June 26, 2022
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The world’s oldest man, Kiko Tanaka, passed away this year at the age of 119.
Once upon a time, longevity seemed impossible, and now it is no longer the case. So, can the aging process be slowed or even reversed? Do those centenarians hold the secret to helping everyone live longer?
On Friday, January 2, 1903, a baby girl named Kiko Tanaka was born in a small village on the southern island of Japan. In the same year, the inaugural Tour de France started from Paris and the Ford Motor Company sold its first car.
Kiko Tanaka passed away in April at the age of 119 and was officially recognized as the world’s oldest person. She spent her final years in a nursing home, waking up at 6am every morning to solve math problems, play board games, eat chocolate, and drink coffee and soda.
Centenarians like Koshi Tanaka are no longer uncommon.
So how do we live to be 100 years old? BBC International’s Investigative programme brought in four experts to explore the question.
second Life
Dr. Hiroko Akiyama specializes in gerontology, which is the study of aging. She is a former vice-chairman of the Japan Science Council and an emeritus professor at the University of Tokyo.
Hiroko Akiyama said that Japan is one of the leaders in a rapidly aging society. The average life expectancy of Japanese is now as high as 88 years, and more than a quarter of the population is over 65 years old.
Others with similar life expectancy to Japan include Hong Kong, Singapore, Switzerland, Italy and Spain.
Data from Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare shows that the number of people over the age of 100 in Japan reached a record 86,510 last year, an increase of more than 6,000 over the same period last year.
Akiyama pointed out that longevity is the result of a combination of factors, one of which is the universal health insurance system. Japan has had easy access to medical care since the 1960s; secondly, Japanese people are more health-conscious and have a relatively healthy lifestyle; many people go for regular health checks; Japanese people also do more sports in their daily lives Activity.
In addition, Japan has one of the lowest obesity rates in developed countries. Food is another factor, Akiyama said. Low in fat intake and eating more fish, vegetables, seaweed and green tea, many Japanese believe that moderation is good for all aspects of life.
Yet while people are living longer, Japan’s overall population is shrinking. That’s because the birth rate has been falling for some time, reaching an all-time low last year.
Akiyama said the working-age population has been steadily decreasing, while the population 65 and older, especially 75 and older, is increasing.
As the number of seniors grows, people also realize that seniors have different needs.
Successive governments in Japan have acknowledged this, but efforts have tended to continue to promote established policies.
Hiroko Akiyama said, “The government is mainly concerned with the health care system, the pension system, the housing and the transportation system. But this society was built when the population was much younger. Therefore, we need to redesign the hard and soft infrastructure of society. , the government is doing a lot.”
A more radical approach is currently needed. Dr. Akiyama and her research team conducted several social experiments in rural and urban areas to explore ways to allow people to live independently for longer.
“We’re trying to redesign our community to meet the needs of a highly aging society,” she said. “We want to build the kind of community where people can live to be 100 years old. Keep them healthy, active, connected, and safe. So this is not a retirement community. We don’t just work for seniors, we work for people of all ages.”
As more people live longer and longer, there are opportunities to fill job gaps in a shrinking labor market. In Japan, starting a new job following retirement is called a “second career” or “second life.” It is believed that, for some, employment brings a sense of purpose and regularity to life, which in turn contributes to health. This has inspired another social experiment in creating community workplaces in schools, government offices and nursing homes.
Hiroko Akiyama, 78, has started her second career.
“I was a college professor for a long time,” she said. “When I was 70, I started farming. There were actually four people, including me, with a lot of different skills, and we started a company that rented a lot of money. I started small farming. When I was young, I wanted to be a farmer. So it was a dream for many years.”
When asked if she wanted to live to be 100, she said, “I’m not sure. My mother died three years ago at 98. She had a great life. I’m not sure I wanted to outlive her.. ….I don’t have a strong desire to live beyond 100.”
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Many elderly Japanese start a “second career” following retirement.
What is aging?
Cathy Slack, senior lecturer at the Aston Centre for Healthy Ageing in Birmingham, UK, focuses on why people age and whether this biological process can be slowed down.
The external signs of aging are well known, like wrinkles and gray hair, but there’s more internal stuff under our skin that makes a difference.
