Beyond 150 years, our body would no longer be resilient enough to keep us alive.
- Physical resilience is the ability to recover following a stressful event for the body.
- A total loss of resilience prevents us from being in a good physiological state, and reduces our lifespan.
- Life expectancy could also depend on our lifestyle, which can contribute to brain shrinkage.
Jeanne Calment holds the record, but we could exceed it. According to a study published in NatureCommunications, humans can live to be 150 years old, at most. Beyond that age, we would no longer be physically resilient enough to survive. According to this research, human life expectancy depends on two factors: biological age and resilience.
What is Resilience?
The first is determined by the level of stress suffered, the lifestyle and the diseases, as for the second criterion, it corresponds to our ability to recover following a stressful event. This recovery time lengthens with age. The researchers used various medical data, including blood samples, as well as the level of physical activity of the participants to estimate the level of resilience of the individuals. At forty, it takes two weeks to recover, compared to six weeks at age 80. From 120 or even 150 years, researchers from the biotechnology company Gero note a total loss of resilience.
What lessons can be drawn from this study?
“This predictable loss of resilience, even in healthy individuals who age well, could explain why we do not believe in a clear increase in maximum lifespan, when it has increased steadily in recent decades.“, explain the researchers. According to them, the extension of the lifespan will necessarily go through an improvement in the resilience. “We know of no law of nature that would prevent such intervention.“, they say. According to their conclusions, drugs could make it possible to maintain a certain level of resilience in order to improve the state of health and ensure longevity.
To live old, let’s take inspiration from the Chimane ethnic group!
Another study reveals other secrets of longevity. In Journal of Gerontologya research team explains that the way of life of the Chimane ethnic group, who live in southern Bolivia, gives keys to slowing down aging. In 2017, a previous study had shown that they had unparalleled heart health: the rate of heart disease is very low among this population. This time, scientists were interested in their brain health. As we age, our brains shrink, but when this phenomenon accelerates, it can be a sign of dementia.
Much slower brain shrinkage
As part of this study, the researchers carried out brain imaging of more than 700 Chimanes, aged 40 to 94 years. They compared the results obtained with those of Americans and Europeans. Brain shrinkage is 70% slower in Chimanes, compared to people in industrialized countries. “Our sedentary lifestyle and high-sugar, high-fat diet could accelerate age-related brain tissue loss and make us more susceptible to diseases like Alzheimer’s“, explains Hillard Kaplan, one of the authors of this study. For him, the lifestyle of the Chimanes offers keys to improving the brain health of the elderly. If they have limited access to health services, they are extremely physically active and have a very high fiber diet of fish, vegetables and lean meats.
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