Daily Archives: August 22, 2021

As La Jolla schools welcome students back to campus for a new academic year amid the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, local experts are passing along lessons for keeping children safer in both their physical and mental health.

With coronavirus cases surging from the highly contagious Delta variant, one of the most important things that parents can do is make sure that their kids are comfortable wearing masks all day, said Rebecca Fielding-Miller, an epidemiologist and assistant professor at the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science at UC San Diego.

All schools are mandated by the state to require staff and students to wear masks indoors, regardless of COVID-19 vaccination status. Fielding-Miller said its important to ensure that children have a mask that fits them well that they like, because the best mask is one that stays on your face.

Rebecca Fielding-Miller, an epidemiologist and assistant professor at UC San Diego, says students and parents should be kind as the school year opens. Its kind to wear a mask, its kind to get vaccinated, she says.

(Courtesy of Rebecca Fielding-Miller)

She advised parents to stock kids backpacks with an extra one or two in case the first becomes damp or soiled.

We know that masks are pretty effective, especially if everybody is wearing one, she said.

As to whether children should be asked to wear masks outdoors (currently, most La Jolla schools are not requiring that), Fielding-Miller said: Personally, I would prefer that my kid keep her mask on, especially if shes in like a larger setting with a lot of kids.

We know that outside is much safer than inside because its the open air. It is less dangerous. But why take a chance?

Its really scary that kids [younger than 12] cant get vaccinated, Fielding-Miller said. A lot of data is coming out that when kids, especially smaller kids, get sick, theyre actually very likely to pass it on to somebody in their household.

One of the best things we can do to protect our kids is make sure that were vaccinated. The more [vaccinated] people who surround somebody who cant get vaccinated, the safer that person is.

Since schools have done away with temperature and other health screenings implemented last academic year, Fielding-Miller said its important to keep children with symptoms such as a fever, cough, stomach trouble or headache home from school.

Its a bummer for everybody, but I think it is good to be sort of extra cautious with Delta going around, she said.

Fielding-Miller, who also runs an environmental COVID-19 monitoring project at schools in high-risk communities, said her most important advice is to be kind. Its kind to wear a mask, its kind to get vaccinated.

Still, there continues to be pushback against mask and vaccine requirements at schools and elsewhere. An Aug. 21 rally at San Diegos Waterfront Park drew about 150 people who urged the recall of Gov. Gavin Newsom, largely because of his COVID-19 mandates.

That followed a protest at the San Diego County Board of Supervisors meeting Aug. 17 that drew about 300 demonstrators and more than 100 speakers, most of whom assailed state and local restrictions initiated in response to the pandemic.

And last month, area parents group Let Them Breathe filed a lawsuit against the state seeking to end the mask mandate for schools. The group argues that masks can harm childrens social, mental and physical health and should be a choice for families, not a requirement.

Katherine Nguyen Williams, a UC San Diego psychiatry professor, says putting feelings into words can help reduce anxiety.

(Courtesy of Katherine Nguyen Williams)

Katherine Nguyen Williams, a professor of psychiatry in the UCSD School of Medicine, said that in preparing to send their children back to school, parents should familiarize themselves with the latest school guidelines on masks and physical distancing and communicate those expectations to their kids.

When kids are prepared and they know what theyre walking into, theyre less anxious when things happen, Williams said. Things are more predictable for them.

She encourages parents to have their children get used to wearing masks for many hours a day, since many will not have done so over the summer or at all if they opted for online-only instruction last school year.

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Williams said parents should watch for the red flags of anxiety in children avoiding what ... theyre fearful of.

She said students may have a challenging time putting their feelings into language, so they may instead avoid school or anxiety-inducing situations such as lunchtime or a specific class. The anxiety may be exhibited in somatic sensations such as a headache or stomachache, she said.

If you give in to that, Williams said, it actually increases anxiety. She said parents need to talk to their children about whats happening during that time period that [theyre] avoiding so that we can address what it is thats anxiety-provoking ... to help [them] feel better.

Williams, a mother of four children at public schools in La Jolla, suggests regular conversations with kids to help them put their feelings into words, which will decrease anxiety.

You can model that for them, she said. You can say as a parent, I know Im feeling a little bit nervous about school opening back up and youre going to be gone all day at school and one of the things that I can do to help myself feel better is take some deep breaths. ... I talked to your teacher and shes really excited to see you.

Youre modeling, Yes, I get anxious, too, and this is what I do to help manage my anxiety.

The challenging thing with this pandemic is that different families have responded differently. Everybody has their own values and perspectives, Williams said. Peer pressure and teasing can occur because of such differences, she said, and kids dont know why its different. Thats where you can increase or improve empathy for others.

She said coming up with answers to questions in advance will help alleviate embarrassment and fear in the moment.

She recommends practicing saying something like I know that we dont have to wear a mask out here, and thats OK with me that youre not, [but] I am because my grandmother lives with us and shes elderly or sick or she cant get vaccinated.

Williams also encourages parents to reach out to others in the same school community to empathize and get answers together.

Humans are social creatures, she said. So having somebody else to reflect back your own thoughts and your own feelings and having that shared experience can help you manage your own anxiety.

San Diego Union-Tribune staff writer Deborah Sullivan Brennan contributed to this report.

Read this article:
Back-to-school stress? UCSD experts unmask strategies for keeping children healthy as they head to campuses - La Jolla Light

When Jeanne Calment of France died in 1997 at the age of 122 years and 164 days, she set a record for oldest human. That record still stands.

