Everything gets better with age.
Feeling between 40 and 80 years old, without increased risk of illness, with a body still strong and a zest for life intact: longevity certainly has its appeal.
And one study found that some people may live longer if their parents have a rare trait that only about 100,000 people have.
The dream of longevity may have been co-opted by biohackers, tech moguls and the wealthy, but even those without money to spare can increase their life expectancy through factors such as lifestyle habits and genetics.
As of 2024, the average American can expect to live to age 74. But the number of trips around the sun that parents have taken could play an important role in how long their children live.
Analyzing data from the offspring of 4,030 participants, the research found that they had a significantly delayed onset of mortality and a reduced risk of age-related diseases.
What do the descendants have in common? Their parents were centenarians and lived beyond 100 years.
Published in the journal JAMA Network Open, the study looked at three independent longitudinal cohorts: LonGenity, made up of people in the New York area; the Centennial Survey of New England conducted across the United States; and the British Biobank of people across the UK.
The researchers compared descendants whose at least one parent had reached the age of 100 and those whose one parent had died at the age of 73.
The participants were aged 65 to 74 years old.
The research team examined differences in children’s ages at death, as well as the occurrence of four diseases associated with aging: cardiovascular disease, cancer, high blood pressure and stroke.
Compared to children whose parents had a shorter life expectancy, children of centenarians had the lowest risk of developing cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure and premature death earlier in life.
Centenarians have long offered a way to study what promotes good health and the delayed onset of age-related diseases.
Previous research has shown that they frequently develop diseases like diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease and dementia nearly three decades later than the general population, while some never develop these diseases.
However, much of this research has focused on a limited population, prompting researchers to conduct a more comprehensive and geographically diverse study.
Only an estimated 101,000 centenarians, or 0.03% of the U.S. population, have reached the 100th birthday milestone.
The reason some people blow out more candles on their birthday cake may lie in our blood, as there is evidence that centenarians age differently on a molecular level.
This research further promotes the use of this group as a research model to identify factors that promote healthy aging, while shedding light on the underlying genetic and environmental mechanisms.
Gn Health
