Episode 6: What does it mean to live a long, healthy life?

Mar. 01, 2023 | 27 mins

Join host Brent Bishop as he chats with Professor S. Jay Olshansky, a professor and longevity expert from Chicago, Illinois. They will discuss what it means to live a long, healthy life.

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You are listening to the Beyond Age podcast series.

Brent:

Hi, and welcome to Beyond Age, a Manulife exclusive podcast where we get to chat with experts to uncover the truth about holistic health and aging, to help keep you living healthier for longer, no matter your age. I'm your host, Brent Bishop, and today I'm joined by Professor S. Jay Olshansky from Chicago, Illinois. He's a professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois, and the Chief Scientist at Lapis Solutions Inc. Today we'll be discussing human longevity, and what it means to live a long, healthy life. Welcome, Jay.

Professor S. Jay Olshansky:

Thanks for having me.

Brent:

Great to have you here. Listen, I'm super interested in this topic. You know, for me, I think because I'm getting older myself, we all are, but I think it's much more about living well and living healthy in your older years rather than just living longer. And I'm sure we'll hear some of that from you today as well. But maybe start by telling us a little bit more about yourself, Jay, and why you got into this field.

Professor S. Jay Olshansky:

Well, I'm a professor of public health at the University of Illinois and Chicago. You know, my expertise is in aging longevity, estimating how long we can live. It's a long story, but when I was a graduate student at the University of Chicago, I took a class from a famous scientist by the name of Bernice Newgarden in Human Development, and she challenged me to discuss what would happen demographically if we succeeded in finding a way to slow the biological process of aging. I took on the challenge, basically didn't leave my university's library for about three years, became fully engaged in the question of how long we can live. And I've been writing about the topic ever since. And the conclusion, I came to a bottom line conclusion from that initial work, and that is there's a limit to how long these bodies can work. And a lot of the research that's going on in the field of aging today is trying to determine how much we can influence and what the consequences are if we succeed or fail.

Brent:

Looking forward to hearing more about all of that. Maybe you can take us through some of the most recent science behind understanding human longevity lifespan and understanding healthy aging.

Professor S. Jay Olshansky:

Well, look. A hundred years ago, life expectancy in most of today's developed countries was about 50. And the reason why it was so low was because of high infant child and maternal mortality. People who, you know, that died at very young ages from infectious diseases and other problems that took people out very early. It brought the average way down. You still had people that could live out into their seventies, eighties, and nineties, even a couple of centuries ago. There's even evidence to indicate that some pharaohs may have lived into their nineties or past a hundred. So old age has always been around, just not with the frequency that we see it today. So in the last century, we added 30 years to life expectancy by dramatically reducing early age mortality. It was a deal with the devil in a way because, you know, the devil came to us 150 years ago, said, Hey, yeah, sure, I'll give you 30 years of life, but in return you're going to get heart disease, cancer, stroke, and Alzheimer's disease and sensory impairments, problems with your eyes and ears.

And we signed the papers and said, sure, we'll take that deal. And so we, you know, kinds of things that happen to us today are not unexpected. It's a consequence of success, not failure. It's a consequence of using these bodies beyond what I refer to as their biological warranty, period. So most of what goes wrong with us isn't our fault. It's a consequence of operating these living machines beyond their biological warranty period. And so we're in an era today where we have a new set of diseases and disorders that we traded for, you know, over a century ago. And so what do we do now? You know, the modern medical model is to attack every disease that we see one at a time, somehow as if they're all independent of each other. But the question for us now is what if we succeed and what if we fail? For example, what if we cure cancer? It would add about three and a half years to life expectancy, but it would expose the saved population to an elevated risk of heart disease and stroke and Alzheimer's. And so there's a big game of whack-a-mole that we're playing today in the longevity world. And it's one of the reasons why myself and my colleagues are suggesting a new paradigm in public health is now warranted.

Brent:

Interesting, a biological warranty. I like that. Can I purchase a longer warranty?

