Scientists have unveiled the ultimate age humans are able to live to, and it turns out, it’s down to chance.
Data shows the main process involved in ageing comes down to the uncontrollable factor of random ‘somatic’ mutations in our DNA. This means even if you are the picture of health, how long you live would be a matter of probability.
Lifespan range: 150 to 190 years
The Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology have reported that this would give the average human between 150 and 190 years, with some being able to live for an unfathomable 627 years.
This news will come as a blow to biohacker Bryan Johnson, who has stunned fans with his bizarre bids to try and turn back his biological clock. The tech guru spends a whopping £1.6 million a year in his quest to live forever. This includes a strict ‘blueprint’ diet with precisely 1,997 calories per day, a bizarre beauty routine and devouring 100 pills a day.
The 48-year-old has also undergone a ‘tri-generational’ swap of blood plasma with his teenage son and dad, and monitored his cardiovascular health and sexual vitality by tracking the frequency and duration of his erections while sleeping.
Life expectancy in UK could double
Although for Mr. Johnson this may be bad news, the rest of us should be celebrating. The Skolkovo’s research means that life expectancy in the UK could be doubled. Currently the average life expectancy stands at 79 for men and 83 for women.
Researchers discovered this scientific breakthrough accidentally, when looking into the processes that contribute to ageing. As we age our bodies break down. These processes derive from the shortening of ‘caps’ on our DNA strands called telomeres, which causes our cells to lose the ability to clear out waste.
Somatic mutations inevitable cause of death
From this research scientists found the build-up of ‘somatic mutations’ (miniscule mistakes that can arise in our DNA when a cell divides) will inevitably cause our death. The majority of these mutations don’t usually affect you but sometimes they can trigger cancer, which even if treated medically would eventually become deadly.
So, even if you were an immortalist and trying every anti-ageing treatment there is, it wouldn’t make a difference. This bleak fact sets a limit on a person’s biological age.
Lead author of Skolkovo’s paper Dr Dimitri Kriukov said: “What would be the lifespan of a human who has overcome all ageing mechanisms except somatic mutations?
“We built a model of human ageing driven solely by somatic mutations’, ‘our model estimates how this process alone affects lifespan by slowly depleting cells across tissues”.
If everything was treatable except these somatic mutations, you could live between 146 and 194 years old.
