Maximum human life span 150 years

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  Maximum human life span 150 years

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• The Story: Who doesn't want to live long? Or perhaps even be immortal? But in Silicon Valley, US, immortality is sometimes elevated to the status of a corporeal goal. Many in big tech have funded ventures to solve the problem of death itself!
• The limits to life: Researchers have taken on the question of how long we can live if we do not die from cancer, heart disease or some accident. The human body’s capacity to restore equilibrium to its structural and metabolic systems after disruptions still fades with time. There is incremental decline on a daily basis, which sets the maximum life span for humans at somewhere between 120 and 150 years. This fundamental loss of resilience will kill any human finally. The latest research point to an underlying “pace of aging” that sets the limits on lifespan.
• Research results: Researchers studied the “pace of aging” in three large groups in the U.S., the U.K. and Russia. To evaluate deviations from stable health, they assessed changes in blood cell counts and the daily number of steps taken and analyzed them by age groups.

1. For both blood cell and step counts, the pattern was the same: as age increased, some factor beyond disease drove a predictable and incremental decline in the body’s ability to return blood cells or gait to a stable level after a disruption. 
2. When researchers used this predictable pace of decline to determine when resilience would disappear entirely, leading to death, a range of 120 to 150 years was seen.
3. The researchers found that with age, the body’s response to damage could increasingly range far from a stable normal, requiring more time for recovery. A healthy young person can produce a rapid physiological response to adjust to fluctuations and restore a personal norm. But not so in an older person.
4. Measurements such as blood pressure and blood cell counts have a known healthy range, however, whereas step counts are highly personal. The fact that something so different from blood counts still showed the same decline over time suggests a real pace-of-aging factor in play.
5. Researchers found a steep turn at about the age of 35 to 40 years that was surprising. This period is often a time when an athlete’s sports career ends, an indication that something in physiology may really be changing at this age.

• Unlocking mortality secrets: The desire to unlock the secrets of immortality has been around as long as humans’ awareness of death. But a long life span is not the same as a long health span. Perhaps the focus shouldn’t be on living longer but on living healthier longer. Death is not the only thing that matters, but other things, like quality of life start mattering more as people experience the loss of them. Can we extend life without also extending the proportion of time that people go through a frail state?
• Final conclusion: Treating diseases in the long run is not going to have the effect that perhaps people imagine. These fundamental biological processes of aging are going to continue. The idea of slowing down the aging process has drawn attention also from researchers who view such interventions as a means to “compress morbidity” — to diminish illness and infirmity at the end of life to extend health span. Whether this will have any impact on the fundamental upper limits identified in latest research remains speculative. Some studies are being launched, testing the diabetes drug metformin, for example, with the goal of attenuating hallmark indicators of aging.
• Summary: Researchers say there is no need to lose hope. Now that the independent pace of aging is known, science will try to find ways to “intercept the loss of resilience.” So what about you - a long life or immortality?

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