Aging is a very personal process, Slack said, and no two people will age in the same way.
Aging really affects all tissues in the body, she said. Many people experience what they call age-related declines in many areas, from the brain to the reproductive system, as they age. “Physiological manifestations of aging observed in older adults are caused by underlying changes in the molecules and cells that make up these tissues.”
These changes are key features of the aging process, also known as hallmarks of aging. So far, nine of them have been found.
Slack also said that includes many cellular metabolic processes, such as the loss of control of protein quality in the cell, and the dysfunction of mitochondria in the cell. Mitochondria are the part of cells that produce energy, and they don’t function as well as they get older. Cells also have difficulty dividing and multiplying rapidly, and the accumulation of old cells can trigger inflammation in new cells.
“So we found that with age, the incidence of chronic diseases associated with inflammation, such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, increases. As the population ages, the incidence of many chronic diseases also increases. This is because Increasing age is a major risk factor for developing these diseases.”
Plus, there are changes in the brain as you age. Some people’s brains actually get smaller, Slack said. This reduction in brain volume appears to occur in areas of the brain that have important cognitive functions. As a result, older adults may experience memory loss or the ability to process many things at once, or even change in behavior. They may become more anxious or depressed. But it’s important to stress that not all older adults experience these changes in the same way.
Sometimes in a family, one or more members are in their 80s or 90s, exceeding the average life expectancy. Kathy Slack says genes have a very limited role in this.
“We know that some people live longer than others for 20 percent of the time, but only 20 percent because of their genetic makeup,” she said. “Life experiences, and the circumstances in which they live throughout their lives, can also have a major impact on the degree of aging.”
So how can we improve our odds of living to 100?
If identical twins are placed in different environments, they age differently, Slack said. People are already living longer than before, but lifestyles are not healthier than before, “this is a problem we need to solve”.
“I think it’s pretty boring and outdated advice,” she said. “Just try to maintain a healthy lifestyle, try to stay active, try to maintain activity levels as you age, eat well. Not too much, not too much. Too little. Limit alcohol intake, don’t smoke, those are those boring advice that public health officials have been trying to tell us for a long time.”
At the end of the day, it’s all regarding helping cells to renew and repair, plus getting enough sleep. Scientists are also studying the anti-aging benefits of regular fasting.
In fact, there is still a lot we don’t know regarding aging because this field of research is relatively immature. According to Slack, it has only been studied in depth in the last three or four decades.
“Historically, we’ve focused more on the disease process,” she said. “There are scientists who study cancer, there are scientists who study Alzheimer’s, and so on, and now there are some who think these diseases are more of a disease of aging. Perhaps, if we look at the underlying process in each disease, we can develop new treatments that fight multiple diseases at the same time.”
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The life expectancy of Japanese people has increased, but the problem of aging has also appeared.
Can it delay aging?
It’s hard to know exactly how many people in the world live to be 100 years old or more. The United Nations Population Division estimates there will be 573,000 in 2021. The agency predicts that number will rise.
Dr Nir Barzilai is director of the Institute on Aging at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City and the scientific director of the American Association for the Study of Aging.
“In my lab, we see every day interventions for aging that can be delayed and in some cases stopped and reversed. All of these are possible,” he said.
“We want to prevent frailty in old age, we want to intervene before people get sick with old age and life becomes miserable,” Dr. Bazley said. So with the help of 750 centenarians and their families, he Potential methods are being tested and developed to allow more people to live beyond the age of 100.
The main goal, he said, is to find genes for longevity. These are the genes that slow aging, keep them healthy for longer, and use that knowledge to discover drugs that will do the same thing for people who actually age faster if they don’t live to 100 .
Bassley’s lab team is looking at three scenarios for future aging, he says:
The first is the ability to delay the process. It’s called Dorian Gray, and it’s a fictional character who doesn’t get old himself, but in a painting he does.
The second is the so-called Wolverine or Fountain of Youth, which turns old people back into youth. It’s very, very hard, “It’s going to be the most complicated thing we can do.”
The third is the so-called Peter Pan. Peter Pan is not getting old. Treating people every few months or every year when they’re in their 20s or 30s can essentially eliminate aging and make them age very slowly, which also means that the result is a maximum potential lifespan that might potentially exceed 115 years .
