Over the past two centuries, advances in quality of life, diet, and medicine have had a notable effect on life expectancy world: doubled in the 20th century. This spectacular growth was driven by factors such as improved nutrition, disease prevention and treatment, and access to health services.
However, in the last three decades, This rate of increase began to slow down considerably. This led to a debate about whether humans are approaching a biological limit to longevity.
This debate was recently fueled by a study led by the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) and published in the journal Nature Aging. The report warns that, Despite continued advances in public health and medicine, the increase in life expectancy at birth in the world’s oldest populations was only six and a half years since 1990.
This figure is well below the expectations of some scientists, who expected longevity to increase at a much faster rate during this century, with most people reaching 100 years of age. The findings suggest that Humanity is approaching a biological limit of life.
According to S. Jay Olshanskylead author of the study and member of the UIC School of Public Health, the largest increases in longevity were achieved thanks to the fight against diseasesbut now biological aging stands as the main barrier to continuing this progress.
This raises the need to focus efforts on delaying the effects of aging, beyond just fighting diseases. As Olshansky stated, according to the news agency EFE: “We must now focus on efforts to delay aging and extend life expectancy”.
This research, in which experts from the University of Hawaii, Harvard and UCLAis part of a debate that has been ongoing for three decades about the possible limits of human longevity.
EFE He added that Olshansky had already published in 1990 an article in Science in which he argued that humanity was approaching a life expectancy ceiling of around 85 yearswhile other scientists were confident that medical and public health advances would continue to accelerate the growth of longevity in the 21st century.
The results of the new study seem to confirm Olshansky’s thesisas they show that the increase in life expectancy slows as more people reach older ages and face the immutable effects of aging.
The geroscience emerges as a field with the potential to address the harmful effects of aging while improving the overall health of older people. According to the researchers, by focusing on delaying the aging processes, more significant benefits could be obtained for the population than simply prolonging life without considering health and well-being during those additional years.
Although the treatment and prevention of diseases were key to improvements in life expectancy during the last century, Aging remains the most important risk factor for many chronic diseases, such as cancer, cardiovascular disease and dementia, according to Guardian.
The authors of the study emphasize that, to advance this approach, it is essential to work on reducing risk factors such as a sedentary lifestyle, poor diet and other harmful habits, as well as eliminating Socioeconomic disparities that affect health and longevity of the people, he stated EFE.
With the implementation of public health policies Aimed at prevention and promoting healthy lifestyle habits, you can not only live longer, but also with better health and quality of life.
Olshansky argued in EFE: “There is much room for improvement: to reduce risk factors, work to eliminate disparities and encourage people to adopt healthier lifestyles, all of which can allow people to live longer and healthier. We can break through this glass ceiling of health and longevity with geroscience and efforts to slow the effects of aging”.