The stakes have just been raised. No longer is it enough to stretch your life expectancy to some vague horizon. Now you are expected to strive for 100, and adjust your life to get there.
I was at a dinner party recently where four of the guests had just taken a longevity test on the internet and were arguing over their scores. One chic 50ish Frenchwoman claimed victory with her estimated checkout age as 102. The rest of us sheepishly acknowledged defeat.
These tests are tapping into a new competitive urge to reach 100 and still have your marbles. How-to books, websites and geriatric clinics are proliferating as life expectancy grows.
The number of American 100-year-olds has been doubling about every 10 years since the 1950s, according to researchers at the New England Centenarian Study at Boston University. There are 80,000 American centenarians alive today, and the US Census Bureau predicts near 5,00,000 by the year 2040.
In Britain, Queen Elizabeth sends letters to each new British centenarian. She totalled 255 letters when she became queen in 1952; last year her staff wrote 4,623 for her to sign.
To establish your likely longevity, the web-based questionnaires ask obvious questions like, “How much processed (junk) food to you eat?” “How much alcohol and tobacco do you consume?” “How much exercise do you take?” On the subject of general outlook, one question finally gets to the heart of the matter, “Are you dreading your older years?” Which leads to a troubling question: Do you really want to live to be 100? Welcome to 100 years of aches and pains.
Dr Thomas Perls, a director of the New England study, says the human body should be sufficiently robust to last about 85 years but baby boomers, now reaching their 60s, have done “a terrible job preparing for old age”.
His study has produced a long list of characteristics that members of the 100 Club share: good longevity genes, emotional resilience, good coping skills, intellectual activity, a sense of humour and a zest for life. Optimists live longer, he adds. Oh yes, it also helps to be female, 80 per cent of centenarians are women.
A quarter of his centenarians were found to be free of cognitive disorders and scored higher on mental agility tests than the researchers did.
The medical world rejects the use of growth hormones as an anti-aging aid but thousands are not listening. A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association estimated that about 30,000 “older individuals” were treated with growth hormones to try to slow the aging process, many of them paying as much as $500 a month for the injections.
Much serious biological research is under way to stretch life expectancy, however. In clinical terms, the aim is to circumvent the “Hayflick limit”, named for biologist Leonard Hayflick. As cells approach their Hayflick limit of about 50 divisions, they begin to show signs of aging, ultimately causing death. If researchers can learn to get around the barrier, they say, life expectancy may be extended dramatically.
While the trends are similar in the G-8 industrialised countries, Russia has emerged as a disturbing exception. Russian men die, on average, at age 58, compared to 73 in the United States and 74 in France and Germany. The relatively poor Russian diet plus a weakness for vodka are the culprits, says a World Bank report. If present trends continue, Russian men will have an average 53-year lifespan by mid-century.
Russia aside, I asked a doctor what he thought about this obsession with staying alive. His reply: “Simple. Because we don’t know what’s on the other side”.