As statisticians who study demography, we expect that record will be broken by 2100.

We study the maximum human life span using a data-driven approach. Our peer-reviewed study, published in June 2021, models and combines two key components: how the risk of dying flattens after age 110, and growth in the number of people to reach age 110 this century.

Our analysis of these two factors, which we did before the COVID-19 pandemic, suggests it's nearly inevitable that someone will break Calment's record during the 21st century, with an 89% chance that someone will live to at least 126, but only a 3% chance that someone will reach age 132.

Scientists are actively debating whether there is a fixed limit to the human life span.

Some biologists think the data shows that aging is not a disease that can be treated, but instead an inevitable process that cannot be fully stopped, whether through medical breakthroughs or other means. Some demographers have argued that there is a natural limit to life expectancy, implying that maximum ages will level off as well.

But others think there's good evidence that life spans will continue to lengthen - at least for a lucky few. Several prominent biologists and medical experts have recently published findings suggesting there is some hope for extending life spans dramatically via medical interventions. Ultrawealthy tech titans like Tesla's Elon Musk and Google co-founder Sergey Brin are investing heavily in such research.

In 2002, two demographers named Jim Oeppen and James Vaupel observed that between 1928 and 1990, limits to life expectancy proposed by leading demographers were broken just five years after the prediction on average. They also noted that flattening gains to life expectancy should not determine our view of maximum life span, as they are quite different things the maximum is not the average!

Even a pair of prominent demographers who come down on the side of a fixed limit to human life, S. Jay Olshansky and Bruce A. Carnes, acknowledged that there is no age at which death is absolutely certain, leaving open the possibility of continually broken life span records.

Data on "supercentenarians," or those who reach age 110, are limited and often of poor quality. There is the problem of "age-attainment bias", or the tendency of very old individuals to misstate or exaggerate their age. For this reason, we've used only data from the International Database on Longevity, a collection of rigorously verified death records for supercentenarians.

Since these individuals died before 2020, they were all born no later than 1910. Because of record-keeping limitations throughout the world at that time, only records from 13 countries could be included in the database. For that reason, our study is limited to individuals from those 13 countries.

Yearly mortality rates generally increase as people age. For example, individuals are more likely to die at age 80 than age 20.

But this changes for those who make it to 110 years old. The best available data suggests that mortality rates for these "supercentenarians," while high, do not increase as they continue to age. In a sense, this means that supercentenarians stop aging.

Instead, supercentenarians as a group have a steady but very high mortality rate of about 50% per year. This means that for every 1,000 individuals who have reached age 110, we expect approximately 500 of them will have died before their 111th birthday, and 250 more by age 112. Taken to its logical end point, this pattern suggests only 1 of the 1,000 would reach age 120, and only 1 in a million supercentenarians would reach age 130.

Even more, such traditional demographic factors as sex and nationality that affect mortality rates also appear to not affect supercentenarians. But scientists have yet to figure out what factors lead supercentenarians to live as long as they do. Do they benefit from excellent genetics? Or healthy environments? Or some other factor as yet unidentified? They appear to be extraordinary individuals, but the exact reason is unclear.

That pattern led us to the second component of our study: projecting how many people will reach age 110 during the 21st century, which ends in the year 2100. Using population forecasting methods developed by our research group that are used by the United Nations, we found that large mid-20th-century population growth will likely lead to an orders-of-magnitude increase in the supercentenarian population by 2100. Our estimates suggest that about 300,000 people will reach age 110 by 2080, give or take about 100,000. Although this range is well below a million, it makes the one-in-a-million chance that at least one of them will reach age 130 a real possibility.

Predicting the extremes of humanity is a challenging task filled with unknowns. Just as it's conceivable that a medical breakthrough could let humans live indefinitely, every individual to reach age 123 could simply die the next day. Instead, our study has taken a statistical, data-driven approach focused on what will be observed this century rather than on untestable hypotheses about absolute limits to life span. Our results indicate there's only a 13% chance any individual will reach age 130, and a very tiny chance anyone lives to age 135 this century.

In other words, the data suggests that life span may not have a hard limit, but a practical one. Humans will almost certainly break Calment's record of 122 this century, but probably not by more than a decade.

While we carried out our analysis using data collected before the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on life expectancy, we believe our overall findings remain accurate. The pandemic may lead to a somewhat smaller total number of 21st-century supercentenarians. But that reduction is unlikely to be very large, and any big effect on their mortality past 110 is unlikely to last many years into the future.

Michael Pearce, PhD Candidate in Statistics, University of Washington and Adrian Raftery, Boeing International Professor of Statistics and Sociology, University of Washington

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Yes, the maximum life span will increase this century, but not by more than 10 years - Big Think

By Ernie Marshall

Some years ago, I took a walk along a stretch of Reedy Branch, a tributary making its way to the Tar River, with a tree specialist to pick his brain about the trees we encountered. There were a lot of old trees, virgin forest perhaps since the area was once farmland back when farmers didnt attempt to clear and farm the bottomlands or floodplains. We talked about the different look of aging trees, coming near the end of their lifespan of a century or more. Their crowns thin out, less full with fewer branches and less foliage, they often develop some lean, no longer have that straight and tall look and the oaks and hickories no longer bear nuts. They seem to look old, as if imitating our changes with age, a bit bent over and balding. They even seem to get a look of wisdom earned with age. Everything in nature ages just as do we.

