50 really is the new 30

You can live younger, longer but if you are looking for a magic bullet, forget it. It all comes down to our brain-body connection.

- NORMAN SWAN

We must be doing something right when it comes to living younger longer. The statistics are dramatic when you compare today’s chances of dying to 50 years ago. If you’re 50 years old today, your chances of dying at that age are the equivalent of someone in their late thirties 50 years ago. If you’re 80 today, your chances of dying at that age are the equivalent of someone in their late sixties 50 years ago. If you’re 90 years of age today, your chances of dying at that age are the equivalent of someone in their early eighties 50 years ago. Put another way, in 1950, the risk of death in the following 12 months for an 85- year-old woman in Sweden was 17 per cent. Today it’s 7 per cent. The size of reductions have been similar for men and even people aged over 90. In the US, at age 95, the risk of dying has fallen from 31 per cent to 22 per cent. So why has this happened? There are many reasons, including stopping smoking, but it’s far more than that.

There are a few concepts about living younger longer that are important to get straight up front. The first is to be clear that the aim is to have a body (including your brain) that has fewer kilometres on the clock than your number of birthdays would suggest. In other words, your biological age is less than your years. There are many markers of being biologically older than your calendar age. High blood pressure, high blood sugars and fats, too big a waist circumference, resting pulse rate, exercise tolerance, muscle strength, cognitive impairment and levels of chronic stress and psychological distress are all markers of increased biological age. There are also markers than can be measured in our genes and chromosomes.