| | Century Living Think about it: 200 years ago, there was no such thing as an active 90-year-old. Fast forward 20 decades, and photos of people breaching the 100-year barrier have become almost routine. Vaccines, antibiotics and a better understanding of what is good for our bodies and minds have taken us far, and by 2050, the U.N. estimates there will be 3.7 million centenarians around the world, a major jump from our nearly 600,000 today. |
| Aging as Treatable Illness? How can we push our biological clocks even further, while keeping our minds sharp and bodies healthy for longer? One departure is to treat aging as an illness. That’s right. A tribe of scientists, including Steven Austad, a biologist at the University of Alabama, says the key to drastically longer life lies in altering the processes that prevent our very molecules from growing old. |
| The Price of a Longer Future Outside the lab, futurologists have been putting forth their own takes on life extension. Ray Kurzweil, who has served as a resident “futurist” at Google, claims that by 2029, medical advances could start adding an additional year, every year, to people’s life expectancy. But there’s a catch: To reach life spans of over 100, you might need to live in an environment free of stressors — with a wad of cash to cover costly treatments. If you’re tempted by what’s being offered by companies like Libella Gene Therapeutics, which claims to reverse aging by up to 20 years, then be prepared to fork over a whopping $1 million. |
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| | | | | | | Bucking the Trend But don’t rush to your doctor’s office with a pile of cash just yet. Despite such theoretical advances, some experts believe our bodies have a built-in expiration date. Citizens in some countries, however, have been living longer for reasons unrelated to their bank account or new scientific advances. Take Nicoya, for example. Centenarians in this lush Costa Rican peninsula say their secret to a long life is robust social networks and strong family ties. On the other side of the world, Japan’s super-senior citizens claim that a healthy diet and exercise have paved the way to a lengthy and happy existence. |
| Preserving a Future You Don’t live in any of those places? Don’t despair. Someday there may be another option for those who want to live a lot, lot longer: uploading your consciousness, Black Mirror style. While we’re still far from transferring our minds onto a chip, artificial intelligence advances could make this sci-fi-sounding proposition a reality. In anticipation of such a possibility, or of reanimation, some people have already signed on to a program to freeze their brains and bodies in liquid nitrogen coffins to preserve the essential parts of their personalities. | | Your opinion matters. Take our poll. |
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| | | | | | | Boost Your Step Counts Walking an extra 1,000 steps a day could increase your chances of living a long life, according to new research from the American Heart Association. The benefits of incorporating walking into your daily routine were consistent across people who took one long stroll and those who opted for shorter bursts throughout the day. | | Walking an extra 1,000 steps a day could increase your chances of living a long life. - American Heart Association | | That included going shopping or walking to your car. Each increase of 1,000 steps was linked to a 28% decrease in the risk of early death. |
| Eliminate Red Meat Harvard researchers have found that increasing the amount of red meat you consume may, in some cases, raise the risk of early death. Participants in the experiment who increased their meat consumption by just half a serving per day (around 1.7 ounces) over eight years had a 10% higher risk of dying over the subsequent eight-year period. The study’s authors also claim a significant benefit to replacing a portion of your weekly meals with non-meat options. It’s not just good for you, it’s good for the planet. |
| Late Kids, Long Life? A study by researchers at the Boston University School of Medicine in 2014 found that late motherhood can lead to a longer life for women who delivered their last child after 33. In fact, they are twice as likely to live to 95 than those who had their last kid by 29. Furthermore, the New England Centenarian Study, published in 2014, concluded that women who bore children after turning 40 were four times more likely than younger mothers to reach 100 years old. |
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| | | | | | | | | A Better Society? Can you imagine what you would do if you could live your peak years — your 20s and 30s, say — over and over? “Maybe we use the [extra] years to reimagine the trajectory of life, just like we did 100 years ago, when we invented childhood and retirement,” Steven Austad argues in a TED Talk. If we truly do get wiser as we get older and gain more life experience, will we become better citizens, colleagues and people? Does a society that lives longer grow into a better society? | | Does a society that lives longer grow into a better society? |
| Aging Unequally For the foreseeable future, the revolutionary science and technology required to thwart aging will mostly be available to the rich alone, which points to another disturbing truth: Longevity is set to become the new standard-bearer of inequality. A recent study by Northwestern University in Illinois found that Americans with a higher net worth at midlife live longer than their poorer counterparts. Even among brothers and sisters, those with greater wealth tend to outlive their siblings. That’s even taking into account identical genetic profiles, meaning the only factor that separates them is money. |
| Population Effects Increased pressure on already overstretched global health care systems and an inadequate supply of jobs, food and housing are just some of the challenges we face if we were to live for as long as we’d like. Longer, healthier lives translate to expanding populations worldwide, a change the planet might not be able to withstand. There are no easy solutions to these problems. Some have proposed “to limit the number of children after life extension” to keep the population down. But that is a road that perhaps leads to more questions than answers, dredging up fundamental issues about personal choice and freedom. | | Your opinion matters. Take our poll. |
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