Some trees are quite aged, being the oldest living things on Earth. Redwoods get to be at least 2000 years old and sequoias over 3000. Both are topped by the bristle pine, which lives 5000 years or more.

Longevity in nature is a very wide spectrum. Most herbaceous plants live only a few months, then disperse seeds to start anew. Many insects live only a matter of days or weeks. The tiger swallowtail sipping nectar in your garden may be gone tomorrow. At the other extreme, stars go through a cycle from birth to demise that lasts billions of years, when they burn all of their hydrogen and perhaps go out with a bang as a dazzling supernova. (No cause for alarm, our sun should last another five billion years, being about half way through its life span.)

Aging is not to be confused with immortality, the fact that all of us will die at some point. Aging is part of life, death is lifes opposite. We tend to think that we fear our own death. Perhaps what we fear is dying, an end stage of the life process. I think the first century B.C. Roman philosopher Lucretius summed it up by saying we have nothing to fear in our death, because when I am here death is not, and when death is here I am not. Mark Twain puts it this way: The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.

To make more interesting comparisons between the life spans of living things and get closer to home, let us consider what has been called the heartbeat hypothesis that all mammals whose longevity ranges roughly from the pygmy shrew that lives only a year or so to the bowhead whale that may live 200 years live for the duration of about one billion heartbeats.

Consider the following instances:

Pygmy shrew 1.02 billion total heartbeats (1300 bpm, 1.5 year average lifespan)

Mouse 1.31 billion (500 bpm, 5 years)

Cat 1.18 billion (150 bpm, 15 years)

Human 2.24 billion heartbeats (60 bpm, 71 years)

Horse 0.93 billion (44 bpm, 40 years)

Elephant 1.03 billion (28 bpm, 70 years)

Notice that the larger the animal gets, the slower its pulse rate. A cat is roughly 100 times larger than a mouse, but its heart rate is about a third as rapid as that of the mouse. The pygmy shrew, with it very rapid pulse, burns itself out in a year or so.

Note who breaks the one billion heartbeat rule us, humans. We get something like twice what other species get. If we followed the rule, our life expectancy would be 35 years instead of 71 years. (It is commonly thought that human life span has increased through history. It seems not, that the Bible three score and ten is fairly constant, considering only death from old age, not disease, accident, death in tribal warfare, death in childbirth, etc.).

There is a plethora of hypotheses about why our species is an exception to the one billion heartbeat rule. I will leave you to ponder or research this. I would like instead to ponder the one billion heartbeat rule.

Heartbeats seem a better measure of life than years, the pulse of a life sustaining organ in our bodies, rather than Earths annual trip around the sun.All of a sudden we have a yardstick for the lives of us and our fellow mammals.Or do we?

My dog Bullitt ages at about seven times the rate that I do. Does that mean because of his more rapid heartbeat (and metabolism) that he experiences time differently? Does his lifetime feel as long as mine?Does he experience a difference in my wife and I being away for an hour for an errand and our being a way for a weekend?Humans seem hyperconscious of time.We make plans for the future and remember the past (or worry and regret). Does my dog just live in the moment, an ever-repeated present?

Despite our dependence on watches and calendars, the experience of time with humans is largely subjective.An hour spent in a hospital waiting room for news about cancer or a newly arriving baby seems much longer.An hour with a cherished friend seems much briefer.

And since Einstein, there is no longer a cosmic yardstick in physics for the universe at large for measuring time. (The question what time is it on the moon? is totally meaningless.)

Oh my, a stroll along a stream bank looking at trees has led us to bumping into Albert Einstein. Time to conclude thiscolumn. May you have a long life, age well and fill your time with bright and memorable moments.

Editors Note: This column originally appeared in The Coastland Times in September 2020.

Ernie Marshall taught at East Carolina College for thirty-two years and had a home in Hyde County near Swan Quarter. He has done extensive volunteer work at the Mattamuskeet, Pocosin Lakes and Swan Quarter refuges and was chief script writer for wildlife documentaries by STRS Productions on the coastal U.S. National Wildlife Refuges, mostly located on the Outer Banks. Questions or comments? Contact the author at marshalle1922@gmail.com.

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The Nature Corner: Aging - The Coastland Times - The Coastland Times

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The World Health Organizationreportedthelife expectancy of an Indian to be 70.8 yearsin its 2019-20 report. Over the lasttwocenturies, Indias life expectancy has increased consistently but is still lower than the global averageof73.4 years.

Human life expectancy depends on multiple factors.A 2018review studyassessing life expectancy in low and medium human development index countries investigated health indicators of83 nations from the World Bank, WHO, United Nation Development Fund and UNICEFdatabases. The authors reported socio-economic status, healthcare system, adult literacy rate, disease burden, andthe interaction of these factorsas major determinants of life expectancy.

Unhealthy food choicesand associated risks are among the leading causes of death globally.According totheWHOs latestfactsheet(13 April 2021), noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) contribute to 71per centof global deaths. Annually, around 15 million peoplebetween30and60 years ofagedie prematurely from NCDs85per centofthese deathsare from lower and middle-income countries. Cardiovascular diseases are the most prevalent cause of death acrossthe world, followed by cancers, respiratory diseases, and diabetes. These four groups alone are responsible for 80per centof all premature deaths. Potential risk factors for NCD include lack of physical activity, poor dietary choices, excessive consumption of alcohol, tobacco, stress, etc.

