In a new study from 42 institutions across 14 countries, researchers found provides new insights into the aging theory “the invariant rate of aging hypothesis”, which states that every species has a relatively fixed rate of aging.
The finding suggests human death is inevitable. No matter how many vitamins we take, how healthy our environment is or how much we exercise, we will eventually age and die.
In the study, the team analyzed the link between life expectancy, which is the average age at which individuals die in a population, and lifespan equality, which measures how concentrated deaths are around older ages.
They combined data and comparing births and death patterns on nine human populations with information from 30 non-human primate populations, including gorillas, chimpanzees, and baboons living in the wild and in zoos.
Their results show that, as life expectancy increases, so does lifespan equality.
So, lifespan equality is very high when most of the individuals in a population tend to die at around the same age such as observed in modern Japan or Sweden – which is around their 70s or 80s.
However, in the 1800s lifespan equality was very low in those same countries, since deaths were less concentrated at old ages, resulting also in lower life expectancy.
The team also found life expectancy has increased dramatically and still does in many parts of the world.
But this is not because we have slowed our rate of aging; the reason is that more and more infants, children, and young people survive and this brings up the average life expectancy.
Previous research has unraveled the striking regularity between life expectancy and lifespan equality among human populations, from pre-industrial European countries, hunter-gatherers, to modern industrialized countries.
However, by exploring these patterns among our closest relatives, this study shows that this pattern might be universal among primates, while it provides unique insights into the mechanisms that produce it.
Using statistics and mathematics, the authors show that even small changes in the rate of aging would make a population of, say, baboons, demographically behave as a population of chimpanzees or even humans.
They say that medical science has advanced at an unprecedented pace, so maybe science might succeed in achieving what evolution could not: to reduce the rate of aging.
If you care about aging and your health, please read studies about this drug may help prevent muscle aging in older people and findings of this treatment could reverse aging in older people.
For more information about aging and wellness, please see recent studies about this diet may effectively reduce stress, promote healthy aging and results showing that this stuff in blood could be a key to aging better and living longer.
The study is published in Nature Communications. One author of the study is Fernando Colchero.
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