Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Can and Could All Humans Live to 100 or Beyond? - Coggle Diagram
Can and Could All Humans Live to 100 or Beyond?
Environmental and external factors
Access to Healthcare
Various regions all around the world do not have access to healthcare. Lack of healthcare around human beings increases their chances of death as there is nowhere to take them during emergency life-or-death situations.
Air quality
Life expectancy is a measure of the average life span of humans in a certain area. Low air quality has massively reduced the life expectancy of humans in several countries such as Papua New Guinea (3.2 years), Niger (3.1 years), and Somalia (3.04 years) as explained by StaeofGlobalAir.org (2023).
Other countries with high air pollution such as India, Bangladesh, China and Nigeria also have relatively low life expectancies between 55-75 years. Hence, the air quality in certain geographic regions can impact longevity.
Water Quality
Occupational burdens
Occupational hazards and issues could have a negative impacts on the lifespan of a human being. Examples of occupational hazards could include exposure to harmful chemicals, unsafe physical burden on the body and injuries that could affect the human life span
Natural disasters
People that encounter natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions and bushfires are more likely to die untimely deaths that are out of their control.
A great example of a natural disaster with devastating consequences in the modern day is the Indian Ocean Tsunami that resulted in the deaths of over 275,000 people in 14 different nations
Advancements in Medicine and Technology
Improved diagnosis of diseases
Technological tools have improved the diagnostics and screening process of diseases, allowing for them to be detected faster. This allows infected people to get faster treatment and increases their chance at living a long life.
Disease prevention through vaccinations
Vaccines have become an instrumental tool in preventing modern day pandemics and epidemics. A great example of this is covid-19, which was overcome through the use of vaccines.
Advancements in surgical techniques
Robotic assisted surgeries that reduce human errors and increase the chance of the patient surviving
3D-bioprinting is a process where large cellular structures are "bio-printed" using large machines outside the living body (UNSW, 2023). This process can be used to replace tissues that are cancerous or damaged, reducing the chances of humans dying from diseases.
Other surgical inventions that make surgeries less invasive and reduce the recovery time for patients.
In the future, more advancements in surgery such as the use of artificial intelligence will improve the patient's chances of survival.
Enhanced treatment therapies
Advancements in medicine and technology have resulted in improved treatments to diseases through therapy. A variety of therapeutic treatments such as targeted therapies, immunotherapies and biologics have resulted in improved treatments for life threatening diseases such as cancer, autoimmune diseases and other infectious diseases. This shows that
modern day innovations have increased the chances of survival for people with diseases.
Lifestyle choices
Chronic stress
Chronic stress, which is when you feel stressed or anxious for a prolonged period of time, may also affect longevity. Studies show that chronic stress increases the likelihood of illnesses such as heart attacks and cancer due to our physical reactions to stress accumulating till the body can no longer handle it.
Alcohol use
High amounts of alcohol can lead liver diseases, a weakened immune system and a high risk of cancer.
Excessive smoking
A study by Statistics Netherlands (2017) suggests that the average lifespan of smokers is 13 years less than non-smokers
Children of a parent that excessively smoked before giving birth to them could suffer severe genetic damage.
Smoking can lead various chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, lung cancer, stroke and many types of cancer. It can also damage our respiratory system. Therefore,
smoking worsens our longevity
through harmfully affecting various body systems.
Sleep
According to The Guardian (2023), sleep quantity as well as quality are important factors that affect our longevity. Furthermore, the article states that 8% of deaths from any cause could be attributed to poor sleep patterns, showing the importance of good sleep for our longevity.
Physical exercise
Improves cardiovascular health by strengthening the heart, improving circulation, and enhancing cardiovascular fitness. This results in a lower blood pressure and a reduced likelihood of heart diseases that could lead to untimely deaths. By promoting a healthy cardiovascular system, physical activity can significantly improve lifespan.
A healthy amount of physical exercise helps us maintain a healthy body weight. This reduces the chance of diseases such as diabetes. Our metabolic health, which is related to our ability to produce and process energy, is also improved through exercise.
Mental health
People with severe mental health disorders have a 10–25-year reduction in life expectancy (World Health Organisation, n.d.). This suggests while positive mental health may not directly improve our longevity like our genetics, it may have some correlation with a longer life.
Genetics
Longevity genes
In a paper published in 2019 in the Journal
Cell,
a team of biologists and a professor of biomedical genetics discovered a gene known as
Sirtuin 6 (SIRT6)
that is responsible for more efficient genetic repair in our bodies.
Sirtuin 6 plays an important role in organising proteins and finding enzymes that are needed to repair damaged DNA. Repairing damaged DNA with the help of SIRT6 will allow human beings to live longer lives by avoiding diseases such as cancer that occur due to genomic instability.
ScienceDaily (2019) explains how a team of researchers from 2019 conducted experiments to analyse the importance of SIRT6 to live long, healthy lives. The experiment conducted by the researchers involved analysing the DNA repair process in 18 different rodent species and the results strongly suggested that the rodents that lived longer lives had stronger SIRT6 genes that repaired their DNA efficiently.
"The SIRT6 protein seems to be the dominant determinant of lifespan," said Dirk Bohmann, who is professor of biomedical genetics.
Why is reparation of DNA important?
Why DSBs can't be avoided with a healthy lifestyle
Double Strand breaks (DSB) in the DNA are often caused by reactive oxygen, which is a byproduct of metabolism. This means that damage to the DNA occurs through essential cellular processes and can't be avoided no matter how healthy a human being's lifestyle is. This means that
DSBs can not be avoided through a healthy life style and strong genes are required to repair them
.
The role gene repair plays in increasing our life span
As humans and many other mammals grow older, their genes are more likely break and tear, resulting in genetic mutations that ultimately result in diseases such as cancer. Hence, DNA repair plays a factor in increasing a human being's life span (ScienceDaily, 2019).
A good diet
Adequate nutrients: A nutritious will allow us to obtain the essential nutrients including carbohydrates, proteins, minerals, vitamins and lipids that we need for our body to function. A lack of these nutrients will reduce the longevity due to unhealthy body systems.
A good diet supports the maintenance of a healthy gut micro-biome, which refers to the intestinal tract or colon of the human body where micro-organisms reside. The amount of dietary fibre we eat plays a large role maintaining healthy micro-organisms in the micro-biome. the A healthy gut micro biome is essential for nutrient absorption and digestion of food.