Also read: Women in India live longer than men but dont have healthier lives, finds new report

A2020 studyby Manika Sharma and colleagues comparingtheIndian diet with the EAT-LancetCommissionreference diet included samples from1.02 lakhhouseholdsinIndia and found that whole grains were contributing significantly more calories than the EAT-Lancet recommendations, whereas the consumption of fruits, vegetables, legumes, meat, fish and eggs were much lower. Protein share was only 6-8per cent,compared tothe 29 per cent recommendation.These outcomes were independent of the socio-economic status of Indian households.Even the rich Indians werenot found to consume optimum amounts of fruits, vegetables, and proteins in their diet. In fact, an average Indian household consumesmore calories from processed foods than fruits. Authors concluded the average Indian diet as unhealthy, lacking essential food groups.

Another national-levelcross-sectional surveyin2017-18 bythe National NCD Monitoring Surveystudiedthe prevalence of risk factors in 12,000 Indianadults.Itrevealedthat32.8per cent of respondentsused tobacco, 15.9per centconsumed alcohol, 41.3per centwere not physically active, 98.4per centconsumed less thanfiveservings of fruits and vegetables per day. The study also reported an elevated risk of blood glucose and cardiovascular diseases among participants.

Also read: In Indias booming junk food market, there is little room for nutrition

Blue Zones, aconceptdeveloped by National Geographic Fellow and author Dan Buettner, are thefiveregions of the world where people live longer, lead physically and mentally healthy lives,and aremore active compared to the rest of the world. Tolive longer, the Blue Zones adoptednineevidence-based lifestyle modalities that arethought to slowthe ageing process, diet being one of the most importantcomponents.

The Blue zone diet is wholeandmostly plant-based.Ninety five per centof the daily Blue zone diet is composed of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, beans, legumes, nuts, olive oil, berries, oats, and barley. The diet recommends avoiding meat and dairy, sugary drinks, with no room for processed foods.

In contrast to the standard diet composition,Sardinia, one of five Blue Zones,followsa variation of the Mediterranean diet that includes all Blue Zone food groups along with moderate intake of fish and fewer intake of dairy, alcohol, and red meat.

Plant-based Blue Zone diets are rich in antioxidantsandanti-inflammatory polyphenols, which are reported topreventchronicillnessessuch as obesity, diabetes, cancer, and cardiovascular disease.

A 2015reviewby G.M. Pes and colleagues mapped historical evidence linked to male longevity among the Sardinian population and found that an inter-community nutrition transition to consuming more fruits and vegetablesandmoderate consumptions of meat led to significant health benefits to the ageing population by reducing mortality risk.

However, a wholesome, nutritious, antioxidant-rich diet isnt the only secret behind the Blue Zone longevity. Thepeopleliving therealso engagein high levels of physical activity, have low-stress levels, more social engagement, and a sense of well-being.

Eating like a Mediterranean is recommended as a part of longevity diet for the Indian population that includes more raw fruits and vegetables in salads; whole grains instead of polished rice; legumes, pulses, and beans in form of sprouts, salads, less spicy curry; healthy fats from nuts, seeds, olive oil, coconut, and avocado; along with limited intake of meat and sweets.

All processed foods like refined sugar, refined wheat flour, biscuits, instant noodlesshouldbe gradually eliminated from the daily diet.

Also read: Two-third Indians with non-communicable diseases fall in 26-59 age group, survey finds

Include these elements of the Mediterranean diet in your meals:

-Oats, barley, jowar, bajra, ragi, kodo millets, quinoa

-Dark green leafy vegetables like spinach, lettuce, drumstick leaves

-Nutslikealmonds, walnuts, figs

-Seedslikeflax, chia, pumpkin, sunflower, beans

-Legumeslikenavy beans, fava beans, chickpeas, lentils

-Dairyproducts likelow-fat cheese, yogurt, milk

-Fishlikesardines, salmon, trout, sea fishes

-Herbs and spiceslikemint, rosemary, sage, garlic, thyme, basil, and oregano.

To summarise, a vibrant, nutritious eating plan along with regular physical activity, sound sleep, and stress-free life is the key to acquiringa disease-free, long life.

Indians can start practising this one day at a time.

Dr Subhasree Ray is Doctoral Scholar (Ketogenic Diet), certified diabetes educator, and a clinical and public health nutritionist. She tweets @DrSubhasree. Views are personal.

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People are fascinated by the extremes of humanity, whether its going to the moon, how fast someone can run in the Olympics, or even how long someone can live,says Michael Pearce from the University of Washington (UW) in the U.S., who recently led a study that estimates with almost a 100% probability that the present record for maximum reported age at death 122 years, 164 days will be broken by 2100.

And with a continuous expansion in the world population, the likelihood of breaking records is only rising, the researchers believe.

Published in Demographic Research, their study assessed the extremes of human life by studying longevity records of more than a thousand people from 13 countries across the world, as well as of almost 14,000 individuals, who died between the ages of 105 and 109. Using statistical modeling to analyze the data, the researchers found that a lifespan of 125 years, or even 130 years, is possible in his century.

Basically, the researchers based their findings on two factors: how the risk of dying flattens after age 110, and growth in the number of people to reach age 110 this century, according to an article in The Conversation by Pierce and his co-author on the study, Adrian Raftery, who is a professor of statistics at UW.

Related on The Swaddle:

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On the one hand, life expectancy is on the rise globally due to advances in healthcare, and due to these same advancements, the researchers believe there is a flattening of the mortality rate after people reach a certain age someone who hits 110 has the almost same probability of living another year as someone reaches the age of 114.

