How to Extend Human Lifespan
How to Extend Human Lifespan
The quest to extend human lifespan is a perennial topic in geroscience and in the
popular culture. The dream of living forever stretches back to Greek myths and
alchemists’ notebooks finance.asialogue, but it has also been captured in science-fiction films such as
Terminator and Blade Runner.
The past century has seen tremendous progress in extending the average lifespan
of humans through the development of effective vaccines and anti-aging drugs, as
well as reducing mortality rates related to disease. As a result, life expectancy at
birth has increased from less than 10 per 1,000 live births halfway through the 19th
century to 68 years now47.
Although many of the advances made in the field of geroscience have been
beneficial, no one has yet demonstrated that human maximum lifespan can be
radically extended. As a result, the majority of researchers prefer to see the aging
process as multifactorial and consider treatments as simply extending healthspan
rather than lifespan8,9.
There are no hard limits on the maximum lifespan of an individual; however, as a
rule, a species’ maximum lifespan is not unlimited, even in theory. This is because
lifespan depends on niche, the environmental circumstances in which an animal
lives.
For example, some animals living in a harsh environment, such as tortoises,
bowhead whales and Greenland sharks, have very long lifespans. But these animals
live in very specialized niches, which are not easily adapted to other
environments70. As a result, their lifespans may be limited by a variety of genetic
factors that are not found in humans.
Moreover, most animals are prone to age-related diseases. These diseases can be
attributed to deleterious changes that have not been identified, but are likely to be
molecular in nature20. This makes preventative and reparative interventions, which
reduce the rate of damage that accumulates during a lifetime, much more important
than lifespan-extension techniques, as they would need to be able to halt or cure
these chronic age-related diseases without causing further adverse late-life effects.
Therefore, if lifespan is to be radically extended in humans, it would need to be
achieved by modifying fundamental aspects of the biology of our species. This could
not only require the reprogramming of our genes, but also the alterations of the
environment in which we live.
For this reason, the development of new life-extension strategies will be a slow and
arduous process. Moreover, it is unlikely that any of the strategies currently under
development will be successful. Nonetheless, they all have the potential to make a
significant impact on human longevity and are of high scientific interest to biologists.
By studying how our body works at specific times of the day, Cooper realized that the brain performed better on demanding and analytical tasks when alert. Conversely, he gets to be more creative when we are tired.
