About 109 billion people did not have the option of being a centurist

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Scientists have worked out that roughly 109 billion people have lived and died since the dawn of humanity. They've also determined that the roughly 8 billion people alive today comprise about 7% of all the people who have ever lived.

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Primarily because of high child mortality, the average lifespan was about 31 years before the 1500s and then crept up to 35 afterwards. Since 1770, life expectancy has increased 150%.

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Despite this great news, the maximum life expectancy has not changed much. The oldest well-documented age ever reaching was 122 by a French woman who died in 1997. Even though she lived a long time when measured in years or decades, she could never be called a centurist.

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All that is in the process of changing.

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Aging is the mother of all diseases​

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Even the World Health Organization has recently designating aging as a disease. Aging is the disease that increases the likely of almost all other life threatening diseases occurring.

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For example, if you're under 20, your chances of getting cancer are less than 0.025% in a given year. In contrast, if you are 60 or older, you chances of getting cancer are more than 1% in a given year. That's an increase of more than 20 times. I have read other statistics that put it at more than 50 times.

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How much does disease impact our expected longevity?

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One recent calculation showed that, the current life expectancy in the United States of 78 would increase to 8,989 years given the current rate of death that occurs by accident alone, assuming nobody died of disease. Although we need to pay attention to disablement or death by accident, the chances of us dying by accident is relatively small compared to our meeting the grim reaper through diseases like CVD, cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's, and Parkinson's, all of which rely heavily on the precursor of the disease of aging.

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Longevity Escape Velocity (how to live long enough to start counting your life by centurial birthdays)

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Currently, advances in health care and science are increasing our expected lifespan by one year every six years, or roughly two months for every year that passes. However, this increase per year is increasing.

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Subsidiaries of Amazon (Altos Labs) and Google (Calico), already valued in the trillions, along with several others, are at the top of the heap of the companies that are in the race to extend our vital lifespan into the indefinite future.

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The longevity escape velocity (LEV) will occur in the year when the rate of progress in health care and health science has resulted in an increase of one year in the vital lifespan for at least 50% of the people on earth. Of course, that year could be earlier for some of us and later for others.

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When will that year occur?

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Different pundits in the area of longevity have different projections. 

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In September, 2022, Peter Diamandis, whose longevity company recently had a rough valuation of one billion dollars, projected that the longevity escape velocity will be reached within 15 years (by 2038).

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Ray Kurzweil, the optimist among the projectionists and author of the book Fantastic Voyage: How to Live Long Enough to Live Forever, predicted in 2018 that LEV would be reached in 10-12 years (by 2028-2030).

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Aubrey de Grey, President and CSO at LEV Foundation, in January of 2021 projected that LEV would have a 50% chance of occurring in 15-16 years (by 2036-2037).

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Caveats and terminology

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Of course, these projections assume that a doomsday type of world event doesn't occur that would have to be orders of magnitude more severe that the two world wars, the great depression, and the recent pandemic blip. Otherwise, the year of the LEV is just a decade or more ahead of us (in 2023).

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Many people use the terms "immortality" and "forever" when talking about longevity and LEV. Perhaps they are not intending that these terms to be taken literally. I take these terms literally. Therefore I don't use them. I don't see any prospect of achieving guaranteed immortality or living forever in this body here on earth. Not only that, personally I would never want the option of creating a "happy" suicide to be taken away from me or anyone else, even if there were some way to do it. And, at least at this junction in our human knowledge, I don't think it's possible or likely to ever be possible to think of ourselves as megaannumist (a person who counts their lifespan in terms of the number of million years they have lived).

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The urgency (for some of us)

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For those of us who are now around 45 or younger and in fairly good health, if you're interested being able to count your future lifespan in terms of many centuries, then the game is yours to lose. There is a very good chance that the longevity escape velocity will be reached while you're still alive and moderately healthy and you'll have the option to get on that LEV train that will take you into a lifetime adventure lasting many centuries.

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For others of us, either with poorer life-threatening health or 55 and beyond, the chances of us being alive and healthy enough to board that LEV train when it arrives start to significantly decrease, especially if we don't get (even majorly) proactive about increasing our chances of catching that train when it arrives.

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Myself as an example

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I am 78 coming up on 79 this July, 2023. Currently, I am the healthiest person of my age group that I personally know. Nevertheless, I know that the disease of aging is with me. As evidence, I have aging spots, BPH, and I need 2.5 reading glasses (when I was younger I didn't need glasses).

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Considering my own chances of living for several centuries or even a few millennia, at this point in time pre-LEV, I would hazard a guess that my chances might be 1% or less. However, if I am alive and healthy enough to get on that LEV train when it arrives, then I would estimate my chances at well over 50%.

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But this means, I cannot rest on my laurels at this time. If I am majorly proactive now in taking action to increase my vital lifespan, that dramatically increases the chances that I'll be able to catch that LEV train. When and if that occurs, I could be more "relaxed" with a guarantee of my centurist lifestyle being more "in the bag."

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It's still a marathon, not a sprint

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Even with Kurzweil's optimistic estimate of 2028, that's still five years away. A more conservative estimate would make it 2038 (I would be 94 then), 15 years ahead. And it could be longer than that. 

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There are two things that are going to affect our ability in reach the goal of being on that train. The first is knowing what to do and not to do (for example, what we eat and don't eat) that will enhance our likely vital lifespan. The second is our willingness to consistently do those things.

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As Woody Allen quipped, "You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred."

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That is why creating Now-Next Integrity regarding our longevity enhancing behaviors is essential. Whenever we consider or discover something to either do or not do that we have reason to believe will help to "get us to the train on time," we need to take time to answer the question, "How could my Now likely be happy to consistently do what my Next thinks will help me catch that train?"

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Go to the NFS toolkit to help you with answers to these important questions.

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My life as a centurist

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Regardless of whatever I am already doing that expresses myself as a centurist, each day I ask myself the question, "What might be another step I might take to express myself as a centurist?"

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Other resources

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The End of Heart Disease: The Live to Eat Plan to Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease

Life Force: How New Breakthroughs in Precision Medicine Can Transform the Quality of Your Life & Those You Love

The Science and Technology of Growing Young

How Not to Diet: The Groundbreaking Science of Healthy, Permanent Weight Loss

The One-Minute Workout: Science Shows a Way to Get Fit That's Smarter, Faster, Shorter

Whole Body Vibration: the Future of Good Health

Living with vitality for at least 99 more years

NutritionFacts.org | The Latest Nutrition Related Topics

 

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