 years for men and women, respectively. Thats about 7 and 6.2 years longer than the average lifespan of their U.S.-born counterparts.

Demographers knew that immigrants lived longer. The main question that we set out to answer was, How much is this really contributing to national life expectancy trends? saidArun Hendi, the lead author of the study andan assistant professor of sociology and public affairs at thePrinceton School of Public and International Affairs. Our results show that they're making an outsized contribution to national life expectancy.

The study was published in the September 2021 issue ofSSM Population Health, by Hendi and Jessica Ho, an assistant professor of gerontology and sociology at the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology. Their workprovides new insights on how immigrants contributed to national life expectancy trends over nearly three decades, from 1990 to 2017.

The research suggests that immigrants are responsible for approximately half of the recent U.S. gains in life expectancy. Moreover, the gap in life expectancy between foreign-born and native-born residents is widening.

In fact, the researchers say, Americans life expectancy would steeply decline if it werent for immigrants and their children. Under that scenario,U.S. life expectancy in 2017 would have reverted to levels last seen in 2003 74.4 years for men and 79.5 years for women more closely resembling the average lifespans of Tunisia and Ecuador.

Diverging trends during the last decade

Prior researchhas shown that between 2010 and 2017, overall U.S. life expectancies saw an unprecedented stagnation. The plateau has been largely attributed to drug overdose deaths among adults in their prime working ages and slowdowns in the rate of improvement in cardiovascular disease mortality. But this new study shows that immigrants experienced life expectancy gains during this period, while the U.S.-born population experienced declines.

If it weren't for immigrants, our national life expectancy stagnation that we experienced since 2010 would instead be a national decline in life expectancy, Ho said. For them to have that large an impact is unexpected because they represent a relatively small proportion of the U.S. population.

In addition, while the immigrant advantage was already present in 1990, the research shows that the difference between immigrants and the U.S.-born has widened substantially over time, with the ratio of American-born to foreign-born mortality rates nearly doubling by 2017.

When compared to immigrants life expectancy, the U.S.-born are doing poorly. Much of this is related to their very high mortality at the prime adult ages, said Ho, an expert in the social determinants of health and mortality. Low mortality among prime-aged immigrants doesnt just help the foreign-born it helps the U.S.-born too. Prime-aged adults are likely to be in the labor force and raising children. This means that they contribute to higher tax revenues and slower population aging.

Hendi says this is particularly relevant today because those prime adult ages are where the country is losing years of life due to drug overdose mortality and other preventable causes of death.

The fact that immigrants are doing well suggests that there is a capacity to thrive in the U.S., but the U.S.-born aren't fulfilling that potential, he said.

Life expectancy at age 1 by sex and nativity, 19902017. The gaps between the foreign-born and US-born life expectancies in 1990 and 2017 are indicated by brackets, with gap values adjacent to the brackets.

Graph courtesy of Arun Hendi

Immigrants a small but influential share of the U.S. population

Immigrants make up under 15% of the U.S. population, up from around 8% in 1990 but still a small percentage of the total. Hendi and Ho cite healthy behaviors and the changing selectivity of the immigrant population as factors that may contribute to their influence on total life expectancy.

Immigrants tend to be healthier in part due to the selective migration of those who have the health, resources and stamina to migrate to the U.S., and this selectivity may have grown stronger, Ho said.

The researchers highlight the role of increases in high-skilled immigration, which is partly reflected in changes in countries of origin as immigrant streams shift from Mexico to places like India and China. They also note that there may be pro-longevity characteristics of immigrant populations, regardless of country of origin, including a lower propensity to drink, smoke and use drugs than U.S.-born residents.

Many of Americas immigrants come from lower-income, less-developed nations, leading some to worry that these immigrants bring their home countries high-mortality conditions with them and thus drag down Americas national average longevity, Hendi said. But the results say just the opposite.Far from dragging down the national average, immigrants are bolstering American life expectancy. A big part of the story appears to be that immigrants take fewer risks when it comes to their health.

The study additionally found that the children of foreign-born residents retain some life expectancy advantage but do not fare as well as their parents.

Hendi and Houseddata from the National Vital Statistics System and the U.S. Census Bureau to estimate life expectancy levels among foreign-born, U.S.-born and total populations between 1990 and 2017.

