What is the maximum human ‘natural lifespan’?

What is the maximum human ‘natural lifespan’? The debate has rekindled with the death of the world’s oldest man. French nun André, the world’s oldest person, died on the 17th (local time) at the age of 118. The oldest living person is Spain’s 115-year-old Maria Branyas Morera.

The 18th-century French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc (aka Count Buffon) argued that people who did not suffer from accidents or illness could theoretically live up to 100 years of age. Since then, the remarkable development of medicine and the improvement of living conditions have greatly increased the limit of human lifespan. In particular, a new milestone was reached when Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment celebrated her 120th birthday in 1995. She died at the age of 122. She is officially the longest-living person ever.

About 600,000 people over the age of 100 worldwide… South Korea also has close to 8,500 people

According to the United Nations, the world population over the age of 100 is 593,000 in 2021, which has increased considerably from 353,000 10 years ago. According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the number of people aged 100 or older in Korea is 8469 (1532 males and 6037 females) as of the end of August 2022. Demographers predict that over the next 10 years, the number of seniors over 100 will more than double, the US health and medicine media ‘Medical Express’ reported.

What is the limit of human lifespan? Some scientists disagree with some claims that human lifespan is constrained by strict biological limits. In a paper published in the international journal Nature in 2016, geneticists analyzed that human lifespan has hardly increased since the late 1990s. The number of long-lived elderly people has increased significantly, but the record for the longest lifespan has not been broken since Calment died in 1997.

“It was once concluded that the natural limit of human lifespan is about 115 years, but this hypothesis has already been dispelled,” said Dr. said. According to the results of a 2018 study, a person’s mortality rate gradually increases with age, but it slows down after the age of 85, and the mortality rate peaks at 50-60% per year around the age of 107. According to this theory, if there are 12 people who are 110 years old, 6 people will live to 111 years old and 3 people will live to 112 years old, Dr. Robin explained.

The trend of a significant increase in longevity… Will the longevity record be higher through the ‘quantity effect’?

According to Dr. Robin, the more people over 100, the more likely it is that some of them will survive to record age. If there are 100 people over the age of 100, 50 of them will survive to the age of 111 and 25 to the age of 112. This kind of ‘volume effect’ means that the lifespan limit can be gradually reduced. “The health of the elderly will get better little by little,” Robin said.

France Messel, a demographer at the Institute of Demography and Statistics (INED), said: “There is no definitive answer right now about the limit of the natural lifespan.” “Although the number of people over 100 is gradually increasing, the number of very old people is still very small, so we cannot make meaningful statistical estimates,” she told AFP.

A future medical breakthrough could turn everything related to death upside down. French geriatrician Dr. Eric Boulanger predicted, “Some people will live to 140 or 150 years due to genetic manipulation.”

Rather than simply living a long life, ‘healthy longevity’ is a trend that places much more importance on ‘healthy longevity’. In the future, demographic experts say there will be a growing need to focus on substantial ‘healthy’ longevity.