A new report out of Great Britain’s Newcastle University makes a fairly attention-grabbing claim. Thanks to modern medical science, they say, it is now easy to reach extreme old age, which they define as age 100 and beyond.
You only need two things:
The first of those is the easier to achieve. All you have to do is try. Eat well, exercise, keep your mind sharp, and stay socially engaged with your community. One study after another has shown that those simple steps can truly add years to your life — and very healthy, happy years, at that.
What about the second prong, though? Obviously, you can’t pick your parents. If you’re lucky, however, you may have inherited super-centenarian genes, which means you’re genetically predisposed to live to 105 or longer.
Until recent times, people with a super-centenarian genetic makeup didn’t always reach their full age potential because various pathologies got in the way. Today, modern medicine has an answer for many major pathologies. It’s that pesky issue of inflammation that claims so many elderly lives now.
But super-centenarians have naturally low rates of inflammation. They age more slowly, stay healthier, and live much longer than the rest.
So just how common are those super-centenarian genes? Maybe more than we previously thought. If so, that would certainly help to explain the rapidly expanding senior lifespan in recent years. More research is still to be done.
The article is certainly an encouraging one. It’s also a reminder that many of us might still stick around for decades to come! That’s why advance planning for the future is so important. As it happens, that’s something our office can be of considerable help with. If you’d like to learn more, we invite you to give us a call.