The team plans to examine COVID-19's impact on immigrant life expectancies. A January 2021 studyby USC and Princeton researchers found the COVID-19 pandemic had significantly affected life expectancy, with stark declines in life expectancy among Black and Latino populations. Aseparate USC studylast July of a large diverse group of Medicaid enrollees found Latino patients had starkly higher odds than whites of testing positive for COVID-19 as well as higher odds of hospitalization and death.

This work was supported by grants from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (grants R00 HD083519 and P2C HD047879) and the National Institute on Aging (grant R01 AG060115) at the National Institutes of Health.

The rest is here:
Princeton, University of Southern California research shows that immigration boosts US life expectancy - Princeton University

Rejuvenate Bio Co-founder and CSONoah Davidsohn/Courtesy Rejuvenate Bio

The myth of a fountain of youth has inspired explorers for centuries, but modern scientists have come closer than any to understanding the secret of long, healthy lives. As it turns out, that secret is genetic.

Today, we think about aging as a dysregulation of genes and proteins that lead to age-related diseases, such as heart disease, obesity, diabetes, etc. When we talk about reversing aging or, more accurately, the disease states associated with aging were talking about reregulating genes back to the healthy state people had when they were younger, Noah Davidsohn, Ph.D., co-founder and CSO of Rejuvenate Bio, told BioSpace.

Unlike most companies addressing the diseases associated with aging, Rejuvenate Bio tackles multiple cardiac, metabolic and renal issues at once. Based on the data weve seen from mice and dogs, we can reverse obesity, diabetes and heart disease, Davidsohn said.

Rejuvenate Bio has two therapies in its pipeline, RJB -01 and RJB-02, targeting the cardiac, metabolic and renal space. Both are delivered via adeno-associated viruses (AAV).

Co-founder and CEO Daniel Oliver said he expects RJB-01 to enter the clinic for humans in 2023, and also to be commercialized for animals that same year. RJB-01 targets overexpression of FGF21 and downregulation of TGF1 via expression of sTGFR2. Rejuvenate is developing it for heart failure. Research conducted by other companies shows that targeting these genes is also effective and safe for weight loss, diabetes and tumor inhibition.

The second therapy, RJB-02, is designed to treat osteoarthritis. It targets two genes downregulation of TGF1 via expression of sTGFR2, and overexpression of Klotho. The latter is associated with improving cognitive performance as well as protecting the heart and kidneys, and increasing insulin sensitivity.

Davidsohn and Oliver proved the concept behind this gene therapy approach with colleagues at Harvard Medical School in 2019. A PNAS paper from the time detailed the results of modulating three genes associated with longevity fibroblast growth factor 21 (FGF21), Klotho, and a soluble form of mouse transforming growth factor- receptor 2 (sTGFR2) delivered via adeno-associated viruses. Notably, the researchers combined two therapies into one to treat four age-related conditions.

The results in mice showed a 58% increase in heart function in ascending aortic construction ensuing heart failure, a 38% reduction in -smooth muscle actin (SMA) expression, and a 75% reduction in renal medullary atrophy in mice subjected to unilateral ureteral obstruction, as well as a complete reversal of obesity and diabetes phenotypes in mice fed a constant high-fat diet, the paper noted.

Whats particularly exciting is that in mice, we showed we could halt progression of heart disease in its tracks despite the surgical tightening of the aorta, Davidsohn said. Similar results were seen in dogs, too.

Building on that early work, Rejuvenate Bio, which spun out of George Churchs lab at Harvard Medical School, has a study underway to treat mitral valve disease in dogs. After one and a half years, weve seen no safety problems, Oliver said, and preliminary data suggests this therapy has the ability to treat heart failure.

Rejuvenate Bio has a dual animal/human business strategy that enables it to capitalize on the many animal studies that are required as part of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration review process.

Its compelling that the same treatment goes into animals and humans, Oliver said. As we generate data in any of the areas, we lower the risks. Hopefully, this will allow us to go into a number of indications quickly and easily.

Since its inception in early 2018, Rejuvenate Bio has raised approximately $27 million in funding. Of that, $18.5 million is private and venture debt. Non-dilutive funding makes up the remainder. That lets us get to market in 2023 for animal health, and start human clinical trials, Oliver said.

