12 replies to this topic

[didierc]

I am a fairly (and even sometimes very) optimist person concerning Life extension. I believe that technological progresses (if they are not interrupted) will make it possible to live a lot longer in a not so far future. I know that life expectancy is raising fast in most parts of the world even for older people and that the group of centenarians is rising fast.

But concerning supercentenarians, the situation these last years seems not really good:

- The oldest person who ever lived is still Jeanne Calment. She died at 122 years already 14 years ago.
- The oldest person in the world at the moment, Besse Cooper, is "only" 115 years.
- None of the 25 verified oldest supercentenarians is still living at the moment.
- Since the number of centenarians is rising and the number of supercentenarians is stable (around 100 verified people in the world), it means probably that the life expectancy of the centenarians is not rising or even is decreasing. For example, in Japan, they were 10.000 centenarians when Jeanne Calment died and they are already 40.000 centenarians now. But they are only 31 Japanese supercentenarians and only 4 older than 112.

So, what is happening? Why is the "last frontier" around 110 years so difficult to break and even more difficult to break now than earlier for the people who reach 100 years?

I think that some of you are going to answer that number of supercentenarians was probably overestimated before. It can be part of the answer. But the number of centenarians was also overestimated. And at the moment, the number of centenarians is dramatically rising and it is not the case of the number of supercentenarians.

[s123]

The increase in life expectancy witnessed in the last century is the result of a decrease in early deaths (infectious disease, poor nutrition, accidents,...). This increases the mean lifespan but has no effect on the maximum lifespan because the rate of aging has not changed. Essentially, the maximum lifespan today is still the same as it was in ancient Egypt. The only difference being that not enough people lived long enough to become very old. We do know of some reasonable long lived people in ancient Egypt. Psusennes I might have been in his eighties when he died and Ramesses II even was in his nineties when he died. Only interventions that decrease, stop or reverse aging will increase maximum lifespan.

Don’t hope for a new Jeanne Calment any time soon… Statistically she shouldn’t even have existed.

[Brainbox]

That could very well be a good explanation. However, you seem to implicitly assume or know that the aspects you mention only have the effect that more people are able to use up their maximum lifespan as a result of reducing external accident-like interventions. Interventions that that have no direct causal relation with the max. biological lifespan. I agree that this is the case with accidents like falling of cliffs or in pits, war or early child death. But what seems to be missing is the positive effect of better hygiene and diet, that possibly (or probably) could very well have a causal relation to maximum biological lifespan. If better diet and hygiene, I.e. Increase of conscious healthy behavior, would have a positive effect on duration of healthy lifespan we should also observe this as an increase of the amount of super centarians. Or should we assume that diet and hygiene do have no or only marginal effects on maximum biological lifespan? Or that the advancements in this area that could have a positive effect are to modern to be able to observe the effects since people using them are still young?

Edited by Brainbox, 14 August 2011 - 04:42 PM.

[didierc]

Hello,

Thank you for your answers.

Indeed, in Egypt, Greece and also in China, you had already people living almost 100 years and even probably a few people living 100 years or more thousands years ago.

But:
- 115 years ago (at the time of the birth of the supercentenarians dying today), the world population was already rising fast;
- 115 years ago, the registration of births was also improving fast.

So we have a bigger group of registered people reaching old age. Statistically, all things being equal, they should be more centenarians living (and this is the case) and more supercentenarians living (and this is not the case).

Also, in my opinion, medical progresses should logically improve not only average lifespan, but also, even slightly, maximal lifespan. There is no "magic evil bullet" killing all people when they reach 115 years. There is a combination of causes killing fast all supercentenarians. And we have medical technologies to at least diminish the impact of certain causes.

But unfortunately, for this last aspect, it is sure that the existing medical progresses are not yet important enough to make a big difference.