Professor S. Jay Olshansky:

You had to inherit it from your parents. It was the gift that your parents gave to you. The genetic propensity for longevity. I can tell you that it's real easy to shorten your life, but it's very difficult to lengthen it. And we shorten it all the time. We adopt unhealthy lifestyles, we dream excessively. We smoke tobacco, we become obese. We're very good at shortening life and we've succeeded at it very well. But if you avoid all of the things that shorten life, there are still limits. There are still warranty periods that exist. You can't transform a Yugo body into a Mercedes body, but it's very easy to transform a Mercedes body into a Yugo <laugh>.

Brent:

That's a great analogy. That's a great sort of segue into, I know you know this too. There's blue zones in the world where, you know, we have the highest level of centenarians, you know, Loma Linda, California, Okinawa, Japan, Sardinia, Italy. But these are places where people of course, live longer, but they live healthier longer. And that's essentially what we all want. In your opinion, what is the key to exceptional longevity?

Professor S. Jay Olshansky:

Choosing long, long-lived parents.

You start out with genetics. Look, there is no chance at all that you can live to become a nonagenarian in your nineties or centenarian past a hundred. There's no chance that that can happen unless you won the genetic lottery at birth. It's just not possible.

Brent:

Is this also why, like you could have somebody who, you know, smokes all their life, but they live relatively healthy and they live to, you know, late nineties, a hundred? Is that part of what it is? Genetics?

Professor S. Jay Olshansky:

Yes. So there's a genetic diversity that exists in the population, and some people do not have tobacco as a risk factor. So the longest lived person in the world, her name was Jean Kamo, she lived in southern France for 122 and a half years. Wow. She died in 1997. She smoked for a century. But what that tells you is, is that smoking was not a risk factor for her. For the vast majority of the rest of us, it will shorten our lives for, for some subgroups of the population, it's not a risk. And it's the same thing with obesity. Some people can carry excess weight into their seventies, eighties, and nineties, and it won't harm them at all. But for the vast majority of the population, it will shorten life. And you don't know where you are.

Brent:

Right. It's like a lottery.

Professor S. Jay Olshansky:

Yeah. On that lottery. Now there are some genetic tests that can be done that can provide some initial information on where you might rest in that distribution. But for the most part, the rule of thumb is assume you don't belong to that group of exceptionally long-lived individuals, which means adopt a healthy lifestyle and maximize the healthy life that is possible for you.

Brent:

Yeah. I mean, you can't do harm by adopting that healthy lifestyle

Professor S. Jay Olshansky:

In general. Yes. But let me throw in a word of caution of not doing harm. Right? You have to be careful what you wish for. If you push out the envelope of survival for yourself into these older regions of the lifespan, which I call a red zone, by the way, you push yourself deeper and deeper into the red zone, frailty and disability are going to rise exponentially. And so, yeah, I mean, a healthier lifestyle, no question is going to enhance your health and quality of life in your middle and early late ages. And so the, you know, it's the message that I give to my students and to my kids, which is, you know, yeah, you don't really want to adopt these unhealthy lifestyles. You do not want to smoke. Be obese. When you're in these younger ages, you will pay a price later on. And so if you want to maximize your chances of enjoying a healthy old age, adopt a healthy lifestyle early, you may very well pay a price for that later on.

In other words, you could live longer as a result of your healthier lifestyle. You could increase your risk of getting Alzheimer's right. Or other problems associated with operating your machine beyond its warranty period. Now this conversation here is precisely the reason why those of us in aging science and aging biology are saying, hey, watch out what you wish for. We need to change the game here. The time has arrived for us to intervene in aging itself so that the individuals that do adopt those healthier lifestyles do experience that compression of morbidity and disability into a very short time period near the end. And you could retain your youthful vigour for a longer time period. It's a total game changer. I'm very optimistic that it's going to happen.

Brent:

I've never really thought about longevity in the way you just explained it with developing a healthier lifestyle, make you live longer. Yet there are some downsides or could be some downsides by living longer. Yeah. To lifestyle decisions that you make in your thirties influence healthy aging in your eighties.

