Health

According to new research, people can live up to 150 years

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To get straight to the point: one of my biggest fears is death. I can’t handle the thought of dying myself, but I also struggle with death around me. I can seriously lie awake at night thinking about what happens after death, what happens to you after you’ve passed away, and how strange it is to no longer exist while the world continues to turn for millions of years and you won’t experience that — and then? Then nothing, but isn’t that also boring? Although, you won’t know anything about that by then, because you won’t be there anymore. Well, here I go again…

It probably won’t come as a surprise to you that the thought of growing very old seems like a wonderful prospect to me. I know there are many people who can sincerely say that they’re done after a certain age, but let me be 300 years old, surrounded by cats all the time. Well, that 300 isn’t going to happen, but half of that should be possible according to scientists: they say the ‘absolute limit’ for human lifespan is 150 years.

This research was conducted among 70,000 people up to 85 years old. They were tested on their ability to fight diseases, the risks of heart failure, and so on. According to that research, it turned out that there was not a single participant among those 70,000 people whose body was capable of living longer than 150; this is also stated by GERO.AI (where the research was conducted) as the highest achievable age for humans.

But there is a glimmer of hope: a study published last year in the scientific journal PLUS ONE concluded that our highest achievable age is not known, in fact: it is not even certain whether there is a limit at all. ‘If there is a maximum limit to human life, we are still a long way from reaching it.’ But well, that 150 years isn’t very realistic either, so that doesn’t say everything.

By the way, I am really curious about this; imagine that in hundreds of years it’s not special at all to reach 140 or 150 years, what will the world look like then? When will we retire? And will we only be considered ‘old’ at a later age? Oh help, this is going to keep me awake at night again…