This is a very select group of very robust people, Raftery explained, adding that if theyve gotten past all the various things life throws at you, such as disease, [then] they die for reasons that are somewhat independent of what affects younger people.

However, it may be pertinent to note, here, that the study is based on data gathered before the pandemic hit, and claimed more than 43 lakh lives globally. And, in any case, as the researchers clarified, the maximum is not the average, and just because we may break records by the end of the century, doesnt mean everyone or even most people will live to be 110.

A study from June had found that while we may live longer now, we cant really slow the process of aging in any manner. Our findings support the theory that, rather than slowing down death, more people are living much longer due to a reduction in mortality at younger ages, Jos Manuel Aburto, one of the studys co-authors from the Oxford University, had told The Guardian.

Yet another study from May had found that even if a person manages to avoid dying of heart disease, cancer, or road accidents, the human bodys structural and metabolic systems do fail beyond a point that lies between 120 to 150 years; making 150 years the absolute longest a human being can live.

Related on The Swaddle:

Scientists Say Gut Microbes May Reverse Aging Process in Human Brains

But so many studies on the subject of human lifespans beg the question: what drives our desire to live longer especially at a juncture when climate change is expected to make life difficult in myriad ways?

Experts believe it could be because we dont understand death. So the prospect of not living triggers a kind of FOMO. The quest to live forever, or to live for great expanses of time, has always been part of the human spirit The most difficult and inscrutable thing to us as mortal beings is our own death We dont understand it, we dont get it, and as meaning-laden beings, we cant fathom what it means to not exist, Paul Root Wolpe, an American sociologist and bioethicist, told Time.

As for people like Teslas Elon Musk and Googles co-founder Sergey Brindriving researchin increasing longevity to the point of, perhaps, being immortal, ego may be an important factor. Obviously they believe the world cant possibly survive without their existence, and so they think their immortality is so critical to the survival of the world, Ezekiel Emanuel, an oncologist and bioethicist, said.

Wolpe, however, notes that younger people have a harder time [dealing with the idea of dying] compared to older people. My youngest is upset that I do not want to be frozen and woken up in the future, Suzanne Moore, a columnist for The Guardian wrote last year.

According to Wolpe, older people dont care about living as long as younger people do because living longer doesnt make aging slower just as the study from June proved. What you see when you actually look at people at the end of life, to a large degree, is a sense of a life well-lived and a time for that life to transition itself, he notes.

Read more:
People's Lifespans May Increase In the Future. Why Do They Desire Longer Lives? - The Swaddle

When Jeanne Calment of France died in 1997 at the age of 122 years and 164 days, she set a record for oldest human. That record still stands.

As statisticians who study demography, we expect that record will be broken by 2100.

We study the maximum human life span using a data-driven approach. Our peer-reviewed study, published in June 2021, models and combines two key components: how the risk of dying flattens after age 110, and growth in the number of people to reach age 110 this century.

Our analysis of these two factors, which we did before the COVID-19 pandemic, suggests its nearly inevitable that someone will break Calments record during the 21st century, with an 89% chance that someone will live to at least 126, but only a 3% chance that someone will reach age 132.

The debate

Scientists are actively debating whether there is a fixed limit to the human life span.

Some biologists think the data shows that aging is not a disease that can be treated, but instead an inevitable process that cannot be fully stopped, whether through medical breakthroughs or other means. Some demographers have argued that there is a natural limit to life expectancy, implying that maximum ages will level off as well.

But others think theres good evidence that life spans will continue to lengthen - at least for a lucky few. Several prominent biologists and medical experts have recently published findings suggesting there is some hope for extending life spans dramatically via medical interventions. Ultrawealthy tech titans like Teslas Elon Musk and Google co-founder Sergey Brin are investing heavily in such research.

In 2002, two demographers named Jim Oeppen and James Vaupel observed that between 1928 and 1990, limits to life expectancy proposed by leading demographers were broken just five years after the prediction on average. They also noted that flattening gains to life expectancy should not determine our view of maximum life span, as they are quite different things the maximum is not the average.

Even a pair of prominent demographers who come down on the side of a fixed limit to human life, S. Jay Olshansky and Bruce A. Carnes, acknowledged that there is no age at which death is absolutely certain, leaving open the possibility of continually broken life span records.

Supercentenarians

Data on supercentenarians, or those who reach age 110, are limited and often of poor quality. There is the problem of age-attainment bias, or the tendency of very old individuals to misstate or exaggerate their age. For this reason, weve used only data from the International Database on Longevity, a collection of rigorously verified death records for supercentenarians.

Since these individuals died before 2020, they were all born no later than 1910. Because of record-keeping limitations throughout the world at that time, only records from 13 countries could be included in the database. For that reason, our study is limited to individuals from those 13 countries.

Basic demography

Yearly mortality rates generally increase as people age. For example, individuals are more likely to die at age 80 than age 20.

But this changes for those who make it to 110 years old. The best available data suggests that mortality rates for these supercentenarians, while high, do not increase as they continue to age. In a sense, this means that supercentenarians stop aging.

Instead, supercentenarians as a group have a steady but very high mortality rate of about 50% per year. This means that for every 1,000 individuals who have reached age 110, we expect approximately 500 of them will have died before their 111th birthday, and 250 more by age 112. Taken to its logical end point, this pattern suggests only 1 of the 1,000 would reach age 120, and only 1 in a million supercentenarians would reach age 130.