Professor S. Jay Olshansky:

Yes. In fact, not just your thirties, but your teenage years. And in your twenties, most people pick up smoking in their teenage years or twenties. They get exposed to the sun excessively. So the decisions that you make early on in teenage years, twenties, thirties, can have a reverberating effect throughout the rest of your life. It's the decisions that you make early on do influence your health and quality of life in middle age and later age. So what are we learning to do now? We're learning how to make these bodies operate longer, more efficiently. You know, the classic illustration is taking care of your teeth. You can now make teeth last for a hundred years by flossing them and caring for them. It's like, you know, an oil lube and a filter for your car. You know how to make your car operate for a longer time period by taking care of it. And the same thing applies with human aging and longevity. It's all moderation. And it's just a way of adopting a sensible, healthy lifestyle beginning early in driving this living machine as carefully as you can and maintaining it. Right. Going in for that oil lube and filter means going in to see your doctor and your dentist to help identify things that go wrong inevitably as early as possible. Cuz the earlier you catch it, the greater the likelihood you can fix it.

Brent:

Wow. If only we would treat our bodies as we treat our cars. That leads me to a question I want to ask you. That may seem like a general question, but I think that a lot of people would want to know the answer to this question. Hopefully you can give us that answer today. What is the ideal age, Jay? Or is there one?

Professor S. Jay Olshansky:

So look, it depends on what you're optimizing. If you're a gymnast and gymnastics is what you're optimizing, then an ideal age is probably late teens and early twenties. If you're a runner, maybe a little bit longer, what is the best age for people to be at overall? So before I give you the answer, because I do know the answer to this question, I want to know what you think it is. Ah, so, and how old are you, by the way?

Brent:

I'm 48.

Professor S. Jay Olshansky:

All right. So what do you think the optimum age is?

Brent:

If I think of my own life and my own performance, I guess I'm thinking performance more from a physical standpoint. I do a lot of physical things, but I would say late twenties, like 28 maybe somewhere around there.

Professor S. Jay Olshansky:

Why? Why 28?

Brent:

One is like the physical strength and speed. I felt like I was at a really good point on those ages, like even into my thirties. But the other point is, I think by the time you reach your late twenties, you've got some life experience. You kind of hopefully know more about who you are and what you want to do. And things that were important are no longer important. And things that are now important are the really important things.

Professor S. Jay Olshansky:

So the most common answer that is given by younger people is younger ages. So my students, for example, who are all in their early twenties, they will all say, yeah, now, right now I don't want to get old. And you know, their definition of old is over 30, just so you're aware., if it isn't obvious. So they have no clue really what the value is of being in your thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, and seventies. Their vision is aging and growing older is all about loss and decline and decay and bad things that happen. And they don't realize that there are wonderful benefits associated with growing older, including, you know, some of the benefits that you were talking about. Additional wisdom, knowledge in general, security, mental security, knowing who you are, being comfortable in your own skin. The overall answer is right about where you're at, right? About 50. Oh, wow. And the reason is, is that, you know, people are established in their career. They usually have a lot more money than they had when they were younger. They know who they are, they're comfortable in their skin. And so, you know, early fifties is one of the most common answers, and it's generally driven by happiness, by how happy you are. Right. Around age 50 is considered to be the optimum age with a lot of variability.

Brent:

Definitely a milestone age. I wouldn't have guessed that. Obviously, I'm sure a lot of people don't, but it makes sense, you know, having happiness at that age, you're established, you probably enjoy things more than you would in your previous years or appreciate more. Right?

Professor S. Jay Olshansky:

Yeah. I mean, look, it's all on what you optimize. Some people may optimize physical prowess, you know how fast you can run or whatever you did when you were younger. You want to be able to do that when you were older. I'm thinking of an interview I saw recently with Jane Fonda, right? So Jane Fonda, I think she's got to be in her seventies or eighties.