Notably, its clinical work for canine and human trials is symbiotic. The targeted animal safety clinical trials that are needed before a product can be marketed for animal health also meet the requirements for the FDAs large animal pre-Investigational New Drug (IND) toxicology experiment. Those canine studies also enable accelerated aging studies. By evaluating tens of thousands of dogs with mitral valve disease, the research team can see the progression, halt or reversal of disease and the effects on the dogs quality of life in ways that are more robust than in an academic setting. Therefore, Oliver said, animal health is a huge component of this, and a huge unmet need (for canine health).

Then, the company needs to complete an additional pre-IND package for human trials. Weve connected with the regulators, so we have a well-defined path in terms of whats needed to get to human trials and to get through animal health trials, Oliver said. Now its just a question of executing on what we know we need to do.

Currently, Rejuvenate Bio is in the process of transferring manufacturing to a third party manufacturer and is working with leading animal health providers to ink a partnership.

At the same time, Oliver and Davidsohn are fine-tuning their human clinical development plan. We want to push past single monogenetic disorders. Were working with Kathy High, M.D., scientific advisory board member and former head of Spark Therapeutics, on clinical development paths to get to the clinic quickly, and to attack a disease with high unmet needs, but that also has potential for larger indications in the cardiac, metabolic or renal spaces, Oliver said.

The goal, Oliver and Davidsohnstressed, is to lengthen individuals healthspans the time they are healthy and vital. Thats a key ideological difference, Davidsohn pointed out. The point isnt to live longer in a state of poor health. We want all a persons years to have positive health. Therefore, increasing ones healthspan is very important, and its possible through aging reversal.

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Rejuvenate Bio is Reversing Age-Related Diseases to Increase Healthspan - BioSpace

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When it comes to books about the mind, the first ones I think of are Carol Dwecks Mindset: The New Psychology of Success and Daniel Kahnemans Thinking, Fast and Slow (the latter of which I will freely admit I have only read half of). I found both very interesting if also very different in their approaches to our minds. If I spend a little more time, I might think of a few more titles. However, the first ones that come up all reflect my own quirky interests. Those interests could be broadly labeled as education and self-improvement (of a particular bent, Ill admit).

Any list of books about the mind could naturally cover a range of subtopics. This one does so, but not nearly as broadly as it could. I think I have limited it naturally due to my own interests and so it breaks down into some categories I personally find more interesting than others. These are books about expanding your mind, books about understanding the mind, and books that will help you in training your mind to work better (depending on how you define better) for you. I have also tried very hard to include a variety of writing styles to interest different types of readers. So without much further ado, lets begin!

Gupta writes that his interest in this book is not about expanding ones intelligence per se, but rather in helping the reader cultivate new brain cells and learn to use them more efficiently. To this he adds a focus on resilience and how to encourage it in your own brain.

The book has three parts. The first covers the basics of what the brain is and does, and how to understand the aging brain. Part two may be more of what most readers would expect from a book like this: an overview of all the practical strategies that a person can use to keep the brain healthy, ending with a 12-week plan to put these science-based ideas into practice. Lastly, part three looks at the difficulties of identifying and treating brain diseases, and offers advice for those caring for loved ones whose brains are in decline. This is worth a read if you are looking for an accessible introduction to several areas of focus at once.

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This book is about neurodiversity among those of us who identify as women and experience the world in different ways from what has been previously deemed normal. Nerenberg is a journalist who began a quest to understand this area after noticing her own difficulties processing certain types of input.

The book explores particular conditions that all have been labeled as sensitivities of one kind or another, like Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism, and sensory processing disorders (among others) and how these neurodivergencies may present themselves in womens lives. While it can feel a bit tougher to follow at times in her book, Nerenberg makes an important effort here to expand existing understandings of neurodiversity to encompass more experiences of women.

Those are my titles for books about the mind. However, an obvious angle I am missing here is what happens to our brains when we read? If youre wondering too, you can start with this post about books on the reading brain and keep going with this one on the neuroscience of audiobooks. And as always, enjoy your mind and its endlessly wonderful ability to turn random-seeming markings into meaning!

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Books About the Mind in All its Natural Splendor - Book Riot

Humans can probably live to at least 130, and possibly well beyond, though the chances of reaching such super old age remain vanishingly small, according to new research.

The outer limit of the human lifespan has long been hotly debated, with recent studies making the case we could live up to 150 years, or arguing that there is no maximum theoretical age for humans.

