What’s the secret to living well beyond the average life expectancy?

My parents are both in the 80s and are in good shape and well for people their age. I would like them to be there for many more years. So what is the secret to the 80s to 100 and beyond?

Good fortune plays a big role: to avoid deadly accidents or deadly infectious diseases and live in a peaceful country with drinking water and a good health system. It also helps if you win the genetic lottery. Women are much more likely than men to encroach a century: more than three -quarters of centenarians are women, and the list of older humans is completely dominated by women.

Longevity also takes place in families and geneticists have identified hundreds of variants of genes associated with life with mature old age. Research on twins and family trees suggests that the biological features associated with extreme longevity are hereditary of around 30%. Most of these genes seem to confer unusual levels of protection against old age diseases, such as cardiovascular disease, according to Nir Barzilai, which studies “Superages” at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.

Longevity genes

The best way to know if you have a genome promoting longevity is to look at your parents, if possible. There is not much that you can do about your DNA, but the good news is that there is still a lot of scope to intervene actively. This could suggest a life of virtuous restraint – a good diet, a lot of exercise and sobriety. Surprisingly, however, these do not seem to make a lot of difference, at least in people who have already reached exceptional longevity.

A 2011 study broke the lifestyles of 477 Ashkenazi Jews who had surrendered at 95 and which still lived independently. Three -quarters of them were women; The oldest was 109. The researchers collected data on their food, their physical activity, smoking, alcohol consumption and body mass index, and compared this to a representative sample of the general population born at the same time, most of which were already dead. There was no significant difference. The survivors were just as likely as their peers who died of having drunk alcohol regularly, had similar IMMs and did similar exercises.

But don’t read this too much, warns Barzilai. Among these very elderly people, there will be a disproportionately large number of the lucky few who inherited a large set of longevity genes and can resist all kinds of insults that would make the rest of us.

For simple mortals, a healthy lifestyle is absolutely crucial to continue after 80 years. “There are four things,” said Barzilai. “Optimize your exercise, sleep, diet and social connectivity.” The exercises of strength and flexibility are becoming more and more important at the highest age, and 8 hours of sleep are a good target. Eating a Mediterranean style diet plus intermittent fasting, like diet 16: 8, is also very effective, he says.

Cognitive factors

The way we take care of our cognition is also important. This is the discovery of a study in 2024 of the life paths which lead to exceptional longevity, which followed 547 people from the Lothian birth cohort study for 24 years after reaching the age of 79. Research revealed that cognitive capacity in life later was an important predictor of survival among the oldest participants, having more impact on the long than their physical functioning.

This highlights the importance of making our brain “in shape” throughout our lives by establishing new brain connections or a “cognitive reserve”. However, the Lothian study revealed that three early life factors – the social class of childhood, IQ at 11 years old and the time spent in education – contributed to a higher cognitive function at the age of 79.

Social connectivity may be the surprise ingredient. A few years ago, Boo Johansson and Valgeir Thorvaldsson at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden dug data collected on 699 Southwitches octogenarian, a nakenarian and centenary who was later to see what distinguished those who made it only in the 1980s in the early 1980s of those who continued to go to the late 80s and beyond. As you would expect, they found that a healthy lifestyle increases the probability of living longer. But social factors have also obtained a very high score. “The most striking conclusion, at least for the general public, was perhaps the relative importance of what could be called” sweeter “factors,” explains Thorvaldssson. “Higher life satisfaction and stronger social ties.”

People over 80 who had people to talk to and felt like a friendship group survived longer than those who had no company or who felt abandoned. More by rewarding these narrower and more emotional connections, the better.

Life satisfaction has also had a major impact. This was measured by the responses to 13 declarations such as “as I get older, things seem better than I thought” and “when I think back to my life, I did not get most of the important things I wanted”.

Other researchers have also found that a low satisfaction with regard to life is a major risk factor for previous deaths in men in the 1980s. “We were not surprised to find an association between life satisfaction and mortality, but we were quite surprised by the extent of the effect,” explains the principal researcher Phil St John at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada.

Anti-aging drugs

Good social connectivity and life satisfaction are not always easy to conceive, but there is another path to healthier aging, explains Barzilai. “There are four drugs that can be reused to treat aging,” he says. These are drug drugs and SGLT2 inhibitors, GLP-1 agonists such as weight loss or ozempic and Wegovy drug diabetes, and osteoporosis zoledronic acid.

These drugs have been developed for specific conditions, but they also target the biology of aging in general. “All the evidence is that you take them to an old age and prevent a variety of diseases and also overall mortality,” explains Barzilai – although your doctor will prescribe them to “treat” aging is a different question.