110 year old man in excellent health

[TomBAvoider]

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/man-110-still-drives-car-234745761.html

Still lives independently and has no problem with daily living tasks, drves his car.

Doesn't exercise, never did, though is "active". No special diet, eats whatever he wants. Drinks Ovaltine daily. Smoked for 20 years until 70. Drank a lot of milk as a young man. 

It's all about the genes, folks. A male supercentenarian is very rare. And here we have one with indifferent diet, former 20-year smoker, who never exercised. Would you pick him as a candidate for a supercentenarian? The man is in excellent health, never any health problems. Yet folks like Peter Attia go to extravagant lengths to implement "science based" (he's an MD!) heathy lifestyles and exercises maniacly... yet has had multiple surgeries already and he's not even 60. You wanna bet Attia - or any of the other prominent health nuts - will last anywhere near 110?

Like I always say, it's all about your genes. No matter what you do, you have very little control over your health and longevity, regardless of what the health gurus claim. OK, now I have to go exercise - which I hate and only do, because of the alleged health benefits. I hope I can live in relatively good health until my 80's before I croak.

[Todd Allen]

19 hours ago, TomBAvoider said:

It's all about the genes, folks.

This supercentenarian did not talk about his genes or the exceptional longevity of family.  Rather he claims to have been very lucky.  If you get hit by a meteor great genes don't matter.

[TomBAvoider]

5 hours ago, Todd Allen said:

This supercentenarian did not talk about his genes or the exceptional longevity of family.  Rather he claims to have been very lucky.  If you get hit by a meteor great genes don't matter.

I agree, but lucky with what? I'd say genes. It's not like he carefully picked them, he chanced into them, pure luck. After all, luck in other contexts is not dispositive. Most folks fail to reach 110 not because they got killed by the routine meteor, or because of any other luck dependent accident. Accidental deaths are rather low on the "cause of death" list, so getting lucky on that score will not buy you much. The vast majority of people are "lucky" enough not to die due to any accident.

The thing that exercises (heh!) me is the universal claim that your life/healthspan is in your own hands. All those stats saying that only 10-20-30% of your life/healthspan is gene-dependent. If that were true, you'd expect health nuts to be overrepresented among the oldest old, centenarian/supercentenarian crowd. Yet that is clearly not true. If anything it seems the opposite.

So, I suspect that lifestyle, diet, exercise and other modifiable factors have a much more limited impact than commonly claimed. I think the reality is that each of us has a certain genetically determined health/lifespan potential, and *within* the parameters of that potential, you might have some limited control. If your potential is 80 years, at best with optimal practices you'll reach that 80, but never 81, or Calmet's 122; with poor practices, maybe 78, 76, or disastrous alcoholism 50. Conversally if Calmet were a health nut, maybe she'd hit 125?
 

It's the genes.

[corybroo]

17 hours ago, TomBAvoider said:

 

It's the genes.

Earlier this month I saw several articles like this

AI Finds Personality Shapes Genes

Choice quote from their key findings:

The study suggests that adopting a creative and self-transcendent perspective on life can positively impact gene expression, offering a new avenue for enhancing well-being and longevity.

Of course, many aspects of personality appear to be controlled by our genes, but we do appear to have some latitude.

 

[Todd Allen]

On 4/23/2024 at 8:30 PM, TomBAvoider said:

So, I suspect that lifestyle, diet, exercise and other modifiable factors have a much more limited impact than commonly claimed. I think the reality is that each of us has a certain genetically determined health/lifespan potential, and *within* the parameters of that potential, you might have some limited control.

I think it highly unlikely a person seeking longevity through CRON and other lifestyle optimizations would place among the elite longevity record holders but not because lifestyle optimizations are of such limited effect as you hypothesize with respect to some gene controlled longevity limit.  Rather I suspect it is merely a numbers game which in a sense boils down to luck.

Imagine a graph of the age at death of all Americans last year with age on the X-axis and the number who died at that age on the Y-axis.  I'd expect a roughly bell shaped curve with a gently rounded peak at something like 77 years falling increasingly steeply through the 80s and 90s rounding off in a small very shallow tail in the 100s terminating at roughly 112 years.  Now imagine the graph of the optimizers.  I'd expect a roughly similar shaped curve but right shifted significantly.  Maybe the peak is at 87 years instead of 77.  That would be roughly a 13% gain of average lifespan which I'd consider a decent worthwhile result.  But if 1 in 1,000 were longevity optimizers that peak at 87 would be roughly 1/1000 the height on the graph of the peak at 77 for the total population and quite likely a small fraction of the height of the total population graph at 87.  It is very easy to imagine the comparatively tiny graph of optimizers curving down rounding off with the tail terminating all fully underneath the total pop graph many years before the tail of the vastly larger total pop graph terminates.

I do not consider those achieving extreme longevity as winners of a gene lottery.  Common polymorphisms involve tradeoffs.  They remain common because they are helpful under some circumstances and don't get weeded out at the rate of universally inferior variations.  Life is cut short when ones genes align poorly with ones environment and circumstances.  Our longevity interventions such as exercise and diet also involve tradeoffs as evidenced by sweetspots for dosing curves where too much of a good thing is harmful.   The tradeoffs and sweetspots differ person to person depending on how our lives and interventions align with our genes.  The luck factor is basically how well our lives align with the strengths and weaknesses of our genes.  Our tools for optimizing that alignment are fairly crude although I believe it is a skill which some of us develop to a bit better degree than others.  But due to the limited numbers blindly optimizing lifestyle based on dodgy statistics of what is commonly best and the even smaller number making serious effort to develop the skill of determining what is best for themselves the optimizers are unlikely to achieve the longevity results of the "luckiest" of the vastly larger population making little effort to optimize longevity.  As tools mature and improve for longevity optimization and personalizing optimization and it becomes easier to achieve compelling results especially for gains in health and health span which are more immediately compelling than gains in longevity I expect increasing numbers will play the game and the increasing number of players is a multiplier impacting longevity records.  This should soften the perception of our genetic limitations.

[Saul]

I basically agree with Tom.  I'm 84 3/4, in excellent health.  I also agree with Cory's post, about Al's post, noting the inportance of

adopting a creative and self-transcendent perspective on life can positively impact gene expression.

Both of my brothers have passed away -- both my older brother and my younger brother.  My parents, and all relatives that I know about, did not have extraordinary lifespans or healthspans.

Like Tom, I exercise, though I don't enjoy it.  I do enjoy calorie restriction, and have been practicing CR for a long time, and intend to continue doing so.

  --  Saul