By Kevin Jiang | Staff Reporter
Jan. 24, 2025
Countless people throughout history have gone to extreme and convoluted lengths to prolong their lives, from ancient Chinese emperors imbibing “immortality elixirs” of mercury and sulphur (and dying shortly thereafter) to modern millionaires injecting the blood plasma of their teenage children.
Unfortunately, experts believe we’re unlikely to defeat aging in this lifetime. But neither would you need to secure a “blood boy” to enjoy a long, healthy life.
It turns out the road to longevity is relatively mundane in comparison, and paved with lifestyle changes and habits achievable by most everyone. It’s not enough to merely live long, experts say — we must also preserve our health to actually enjoy our later years.
How old can we possibly get?
It’s a controversial question, considering we don’t fully understand the mechanisms behind why we age to begin with, according to Siegfried Hekimi, a professor and molecular biologist specializing in aging at McGill University.
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One recent study posits the upper biological limit at 120 to 150 years of age, provided we’re blessed with great genetics and manage to avoid disease, injury, gunshot wounds and untimely car accidents. Our bodies gradually lose its ability to recover from stressors over time, the paper reads; extrapolated out, our resilience is expected to give way entirely around that age.
Genetics may play a surprisingly minor role in all this. It’s believed humans are born with a certain “dose” of good health dictated by genetics, that can either be eroded or reinforced by our environment and life habits, explained Heather Keller, Schlegel Research Chair in Nutrition and Aging at the Schlegel-UW Research Institute for Aging.
“Typically, the things that we have control over are higher actually than just our genes,” she said. “So you can do something about your bad genes, basically.”
Research suggests just 20 to 30 per cent of our life expectancy is heritable. The rest, more than 70 per cent, is dictated by our environment and how we live life. And it starts with nutrition.
Nutrition is key
The smell of rosemary pervades through the picturesque Italian hamlet of Acciaroli. Local varieties of the herb decorate the landscape and feature heavily in their meals, alongside home-reared rabbits and freshly caught anchovies.
The village isn’t only famous for its botanicals. More than one in ten of its population of 700 are over 100 in age.
Despite this, the residents aren’t exactly the picture of health — many elderly villagers are smokers and overweight, a researcher in the region told NPR. And yet, residents largely enjoy great heart health and suffer from few chronic illnesses like cataracts or Alzheimer’s disease.
Scientists believe a major factor in their longevity boils down to their diets. Studies suggest rosemary can boost brain function, and their daily meals boil down to a local variation of the Mediterranean diet — shown by multiple studies to boost longevity, given its ample antioxidants, fibre and lean proteins, Keller explained.
Perhaps just as important are the foods they don’t eat. Modern diets are littered with highly-processed foods, Keller said, high in saturated fats with not enough antioxidants and plant-based phytonutrients. These can all contribute to inflammation and “are for sure linked to a shorter lifespan.”
In fact, a massive study that followed more than half a million Americans found those who consumed significant amounts of ultraprocessed foods were 10 per cent more likely to die than those who didn’t over a 20 year period.
“I tell people, move toward whole foods as much as possible, or at least less-processed foods. That is a good recipe for promoting health overall,” Keller said. We also tend to eat too much meat, one of the biggest sources of saturated fats: “You don’t have to be vegan or vegetarian by any means — but moving more toward a plant-based diet is helpful because there’s also a lot of nutrients in these foods.”
Another factor is hydration. Studies suggest not drinking enough water can accelerate aging and increase one’s odds of chronic disease and premature death. As a general rule of thumb, people need around eight or nine cups (or about 250 millilitres) of water every day, up to 13 cups depending on your body size, Keller said.
Stop using substances
Perhaps the best thing you can do for your health is to quit smoking, noted Richard Hughson, a distinguished professor emeritus and the Schlegel Research Chair in Vascular Aging and Brain Health at the Schlegel-UW Research Institute for Aging.
“Smoking is clearly one of the worst things that you could possibly do to reduce your health span,” he said.
Each cigarette you smoke shaves off about 20 minutes of your life expectancy — 17 minutes for men and 22 for women, a new study suggests. Added up, the habit can shorten one’s life expectancy by 10 years on average.
But there’s also hope. New research shows those who quit smoking before 40 can live just as long as people who’ve never smoked. And smokers who quit at any age can come close to the survival rate of someone who’s never smoked within 10 years, and receive half that benefit in just three years.
Regular drinking can also shorten your life. Consuming more than one alcoholic beverage each day can shrink one’s lifespan by 6.9 years, a recent study shows, while raising overall mortality by 43 per cent.
Exercise, and the cost of our modern lifestyle
Modern life has made many things easier for us. But it’s also made us more stationary than ever — and the comfort is killing us slowly, Hughson explained.
For one, it’s contributing to the continued rise of Type 2 diabetes, which can reduce one’s lifespan by five to 15 years. Studies estimate global diabetes rates could nearly double from 529 million in 2021 to 1.3 billion by 2050.
A sedentary lifestyle can also lead to stiffer arteries, Hughson explained, which forces the heart to work harder and can lead to cardiovascular disease. At the same time, the energy once absorbed by more elastic blood vessels can instead get forced into the brain, damaging some of the organ’s sensitive blood vessels and potentially leading to cognitive impairment.
“You want to keep your arteries as young and healthy as possible,” he explained. “And you can do that by exercise, by reducing sedentary time and, to some extent, by eating better — so a low sodium diet, not too much fat.”
Sedentary behaviour is unavoidable to some extent, especially if you work an office job. But you can offset some of this damage taking regular breaks between stretches of work — consider getting up and walking around the office at least once every two hours, Hughson said. After your drive to work, take the stairs instead of the elevator. And if you can sneak in a workout session before or after work, that would be even better.
For best results, Hughson recommends following the Canadian 24-hour Movement Guidelines. For those aged 18 to 64, these include at least 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous aerobic activities a week, like walking fast or cycling, and muscle strengthening activities of major muscle groups at least twice a week. It also recommends limiting sedentary time to eight hours a day or less.
The more you exercise, the better. A recent study that monitored more than 116,000 Americans found those who exercised two to four times beyond those 150 moderate minutes a week experienced 26 to 31 per cent lower all-cause mortality, including a 28 to 38 per cent lower risk of death by cardiovascular disease.
Social factors
An uncomfortable fact of life is that longevity is closely tied to one’s income level, according to Verena Menec, a professor emerit of community health sciences at the University of Manitoba.
Studies show Americans who made less than $15,000 a year were more than three times more likely to die from all-cause mortality than those making $50,000 or more annually. Those in the lowest income bracket have life expectancies more than 10 years lower than those with the highest income.
One’s level of education also plays an outsized role; at age 25, the difference in life expectancy between high and low educated groups is 8.3 years for men and 5.3 for women.
Poverty makes life more difficult in general. People with low income are at greater risk of housing and food insecurity; they also experience more chronic and infectious disease, poor mental health and substance use disorders.
A significant part of this is the impact of long-term stress, which has long been known to speed up one’s aging process. On the flip side, by strengthening one’s emotional regulation skills and managing that stress, we can also slow that clock down.
Then there’s the importance of social connections — loneliness has been shown to increase the risk of premature death by 26 per cent, while a strong social support system can shield us from stress and poor mental health.
“All of this is interrelated,” Menec explained. “It all ties together, reinforces each other and helps people live longer and live better with chronic diseases … and contributes to a longer and better life.”