She was asked about her current age, and she came to the conclusion that she loves where she's at now. And so here she is in her whatever, seventies or eighties, it doesn't really matter. Biologically, she's probably younger than that. She's enjoying life to the fullest at this age. And you know, someone like that may say, yeah, the best ages right now in my seventies or eighties, you don't really think too far ahead of the kinds of things that might go wrong or you don't really think about end of life. We're focused on living life right now and enjoying it in the moment. And I think in the end, that's what it's all about. And you can do that in your sixties, seventies, eighties, even nineties, if you've got your health right, health meaning mind and body. We're seeing it with greater frequency. About 15% of the US population are what we call super ager individuals that are cognitively intact, well past the age of 80, many of them retaining their physical functioning. You meet these superagers, there's no reason why they can't be president of the United States or CEO of a company. You know, they can do anything. Doesn't matter how old they are.

Brent:

That's a very positive thing to know for people, I think. And myself included, I hope to be a super ager.

Professor S. Jay Olshansky:

I hope so too. We'd have to go into your family history of longevity, take a look at your genes, and then take a look at your lifestyle and, you know, see what you can do to maximize your genetic potential. Right.

Brent:

We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back after this message.

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Brent:

Welcome back to Beyond Age. I'm curious about something that I've just recently learned about, the "billion dollar bet"... you were involved with this, about longevity and aging. Can you tell us a bit more about that?

Professor S. Jay Olshansky:

Yeah. Back in the year 2000, some of my colleagues and I were interviewed by Scientific American about aging. And one of my colleagues said, oh yeah, I think the first person that lived to 150 is alive today. I called him up on the phone, I said, are you serious? You know, the longest lived person was 122, so the difference between 122 and 150 is multiple light years. It's not even close. And so I said, Hey, you want to place a wager on this, on whether or not anyone alive in the year 2000 will be alive in the year 2150? And of course, I said no. And he said yes. So we each put $150 down into an account. We doubled the bet some years later, as a result of the news media getting wind of this, it's one of the most famous bets in science. In fact, it led to the creation of long bets, which is this website that focuses in on bets that are made by scientists and others on future events. And the reason why it's called the “Billion Dollar Bet” is because of how wisely I invested the money <laugh>. And if anyone is alive in the year 2150 that was born in the year 2000 and earlier, then my colleague Steven Austad’s, surviving relatives will get the money. And if no one is alive in the year 2150 that was alive in 2000 or earlier, then my surviving relatives will get billion to a billion and a half dollars.

Brent:

So that's what it's all about. Yeah. You got a bit of time to wait. So another question for you. Part of your research in health and public policy implications of aging when it comes to human longevity and the societal aspect, tell us about some of your observations on how society plays a role on human longevity. Well,

Professor S. Jay Olshansky:

I mean, it depends on what country you're in. So in some countries, they've greatly value older individuals. So in Japan, for example, well, in many other parts of Asia in particular, the people that they look to the most for their wisdom and intelligence are older individuals, you know, the senior members of society. But you know, we've had a tendency to push aside older individuals to sort of push them out on the iceberg and say, yeah, your time is up. It's time to make room now for the next generation. What a horrible idea. Individuals that make it out to older ages are one of the most valuable resources we have created in the modern era. You know, and I'm not talking about just individuals that are wealthy or highly educated, I'm talking about people of all walks of life, of all professions. And passing that knowledge on serving as mentors to the next generation, or just continuing to work to do what they do is a wonderful thing for society to advocate. And when we start pushing people out, just because of their chronological age, we are hurting ourselves. One of my colleagues, she says, older individuals are the only growing natural resource that exists today.

Brent:

That's great.

Professor S. Jay Olshansky:

Right? We're using everything else up, but we are creating a large number of older individuals. And if we consider them a valuable resource and utilize that resource to their advantage and to our advantage, it's good for everyone. How society treats older individuals should be foundational to the health and wealth of the nation itself. If society can find a way to nurture these older generations.

Brent:

Wow, that's a great perspective. You're right. In North America, we don't really adopt that to the extent of other countries like Japan, as you mentioned.

How do our one-on-one interactions and mental health impact our longevity?

