The elderly is one of the few things that every living thing has in common. In particular people are Today live longer than in the past. Much of this is due to social progress such as vaccines, antibiotics, infrastructure for public health, sanitary facilities, hygiene, earlier diagnoses and increased public awareness about health and lifespan.
Most people will not be 100 years old, despite these jumps in public health, according to Briana Mezuk, the co-director of the Center for Social Epidemiology and population Health of the University of Michigan.
Five years after the start of the COVID-19 Pandemie, the average life expectations in the US decreased. For indigenous Americans and residents of Alaska, life expectancy fell by 6.6 years to 65.2, according to An analysis of 2023 From provisional data from the National Center for Health Statistics. Life expectancy fell by about four years for black and Spanish Americans to 70.8 and 77.7 years respectively. Asian and white Americans saw a drop of approximately 2 years to 83.5 and 76.4 years.
“Everything must have a limit. There is no creature on planet earth that we know that at some point not dying, “said Mezuk. “But there is clearly a substantial variation in life expectancy and healthy life expectancy, which in some respects is more important than the first question. How long can we live and be able to have the type of psychological, functional and social life that makes life worth living? What is that life expectancy? “
Research maintenance That the natural limit for the human lifespan is approximately 122 years, based on the fact that the longest living person died at 122 in 1997, and it is known that nobody lives any longer.
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To be honest, nobody knows. But it will probably be shorter than the biological maximum that a person could live.
And there is a difference between life expectancy and the speed of aging, William Mair explained, the director of the Aging Initiative of Harvard Chan School. Many factors influence life expectancy in the United States. As people get older, their sensitivity to chronic diseases such as heart conditions, different cancers and diabetes raised. For younger people, accidents, violence and overdoses of drugs contribute Early mortality. The life expectancy of all demography is influenced by income, education, access to health care and other socio -economic and systemic factors. When it comes to race, systemic inequality, for example, leads routinely to adverse health results. Although progress in medicine and technology continues to extend lifespan, these factors, plus broader public health crises, such as the opioid epidemic and COVID-19have our ability to live longer.
However, the speed with which the body ages refers to the biological speed with which our body deteriorates over time as a result of cellular damage, genetic factors and environmental influences.
“People are exposed to things that accumulate in the body, and the accumulation of those things makes it that way, at some point the body is simply not resilient enough to function,” said Mezuk. “Even if you imagine the person where they just live in a room and are locked up there, and they will never get environmental expansions, they will only die from biological processes.” But for the rest of us who will probably not spend our lives in a literal bubble, we will be exposed to things that change how well our body aging – such as radiation from the sun or air pollution – simply because we are outside about life.
Some people try to reduce the impact of environmental factors on their lives through life extension and biohacking. This includes injecting itself with NAD+ (An enzyme that promises anti-aging benefits), extreme food restrictions, plasma injections, hundreds of supplements-the list continues. The most extreme example is venture capitalist Bryan Johnson, who has become notorious for the pursuit of young people and immortality. The Netflix -Documentary, Don’t dieExplains his journey in deeply and emphasizes, perhaps the most interesting, a compulsive need to rule how long he can live.
His resources can be extreme, but the motive is understandable. That said, control is an illusion when it comes to things like this. While Johnson has millions of dollars at his disposal to experiment with a multitude of therapies – Bloomberg estimates that he spends $ 2 million on doctors and treatments annually – most people don’t. And many of which ages people are the circumstances in which they were born and are increasingly difficult to escape because of social -economic and systemic factors, such as poverty and racism.
For example, someone’s location can define his results and risk of chronic conditions. Two people who just live in the US live in the US a few kilometers could be apart Dramatically different health results And their bodies can age with dramatically different percentages due to stress, access to health care or nutrition. On the other hand, talking about her time that lived in Italy, I noticed that people who live in the Mediterranean Sea exist in a society that is structured on a long service life due to broader access to higher quality food, stores that Close so that people could cook their children a healthy lunch at home, smaller portion sizes and a better work-life culture. “It is just fundamentally different on a different value system than we have in the United States,” she added.
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“If you think about life expectancy, what has really happened in the last 100 years, certainly in developed countries such as the US and increasingly all over the world, we have added a phenomenal amount of time to the expectation of human life,” ” said Mir. “But those extra years have absolutely nothing to do with the intrinsically slower of our bodies.”
Instead, the problem of aging on the road has been shifted. Alzheimer’s disease has increasedJust like other age -related chronic conditions, because people live longer. “Now many of us live until our seventies; We experience this built -in aging of people who manifests themselves in age -related chronic conditions, “said Mir.
Even, the best balms against aging bad are the things that our mothers and grandmothers told us to do: regularly exercise, avoid smoking, drink too much alcohol and stay away from highly processed foods to concentrate on a balanced diet of healthy Very food.
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