No Great Surprises in a Recent Study of the Causes of Variation in Human Lifespan

A recent study of human life expectancy uses a novel approach but the results offer no real surprises, confirming most of the current consensus associations. As a tour of the high level points, it is worth skimming. There are few genetic relationships that are large enough to be seen, and those that are visible are small in comparison to the impact of lifestyle choices. Excess fat tissue is just about as harmful as smoking for the obese: two months of life expectancy lost for every kilogram of excess weight. This all confirms the long-standing common wisdom when it comes to maintaining health for the long term - but also shows that the scope of the possible in the absence of rejuvenation therapies is very limited. You can move your life expectancy a few years up or a good many years down given the tools and techniques of yesterday. For more than that, we must look to the SENS research programs and similar efforts to repair the cell and tissue damage that causes aging. Longevity is of interest to us all, and philosophers have long speculated on the extent to which it is pre-determined by fate. Here we focus on a narrower question - the extent and nature of its genetic basis and how this inter-relates with that of health and disease traits. In what follows, we shall use longevity as an umbrella term. We shall also more specifically refer to lifespan (the duration of life) and long-livedness (living to extreme old age, usually defined by a threshold, such as 90 years). ...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs