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You might live to be 100. Are you ready? | Andrew J Scott

Explanation: Edward Carvalho Monaghan/Those

CattlehamAt the age of 115, he is said to be the oldest person. It provides Sage Life’s advice to “saying yes to every chance because you never know what to do. When you were born in 1909, the average age of the British female was 52 years old – it became a centenary of a distance.

Today, according to the United Nations, centenary is the fastest growing age group. By 1950, there was an estimated 14,000, while today there are approximately 750,000, which is expected to reach approximately 4 million by 2054. Medical progress in the standard of living and public health improvements has changed the human condition. The American Academy of Actarians estimate that one of all six Americans born today will live to be 100. This is the same as in the United Kingdom, where the National Statistics Office indicates that the majority of children can expect to live in the early 1990s.

Is the possibility of living that has been raising you for a long time, or is it a source of awe? Are you looking for decades of extra time, or does live to 100 seem like threat? Clearly, there are reasons that make us concern about living for a long time. What is the benefit of living until after 80 if your savings have run out, the sponsorship role is full, and you end up to feel lonely and bored and not related?

For most history of mankind, such concerns were not relevant. Only a minority can expect to become old. Now, with the average global expected age of 70 years, it is a majority. Just as we discuss adapting and adapting to artificial intelligence and climate crisis, we need similar talks regarding our newly extended life. After making the majority to live in age, we now have to focus on changing our age to make life longer, but more healthy, productive and shared for a longer period. A little things are important to us individually and collectively.

Today, there is a very large gap between average age and healthspan. The number of years that we are likely to live in more than the number of years that we are likely to remain in good health. Reducing this gap is very important to infer the advantages of long lives.

The good news is that there is a lot that you can do. About 80 % of how life is driven by our behaviors and our environment. It might seem familiar to a favorable way, but there is no alternative to eating and sleeping well, practicing more and following your doctor’s advice. While this advice is granted a scientific upgrade, what has already changed is your incentive to follow it now you can expect to become old.

Fortunately, we do not only rely on self -discipline. aging Well, it has become an industry, and we can expect support from technological and scientific progress and transformations in government policy. Currently, it is the billionaire life -inspired lifestyles that receive headlines, along with the long button of nutritional supplements and excessive tested treatments. But your future is likely to be affected by broad transformations in our health system.

These systems are currently focusing on intervention when the disease becomes so remarkable that it negatively affects your health. When it comes to age -related diseases, such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes or dementia, this is a recipe to keep us alive but not necessarily more healthier for a longer period.

Instead, the focus on exploiting the potential of modern protection techniques should be, with the use of artificial intelligence and huge data. Whether it follows genetics to determine the diseases that are exposed to more than one danger; Monitor changes in your body’s vital indicators of the early signs of the disease; Or accelerate the innovation and reuse of drugs, waiting for future innovations.

Another step will arise forward with more progress in understanding aging biology – processes that slowly reduce the physical components of our bodies. The prize is huge because its slowdown would significantly reduce the gap between healthspan and lifespan.

The mere idea of ​​treatments that can delay age -related diseases reveal how humanity enters a radical new era. We tend to think of aging as “natural” and not changeable, but this reflects our relatively modern progress in reducing the threat of diseases such as smallpox, cholera, tuberculosis and plague. For most history, these diseases were considered “normal” and were the main reason that a few lived to live in old age. This explains why, in the seventeenth century, Montin was considered death from aging “rare death” and “less normal than others.” Now that the main cause of death and disease is age -related diseases, scientific attention turns into a treatment of these next boundaries.

The result is the increase in the resources that have been invested in “gym science”. Throughout history, there have always been those who claim to discover the secret of young people, but the topic is slowly attracted to the prevailing scientific community. Procedure is also made in the laboratory so that the treatment of cell era and the expansion of the life of an increasing group of routine animals is now.

Nothing means that you will appear magic pill any time soon, and this certainly does not mean that you can start a dream of eternity. What this means, however, is that the younger you are, the more likely to take advantage of the treatments that help you better age. Exactly to what extent does it take, it will depend on the relative strength of human creativity and human biology, but it opens a future that changes in basic ways that seem human life.

But there is another problem that we have to address – how do we pay for these additional years? If more of us live up to 100, the state’s pensions will collapse in their current form. In the absence of an increase in productivity, it requires living longer than work for a longer period if we want to maintain our standard of living. This is why retirement age increases governments around the world. Again, we went back to the unpalatable consequences of living for a longer period.

But seizing the advantages of a longer life needs to be deeper than just raising the retirement age. We need changes that help us work longer, not just forcing us to do so.

We need to create a new and more flexible structure than work and entertainment. Professional transformations and transformations will need to become more frequent as we change jobs and professions to prolong our working lives, take a long time to store our health or care, and the shift between full -time work or part -time or without a full -time time.

The life cycle restructuring it reveals that the true benefit of the longer life is more time and the ability to organize the life cycle differently. We tend to think of a longer life like bringing time at the end of life, but the more healthy we make these additional years, the more time we have throughout our lives. The twentieth century witnessed expected for years more entertainment after retirement. The longest professions of the twenty -first century will be about taking more of this aspect of this aspect of retirement.

This leads us, perhaps, to the most difficult change at all: seeing a longer life as an opportunity and overcoming deep life assumptions. Currently, we reduce the ability of the elderly and the promise of our subsequent years.

David Boy, a man who knows something or two about the transformations, described aging as “an extraordinary process as you become the person you should have always been.” If we can make life not only longer, but more healthy, productive and shared for a longer period, what do you not like?

For most history of humanity, only a minority of young people and the middle of life has become ancient. The result is that we provide our investments in our subsequent years and fail to provide the required support required by a healthy and fruitful life and long participation. Looking at the number of us alive, he can expect to become 80 years old, and has a shot at 90, and may reach 100, a problem that requires change.

There is a lot to do. Aging is greatly shown in increased health inequality. Changing how we have a lifetime requires significant transformations in social standards and institutions. But this is the thing about a long life: they are witnessing a lot of change. When Ethi Cattleham was born, compulsory education ended at the age of 12, the concepts of adolescents and the middle -aged crisis were not present, and the woman was not a vote, and the UK did not provide only retirement in the state and the first vaccine against tuberculosis. The coming years will witness fundamental transformations equally in how we live while we are back. Catherham did not expect to live to 100 and the advice of her insightful life. However, a hundred of tomorrow must invest more in preparing for this future and exceeding merely thinking positively. We need a collective need to create a society of longevity.

  • Andrew JC Scott Professor of Economics at London College of Business and author of “longevity”: building a better and longer society, basic books, 2024.

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