To accelerate progress, they plan to increase the original 750 participating centenarians to 10,000.
Biomarkers are molecules that indicate underlying disease, just like cholesterol does for heart disease. But finding biomarkers that do the same for aging has been tricky.
“A bunch of biomarkers are needed, but the biomarkers you’re looking for do two things. First, they differentiate our chronological age from our biological age, some people look younger and some look younger,” Bazley said. The chronological age. The second is that these biomarkers change when we use the aging drugs that are in development.
Some promising drugs that target the hallmarks of aging have been approved by regulators and are widely available, but other treatments, such as drugs to prevent rejection following organ transplants, have not. Dr. Bazley is leading an effort to complete a clinical trial to repurpose a drug called metformin, which is used to treat type 2 diabetes.
As for whether he will see a major breakthrough in this field in his lifetime, Barziley said the answer is yes, “I think there is such a wave in this field that people have found that aging is the next front. Rich people around the world People are investing at any cost in addressing aging. It’s entirely possible, it’s only going to get faster.”
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Many Japanese are very focused on healthy eating.
“Take care of your body”
Robert Waldinger is a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and director of the ongoing Harvard Study in Adult Development.
The study began in 1938, tracking Harvard students. A year later, another 456 poor people who grew up in Boston were added. He noted that people with more connections and better relationships lived longer and healthier lives than those with fewer connections.
“The study is in its 84th year,” he said. “As far as we know, this is the longest study of the same people from adolescence all the way to old age. Now we’re looking at their children, all of whom were baby boomers. The thinking at the time was that we spent so much energy studying what went wrong in human life that it would be helpful if we started looking at what was done right, looking at people whose lives were on the right track for healthy progress.”
He said that initially 724 people participated, but almost all of them died, but there were also some – less than 50 – people in their 90s, and some people even more than 100 years old and still alive.
Some of the research’s findings cover what we’re now familiar with — those who have healthy eating and lifestyle choices tend to live longer…but there are others.
Professor Waldinger said the more surprising finding was that having more relationships with others, having more connections with those around you, having warmer relationships, actually made people healthier throughout their lives. Research predicts that they will live longer than those with less contact with others.
It seems to say, (longevity) is not just regarding what to do… but also, who you know.
‘We’ve found that if you do things that make sense for you and do it with other people, reaching out to people who have the same interests as you, you’re more likely to end up with new relationships,’ he said.
So, how does loneliness affect longevity?
There’s a lot of research in this area right now, Waldinger said. The best explanation is that it has to do with stress and the regulation of stress. Think regarding it, if you had an upset or a difficult conversation during the day, you might have felt an increased physical load. If you come home and talk to someone who is willing to listen, you can really feel your body calm down. “We believe that those who are more lonely never get quiet. Their bodies are always in a mild stress response. That means higher levels of circulating stress hormones, more chronic inflammation, and damage to the system. So, with some research, our best guess is that good relationships help us manage stress.”
But are relationships really necessary for longevity? We all know that there are people who just like to be alone and are doing fine.
In this regard, Waldinger’s answer is that there are such people. “Some people are more introverted — that’s not a problem, some people are more extroverted. There are so many people around, there’s a lot of pressure on introverts, and they might just need one or two close people. That’s what they need, it’s what they want Yes, it’s great for them. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to living a healthy life. Plus, we also know that pets can provide a lot of comfort and joy, and pets can calm us down.”
Monitoring happiness levels is part of Harvard’s Adult Development Study. But it took decades for the full significance of these findings to become more widely accepted.
“We’ve studied people who don’t start to put effort into relationships until they’re in their 70s and 80s, have warmer friendships, and even find love for the first time in their 70s and 80s,” Waldinger said. So, It’s never too late.”
So, how exactly does one live to be 100 years old?
The answer is, no guarantees, but eating as much as you can, exercising, finding someone or chatting with an animal can help.
If you live in a country where older people outnumber younger people, you may have seen some changes by now to ensure your later years are vibrant and comfortable.
There isn’t a single method that most people can use to delay, stop or reverse aging, but scientists are working on it.
Until then, Professor Robert Waldinger’s advice is: “Take care of your body and always remember that you may need it for 100 years.”
