Longevity
Longevity may refer to especially long-lived members of a population, whereas life expectancy is defined statistically as the average number of years remaining at a given age. For example, a population's life expectancy at birth is the same as the average age at death for all people born in the same year (in the case of cohorts).
Longevity studies may involve putative methods to extend life. Longevity has been a topic not only for the scientific community but also for writers of
There are difficulties in authenticating the longest human
A life annuity is a form of longevity insurance.
Life expectancy, as of 2010
Various factors contribute to an individual's longevity. Significant factors in life expectancy include
- Developed countries: 77–90 years (e.g. Canada: 81.29 years, 2010 est.)
- Developing countries: 32–80 years (e.g. Mozambique: 41.37 years, 2010 est.)
- Australia: 80 years in 2002, 81.72 years in 2010
- France: 79.05 years in 2002, 81.09 years in 2010
- Germany: 77.78 years in 2002, 79.41 years in 2010
- Italy: 79.25 years in 2002, 80.33 years in 2010
- Japan: 81.56 years in 2002, 82.84 years in 2010
- Monaco: 79.12 years in 2002, 79.73 years in 2011
- Spain: 79.06 years in 2002, 81.07 years in 2010
- United Kingdom: 80 years in 2002, 81.73 years in 2010
- United States: 77.4 years in 2002, 78.24 years in 2010
Long-lived individuals
The Gerontology Research Group validates current longevity records by modern standards, and maintains a list of supercentenarians; many other unvalidated longevity claims exist. Record-holding individuals include:[4][5][6]
- Eilif Philipsen (21 July 1682 – 20 June 1785, 102 years, 333 days): first person to reach the age of 100 (on 21 July 1782) and whose age could be validated.
- Geert Adriaans Boomgaard (1788–1899, 110 years, 135 days): first person to reach the age of 110 (on September 21, 1898) and whose age could be validated.
- Margaret Ann Neve, (18 May 1792 – 4 April 1903, 110 years, 346 days) the first validated female supercentenarian (on 18 May 1902).
- Jeanne Calment (1875–1997, 122 years, 164 days): the oldest person in history whose age has been verified by modern documentation.[note 1] This defines the modern human life span, which is set by the oldest documented individual who ever lived.
- Sarah Knauss (1880–1999, 119 years, 97 days): the third oldest documented person in modern times and the oldest American.
- Jiroemon Kimura (1897–2013, 116 years, 54 days): the oldest man in history whose age has been verified by modern documentation.
- Kane Tanaka (1903–2022, 119 years, 107 days): the second oldest documented person in modern times and the oldest Japanese.
Major factors
Evidence-based studies indicate that longevity is based on two major factors: genetics and lifestyle.[8]
Genetics
Twin studies have estimated that approximately 20-30% of the variation in human lifespan can be related to genetics, with the rest due to individual behaviors and environmental factors which can be modified.[9] Although over 200 gene variants have been associated with longevity according to a US-Belgian-UK research database of human genetic variants[10] these explain only a small fraction of the heritability.[11]
In July
Lifestyle
Longevity is a highly plastic trait, and traits that influence its components respond to physical (static) environments and to wide-ranging life-style changes: physical exercise, dietary habits, living conditions, and pharmaceutical as well as nutritional interventions.[17][18][19] A 2012 study found that even modest amounts of leisure time physical exercise can extend life expectancy by as much as 4.5 years.[20]
Diet
As of 2021, there is no clinical evidence that any dietary practice contributes to human longevity.[21]
Biological pathways
Four well-studied biological pathways that are known to regulate aging, and whose modulation has been shown to influence longevity are Insulin/IGF-1, mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR), AMP-activating protein kinase (AMPK), and Sirtuin pathways.[22][23]
Autophagy
Change over time
In preindustrial times, deaths at young and middle age were more common than they are today. This is not due to genetics, but because of environmental factors such as disease, accidents, and malnutrition, especially since the former were not generally treatable with pre-20th-century medicine. Deaths from childbirth were common for women, and many children did not live past infancy. In addition, most people who did attain old age were likely to die quickly from the above-mentioned untreatable health problems. Despite this, there are many examples of pre-20th-century individuals attaining lifespans of 85 years or greater, including John Adams, Cato the Elder, Thomas Hobbes, Eric of Pomerania,[citation needed] Christopher Polhem, and Michelangelo. This was also true for poorer people like peasants or laborers. Genealogists will almost certainly find ancestors living to their 70s, 80s and even 90s several hundred years ago.
For example, an 1871 census in the UK (the first of its kind, but personal data from other censuses dates back to 1841 and numerical data back to 1801) found the average male life expectancy as being 44, but if infant mortality is subtracted, males who lived to adulthood averaged 75 years. The present life expectancy in the UK is 77 years for males and 81 for females, while the United States averages 74 for males and 80 for females.
Studies have shown that black American males have the shortest lifespans of any group of people in the US, averaging only 69 years (Asian-American females average the longest).[25] This reflects overall poorer health and greater prevalence of heart disease, obesity, diabetes, and cancer among black American men.