Professor S. Jay Olshansky:

So social isolation, we know shortens life. We know folks that are engaged in their world that have lots of friends, lots of social interactions. And I don't mean online <laugh>, I'm talking about, you know, people that spend time with friends, with neighbours, going to social events, have a tendency to live healthier longer lives. Look, one of the greatest risks that we see is among older men who lose their spouse, and as soon as they lose their spouse, the risk of death actually rises pretty dramatically. And part of that has to do with losing the individual who is watching out for you, who is keeping an eye to make sure that you're eating right, that you're going to the doctor. And the same thing applies to your social interactions, these one-on-one interactions with friends and relatives. These are the folks that keep you in line in maintaining those healthier lifestyles for longer.

So they're absolutely critical. Now, in terms of mental health, you know, for some people, cognitive functioning is essential to making it out to older ages healthy. One of the questions we get all the time is stress. And no question. Once you become a political leader of any kind, you seem to go through what looks like accelerated aging, right? Your skin wrinkles, your hair either falls out or it becomes white or gray. And the conclusion that I came to in my article back in 2011, looking at longevity associated with stress, was that at least among these folks, they thrive on stress. You don't die from wrinkled skin and gray hair, or lack of hair. But for the rest of the population, if you can avoid stress, you're overall much better off. But it's all in how you deal with the stress. If you deal with it effectively, efficiently, you have coping mechanisms for dealing with stress, then a little bit of stress actually can be healthy for you.

The coping mechanism itself can be healthy for you. If you are incapable of dealing with stress effectively, then that's where the harm comes in. That's where the mental health issues become significant. But you know, there are people that are exceptionally good at dealing with stress. They tend to be high functioning individuals, like political leaders of one kind or another. And most of us at younger ages would be incapable of handling the type of schedule that we see among these super ages. And the rest of us aspire to be <laugh>. Yeah. So, yeah, I think these issues of quality of life influenced by mental and cognitive functioning and stress can be influential. Having these social interactions are important, no question. And we, it's not like it's anything we don't know. We've known this for decades, since the 1970s, when we studied the longevity and health of individuals that had no friends or quality relationships versus those that did, you could see it among those that are divorced versus those that are either married or have a partner. Those with partners or who are married, do much, much, much better. That alone tells you the importance of having a partner of one kind or another. It is critical.

Brent:

Wow. Makes a lot of sense. I know you've written a number of books on aging, "The Quest for Immortality", "Science at the Frontiers of Aging" and "The "Longevity Dividend". How do these books, like how do they come to be, and what did you learn about longevity while writing them?

Professor S. Jay Olshansky:

Well, the first one, "The Quest for Immortality", we published in 2001. And the primary reason my colleague and I, Bruce Carnes, wrote it was because there was a massive amount of misinformation out there about people selling every conceivable anti-aging product to the public, trying to convince them that they could make them all live to a, you know, a hundred, 150, 200, even 500 years. It was all complete nonsense. And so the first chapter of the book is devoted to the history of this nonsense, which is called anti-aging medicine. People have been selling, you know, phony elixirs to the public for thousands of years, making false or exaggerated claims, and it's still going on today. So that's one of the main reasons why we wrote that book, was to set the record straight on what we know, what we don't know, what we can do, what we can't do.

You know, we were contacted, for example, by the folks that were running Oprah's show, and they were thinking, oh yeah, we were going to come up with some recipe in the book that would explain how we can all be immortal or live a much longer lifestyle. And when they actually read the book, they realized, no, it was the exact opposite. That these bodies aren't designed for long-term use, and there are limits on how long we can use these bodies. So the goal then is not to make us live longer, it's to make us live healthier. And I guess that wasn't the message they wanted.

Brent:

Right, right. Yeah. Quick fix solutions is what everybody seems to want. So I know every industry, my own included, has just things that have been myths for years and years. What are some longevity myths that we can possibly leave behind? And what are some that are rooted in fact still?

Professor S. Jay Olshansky:

Yeah, good question. So probably some of the most interesting ones date, back a couple of hundred years ago. So these were folks that tried to convey to, you know, kings or others that had a lot of money on how to live an exceptionally long, healthy life. Some of the philosophy was rather interesting. So the belief was, was that youthful vigour in part was associated with your breath, your inhaled and exhaled breath. So the belief was that if older individuals spend time in the company of younger individuals, they will inhale the exhaled breath of the younger individuals. This myth has come all the way into the present where people actually believe that to be true. You know, hormone replacement growth hormone was thought to be the magic elixir in 1980. There were some stories about how people that shot themselves up with growth hormone could return to youthful vigour.

