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Oldest Man 111


TomBAvoider

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The oldest man is about to be proclaimed when verification is completed. What's intersting is that he insists with great emphasis that he did absolutly nothing special to reach this age, which is something that we've remarked upon many times, i.e. how come not one supercentenarian was ever a "health nut"... perhaps none of these behaviors or strategies actually impact max longevity, although it's possible healthspan is affectedL

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-hampshire-51656545

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17 minutes ago, TomBAvoider said:

he insists with great emphasis that he did absolutly nothing special to reach this age, 

Well no special physical practices anyway. He does suggest not being too worried about money or taking oneself too seriously:

He said money has never been important to him, adding: "I think laughter is extremely important.
"Most of the trouble in the world is caused by people taking themselves too seriously."

Seems like good advice.

--Dean 

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15 hours ago, TomBAvoider said:

which is something that we've remarked upon many times, i.e. how come not one supercentenarian was ever a "health nut"... perhaps none of these behaviors or strategies actually impact max longevity, although it's possible healthspan is affectedL

The concept I grasped is that exceptionally few people win the max longevity lottery, being borne with the appropriate combinations of genes.

Those who didn't win such a lottery may nevertheless approach, or try to approach, the max longevity of the winners by expressing that same combination of genes or a similar one...

Expressing the (supposedly) right combination of genes requires accurate calibration of various interventions, the very ones we discuss in this forum.

The results will be different in each individual according to the more or less favorable setup of gene expression achieved. But everyone is likely to receive a benefit, albeit in different measures.

Also, we cannot say that healthspan and longevity are not correlated. They are not the same but their coefficient of correlation is probably significant. 

 

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4 hours ago, mccoy said:

The concept I grasped is that exceptionally few people win the max longevity lottery, being borne with the appropriate combinations of genes.

Those who didn't win such a lottery may nevertheless approach, or try to approach, the max longevity of the winners by expressing that same combination of genes or a similar one...

Expressing the (supposedly) right combination of genes requires accurate calibration of various interventions, the very ones we discuss in this forum.

The results will be different in each individual according to the more or less favorable setup of gene expression achieved. But everyone is likely to receive a benefit, albeit in different measures.

Also, we cannot say that healthspan and longevity are not correlated. They are not the same but their coefficient of correlation is probably significant. 

 

Did Jeanne Calment have caloric restriction?

Edited by Fernando Gabriel
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37 minutes ago, Fernando Gabriel said:

Did Jeanne Calment have caloric restriction?

LOL, I don't know her calories but she didn't need it, she hit the genetic longevity jackpot, that's a total outlier. When you win the genetic lottery, you are automatically protected from sickness and senescence, without having to practice caloric restriction or else. 

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Hah, I didn't know Italy had a CR proponent in the 16th century:

Luigi Cornaro

"When he was about 40, Cornaro found himself exhausted and in poor health, a condition he attributed to a hedonistic lifestyle with excessive eating, drinking, and sexual licentiousness. On the advice of doctors, he began to adhere to a calorie restriction diet specially for morbid obese/anorexia nervosa persons,[3] centered on the "quantifying principle" of restricting himself to only 350g of food daily (including bread, egg yolk, meat, and soup) and 414 mL of wine.[4] His book Discorsi della vita sobria (Discourses On the Temperate Life), which described his regimen, was extremely successful, and "was a true reconceptualization of old age. As late as the Renaissance it was largely the negative aspects of this phase of life which were emphasized ... Cornaro’s method offered the possibility for the first time not only of a long but also a worthwhile life." After his conversion to a holistic lifestyle, he remained in vigorous health well into old age.[4]

In 1550, when Cornaro was about 83, he was urged to write down his secrets of health, and its English translation, often referred to today under the title The Sure and Certain Method of Attaining a Long and Healthful Life, went through numerous editions; he wrote three follow-ups in 1553, 1558, and 1562. The first three were published at Padua in 1558. They are written, says Joseph Addison, in the early 18th century periodical The Spectator (No. 195), "with such a spirit of cheerfulness, religion and good sense, as are the natural concomitants of temperance and sobriety." Friedrich Nietzsche criticized the work for mistaking the consequence with the cause,[5] insisting that Cornaro's diet is not the cause of his long life, but rather that the cause of his long life - which Nietzsche gives as his slow metabolism - is the reason for his diet."

