CNN: Gupta on Super Centenarians
This is from a few months ago but thought I'd post it, as I don't have much time to post anything else right now. The women in this video is 112 years old. She didn't smoke or drink all her life and took care of herself...
The scientist mentions that in general, super centenarians look younger at all stages of life and function much younger than their age. Researchers attribute reaching these ages purely on genetics, but I have a feeling that depending on where in the world you look, different influences on getting to these ages will turn up. For example, in the U.S, its more likely to be genetics, as there are fewer centenarians than say japan. Where in particular Okinawa is thought to be more diet related.
Calorie Restriction seems to give the majority of its followers characteristics similar to long lived people. Lower body temperature, extremely good insulin sensitivity, and hopefully slower declining DHEA-S, lower levels of oxidative damage, better DNA repair and more. If you look up the evidence that is SLOWLY being found from centenarian studies you will see that the theories or details on why these people might reach such ages are pretty much also influenced by calorie restriction. We could argue that some long term CRers do in fact look a little younger than their ages too. Whether or not we push 120 years is very much up for debate, but I think our chances of reaching 100 is MANY times greater than the general population. It could just be that 'super centenarians' experience the longevity that would be possible on a CR diet (but they didn't do CR). So because the population is so big, the chances of genes influencing lifespan, how CR influences lifespan could be likely possibility.
This is interesting, it's from the Baltimore study on aging. As I said above, CR influences all three markers. So it seems average lifespan should at least be extended. I think assuming that Life long Calorie Restriction will only give 1-2 years extra life as a few researchers are saying is extremely pessimistic. Especially since we know how long certain groups of people live longer, one comes to mind is Seventh Day adventists, and they don't even do calorie restrction. This is quite obvious as various studies have shown their average BMI to be around 24 (ref 18.5-25). And the men live upto 9-10 years longer than the average american. This is just by eating a healthy diet!
Below: Men that show the same characteristics influenced by CR live longer (without CR).
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