every morning. Which doesn’t sound half bad.. but how can we really live longer?

Hey everyone! Julia here for DNews

While genes are a big factor into living longer, genetics only make up 30% of the story. The

rest seems up to us. Life expectancy at birth in the U.S. has been rising for all groups

at rate of about .6 years a year. People born in the last five years could reasonably expect

to live into their late 70s even early 80s. At this rate, it seems like we could live

until 100 soon! Well, not quite yet.

Most researchers thought that living longer meant more time doing what you love. The assumption

just went without saying. However recent research showed otherwise. Scientists at University

of Massachusetts Medical School extended the life of roundworm by playing with four different

mechanisms. No matter what mutations they had, the worms lived longer, but they spent

a greater percentage of their live in a frail state. BUMMER DUDE.

As we extend our lifespans with modern medicine, age related diseases like Alzheimer's and

certain cancers are on the rise. We seem to be extending the amount of time we spend in

suffering. To spend more time healthy, that’s going to take some heavy scientific lifting.

Researchers from UCLA showed that by turning on a single gene they could extend life by

30%. AMP-activated protein kinase helps get rid of cellular garbage by promoting autophagy,

or destroying sick or damaged cells. The story goes that over time our cells get damaged

as we age and it’s the build up of these damaged cells that lead to age related illnesses.

The enzyme helps the body clean up all these damaged cells. The researchers found that

flies who had this gene activated lived up to 30% longer and were healthier during their

later days. Yet note that I said flies, this hasn’t been proved in mammals yet.

Another way to boost your lifespan? Caloric Restriction. For some reason rats who are

fed shockingly low number of calories, live up to 40% longer than their peers. Scientists

think a lack of glucose is responsible. Glucose occasionally binds to some of our DNA, proteins

and lipids, and stops them from doing their jobs causing some disease. A restricted diet

might prevent some of this process. But there’s no evidence this works in humans and it’s

not recommended, for obvious reasons.

Rather than starving yourself, could you pop a pill? One FDA approved drug, Rapamycin,

already extends the lifespan and healthspan in mice by 30%. But unfortunately it’s designed

as an immunosuppressant. Knocking out your immune system could be a pretty heavy price

to pay for a chance at a longer life. Yet recent research is working on blocking the

immunosuppressant qualities.

And you can’t talk about immortality without talking about telomeres. Telomeres are like

the plastic tips on your shoelaces, but for your DNA. Everytime DNA makes a copy of itself,

the telomeres get shorter. If they weren’t there at all, your DNA would fray like a shoelace

and cause age-related diseases. So what would happen if we could stop telomere shortening?

Most of these possibilities only seem to extend lifespan 10-30 years, which is not forever.

But hey, I’ll take it. Geneticist Richard Cawthon thinks if we could get rid of all

aging processes and repair cellular damage, humans could live up to 1,000 years.

The question is - would you want to?

What do you think? let us know in the comments and keep coming back here for more DNews every

day of the week!