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Think about it - the lens of the eye deteriorates at a steady rate - the crystallin proteins clump decreasing transparency and eventually you develop cataracts if you live long enough to 100%. Since it is a physical process, there is a rate at which this happens and that process can be accelerated by various factors such as exposure to ultraviolet light, diabetes associated high sugar levels and so on. This deterioration is progressive and not subject to arrest, so the eye is a very prominent marker of age. One thing that I have observed is the extremely high prevalence of outright blindness (J. Calment) or severely compromised vision in most supercentenarians. Remarkably, the vision of this man - at least insofar as one can judge from a video - appears to be fairly spectacular for such an advanced age! I mean, it's one thing to say "you have a heart/kidney/liver/organ of a man 30 years younger", but to say that about the lens of the eye, something that deteriorates at a very steady rate that cannot be arrested and only accelerated, sounds like something close to a miracle!

It's an example of the kind of odds you have to beat in order for everything to align just so, in order to allow someone to live past 110. Think of the sheer number of times you have to roll the dice to obtain this spectacular combination - much more rare than hitting a lottery - you're talking about something on the order of billions to one. Sadly, I don't think you can duplicate this result through a careful regimen of exercise and diet, no matter how refined - you need the massive luck of a combo of genes and environment that happens extremely rarely. We can admire, but we can't imitate.

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I actually think that some people on CR will do better, especially when combined with new medical technologies and drugs that'll come along in the next few decades. It's likely to be genetic in this man's case, and it's really impressive compared to many supercentenarians I've seen over the years, but why couldn't CR mimic this effect? Even on something like the eyes?

CR helps maintain good glucose metabolism (completely prevention of diabetes), and maintaining good proper folding of proteins and preventing degradation of them. CR appears to enhance the expression of many genes implicated in longevity in centenarians: it acts on the IGF-1/insulin signaling pathway, boosts SIRT1, FOXO3A, boosting autophagy, and reducing expression of genes involved in inflammation. CR also results in profiles of thyroid hormones that go in the same direction as what is seen in familial longevity, but only a stronger effect and more representative of a CR'd state.

I've looked at some of the research on families who are 'predisposed to longevity' the results from Fontana's group is far more impressive when you look at the numbers. 

If none of these longevity markers that are found in centenarians have anything to do with their longevity, then everything we know has to be wrong. And the reason for their longevity (despite knowing that more active variants of these genes alter lifespan in animals also) is still unknown.

I feel like I'm one of the very few people here that is still optimistic about the effects of CR on human aging. 🙂

I really can see many of us who started earlier in life being able to reach 100-115. The average person lives to about 80 years old, while the oldest lived to 122. There is clearly a lot of room left in the system for optimizing for the vast majority of people. The best way to optimize our biology and genes to resemble a person or animal that is phenotypically predisposed to extreme longevity is by doing CR. 

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I agree with CR being our best bet for matching 110+yrs (especially with CRON).

Afterall, doesn’t CR turn on and off genes to maximize the robustness of our survivability?  It makes sense that by following CR you are in-effect reprogramming your own genes to match those lucky enough to be randomly born with that ideal genetic profile.

Add to that optimal nutrition, some exercise, low stress, etc. and it makes sense that making it to 100 is attainable for those otherwise destined to peg-out at around age 80.

 

 

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Well, yes, reaching 100 with optimal care - diet, exercise, lifestyle choices etc. - is entirely possible for a reasonable fraction of the population. In fact, there is quite a bit of talk among demographers that the population of centenarians is set to expand very considerably. That said, the status of supercentenarian is a whole other ball game - here I am pretty skeptical that it can be accomplished on the same scale just by utilizing CR and such, I think you need to get very lucky with your physiology. Now, maybe drugs or drastic interventions (f.ex. parabiosis) might push you from 100 to 110+, but I'm not sure we have any such interventions at the moment or the foreseeable future.

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One thing that crosses my mind when considering super centenarians is that none of them were anal about diet (I.e. micronutrients).

It makes me wonder what magnitude of benefit any of us get from ensuring RDA levels of all nutrients.  
This fellow is still functioning well at over  110yrs and he ate ‘whatever was put in front of him’.

Regardless, I am trying to mitigate DNA damage due to any deficiency.