Women normally outlive men. Theories for this include smaller bodies that place lesser strain on the heart (women have lower rates of cardiovascular disease) and a reduced tendency to engage in physically dangerous activities.[26] Conversely, women are more likely to participate in health-promoting activities.[27] The X chromosome also contains more genes related to the immune system, and women tend to mount a stronger immune response to pathogens than men.[28] However, the idea that men have weaker immune systems due to the supposed immuno-suppressive actions of testosterone is unfounded.[29]
There is debate as to whether the pursuit of longevity is a worthwhile health care goal. Bioethicist
Naturally limited longevity
Most biological organisms have a naturally limited longevity due to
Given that different species of animals and plants have different potentials for longevity, the disrepair accumulation theory of aging tries to explain how the potential for longevity of an organism is sometimes positively correlated to its structural complexity. It suggests that while biological complexity increases individual lifespan, it is counteracted in nature since the survivability of the overall species may be hindered when it results in a prolonged development process, which is an evolutionarily vulnerable state.[33]
According to the antagonistic pleiotropy hypothesis, one of the reasons biological immortality is so rare is that certain categories of gene expression that are beneficial in youth become deleterious at an older age.
Myths and claims
Longevity myths are traditions about long-lived people (generally supercentenarians), either as individuals or groups of people, and practices that have been believed to confer longevity, but for which scientific evidence does not support the ages claimed or the reasons for the claims.[34][35] A comparison and contrast of "longevity in antiquity" (such as the Sumerian King List, the genealogies of Genesis, and the Persian Shahnameh) with "longevity in historical times" (common-era cases through twentieth-century news reports) is elaborated in detail in Lucian Boia's 2004 book Forever Young: A Cultural History of Longevity from Antiquity to the Present and other sources.[36]
After the death of Juan Ponce de León, Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés wrote in Historia General y Natural de las Indias (1535) that Ponce de León was looking for the waters of Bimini to cure his aging.[37] Traditions that have been believed to confer greater human longevity also include alchemy,[38] such as that attributed to Nicolas Flamel. In the modern era, the Okinawa diet has some reputation of linkage to exceptionally high ages.[39]
Longevity claims may be subcategorized into four groups: "In late life, very old people often tend to advance their ages at the rate of about 17 years per decade .... Several celebrated super-centenarians (over 110 years) are believed to have been double lives (father and son, relations with the same names or successive bearers of a title) .... A number of instances have been commercially sponsored, while a fourth category of recent claims are those made for political ends ...."[40] The estimate of 17 years per decade was corroborated by the 1901 and 1911 British censuses.[40] Time magazine considered that, by the Soviet Union, longevity had been elevated to a state-supported "Methuselah cult".[41] Robert Ripley regularly reported supercentenarian claims in Ripley's Believe It or Not!, usually citing his own reputation as a fact-checker to claim reliability.[42]
Non-human biological longevity
There are studies about aging-related characteristics of and aging in long-lived animals like various turtles[46][47] and plants like Ginkgo biloba trees.[48] They have identified potentially causal protective traits and suggest many of the species have "slow or [times of][clarification needed] negligible[clarification needed] senescence" (or aging).[49][46][47] The jellyfish T. dohrnii is biologically immortal and has been studied by comparative genomics.[50][51]
Examples of long lived plants and animals
Currently living
- A 5,073-year-old member of the species Pinus longaeva: Oldest known currently living non-clonal tree.[52]
- Methuselah: 4,800-year-old bristlecone pine in the White Mountains of California, the second oldest currently living non-clonal tree.[52]
Dead
- The quahog clam (Arctica islandica) is exceptionally long-lived, with a maximum recorded age of 507 years, the longest of any animal.[53] Other clams of the species have been recorded as living up to 374 years.[54]
- Lamellibrachia luymesi, a deep-sea cold-seep tubeworm, is estimated to reach ages of over 250 years based on a model of its growth rates.[55]
- A bowhead whale killed in a hunt was found to be approximately 211 years old (possibly up to 245 years old), the longest-lived mammal known.[56]
- Possibly 250-million year-old bacteria, Bacillus permians, were revived from stasis after being found in sodium chloride crystals in a cavern in New Mexico.[57][58]
Artificial animal longevity extension
Gene editing via CRISPR-Cas9 and other methods has significantly altered lifespans in animals.[59][60][61]
See also
- Actuarial science
- Aging
- Centenarian
- Blue zone
- Genetics of aging
- Life extension
- Longevity claims
- Longevity myths
- Longevity quotient
- Maximum life span
- Senescence
Notes
References
Citations
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The Old Man of the Sea / Yaupa / a native of Futuna, one of the New Hebrides Islands / regularly worked his own farm at the age of 130 / He died in 1899 of measles — a children's disease ... Horoz Ali, the last Turkish gatekeeper of Nicosia, Cyprus, lived to the age of 120 ... Francisco Huppazoli (1587–1702) of Casale, Italy, lived 114 years without a day's illness and had 4 children by his 5th wife — whom he married at the age of 98
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External links
Media related to Longevity at Wikimedia Commons
- Global Agewatch's country report cards have the most up-to-date, internationally comparable statistics on population ageing and life expectancy from 195 countries.