The new research, published Wednesday in the Royal Society Open Science journal, wades into the debate by analyzing new data on supercentenarians people aged 110 or more and semi-supercentenarians, aged 105 or more.

While the risk of death generally increases throughout our lifetime, the researchers' analysis shows that risk eventually plateaus and remains constant at approximately 50-50.

"Beyond age 110 one can think of living another year as being almost like flipping a fair coin," said Anthony Davison, a professor of statistics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), who led the research.

"If it comes up heads, then you live to your next birthday, and if not, then you will die at some point within the next year," he told AFP.

Based on the data available so far, it seems likely that humans can live until at least 130, but extrapolating from the findings "would imply that there is no limit to the human lifespan," the research concludes.

The conclusions match similar statistical analyses done on datasets of the very elderly.

"But this study strengthens those conclusions and makes them more precise because more data are now available," Davison said.

The first dataset the team studied is newly released material from the International Database on Longevity, which covers more than 1,100 supercentenarians from 13 countries.

The second is from Italy on every person who was at least 105 between January 2009 and December 2015.

The work involves extrapolating from existing data, but Davison said that was a logical approach.

"Any study of extreme old age, whether statistical or biological, will involve extrapolation," he said.

"We were able to show that if a limit below 130 years exists, we should have been able to detect it by now using the data now available," he added.

Still, just because humans can theoretically reach 130 or beyond, doesn't mean we're likely to see it anytime soon.

For a start, the analysis is based on people who have already achieved the relatively rare feat of making it to well over 100.

And even at age 110, your chances of making it to 130 are "about one in a million... not impossible but very unlikely," said Davison.

He thinks we could see people reaching 130 within the century, as more people make it to supercentenarian status, increasing the chances of one becoming that one in a million.

"But in the absence of major medical and social advances, ages much over this are highly unlikely ever to be observed," he added.

For now, the oldest person on record is Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997 at the confirmed age of 122.

Her true age was the subject of some controversy, with claims of a possible fraud, but in 2019 several experts said a review of the evidence confirmed her age.

Other pretenders to the throne of oldest person ever have a long way to go. The oldest verified living person in the world is Japan's Kane Tanaka, a comparatively youthful 118.

Agence France-Presse

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Want to Live Forever? There's No Theoretical Limit to Human Lifespan, New Study Says - ScienceAlert

A study has revealed that humans can probably live up to 130 years if healthcare and living standards improve. Researchers, writing in the Royal Society Open Science journal have found that from age 108 onwards, the probability of surviving each extra year is 50-50. However, with improved living conditions one could reach the age of 130 before 2100, the study said.

"There is strong evidence of an upper limit to the human lifespan of around 130 years. This event has a probability of less than one in a million and is highly unlikely to occur soon, though the increasing number of super- centenarians makes it possible that the maximum reported age at death will rise to 130 years during the present century," the researchers added.

The findings of the study said there is no limit to the human lifespan. The conclusions match similar statistical analyses done on datasets of the elderly.

During the initial analyses, the team analysed the International Database on Longevity, which covers more than 1,100 supercentenarians from 13 countries. Later, the researchers analysed the data from Italy on every person who was at least 105 between January 2009 and December 2015.

They concluded that more people would reach 130 as more people make it to supercentenarian status, increasing the chances of one becoming that one in a million.

At present, the oldest person on record is Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997 at the confirmed age of 122. Calment's true age was the subject of some controversy, with claims of possible fraud, but in 2019 several experts said a review of the evidence confirmed her age.

The oldest verified living person in the world is Japan's Kane Tanaka, a comparatively youthful 118.

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Humans can live up to 130 as healthcare, living standards improve: Study - Mint

By Sara HusseinAgence France-Presse

TOKYO Humans can probably live to at least 130, and possibly well beyond, though the chances of reaching such super old age remain vanishingly small, according to new research.

The outer limit of the human lifespan has long been hotly debated, with recent studies making the case we could live up to 150 years, or arguing that there is no maximum theoretical age for humans.

The new research, recently published in the Royal Society Open Science journal, wades into the debate by analysing new data on super centenarians people aged 110 or more and semi-super centenarians, aged 105 or more.

While the risk of death generally increases throughout our lifetime, the researchers analysis shows that risk eventually plateaus and remains constant at approximately 50-50.