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Right. This is a frequent thing mentioned when discussing these super agers - they don't appear to do anything special either with exercise or diet, which always leads me to ask - if diet and exercise could indeed push you to a supercentenarian status, why aren't such "health nuts" over-represented in these cohorts? Instead, you mostly read about how their diet was unremarkable and occassionally outright "bad". Then again, most don't have truly terrible habits like excessive drinking or smoking (IIRC, Calment had a bit of wine and occasional cigarette until very late in her life). I don't know, I suspect that diet, exercise and lifestyle have small effects at the margins, but basically there's a max lifespan each of us has - if you were designed to live to 86 max, you can reach that with appropriate diet/ex/lifestyle, but if you mess that up, you'll live less than 86. It's a rare bird that's designed to last to 110+. So these health habits can square the survival curve, but not really extend it - at best you'll live to the potential you were designed for, and for most of us that will not exceed much beyond 100 at best, only the true freaks of nature will see 100+. YMMV.

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On 3/7/2020 at 2:31 AM, Matt said:

I feel like I'm one of the very few people here that is still optimistic about the effects of CR on human aging. 🙂

Hi Matt!

I'm 80, on CR, healthy and a vigorous exerciser.

I fully agree with you.

  --  Saul

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On 3/7/2020 at 10:45 AM, TomBAvoider said:

Right. This is a frequent thing mentioned when discussing these super agers - they don't appear to do anything special either with exercise or diet, ...

It's rarely an all or nothing scenario.

Maybe we should think of the supercentenarians as lottery winners: The fact that very few win the lottery and get rich without effort doesn't meant that the rest of us should not go to work everyday and make a living.

Most studies show that healthy habits have measurable effects and as Tom points out, generally supercentenarians do not engage in destructive behavior. Eating 'whatever was put in front of him" has a different meaning depending on whether one is at KFC or a farm-to-table vegan restaurant.

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Saul,

Keep it up! You are inspiring.

 

On ‎3‎/‎7‎/‎2020 at 2:45 PM, TomBAvoider said:

I suspect that diet, exercise and lifestyle have small effects at the margins, but basically there's a max lifespan each of us has - if you were designed to live to 86 max, you can reach that with appropriate diet/ex/lifestyle, but if you mess that up, you'll live less than 86. It's a rare bird that's designed to last to 110+. So these health habits can square the survival curve, but not really extend it - at best you'll live to the potential you were designed for, and for most of us that will not exceed much beyond 100 at best, only the true freaks of nature will see 100+. YMMV.

I agree 100% with your example; certain things that we do improve ‘healthspan’ or contribute to rectangularize each of our own ‘physical function’ curves; these include micronutrient intake, exercise, good sleep, low stress, even likely time-restriceted feeding (TRF), etc. and essentially they do not slow our aging.

 

However CR is different than (only) rectangularizing a curve/increasing healthspan --

I'm not 100% sure that CR (and perhaps TRF to some extent) does not allow us to reprogram our genes to match those that the centenarian was lucky enough to be born with (entirely or partially); in effect I think CR might allow the guy 'designed to live to 86' to perhaps reprgram to get to let''s say 100?? 

Living to 110 is certainly expecting allot, I agree, and of course your final lifespan WITH CR depend on what your 'natural' lifespan would have been without CR, at what age you begin CR, and how much (what %) CR you practice.

 

FWIW, I haven't been motivated enough to practice CR ... yet -- but that has more to do with willpower/discipline than any scepticism of CR.

 

Clinton

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 9 months later...

Gymnastics
'I love life': Oldest living Olympic champion turns 100
Agnes Keleti survived Holocaust, won 10 Olympic medals and is still celebrating life
Justin Spike · The Associated Press · Posted: Jan 09, 2021
https://www.cbc.ca/sports/olympics/summer/gymnastics/agnes-keleti-oldest-olympian-turns-100-1.5867686

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  • 2 weeks later...

This thread prompted me to look up some of the ages of the longest currently living people. Kane Tanaka is currently the oldest verified person at 118 and is from Japan. More on her can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kane_Tanaka What I find remarkable is that unlike many centenarians who were seemingly healthy right up until the end, she clearly is not. It is remarkable to think that she had pancreatic cancer at age 45 and is still alive today. The 10-year survival rate for pancreatic cancer is less than 2% and here she is 73 years later still alive. 

Quote

 Tanaka has had several major illnesses, and was infected with paratyphoid fever with her adopted daughter at the age of 35.[17] She underwent pancreatic cancer surgery at the age of 45.[17] Most recently, Kane was diagnosed with colorectal cancer and underwent surgery when she was 103 years old.[4] 

 

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