[AgeVivo]

I agree with Didier that it is surprising that the the number of centenarians is growing very fast but not the number of supercentenarians
Here are 3 explanations that come out of my mind, there are certainly others:

• a pure coincidence: due to the limited number of supercentenarions there might have been some luck to have so long lived persons in the last decades, and that over the last decade luck was not there. I think Stephen Coles' article was saying that it is possible (would need to be checked, or stats should be done) although 114 year old people keep dying...
• OK we have good medicine hygiena etc such that people more easily attain age 100, but then something that was not so striking before, like pollution for example, becomes a bottleneck at very very high ages (supercentanarians often have trouble breathing and die from it).
• the Supercentenarian Research Foundation (SRF) make them die faster, by telling them how special they are and paparazzying them and then they change, do not keep that secret elixir that they ignore and become vulnerable like others.... But I don't think this is the right explanation Go SRF!

[Brainbox]

But unfortunately, for this last aspect, it is sure that the existing medical progresses are not yet important enough to make a big difference.

Maybe the primary focus of medical development research could be part of the culprit here? A lot of focus is aimed at repairing physical issues, issues that are visible with your bare eye, vision enhanced with CAT and MRI scans, but still issues you can simply see. Like a broken bone, tumor, etc. After detection, the measures are also quite physical, e.g. putting bones together with screws or surgically removing the tumor. Yes, we also have fMRI, but this is aimed at finding correlations of thought patterns, and yes, with physical locations of the parts of the brain that are activated. A lot more sophisticated, but in essence not very different from surgically removing or disabling brain parts and looking at the consequences this has on behavior of research subjects. I know I'm becoming a bit sarcastic now, but for the purpose of making my point: in essence medieval medical science with added technical visualization tools. With the effect that we are predominantly aiming at dealing with external threads of which the elimination only has a statistical effect on mean lifespan.

We do not know to much about the biological processes that form life. Knowledge about stem cells and genetics is still in it's infancy. We can use our knowledge, but currently only for the crude malfunctions of which the elimination, yes, ..... the statistical mean again.

One way or another, humanity is focused on the elimination of suffering. We are deadly afraid of suffering. Creating (in combination with several kinds of severe forms of ignorance) the paradox that the perception of extending ones lifespan increases suffering. "I don't want to be old and sick very long". "Living longer causes economical problems related to demographic changes". "Shit, now I live longer, but I have to work longer as well, big bummer". "I don't want to feel even a tiny bit hungry and don't want to spend a lot of boring time for preparation of healthy meals, so I eat easy refined foodstuff all the time".

The majority of the "developed" world seems to be at least a bit spoiled (understatement of the year?). The others are not developed and not spoiled, but do not have sufficient resources to keep themselves alive and are not able to generate significant cash-flow. Economical (medical) development is aimed at improving financial returns quickly, so the spoiled developed world is served almost exclusively. Spoiling is big business.

Humans are statistical beasts. What we can do best is directing resources towards statistical proven causes of quick gain. So what we get is statistical improvement.

Hmm, maybe I'm in a pessimistic mood tonight.... I think some of the presented thoughts are somewhat incoherent, incomplete and maybe even a just a tad populist. But I still want to share it for discussion.

Cheers!

Edited by Brainbox, 20 August 2011 - 10:50 PM.

[s123]

One way or another, humanity is focused on the elimination of suffering. We are deadly afraid of suffering.

Indeed! There are many problems with this. First of all, therapies that increase lifespan by deceleration of aging should also delay suffering and therapies that cure aging will stop suffering. But aside from this, even if suffering would be increased, the argument would be flawed. Is it better to be dead than to suffer a little bit? By this logic all people who have an incurable disease (for example an inherited disease) should get euthanasia. The error is that a lower quality of life is equated to no quality of life. And that's not true. One can find life worth living even if one suffers a bit from something. Strangely enough this argument is used by ethicists and gerontologists, people who should know better. Of course many of them might say this for political reasons, as beautifully explained by Richard Miller: “Discussions of research on life span extension are carefully skirted in political discourse at the National Institutes of Health and among similar custodians of public funding. One can sometimes get away with cautious circumlocutions (“we do research on late life illness”), but to be safe, it is clearly better to focus on how to “add life to years” and “how to learn the secrets of contributing to a healthy old age”. I disagree with this attitude. Evolutionary biologists might get more political support if they would say “we’re not sure if evolution is true but we try to find it out…” but saying such a thing is a disgrace to scientific integrity. The same is true in biogerontology. Politics should not influence scientific conclusions!

