By Dr. Thomas LaGrelius
Have you ever wondered why some people are old at 50 and others young at 80?
Maximum life expectancy is determined by genetics. You either win the genetic lottery or you don’t, but there are lots of things you can do to improve your odds of survival to your genetic limit.
- Exercise daily.
- Eat lightly and stay lean.
- Eat more plant foods and less animal foods.
- Don’t smoke! Anything!
- Don’t drink alcohol, or at least not much and not often.
- Avoid stress and anxiety.
- Be cheerful, positive and involved.
- Get plenty of good sleep.
- Take fewer injury and infection risks.
- Have strong and positive social networks and families.
- Invest early and heavily in the best mainstream preventive medical care, but avoid health care fads and frauds.
However, what fascinates me is the genetic longevity limits and how to crack them.
There is a disease called progeria. Victims have accelerated aging and die in their teens looking ninety-five. They get the same degenerative diseases associated with old age beginning at age two or three. The gene defect causing this disease has been identified and is being intensely studied. Research here could yield very useful information.
On the other hand, some animals seem not to age. Alaskan bowhead whales have been discovered with Victorian era harpoons imbedded in their blubber that have not been in use for over 200 years. The bowhead is the longest lived mammal we know of and its genetics are being studied to see why.
In 2006, a tortoise that had been given to the governor of India in the early 1700s died in the Calcutta Zoo at age 255. Protected from predators in the zoo as he was, he could live a long time. Perhaps he did not age at all, but a random disease finally got him.
Lobsters and other crustaceans do not seem to age, they just get bigger and bigger until someone or something catches and eats them, or until a disease kills them. (They never take their shots you know.)
Many trees, like the redwoods, can live for thousands of years. The bristlecone pine has been shown to survive more than 5,000 years with absolutely no evidence of cellular aging whatsoever. The old trees look awful from lightning strikes and other damage over the millennia, but their cells look and act just like a sapling’s.
Protected from infectious diseases, predator attacks and trauma, some animals and plants can live very long lives. What is the genetic difference between these living things and humans who have a finite life span and usually reach the end of their genetically preprogrammed lives in their 90s? These are questions that haunt geriatricians. So we read and study research literature voraciously. I’ve been doing that since college. It’s finally getting very interesting.
A huge effort is going on to study the genetics of aging and learn how to modify it. Numerous studies are published daily pursuing the answers to these questions. A lot has been discovered, and many in the field are convinced we are very close to cracking the code that causes aging and learning how to change it.
There lives today in our South Bay community an active 109-year-old who is now the 24th oldest person on earth. Clearly this man won, but also had the potential to lose, the “genetic lottery”.
I met him about 15 years ago and later attended his 100th birthday celebration at which he gave an eloquent speech, danced all night and was definitely the life of the party. He does not dance anymore, but is still bright and has all his mental faculties.
He attributes his longevity and health to daily exercise, and to the attentions of his physician son who has managed his health care for decades. His son prevented him from dying of, among other things, colon cancer. This senior has had 38 pre-malignant and malignant colon polyps removed from his colon over the years, all found by his son, a noted gastroenterologist. The gentleman’s father, two of his uncles and a grandfather all died young of familial colon cancer, so without this care no doubt so would have he.
Another genetic characterization in this Ukrainian family is that many carry a gene that codes for a clotting disorder that creates an effect similar to that of aspirin. There is therefore virtually no vascular disease in the family members with this gene.
Strokes, heart attacks, peripheral vascular diseases are unknown, but there is increased tendency to bleed from injuries, like a person on aspirin. There is also an increased cancer risk in the family, including pancreatic cancer. So though he won the genetic lottery in some ways, he was also born in a family which without optimal medical care would lose it in other ways.
Genetics is the future of medicine. Get your genome tested (23 and Me will do just fine for now) and take the results to your doctor. It might be very interesting and useful to both of you.
One day genetic therapy could give humans the life expectancy of a bowhead whale or maybe even a bristlecone pine, but what on earth will we do with all those people?
Live long, be well.
Dr. Thomas W. LaGrelius, M.D., is a certified specialist in family medicine and geriatric medicine. He is the founder and president of Skypark Preferred Family Care, a concierge primary care/geriatrics practice based in Torrance. He is a staff member at Torrance Memorial Medical Center and Providence Little Company of Mary Torrance Hospital. Email questions and topic suggestions to firstname.lastname@example.org