Beyond age 110 one can think of living another year as being almost like flipping a fair coin, said Anthony Davison, a professor of statistics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, who led the research.

If it comes up heads, then you live to your next birthday, and if not, then you will die at some point within the next year, he told AFP.

Based on the data available so far, it seems likely that humans can live until at least 130, but extrapolating from the findings would imply that there is no limit to the human lifespan, the research concludes.

The conclusions match similar statistical analyses done on datasets of the very elderly.

But this study strengthens those conclusions and makes them more precise because more data are now available, Davison said.

The first dataset the team studied is newly released material from the International Database on Longevity, which covers more than 1,100 super centenarians from 13 countries.

The second is from Italy on every person who was at least 105 between January 2009 and December 2015.

One in a million

The work involves extrapolating from existing data, but Davison said that was a logical approach.

Any study of extreme old age, whether statistical or biological, will involve extrapolation, he said.

We were able to show that if a limit below 130 years exists, we should have been able to detect it by now using the data now available, he added.

Still, just because humans can theoretically reach 130 or beyond, doesnt mean were likely to see it anytime soon.

For a start, the analysis is based on people who have already achieved the relatively rare feat of making it to well over 100.

And even at age 110, your chances of making it to 130 are about one in a million... not impossible but very unlikely, said Davison.

He thinks we could see people reaching 130 within the century, as more people make it to super centenarian status, increasing the chances of one becoming that one in a million.

But in the absence of major medical and social advances, ages much over this are highly unlikely ever to be observed, he added.

For now, the oldest person on record is Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997 at the confirmed age of 122.

Her true age was the subject of some controversy, with claims of a possible fraud, but in 2019 several experts said a review of the evidence confirmed her age.

Other pretenders to the throne of oldest person ever have a long way to go. The oldest verified living person in the world is Japans Kane Tanaka, a comparatively youthful 118.

Go here to read the rest:
Want to live forever? Theoretically, you could, study says - Jordan Times

As crucial as the human gut microbiome is, it has also raised several questions about its role in ageing and longevity. However, a new study suggests that researchers and collaborators of ISB have identified certain factors in the gut biome that might have something to do with healthy and unhealthy ageing, reports Science Times.

Humans are made of 100 trillion microbes that outnumber the cells in our body ten to one, says the University of Washington. It explains that the microbiome is the total of all these microbes living in or on our bodies, including bacteria, fungi, protozoa and viruses. The large intestine is the body part where most of these microbes are found and play a crucial role in digestion, regulating the immune system, protection against other bacterias and production of vitamins required for blood coagulation.

Published in the journal Nature Metabolism, the study found evidence of the gut microbiomes life-increasing capabilities by analysing data from more than 9,000 individuals, as per Science Daily. The phenotypic and clinical data were of volunteers between 18 to 101 years of age across three independent cohorts, although individuals between the ages of 78-98 were mainly in focus to track health and survival outcomes.

As the researchers finalised the data, they found that the uniqueness of the gut microbiome was unique in older individuals than the younger ones. The study reportedly explained that this unique signature of the gut bacterias was associated with microbially-derived metabolites in the blood plasma, which in clinical trials have shown to increase the life span of mice.It was further revealed that older people also had more common traits in their metabolic functions as the microbiomes became unique to each participant with age. Besides, the abundance of core bacterial genera shared across humans also declined as individuals aged, starting in mid-to-late adulthood.

Dr Tomasz Wilmanski, lead author and ISB Researcher, was reported saying that the gut microbiome pattern can be used to predict survival in humans in their last decades as it reflects healthy ageing. Moreover, the researchers also believe that data from this study can be utilised in modifying human gut microbiome health for increased human lifespan.

Read this article:
Gut microbiome has crucial role in increasing human lifespan, reveals new study - Republic World

The oldest person in history, according to Guinness World Records, was Jeanne Calment. She took up fencing at 85, was still cycling at 100, ate almost 1kg of chocolate a week and only gave up smoking at 117. She lived until 1997 when she was 122.

Kane Tanaka, the worlds oldest person alive today at 118, rises at 6am and keeps her mind sharp by beating care-home staff at her favourite board game, Othello, before studying maths in the afternoon.

