Teh One Who Knocks
10-07-2016, 11:48 AM
By Colin Fernandez Science Correspondent For The Daily Mail
http://i.imgur.com/QovTPOw.jpg
The natural limit to human life is no more than 125 years, a study has found.
Despite ever more humans living for longer each year – the final cut-off point has remained stubbornly the same.
No human has lived longer than 122 – the age reached by a Frenchwoman, Jeanne Calment, in 1997.
Researchers believe that this is because there is an age limit beyond which humans just cannot pass naturally.
Researchers led by Jan Vijg of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, New York investigated whether the rise in human lifespans meant the 122 lifespan was a maximum.
The most 'convincing argument' that the maximum human lifespan is not fixed is the ongoing increase in life expectancy in most countries over the last century, the researchers said.
However, a large part of the increase in life expectancy comes from a huge reduction of deaths in childbirth and infancy.
http://i.imgur.com/2c3H1cX.jpg
If there was no limit, we would see an onward march of ever older people.
To test the theory, they studied the International Database on Longevity, which records the age of death from people in 41 countries between 1968 and 2006.
They found that people do keep living longer – but only up to a point.
They said: 'the rate of improvement in survival peaks and then declines for very old age levels which points towards diminishing gains in reduction of late-life mortality and a possible limit to human lifespan.'
'In contrast to previous suggestions that human longevity can be extended ever further, our data strongly suggest that the duration of life is limited,' the researchers wrote in Nature.
They said despite the huge improvements in life expectancy seen in the past 150 years, 'improvements in survival with age tend to decline after age 100,' and that the age at death of the world's oldest person has not increased since the 1990s.
Their findings were also supported by maximum recorded age of death figures in another database, that of the Gerontological Research Group, which records deaths from 1972 to 2015.
This database shows that each year, the maximum recorded age of death for the countries in the database 'plateaued' in 1994 at an average of 114, It has slightly decreased since then.
They estimate 125 as an upper limit: but stress it would be rare.
They estimate the chance of anyone living longer than Jeanne Calment, and recording a maximum age of 125 for any given year would be once in 10,000 years.
Mrs Calment, the oldest documented human to ever live, chalked up the remarkable age of 122 years and 164 days in 1997.
She greatly outlived her husband, who died at 73, and only gave up cycling when she was 100.
She smoked two cigarettes a day, only giving up five years before her death.
In 1877, as a girl of 13, in her hometown of Arles, she recalled selling pencils to Vincent Van Gogh, who lived nearby, who was 'dirty, badly dressed and disagreeable.'
The UK, France, Japan and the US have the most supercentenarians – people aged 110 years or more.
Average life expectancy is 81.50 years in the UK.
There have been 134 verified supercentenarians from the United Kingdom.
The oldest living person in the United Kingdom is Bessie Camm from Rotherham, born 20 June 1904, aged 112 years, 107 days as of today.
http://i.imgur.com/QovTPOw.jpg
The natural limit to human life is no more than 125 years, a study has found.
Despite ever more humans living for longer each year – the final cut-off point has remained stubbornly the same.
No human has lived longer than 122 – the age reached by a Frenchwoman, Jeanne Calment, in 1997.
Researchers believe that this is because there is an age limit beyond which humans just cannot pass naturally.
Researchers led by Jan Vijg of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, New York investigated whether the rise in human lifespans meant the 122 lifespan was a maximum.
The most 'convincing argument' that the maximum human lifespan is not fixed is the ongoing increase in life expectancy in most countries over the last century, the researchers said.
However, a large part of the increase in life expectancy comes from a huge reduction of deaths in childbirth and infancy.
http://i.imgur.com/2c3H1cX.jpg
If there was no limit, we would see an onward march of ever older people.
To test the theory, they studied the International Database on Longevity, which records the age of death from people in 41 countries between 1968 and 2006.
They found that people do keep living longer – but only up to a point.
They said: 'the rate of improvement in survival peaks and then declines for very old age levels which points towards diminishing gains in reduction of late-life mortality and a possible limit to human lifespan.'
'In contrast to previous suggestions that human longevity can be extended ever further, our data strongly suggest that the duration of life is limited,' the researchers wrote in Nature.
They said despite the huge improvements in life expectancy seen in the past 150 years, 'improvements in survival with age tend to decline after age 100,' and that the age at death of the world's oldest person has not increased since the 1990s.
Their findings were also supported by maximum recorded age of death figures in another database, that of the Gerontological Research Group, which records deaths from 1972 to 2015.
This database shows that each year, the maximum recorded age of death for the countries in the database 'plateaued' in 1994 at an average of 114, It has slightly decreased since then.
They estimate 125 as an upper limit: but stress it would be rare.
They estimate the chance of anyone living longer than Jeanne Calment, and recording a maximum age of 125 for any given year would be once in 10,000 years.
Mrs Calment, the oldest documented human to ever live, chalked up the remarkable age of 122 years and 164 days in 1997.
She greatly outlived her husband, who died at 73, and only gave up cycling when she was 100.
She smoked two cigarettes a day, only giving up five years before her death.
In 1877, as a girl of 13, in her hometown of Arles, she recalled selling pencils to Vincent Van Gogh, who lived nearby, who was 'dirty, badly dressed and disagreeable.'
The UK, France, Japan and the US have the most supercentenarians – people aged 110 years or more.
Average life expectancy is 81.50 years in the UK.
There have been 134 verified supercentenarians from the United Kingdom.
The oldest living person in the United Kingdom is Bessie Camm from Rotherham, born 20 June 1904, aged 112 years, 107 days as of today.