Friday, June 30, 2017

No Detectable Limit to How Long People Can Live #Science #Health

The Rockhouse knows you want it straight-up and this is Walt Disney science so there's not huge depth to it but there's no reason to try to refute it particularly since that wouldn't amount to much more than betting against ourselves.



New research suggests there is no detectable limit to how long people can live.

Credit: © pathdoc / Fotolia

That looks like a happy array of old people but Uncle Joe in No. 5 looks like he's soused.  Lighten up on the vino, Uncle Joe.


Super- centenarians, such as Morano and Jeanne Calment of France, who famously lived to be 122 years old, continue to fascinate scientists and have led them to wonder just how long humans can live. A study published in Nature last October concluded that the upper limit of human age is peaking at around 115 years.

Now, however, a new study in Nature by McGill University biologists Bryan G. Hughes and Siegfried Hekimi comes to a starkly different conclusion. By analyzing the lifespan of the longest-living individuals from the USA, the UK, France and Japan for each year since 1968, Hekimi and Hughes found no evidence for such a limit, and if such a maximum exists, it has yet to be reached or identified, Hekimi says.

Science Daily:  No detectable limit to how long people can live

OK, so researchers don't agree with each other but that's not a problem since that's when they can get most interesting.


"We just don't know what the age limit might be. In fact, by extending trend lines, we can show that maximum and average lifespans, could continue to increase far into the foreseeable future," Hekimi says. Many people are aware of what has happened with average lifespans. In 1920, for example, the average newborn Canadian could expect to live 60 years; a Canadian born in 1980 could expect 76 years, and today, life expectancy has jumped to 82 years. Maximum lifespan seems to follow the same trend.

- SD

Watson:  it's getting thin

Roger that but there's nothing to refute since that observation is true.


It's impossible to predict what future lifespans in humans might look like, Hekimi says. Some scientists argue that technology, medical interventions, and improvements in living conditions could all push back the upper limit.

"It's hard to guess," Hekimi adds. "Three hundred years ago, many people lived only short lives. If we would have told them that one day most humans might live up to 100, they would have said we were crazy."

- SD

Watson:  now we're in dreamthink?

Sure but it's not such a terrible dream.


Here's a fast list of some real things which get constant study:

- research into preventing aging

- research into development of better delivery mechanisms for medicine

- development of robos with skills which go beyond human for diagnostics and surgery

- cancer research of all kinds and similar is true for multiple debilitating diseases

Those are real and they are live right now so extensions to the limits on lifespan seem realistic to make.  That may seem a difficult observation for a Rockhouse Boomer since I won't get it but we don't need to own the Future; we just need to know no-one is going to screw it up for you before you get there.


The consideration of a much longer life is peachy and we're happy to do it but, as with many things, we don't see much attention to thinking things through.  For one immediate question, we ask what happens to retirement when it's set now for sixty-five or whatever but a person may live to be twice that.  Those extra years may not be productive in the same context as whatever took place in the younger years but will this older person use this newfound bounty only for fishing?

Alabama:  yes!

The bass are jumping while the mayflies are about, aren't they.


It's not the Rockhouse purpose to spin a Walt Disney story and then rain on it.  Our concern is ensuring it will not rain on you and we strongly believe anticipation and preparation are the answer to that.

Spock:  live long and prosper

Fair enough but we do have one advisory since it's a good idea to understand the meaning of prosperity and, amazingly, it's not accumulation of the most stuff.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is true that the average lifespan is increasing.
But it is also true that the percentage of disabilities in older age is also increasing. So we are living longer but we aren't necessarily living old well.
That is from an article further down the page in your link.
No reason to think at with as a population practices healthy lifestyles from an early age that it could not both live longer and with less disabilities.

Unknown said...

I do believe boiling that one will leave us with if you want to live an old and healthy life then you will still need to earn it.

At more detail, part of the research is into why old age can be so debilitating and they work to reduce or eliminate things of that nature as well. I suspect the field is exciting for young people working it today and actually doing the research since they have been turning up spectacular things.

I doubt any of that means you can smoke and / or get fat and sloppy and get away with it but there does seems to be the realistic potential for significant changes.