What’s the maximum age a human can live to? Of course, we have extremely rare cases of people living to unthinkable ages and the oldest person ever was Jeanne Calment (1875–1997), of France, who lived to the ripe old age of 122.
But, in general, what is the potential human lifespan? And is it getting longer as technology advances?
There is an age ‘ceiling’, according to research
Back in 2017, Dutch researchers claimed to have discovered the maximum age “ceiling” for the human lifespan and the results are... a little surreal, to be honest.
According to researchers, the maximum ceiling lifespan for a female is 115 years old and, for males, a little younger at 114 years old.
Researchers used data from 75,000 Dutch people whose exact ages were recorded at the time of death and, using this information, statisticians at Tilburg and Rotterdam’s Erasmus universities identified the maximum ceiling for the female lifespan at 115.7 years.
One of the researchers, Professor John Einmahl, said: “On average, people live longer, but the very oldest among us have not gotten older over the last thirty years.”
He pointed out that the number of people turning 95 in the Netherlands had almost tripled but this hadn’t impacted the maximum age males and females could reach.
This research correlated with research conducted in the US just a year earlier where researchers identified the same age ranges but were keen to emphasise that while life expectancy might improve over time, potential lifespan is unlikely to.
Jan Vijg, a senior author of the paper, said: “Further progress against infectious and chronic diseases may continue boosting average life expectancy, but not maximum lifespan.”
They added: “While it’s conceivable that therapeutic breakthroughs might extend human longevity beyond the limits we’ve calculated, such advances would need to overwhelm the many genetic variants that appear to collectively determine the human lifespan.
“Perhaps resources now being spent to increase lifespan should instead go to lengthening health-span – the duration of old age spent in good health.”
A fair point.