Even more, such traditional demographic factors as sex and nationality that affect mortality rates also appear to not affect supercentenarians. But scientists have yet to figure out what factors lead supercentenarians to live as long as they do. Do they benefit from excellent genetics? Or healthy environments? Or some other factor as yet unidentified? They appear to be extraordinary individuals, but the exact reason is unclear.

That pattern led us to the second component of our study: projecting how many people will reach age 110 during the 21st century, which ends in the year 2100. Using population forecasting methods developed by our research group that are used by the United Nations, we found that large mid-20th-century population growth will likely lead to an orders-of-magnitude increase in the supercentenarian population by 2100. Our estimates suggest that about 300,000 people will reach age 110 by 2080, give or take about 100,000. Although this range is well below a million, it makes the one-in-a-million chance that at least one of them will reach age 130 a real possibility.

Practical limits

Predicting the extremes of humanity is a challenging task filled with unknowns. Just as its conceivable that a medical breakthrough could let humans live indefinitely, every individual to reach age 123 could simply die the next day. Instead, our study has taken a statistical, data-driven approach focused on what will be observed this century rather than on untestable hypotheses about absolute limits to life span. Our results indicate theres only a 13% chance any individual will reach age 130, and a very tiny chance anyone lives to age 135 this century.

In other words, the data suggests that life span may not have a hard limit, but a practical one. Humans will almost certainly break Calments record of 122 this century, but probably not by more than a decade.

While we carried out our analysis using data collected before the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on life expectancy, we believe our overall findings remain accurate. The pandemic may lead to a somewhat smaller total number of 21st-century supercentenarians. But that reduction is unlikely to be very large, and any big effect on their mortality past 110 is unlikely to last many years into the future.

Originally posted here:
Life spans will likely increase this century - Jacksonville Journal-Courier

Im very fortunate. My wife Diane and I will celebrate our 44th wedding anniversary this year. Wow! Thats a long time.

Periodically, someone will want to know the secret of marital longevity. Couples who have been married for less than a decade wonder how to make it through all the ups and downs of married life. Im very fortunate to have married the right person for me. But I have also learned a few things along the way.

I admit Im a slow learner (I know that Diane will agree with this!). Its taken me a long time to learn these lessons, and even now, I sometimes forget. So be patient. This week, I share several big lessons Ive learned.

Men arent from Mars were from Pluto. (Mars and Venus are right next to Earth.) We all know that men and women are different in a hundred different ways. Yet sometimes we forget. Below is one stereotypical difference that Ive observed over the years that can have a huge impact on our relationships. Woman can also be guilty of this characteristic, too.

Men like to give their partners unsolicited advice. The other day, Joe talked to his best friend, Bill, about a problem a work. Bill thought long and hard about the problem and gave Joe some advice. Joe was appreciative and thanked Bill. Men often feel comfortable both giving and receiving advice. Its our way of being helpful to each other on Pluto.

Earlier this week, my wife discussed some of her health worries with me. I thought about her concerns and gave her what I thought was helpful advice. Guess what? She wasnt happy. She wondered why I didnt have faith in her ability to solve her own problems. And she wasnt terribly polite about her feelings she was pretty direct.

In my experience, men and women can get into trouble when we give unsolicited advice to our partners. Your spouse may just want to bounce some ideas off of you and figure out their own solution. If their partner jumps in with a suggestion, their spouse can feel interrupted, or even worse, criticized (e.g., Dont you have confidence in my abilities?).

The lesson Ive learned is to keep unsolicited advice to yourself. Its OK to ask your partner if they would like your advice. If they say yes, the door is open. However, that will probably be the exception, not the rule.

So, give it a try, and see what happens. Instead of trying to be helpful, just listen. You will like the results.

Another piece of useful advice (see, here I go again): Accept your partner for who they are.

It appears to be human nature that opposites attract. A quiet person seeks a talkative one. Someone who plans everything in advance is attracted to someone who is spontaneous. And then we spend the next 20 years trying to get our partner to be just like us. Its a recipe for misery and, even worse, it doesnt work.

Its helpful to accept your loved one for who they are dont try to change them. That doesnt stop you from asking for what you want. Its also no guarantee that you will always get what you want. This doesnt mean that we cant modify our behavior, particularly when we feel that we have a bad habit we want to change. But ultimately, change has to come from within.

Love and commitment that results in long-lived relationships require growing and learning together as a couple. It takes work, self-awareness, empathy and communication.

Paul Schoenfeld is a clinical psychologist at The Everett Clinic. His Family Talk blog can be found at http://www.everettclinic.com.health-wellness-library.html.

Excerpt from:
Take it from me: Advice for couples in long-term relationships | HeraldNet.com - The Daily Herald

Each week, BIV staff will share with you some of the interesting stories we have found from around the web.

Kirk LaPointe, publisher and editor-in-chief:

Why do sew and new not rhyme? Why do kernel and colonel? English spelling is full of tricks and a linguist tries to sort it for us. Aeon

https://aeon.co/essays/why-is-the-english-spelling-system-so-weird-and-inconsistent

An insightful, if anecdotal look at why so many knowledge industry workers are part of Americas Great Resignation in the pandemic. The New Yorker

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/office-space/why-are-so-many-knowledge-workers-quitting

Choosing a successor to Alex Trebek as Jeopardy! host was never going to be easy, partly because of the shoes to fill, partly because so many lusted after the job. But when the successor proved to be the shows executive producer, some felt there was never a real competition. This feature illuminates some of the questions about the process on a show that demands questions of its contestants. The Ringer

https://www.theringer.com/tv/2021/8/18/22631299/mike-richards-jeopardy-host-search-process-past-comments

