My dad died in 1987 of “multiple organ failure.” He was overweight (so am I), and he also smoked and drank heavily (I am a teetotaler and a nonsmoker). He was 66. I recently turned 65.
However, people on my Mom’s side live longer. My Mom herself is 84 and her two older sisters are 95 and 92. (Their father died at 98, although he was a heavy drinker and smoker.)
My eldest aunt’s husband died about 10 years ago in his 80s; but their son, my eldest first cousin, died a few years ago–age about 70. Are my days numbered?:eek:
There are multiple genes associated with longevity, each individual gene exerting a tiny influence. As you might have surmised from your family’s history, environmental and lifestyle choices may overwhelm the effect of any single gene. And even with the best possible genes there is no guarantee of longevity - there is no won’t-get-hit-by-a-bus gene.
The Longevity Genes Project at Yeshiva University is studying this area and has already identified several factors, some genetic, that centenarians have in common. Lower growth hormone levels, longer telomeres, and specific gene variants all correlate to a longer lifespan.
Are your days numbered? There is simply too little data at this point to say with any certainty. Eat right, exercise, and maintain an active lifestyle and you might drop dead tomorrow. Take a second helping of cheesecake, smoke like a chimney, and live the life of a couch potato and you might outlive us all.
Lifestyle is important - but so is access to good medical care. Someone otherwise “programmed” to die of heart disease, some cancers, diabetes etc who gets and is compliant with excellent medical care can live many years past the age where otherwise, or in previous decades, they may have succumbed.
That said, my father quit smoking by age 40, was very physically and mentally active and fit, yet died of cancer at age 64. On the other hand, my mother is in her mid 80s, still smokes, still runs a business and remains very active. So in part it is also a crapshoot, but maintaining a healthy lifestyle will greatly increase your chances of getting to old age, while also remaining healthy.
Logic tells me that there is not, but alternatively, there are genes that permit life-interrupting events. People succumb to one or another event for which their genetic code offers little or no defense. Because living past reproductive age has no survival value that selection would recognize and favor. So a person genetically programmed to die in his 60s would never get selected out.
Nonsense. If grandparents live on long enough to contribute to the raising of grandchildren, or to pass on useful knowledge and experience to the younger generations, longevity past the age of reproduction can most certainly be selected for. In humans, these things happen routinely.
Besides that, human males generally remain able to father children for most of their lives, even if older males rarely (but not never) do so in practice.
Human beings are living longer than they used to, mainly because of advances in healthcare and nutrition. I believe, but can’t find a cite, that people whose parents were long-lived will be so themselves - ie, it runs in families like many other things for all kinds of reasons.
The increasing lifespan has caused many problems for the pension industry, but I do wonder, with our increasingly unhealthy lifestyles, this trend will slow, stop, or even reverse. I was born at the end of WW2 in a time of strict rationing in the UK - sweets, butter, sugar, all rationed. There was no TV or computer game to keep us indoors so we played outside. This meant that my generation had a pretty healthy start compared to the obese children we now have.
This post is slightly speculative, but the way I view it is that DNA is a bit like a blueprint for a house (except it’s a blueprint for a person). So the question is a bit like asking, “What part of a blueprint tells me what size earthquake a house can withstand?” But of course the answer is, the whole design determines that. There isn’t a number down in the corner which says, “Withstand up to a 7.5 earthquake”, which you can just scribble out and replace with “9.0”. It comes down to the geometry of the walls, the size of the rooms, where the supports are, how many there are, what materials are used, etc.
That we’ve been able to find a few common setups between centennarians is certainly an indication that there may be some quick and easy upgrades one can do, to get a lot of benefit. But one can imagine that simply copying and pasting random portions of a blueprint out of one building and into a second, unrelated, building might cause some issues. Just identifying some key design elements doesn’t help if you don’t understand what a blueprint is and how it works. You need the basic understanding of what you’re actually looking at the safely transplant the good bits from one design into another.
Just the same, I have to wonder why my uncle lived into his 80s while his son died about ten or twelve years younger…
Was the son hit by a bus?
Some variation in human lifespan can be attributed to variation in gene expression, rather than to variation in the gene sequences themselves.
No! He was not in any kind of accident.
Beyond epigenetics and as previously noted, lifestyle can make a difference. Some kids are shorter or taller than both parents due to better nutrition, for example. Regular exercise is correlated with better health. Some smokers may live to 100, though the vast majority live shorter lives than non-smokers.
Simple genetics don’t predetermine outcomes. Neither do lifestyle nor epigenetics.
Nonsense. Your argument is easily neutralized by long-lived grandparents who lose motor skills and strength and drop babies on their heads, or consume a share from a limited food supply so that growing children are malnourished.