I will now every time I see an article about people this old, post this article: https://theconversation.com/the-data-on-extreme-human-ageing-is-rotten-from-the-inside-out-ig-nobel-winner-saul-justin-newman-239023
Regions where people most often reach 100-110 years old are the ones where there’s the most pressure to commit pension fraud, and they also have the worst records.
Certainly interesting. It’ll be curious to see whether our 100+ year olds globally start decreasing in number at some point, due to improved abilities to check.
Thanks for sharing
Damn.
She was 66 years old 50 years ago.
Not just that. Think of the shit she’s lived through born in 1908. WWII meant firebombings, literal fallout from nuclear attacks, post war recovery and things like industrial poisonings (ie: minimata bay disease)… that’s just off the top of my head.
Yeah, and she was a full-fledged adult in her 30s onward to these things, not like a 4-year-old who wasn’t aware of what was going on around them.
She was married for 50 years and was a widow for almost the same amount of time.
She also had 4 children, and only 2 are still alive. Just says they had them in her 20s, so even those 2 kids have to be in their 80s now.
Imagine still being alive while your grandkids die of old age.
This had me look and see the current list of oldest people and wiki has a top 50 list. The craziest thing about the list? Only 1 male on the entire list, and he is number 49th!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_living_people
I think 120 is pretty much the upper limit of the human lifespan and I doubt medicine will change that any time in the foreseeable future. It would be nice to be wrong.
It would be nice to be wrong.
Only if medicine is also able to prevent the problems that arise from being so old
Agreed. I’m under half of 120 and it’s depressing to think this is the best it would be for the next 60+. Things like vision, vertigo (those roller coasters just hit different after 40) etc.
…and stop the earth from slowly turning into a far-right corporate dystopia with drastic climate deterioration.
Tell that to shell company owners.
The main cause for aging comes from the shortening of telemeres during cellular division and the reduction of organelle walls of certain nuclear components in cells.
I do not think it’s beyond our scientific ability to address these things, but it will be more expensive than the average person can hack if it ever becomes reality.
With current tech, I think it is semi-possible but has potential ethical problems. There have been studies witth moderately promising results but all rather limited in scope. (This is from what I know when I studied medicine, may be somewhat outdated by now)
What you need is to have either have stem cells preserved since infancy or use stem cells from early embryos. These can be combined with dna from the patient and then reintroduced to revitalize organs reaching the end of their telomeric lifespan.
Afaik the main issue here is that the prior option requires cryogenically preserved stem cells (which basically none of our elders today have) or harvesting stem cells from human embryos (which is prohibited in western healthcare). Aside from that there’s also an increased cancer risk.
I don’t know that any of that solves the problem of an aging brain.
I think they’ve explored using it as a countermeasure for alzhiemers, but don’t recall how effective it was. In any case, that particular avenue isn’t likely to get significant traction currently in the west. Legally dubious and way too expensive for any of us mere mortals to afford.
I don’t even mean Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia. Your brain cells only have a certain lifespan and most of them don’t regenerate. Some can regenerate, but eventually the brain just can’t keep repairing itself. Pathways break down. Can stem cells fix that? Maybe. I haven’t heard anything about it.
I do hear there are some possible solutions out there to the other major aging issue- telomeres.
Well, alz & other forms of dementia are directly related to atrophy of gray matter in the brain. The general idea of rejuvination by adding progenitor (stem) cells which have fresh telomerase (enzyme that replenishes telomeres, the reason stem cells can keep replicating longer than other cells) in the brain is that they could develop new nerve cells. On a rather basic theoretical level that should also help with basic brain aging. I’m no neurologist though and haven’t been keeping up with the topic lately.
We’ve apparently peaked and lifespans aren’t expected to continue to increase from today. There may be medical changes in the future, but we’re at our natural limit.
Rest in peace.