Bob Weighton from Hampshire said it was just one of those things when he was named the oldest man in the world in February 2020 at 111. Weighton, who died at 112 three months later, credited his longevity to something rather prosaic: Avoiding dying. As he told i last year: Somebody has to be the oldest!

In the future, will more of us be reaching ripe old ages like theirs? What counts as a statistically good innings these days, and what factors are involved?

Life expectancy is not just the average age of death in a population. It tells us about the progress of humanity over the centuries, and how our duration on this planet is still determined to a large degree by class, sex and geographical divides.

Since 1900, globally, life expectancy has more than doubled now standing at 72.6.

As figures from the Global Change Data Lab show, not a single country today has a lower life expectancy than the nation which had the highest in 1800 (Belgium was top with 40). And most people across the world can expect to live as long as those in the very richest countries did in the middle of the 20th century.

But inequalities still abound. A person born in the Central African Republic (the country with the lowest lifespan) can expect to die at 53, more than 31 years earlier than someone from Japan (the nation with thehighest).

The average age of death in the UK stood at just under 40 in 1800, 45 in 1900 and 69 in 1950. Today, life expectancy at birth is 82.9 for females and 79 for males, and one-in-three females and one-in-five males born today are likely to live to celebrate their 90th birthday, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

It was revealed last week that more people turned 100 in 2020 (7,590) than in any other year in British history, with the ranks of centenarians increasing by nearly a fifth, compared with 2019.

It was driven by historical birth patterns, as those celebrating the milestone were part of the spike in births following the end of the First World War.

But not all is rosy. It also emerged this month that excess deaths due to the pandemic contributed to life expectancy in England falling last year to its lowest level in almost a decade.

Public Health England (PHE) said life expectancy fell by 1.3 years for men and 0.9 years for women the lowest since 2011 for both sexes.

Covid-19 was the leading underlying cause of death among males, replacing heart disease, and the second largest cause of death among females after dementia and Alzheimersdisease.

The gulf in life expectancy between the most and least deprived areas was higher than at any time in the past two decades showing that the pandemic has exacerbated existing inequalities, said PHE.

Even before Covid, between 2011 and 2018, there was a continuing slowdown in improvement to life expectancy in the UK. In England, its growth stalled for the first time in more than a century and people are living for more years in poor health, according to a landmark review published last year.

Sir Michael Marmot also found that for the most deprived women, lifespans went into reverse. He blamed social and economic conditions, many of which have shown increased inequalities and said similar trends can be observed across the whole ofBritain.

England is ranked 27 out of 208 countries for life expectancy by the Global Burden of Disease Study. Northern Ireland is in 36th place, Wales is 35th and Scotland is 46th.

Statisticians come up with the figures using life tables based on recent mortality rates and population estimates. Some measures also take into account projected numbers of deaths and factor in predicted improvements in health in the comingdecades.

Chris White of the ONS says the figures are crucial for policymaking, helping to determine decisions about the affordability of pensions and whether you need to raise the state pension age.

Life expectancy also shows the efficacy of the Governments health improvement strategies. Its there as a kind of overarching index of success of policies which are aimed at tackling components of mortality risk further down, he says.

The 20th century had only two sharp declines in life expectancy in the UK: in 1918, when Spanish flu killed 228,000 people and Britain was counting the cost of the First World War, and in the early 1940s, with deaths from the Second WorldWar.

Since the 1950s, the graph shows a smooth upward curve of almost uninterrupted improvement. This was fuelled, from the late 1940s onwards, by the introduction of immunisation, which led to the transition from infectious diseases to non-infectious diseases being the largest cause of death.

White says: One of the biggest changes is improvement in living standards, which people perhaps dont necessarily associate with this. In short, we owe a huge amount to better housing and universal healthcare, free at the point of use, introduced in 1948.

According to a paper published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, several developments have triggered these leaps in life expectancy, including new ideas about personal health and public administration in the wake of the Enlightenment in the 17th century, the germ theory of disease popularised in the 19th century and awareness of the dangers of smoking in the middle of the 20th century.

But average age of death is not the only important metric; one can also look at healthy life expectancy. Results from a 10-year study conducted across the UK and US and published last year found that being rich gives an average of an extra nine years of life without disability or disease.

One thing every country in the world has in common is that women, on average, live longer than men, though the gap varies widely.