[niner]

Politics should not influence scientific conclusions!

Certainly not, and I hope we never see this. OTOH, politics is always present in the flow of research funding. If a biogerontologist has to couch his or her work in 'politically correct' language in order to get funded, I don't see that as such a huge problem, as long as the work gets done.

[AgeVivo]

So, what is happening? Why is the "last frontier" around 110 years so difficult to break and even more difficult to break now than earlier for the people who reach 100 years?

I think that some of you are going to answer that number of supercentenarians was probably overestimated before. It can be part of the answer. But the number of centenarians was also overestimated. And at the moment, the number of centenarians is dramatically rising and it is not the case of the number of supercentenarians.

I'm hoping to see potential answers in this thread, because I am myself puzzled.

[niner]

So, what is happening? Why is the "last frontier" around 110 years so difficult to break and even more difficult to break now than earlier for the people who reach 100 years?

I think that some of you are going to answer that number of supercentenarians was probably overestimated before. It can be part of the answer. But the number of centenarians was also overestimated. And at the moment, the number of centenarians is dramatically rising and it is not the case of the number of supercentenarians.

I'm hoping to see potential answers in this thread, because I am myself puzzled.

This is my take on it: Supercentenarians are a very different animal than younger people. Medical science has focused on the things that kill younger people, and made a fair amount of progress on that. Supers, for whatever genetics/lifestyle/luck reason, don't die of any of those things. Instead, they are afflicted with things that don't start to show up until people reach advanced ages. The first thing that comes to mind is systemic amyloidosis. No telling what their telomeres look like, but they are probably pretty darn short. At any rate, as if the things that kill most of us weren't enough, there are some more disease states that kick in in this age group, and we don't have much in the way of either understanding or therapy for them.

[AgeVivo]

thx! systemic [TTR] amyloidosis typically explains why it is difficult to live above some high age until cures for it happen (such as Tamafidis, www.foldrx.com/pipeline-attr-tafamidis.htm ) but not why it is MORE difficult now to survive above age 114 than before (it seems...)

[Brainbox]

Trying to build on the previous contribution of niner and my kind of medieval rant at the begin ing of my previous post. Again a bit caricaturistic to keep it simple. And just my view, nothing more but also nothing less.

I think we have a very limited focus. We tend to jump into exploration of details right after we have one promising research result. Or we jump into conclusions without knowing the bigger picture. Take the development of our knowledge of vit. D as an example. We know for decades that UV radiation on our skin produces vit. D. For a very long time, vit. D became a kind of equivalent for the benefits of spending time in the sun. I think this is an example of the kind of tunnel vision that for a significant part is induced by our economic mechanisms. We need to raise research funding on one side and the supplement industry (or in other cases pharmacy) on the other side needs a business case to keep production rolling. Both need a promising vision. Focussing solely on the development of vit. D produces that needed "clear" vision. Although from a more general research view it would maybe be better to also search for vit. D analogues or other beneficial effects of sun radiation.

Why? Because, although vit. D has a lot of promising health benefits, we will not find miricle cures for conditions or deceases based on vit. D alone (my opinion). We can find promising correlations regarding vit. D and health, but probably for finding the real causality of benefits, to find a cure that really works or a general health benefit that really matters, we also need the missing substances we ignored.

We reduce our focus to soon for the benefit of "quick" gain.

[Brainbox]

One way or another, humanity is focused on the elimination of suffering. We are deadly afraid of suffering.

Politics should not influence scientific conclusions!

Yes, politics introduces it's own dynamics.

What I was referring to is that "we" tend to exchange short term "suffering" for long term negative effects. There exists some kind of positive feed back between consumers and the food industry in this case. In itself, this is bad for health and longevity, but it is also a behavioral pattern that can be seen everywhere, also in the medical research community.

Edited by Brainbox, 23 August 2011 - 01:38 AM.