Future long life

Even today, there are many, many people who have passed the landmark age of 100 – an age that seemed an impossible achievement only a few decades ago. In fact, there are now so many healthy, elderly people that a new term has been coined: the wellderly. These are people over the age of 80 who have no chronic diseases such as high blood pressure, coronary disease or diabetes and who have never taken medication for these conditions. There have been quite a few scientific studies of communities where a healthy old age is typical. These include places like Calabria in southern Italy and the island of Okinawa in Japan. When researchers ask people like this what the secret of their long life is, the answer is invariably to do with diet and is almost always the same: ‘I eat a lot of fruit and vegetables.’ ‘A little bit, but of everything.’ ‘No smoking, no drinking.’ New research into long life, looking at groups of people who have a genetic connection, has taken scientists to Ecuador. In one small region there are a number of people with a genetic condition called Laron syndrome. The main effect of this condition is to restrict the individual’s growth to little more than a metre, but it also seems to protect them against both cancer and diabetes. Ultimately, those with Laron’s syndrome live longer than the rest of their families. Meanwhile, on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, there’s a completely separate group of Japanese-American men who are particularly long-lived. And it turns out that they have a variant of the same gene as the Laron syndrome group.