Mark Falkenberg, deputy managing editor

Left-leaning voters in Canada are more likely to want to vote by mail this election. So this countrys complicated vote-by-mail process could spell trouble for the Liberals, NDP and Greens. Reuters

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/mail-in-voting-set-soar-canada-election-could-undermine-trudeau-new-democratic-2021-08-17/

This summers deadly heat wave shows that air-conditioning may very well be a life-saving necessity in this province in the years ahead. Yet there are a lot of rules against window AC units in B.C., often on esthetic grounds. Those rules need to go, says Vancouver broadcaster Jody Vance. The Orca

Jody Vance: Time to go all in on AC

Timothy Renshaw, managing editor:

Enlightening insights about the unsung Canadian hero who helped spearhead the technology that gets mRNA COVID vaccines into human cells. Forbes

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2021/08/17/covids-forgotten-hero-the-untold-story-of-the-scientist-whose-breakthrough-made-the-vaccines-possible/

If you make it to 100 you would be in select human longevity company but a relative youngster compared with other animals on Earth. A Greenland shark, for example, would still have nearly another two centuries ahead of it; an ocean quahog clam would barely be out of diapers and looking at another 400 years of pondering existence. A deep ocean glass sponge, meanwhile, can look forward to more than 10,000 years of glass spongery. Think of the pension plan complications there and the tedium of being stuck on that rung of the reincarnation ladder. An inventory of Earth's longest living beings is listed in this Live Science article.

https://www.livescience.com/longest-living-animals.html

If you are wearying of the daily diet of pandemic, wildfire, social media bilge water and Taliban misery that has come to occupy pretty much every newscast in 2021, here are seven reasons to be cheerful, courtesy of the Smithsonian Magazine.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/seven-reasons-be-optimistic-about-worlds-oceans-180978398/

Jeremy Hainsworth, reporter:

Wilfull Blindness: How A Network Of Narcos, Tycoons And CCP Agents Infiltrated The West by Sam Cooper.

This is a riveting, page-turning tale of how B.C. government casinos became a tool for global criminals to import narcotics into Canada and launder billions of drug cash through Vancouver real estate. The cast of accomplices includes revenue-hungry governments; corrupt immigration practices; casino and real estate companies tied to shady offshore wealth; lawyers and bankers; and an aimless, at-times uninterested RCMP that gave organized crime room to grow.

A good read in tandem with Jonathan Manthorpes Claws of the Panda: Beijings Campaign of Influence and Intimidation in Canada and Kerry Browns CEO, China: The Rise of Xi Jinping.

Nelson Bennett, reporter:

Once again, pundits were shocked by the recent election outcome in Nova Scotia, where the Progressive Conservatives swept the Liberals from power in a snap election. John Ivison wonders aloud whether this has any implications for the September 20 federal election. He writes: The result highlights the perils of calling a snap election for no good reason, other than that the polls suggest you might be able to convert a minority into a majority. The National Post

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/john-ivison-n-s-election-result-shows-the-perils-of-calling-a-snap-election-for-no-good-reason

Are Stanley Parks coyotes stoned out of their minds? That theory is actually being floated, after a string of attacks by coyotes in Stanley Park: Theyre high as kites after ingesting opioids. UNILAD

https://www.unilad.co.uk/animals/expert-fears-coyotes-have-ingested-drugs-after-three-attacks-in-four-days

Glen Korstrom, reporter:

The Talibans surge to take over Afghanistan last week had me dust off and start re-reading Khaled Hosseinis novel The Kite Runner. Its an excellent book largely told from the point of view of a boy, about relationships, growing older and the rise of the Taliban in the 1990s. Khaled Hosseini

https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-kite-runner/id361931306

After I first read Kite Runner, I moved on to read Khaled Hosseinis second novel, 2007s A Thousand Splendid Suns, which is also set in Afghanistan but is told from a female perspective, in part from behind the veil. It also shows the rise of the Taliban, and how that changes life for Afghanis. Khaled Hosseini

https://books.apple.com/us/book/a-thousand-splendid-suns/id357923249

Read this article:
What are we reading? August 19, 2021 - Business in Vancouver

Wearing a dark polo-shirt, his jovial, unlined features are a good advertisement for the medicine he is peddling. His dark hair has only the odd streak of grey. He looks relaxed but then perhaps a holiday in Tuscany, from where he is calling, will do that for anyone.

As he waves his arms, another possible reason for his youthful demeanour becomes clear: he is plastered in wearable devices smart watches and rings which track his heart rate and sleep patterns. I just took out my continuous glucose monitor. His latest health check-up was just a couple of months ago. I didnt even have the colonoscopy, he says, deadly serious. The combination of full-body MRI and colo guard [an at-home colon cancer screening kit] was enough

I nod sagely as though I too have just pooed into a sample bucket and sent it off to a lab.

But hes not wrong that such tests do form part of an ongoing medical revolution. Early diagnostics prevention not cure are increasingly hardwired into healthcare provision, if only because stopping people becoming sick is vastly cheaper for governments than treating them once they do.

Many of us will already be surfing this wave of consumer health tech gadgets, from trackers in smartwatches to fingertip oxygen monitors deployed during Covid. In Youngs book they are producing a wealth of data which, when allied with growing computing power to crunch through it, form the first great pillar of how life will be extended in the near time. How can he be wrong? Personalised, predictive medicine is already with us.

