Healthy lifestyle and positive attitude are all well and good; however, reporters tend to egregiously overstate their efficacy in a bid to promote these virtues. In academic research, there is a complementary flaw of insufficient controls for genetic confounding, which massively inflates the apparent contribution of individual choices, drawing attention away from the innate causal factors underlying both the outcomes and the capacity to effect them [1][2].
One particularly frustrating consequence of this pattern is that we are most certainly overlooking and underfunding basic life science research that could uncover precise biological mechanisms producing positive outcomes, and instead chase after mere correlates of their presence.
In this vein, it is sometimes claimed that human longevity is only weakly heritable, which leads to excessive hope pinned on trivial lifestyle changes. The folly of this is best illustrated by the fact that even in this study superagers often neglect basic rules of healthy lifestyle: 71% of them even smoke. In fact, if we look at longevity in the sample consisting of people who already have reached advanced age (thus excluding the noise produced by infant mortality etc.), heritability estimate increases significantly, the older the sample the greater[3].
>In contrast to the modest heritability estimate for continuous age at death (16%), heritability of surviving past 65 years and surviving past 85 years was substantial at 36% (p = 4.2 × 10 −10 ) and 40% (p = 9.0 × 10 −10 ), respectively. Thus, genetic effects appear to be greater for survival to more advanced ages. In the Framingham Heart Study cohorts, heritability appears to increase with each 10-year increment in survived age (65 years, 75 years, and 85 years) for men, but not women, again suggesting that genetic effects on aging may be more substantial for men than women (20).
It is highly likely and in fact supported by growing evidence[4] that the pattern observed for longevity holds for cognitive aging as well.
In my humble opinion, it is incumbent upon us to focus on dissecting relevant heritable differences in biological pathways[5][6][7] between the small minority of supercentenarians (and, indeed, "superagers") and people with average lifespans/healthspans, in order to design sound medical treatments which could provide those benefits to the rest of us, less genetically endowed.
One particularly frustrating consequence of this pattern is that we are most certainly overlooking and underfunding basic life science research that could uncover precise biological mechanisms producing positive outcomes, and instead chase after mere correlates of their presence.
In this vein, it is sometimes claimed that human longevity is only weakly heritable, which leads to excessive hope pinned on trivial lifestyle changes. The folly of this is best illustrated by the fact that even in this study superagers often neglect basic rules of healthy lifestyle: 71% of them even smoke. In fact, if we look at longevity in the sample consisting of people who already have reached advanced age (thus excluding the noise produced by infant mortality etc.), heritability estimate increases significantly, the older the sample the greater[3].
>In contrast to the modest heritability estimate for continuous age at death (16%), heritability of surviving past 65 years and surviving past 85 years was substantial at 36% (p = 4.2 × 10 −10 ) and 40% (p = 9.0 × 10 −10 ), respectively. Thus, genetic effects appear to be greater for survival to more advanced ages. In the Framingham Heart Study cohorts, heritability appears to increase with each 10-year increment in survived age (65 years, 75 years, and 85 years) for men, but not women, again suggesting that genetic effects on aging may be more substantial for men than women (20).
It is highly likely and in fact supported by growing evidence[4] that the pattern observed for longevity holds for cognitive aging as well.
In my humble opinion, it is incumbent upon us to focus on dissecting relevant heritable differences in biological pathways[5][6][7] between the small minority of supercentenarians (and, indeed, "superagers") and people with average lifespans/healthspans, in order to design sound medical treatments which could provide those benefits to the rest of us, less genetically endowed.
1. https://psyarxiv.com/j5x7g/
2. https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2017-42708-001.pdf
3. https://doi.org/10.1093/gerona/gls089
4. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23586942/
5. https://www.pnas.org/content/106/8/2700
6. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fgene.2012.0027...
7. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11357-006-9020-x