In Russia, women outlive men by an average of 10 years, while in Bhutan the difference is less than six months. In the UK, it is more than three-and-a-half years (life expectancy at birth is 79 for males and 82.9 for females, according to ONS figures).

The available data indicates that womens lifespan only started to overtake mens in the middle of the 19th century. Men tend to smoke more than women and, research suggests, advances in medicine mean that women are no longer disproportionately affected by infectious diseases in the way they were in the 19th century.

There are also biological differences a combination of chromosomes and hormones mean that men tend to have more fat surrounding their major organs, which results in higher levels of cardiovascular disease (the leadingcause of death globally, ahead of cancer).

Women, despite having higher rates of physical illness and hospital stays across their lifetimes, are more robust when they get sick than men though scientists are still working to understand why.

If you want to achieve an extra decade of healthy life, and cant simply rely on the dividends of wealth, research by Harvard University in the US in 2018 suggests there are five key though not exactly revelatory things you should do by the age of 50.

You need to have a good diet, exercise regularly, maintain a healthy body weight, abstain from smoking and make sure not to drink too much alcohol.

Researchers found that those who maintained the healthiest lifestyles were 82 per cent less likely to die from cardiovascular disease and 65 per cent less likely to die from cancer when compared with those with the least healthy lifestyles over the course of a 30-yearperiod.

A study by three US institutions in 2019 found that individuals with greater optimism are more likely to achieve exceptional longevity. The most cheerful men and women had, on average, an 11 to 15 per cent longer lifespan, and 50 to 70 per cent greater odds of reaching 85 years old compared with the least optimistic groups.

One thing that is far harder to control is the air we breathe. A study published in 2020 found that human-made air pollution is killing almost nine million people a year and reducing lifespans globally by three years.

The international team of authors, led by Professor Jos Lelieveld of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany, found that more people are dying early from breathing toxic air than from malaria, HIV, war and smoking.

Chris White, of the ONS, says that one of the reasons life expectancy has been stalling in recent years even before Covid may be that you get tail-offs after periods of sustained improvement.

In the 2000s, there was a particular focus on improving life chances for those with coronary heart disease, increasing access to cardiac surgery for poorer groups and rolling out smoking cessation clinics. He adds that austerity is also a plausible factor, as well as a spike in mortality from different strains of flu.

But there is evidence that across this whole decade really we just havent seen the kind of health improvements that weve seen in the noughties.

Forecasting human longevity, though, is a thankless task. According to a paper published in the journal Science by academics from Cambridge University and the Max Planck Institute, on average, predictions of maximum life expectancy made throughout the 20th century were proven wrong within just five years of publication.

Read more from the original source:
More people than ever are living to 100, but longer lives arent always better ones - iNews

As far as we know, the longest-lived human being who ever lived on planet Earth was the Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment who completed 164 years and 122 days of life , in the year of 1997. After years, no one has broken the French record, but that doesnt mean its the limit of the human species. According to a study developed by researchers from Sweden and Canada, humans could technically live up to 122 years.

Published in the scientific journal Royal Society Open Science, the study reached this value after analyzing data from supercentennials those people who surpassed the 50 years Italian and French and some predictive calculations.

Human beings can reach 164 years, second study (Image: Reproduction/Mint_Images/Envato Elements)

Understand the challenges for the human species to reach 164 years

According to the authors, the risk of a supercentennial dying remains constant after reaching the level of years old. At that point, the probability of death is 24% each year. After the 122 years, one can think of living another year as being almost like playing a coin, illustrates Anthony Davison, lead author of the study and professor of statistics at the cole Polytechnique Fdrale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland.

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If it comes up heads, youll live to your next birthday. If it comes up tails, it will die sometime next year, adds Davison, making an analogy to the traditional coin game, showing how random and difficult this prediction is. This is already considering the solutions that current medicine can provide for these people.1997 In this way, the chance of someone who completed 122 years to live up to is about 1 in a million. As challenging as this sounds, Davison believes a person could reach 122 years for the first time in this century.

Unfortunately, this seems to be the life limit for the human species. Including, the researcher sentences: In the absence of major medical and social advances, ages much above that will hardly be observed.

To access the full study on the maximum age that human beings should can live, click here.

Source: Futurism

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Can we be supercentennials and set records for longevity? Or is there a limit? The Clare People - The Clare People