Living to 100 And Beyond

Scientists have now developed a way of predicting the chance of someone living beyond the age of 100, and you could soon get a personalized report with suggestions on increasing your own lifespan.

The breakthrough, described in the journal Science, is based on 150 genetic "signposts" found in people with exceptional longevity, specifically people 100 or older.

Researchers from Boston University created a mathematical model which takes information from the signposts to calculate a person's chance of reaching 100. It’s based on the largest worldwide study of centenarians ever done.

Some of research team members are now building a website that can help predict your life expectancy, based on the factors uncovered in the study. Once the factors are identified, you can presumably modify your lifestyle and potentially add years to your life. It will include genetic and non-genetic factors that affect life expectancy.

Looking at genetic markers, researchers were able to determine with 77 percent accuracy which gene groups came from people over 100, according to the Associated Press.

Paola Sebastiani, a professor of biostatistics, and Thomas Perls, associate professor of medicine, both of Boston University, led the research. Sebastiani says the study helps scientists predict life expectancy, barring accidents.

For more than a decade, the two scientists have suspected that when it comes to exceptional longevity genes beat lifestyle, with your genetic code serving as the tipping factor.

“Our work, as well as the work of our colleagues, has clearly shown that exceptional longevity runs strongly in families,” explained Sebastiani and Perls. “For example, having a centenarian sibling increases a brother’s chance to reach age 100 by 17 times and a sister’s chance by eight times.”

The team’s initial investigations also led them to conclude that longevity is dictated by more than just one or two genes. “Because people can age so differently from one another, we suspected that the ability to survive to extreme old age has a very complex basis, involving many genes interacting with one another and with environmental factors,” they said.

Sebastiani and Perls noted that over 90 percent of the centenarians delayed any disability well into their early to mid-90s. The supercentenarians (those older than 110) do so until around the age of 105 years or later. The researchers studied the genomes of 800 people who lived more than 100 years.

“My hope has always been …. that we would learn much more about how to get lots of people to live to older age in good health,” said Perls. “I look at the complexity of this puzzle and feel very strongly that this will not lead to treatments that will get a lot of people to become centenarians, but rather to make a dent in the onset of age-related diseases like Alzheimer's for example.”

The BU study cautioned about not giving up on diet and exercise as a means to toward healthy living and increasing the chances of longevity. The study also concluded that women are more likely to live longer than men, but men are less prone to diseases and disabilities.

The genes which contribute most to extreme longevity don't seem to be the ones that were previously known to be specifically connected to some disease. The people who live to 100 and beyond don't do so because they have strong genetic defenses against stroke or Alzheimer's or cancer, but because their overall aging clock is slower, and the diseases and disabilities to which they would otherwise be prone are all mutually delayed.

There may be other factors like environment or other lifestyles that may help people live longer and healthier lives. Religion, for example, may play a factor.

According to Perls, there was a study conducted among people from the Seventh-day Adventist Church regarding their longevity.

''Those individuals have probably among the highest average life expectancy that we know of in the U.S. of 88 years,’’ Perls said. “They get there by virtue of the fact that they have a religion that asks them to be vegetarian, they regularly exercise, they don't drink alcohol, they tend to manage their stress well through religion and time with family, and they don't smoke.”

While this BU research offers us real insights into healthy aging and longevity, it also raises practical considerations for any individual:

Would you want to live a century and with it the likely prospect of outliving most of your family and friends? Would you have the financial means to sustain you well beyond your regular retirement age? What quality of life would you have?

Certainly, we should all try to live as healthy as possible. That’s just common sense. But perhaps, religious beliefs aside, you might prefer to let nature take its course when it comes to longevity.

Some might prefer to live 80 solid years over reaching 100, especially if those final 20 years represented something far less than the previous 80. In that sense, it truly might be a case of the journey counting more than the destination.

As for me, I practice what I preach at writenowworks.com.