Gene editing, organ regeneration and what he calls longevity in a pill are his other great hopes. The first of these, too, is here today. A renegade Chinese scientist has already created the first gene-edited humans twins born in 2018 whose DNA was tweaked to confer resistance to HIV. And I remain marked by an interview in 2019 with Sophie Wheldon, then a 21-year-old student from Birmingham whose life was saved by Car-T, a novel therapy which genetically modified her own white blood cells to attack her otherwise untreatable leukaemia.

Organ regeneration is more far-fetched, more far-off, even if Young has put his money where his mouth is, investing in Lygenesis, a company trying to grow functioning new organs (to replace failing old ones) using a patients own lymph nodes. So far the company is working on growing livers, but Young says they have many more organs in the pipeline. Human trials start in November.

As for longevity in a pill, such hopes are pinned on drugs like metformin, usually administered for diabetes, which in some patients can have a beneficial effect on other body systems too. But despite thousands of ongoing trials, its still far from being released as a regulated anti-ageing drug. That doesnt deter Young. When we perfect such processes, he believes, living to 150 or 200 years old will become as simple as getting vaccinated today. For the moment, however, and as Young himself admits, regular exercise is, for most of us, safer and more effective.

Indeed, there is no getting around the boring, unchanging truths of staying well longer. Young is most proud of the books final chapter, which offers 10 top tips to take advantage of the longevity revolution. Quit smoking is second on the list. Dont drink too much is there, too. Sleep and eat well. This is hardly revolutionary, though he is also a keen advocate of fasting (Every week Im fasting 36 hours from Monday evening to Wednesday morning), and plant-based diets. (I eat meat probably once every two or three weeks).

He thinks that such steps will help him overcome the cancer barrier, and the heart disease barrier, which is somewhere around 60 and 65 years. But he knows that hurdling those only means crashing into the neurodegenerative diseases barrier, which is around 80 or 90 years.

But there is a tech solution to dementia too, he thinks. And this is where things get more outlandish. If we want to help people to fight Alzheimers or neurodegenerative diseases, he says, integration between human brain and computer is the only way to solve it. He talks of Elon Musk, whose company Neuralink is working on just such a brain-machine interface with the goal of enabling people with paralysis to directly use their neural activity to operate digital devices. He mentions digital representations of the elderly avatars which could continue, compos mentis, as the physical persons dementia deteriorates, or even live on after they die. It sounds loopy, until he talks movingly of his grandfather, who died in 1995 and to whom he was close. He was instrumental for me. I would love to have the opportunity to have 30 minutes with a [digital copy] of him in the virtual world. Theres so many questions I would still like to ask.

See the article here:
Would you really like to live to be 200? - Telegraph.co.uk

If you require a lot of motivation to get yourself to exercise, take comfort in this fact: You're not actually lazy. At least that's according to Harvard biologist Daniel Lieberman, Ph.D., author of Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding. He says you're totally normal and behaving the way that human beings naturally evolved to behave.

"We evolved to be physically active, but exercise is a special kind of physical activity," he explained to The Harvard Gazette. "It's voluntary physical activity for the sake of health and fitness. Until recently, nobody did that. In fact, it would be a kind of a crazy thing to do because if you're a very active hunter-gatherer, for example, or a subsistence farmer, it wouldn't make sense to spend any extra energy going for a needless five-mile jog in the morning. It doesn't help you."

Fast forward to 2021, and you need exerciseand you need to fight your instincts not to. So the first order of business is to be kinder to yourself, and know that you're inherently hardwired to avoid it. The next thing to do? Follow these simple tricks for convincing yourself to hit the gym. Trust us: Your body will thank you later. And for more great exercise advice, don't miss the Secret Side Effects of Lifting Weights for the First Time, Says Science.

Ticking off many achievable targets keeps people motivated, says Mark Davis, a researcher at the University of Bristol, in England. In a study of 78 adults, Davis gave half the subjects a modest fitness goal (walk 2,500 steps daily) and the others an ambitious goal (10,000 steps). Result: The participants with the easier target were 27 percent more likely to keep exercising. And if you love to walk, make sure you know about The Secret Cult Walking Shoe That Walkers Everywhere Are Totally Obsessed With.

"Your training partner needs to be someone who will hold you accountable," says Jack Raglin, Ph.D., a professor of kinesiology at Indiana University. An old study by Raglin found that 92 percent of couples who went to the gym together continued to do so after a year. By contrast, couples who worked out separately had a 50 percent dropout rate. And for more amazing exercise advice, don't miss the Unexpected Side Effects of Working Out in the Morning, Say Experts.

"Eliminating boredom is one of the most important factors for maintaining the longevity of a fitness program," says Chris Jordan, C.S.C.S. A study of 61 people at the University of Florida found that people who varied their workouts were 15 percent more likely to exercise regularly than those who stuck to one workout.

The music will help you exercise longer and more intensely without even realizing it. Anew study just released by the University of Edinburgh reports that when it comes to going for a run or jog, music helps you overcome mental adversity so much more easily. Read more about this study here.

Research conducted at Springfield College in Massachusetts found that people who cooled down for 5 minutes at the end of a bike workout rated it easier than when they did a workout of equal intensity that didn't include a cool down. It suggests that if the last thing you do is pleasant, you're more apt to repeat your workout. And if you're inspired to lift now, make sure you're aware of The Single Greatest Weightlifting Move for Shedding Pounds, Says Science.

Read more:
Secret Tricks for Convincing Yourself to Exercise, Say Experts | Eat This Not That - Eat This, Not That