I could go on, but there's stories like this. Yeah, there's so many. I mean, you mentioned the Blue Zones, right? Well, unless you have the genetic background associated with being in one of these areas like Okinawa or Sardinia, you know, you and I, I, I'm pretty sure don't come from that part of the world. You know, chances are we're not going to live as long as these folks. There's a strong genetic component to it. Yeah. Interestingly enough, when folks from those parts of the world move to the United States, for example, and there's been studies that have looked at this, they end up acquiring the higher mortality risks of the host country. In other words, their life expectancy goes down, their mortality risk goes up because they've moved to the United States where these unhealthier lifestyles are located. Would you and I live longer by moving to Sardinia or Okinawa? Yeah, probably if we adopt a lifestyle that exists there, but not a whole lot longer, because you're not inheriting the genetics. You start out with genetics and you move from there. You have to realize that, you know, you're born with a genetic potential to live a certain lifespan, but it's not length of life that we're particularly interested in science. It's all about quality of life.

Brent:

Wow. So Jay, we're getting close to the end. I could talk to you for hours about this topic. It's very fascinating and interesting. But why don't we let our audience have maybe one to two takeaways from today. Like what are the two sort of key takeaways that people can do to improve their longevity no matter what their age is?

Professor S. Jay Olshansky:

Well, look, the only equivalent of a fountain of youth that exists today is exercise. You pair it with diet, of course, because they're closely related to one another. But in the end, diet and exercise would represent sort of the way in which we've discovered how to make these bodies last longer by adopting a healthy lifestyle as early as you can, maintaining it as long as possible, avoiding the things that shorten life. No question that there's something that we can do to enhance our quality of life, but we have to realize that there are in fact limitations that exist. So let me just leave you with this. While it's true that diet exercise will work and it will enhance your quality of life while you're alive, in the end, what's going to drive the next revolution in public health is not going to be cures for cancer or heart disease or stroke.

The new paradigm in public health is going to be aging science and aging biology. And in that regard, I am very optimistic. Now, I think we're going to intervene in the underlying biology that determines how long we live when people make it out into their eighties, nineties, and beyond healthy. That's what we're trying to achieve for the rest of the population. By finding a way to slow the biological process of aging. Will it happen for everyone? No, realistically, you know, some people are destined to run into health issues in their forties, fifties, and sixties because of their genetics, and people make bad decisions about their healthy life. But what I want to present to the listeners is a word of great optimism that I think we can break through this glass ceiling of human longevity and find a way to make us live healthier longer. Not just by altering our lifestyles, not just by diet and exercise, but actually through science. I'm really optimistic that that's going to happen. And in the end, when that happens, you will see a pretty radical transformation in human society.

Brent:

I love that. Leaving on a positive note there, Jay. That's great. It's been amazing just learning more about longevity and aging from you. And I know our listeners has got a lot from it as well. Thank you so much, Jay, for joining us.

Professor S. Jay Olshansky:

Thanks for having me. It was my pleasure. And you know, maybe we'll do this again in 20 years.

Brent:

That would be great

Professor S. Jay Olshansky:

When you're my age.

Brent:

Exactly. And good luck on that bet too.

Professor S. Jay Olshansky:

Yeah. Thanks.

Brent:

Well, that's it everyone. Thanks for tuning in to Beyond Age, an exclusive podcast from Manulife. Tune in to the next episode where we talk to both Tasha Romanelli, the owner and founder of Zen Den from Erin Ontario and Lucie Hager, a registered social worker and therapist from Toronto, Ontario. We'll be chatting about the many benefits of meditation and whether it can be the key to feeling youthful. Don't forget to visit our website, manulife.ca/LiveHealthier for more tips, videos, and content from Manulife that can help you live healthier for longer, no matter your age.

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