How Long Can We Really Live?

Read Transcript

I think it's not remotely beyond Barn's possibility that people could live at least two or three times or 10 times or 100 times longer than they do at the moment. Demographers tell us that for the rest of human history we're going to have more older people than younger people and it's never been that way on the planet.

Lifespan increased from 50 in the 1900s to 75 in the end of the 20th century and now it's already up to almost 80, we might be able to expect lifespans to go out to over 100 by the end of this century. The reason that we're living longer is because we will be staying healthier, there's no prospect whatsoever of keeping people living a lot longer than they do now in a frail, diseased, disabled effects.

Eating mainly a vegetarian based diet without saturated fat, without added sugars, avoiding tobacco, having clean water, exercise, diet, doing physical activity daily, as part of your life. Social engagement, novelty, keep moving, keep learning, this is the key, make your brain keep working. We can use repair and management to keep people in truly a physically and mentally young state in terms of functionality, we're going to [xx].

It's not just about making sure that you're physically well and your diseases are taken care of, it's using these tools to make sure that you've got a sense of social connectedness and a sense of purpose. Having a purpose in life, you know, being a valuable member of society,TThe elders educating the young.

And you can have all the health in the world but if you are lonely and depressed and have no sense of purpose in the world, then there's not much reason to be healthy. But what's taking us out? The big four, right? Cancer, diabetes, heart disease and stroke, and Alzheimer's disease, all four of them have in common, lifestyle and genetics.

For a long time people thought that becoming senile, becoming demented was an inevitable process of aging, and if it is then what's point, you can't do anything about it and that's not true. So all of modern medicine is letting us grow older, but the dead end is Alzheimer's, no one is escaping this pathology. All mental illness sort of stigmatized in this society and when you add to the fact that this is a medal owners that's precede that affects mostly old people and we're youth obsessed to culture, those two things combined to make long time anticipation an invisible person $200 billion a year your spending on treating Alzheimer's.

By 2050, when there are 25 million Alzheimer's patients in the United State. Every dollar we spend on medicare will need to be spent on Alzheimer's and there won't be a dime left over for any other disease. The number of Alzheimer's patients is going to single handedly collapse medicare and medicaid. Practically 100% of geriatric practice is medicare and medicare you can not pay your office expenses and the staff on medicare reimbursement.

Where will we put all the people or dictate to live forever or how we pay the pensions and so on, all these questions pale into absolute insignificance as compared to the problem we're solving, there are 100, 000 people everyday die of this thing called aging and of course mostly after an extended period of ill health and disability and debilitation and dependence and decrepitated.

Great technologies for global aging are going to be a great source of jobs and income and new services as well. That will undoubtedly alleviate the most astronomical amount of human suffering and save them at atronomical life and I can't think of anything better to do with my life.