Why some people live longer - The Longevity Puzzle

The motivation to write this was triggered by the news last week that Kerala’s ex chief minister and opposition leader had completed 101 years of age. Though no longer active in public life reaching such an old page for someone who was extremely active in public life including holding senior executive positions till about a decade ago is what set me on the course for writing this.

I was also recollecting the 2018 floods of Kerala, something of that scale which hasn’t even happened for well over a century. There is a movie based on the same called 2018 which is a good watch to recollect the experiences that panned out over a period of a week or so. Since there was no expectation of such a thing happening there was hardly any preparation to manage something of that scale. The actual saviors on that day were the local fishermen who came with their boats to ensure that people marooned with rising water levels were taken to safer places. 2018 is a strong watch from my side .Once the flood was over the fishermen went back to their lives and continued with their lives which they had been living till then.

Our bodies also function in a very similar manner. There is a very nicely built-up routine of work and recovery based on which not only humans, but most living organisms survive. What’s also interesting is that almost our entire body gets rebuilt once in 2 years or so. When there is a crisis, the body contains some of its routine functions to ensure that the immediate requirement is addressed. The reason why I quoted the 2018 floods, and the fishermen was these are very similar in context. Once the flood was over the fishermen went back to their lives and everything else fell into their earlier established routines. But if the calamity like floods continue regularly then it disturbs the equilibrium in our bodies also.

Further in today’s world we are continuously bombarded with electromagnetic and light insertions on our bodies which affect our bodies at a cellular level. We might not even observe the changes during short periods because the body takes care of them and does the necessary corrections and ensures things stay in place. The changes effect the transfer of information from the dying to the new cells both at the digital and analogue level. But if we keep challenging our bodies or we are continuously being affected by outside viruses or other electromagnetic attacks the noise that these creates effects the information that is transferred from a dying cell to the new cell and the normal routine is broken.

Any living organism is programmed to first copulate as this is the way the species survives and is how all surviving species have survived all these years. We all would have noticed how our sexual drive is probably the first feeling to get affected when we start becoming sick. This is because the body is diverting forces from its primary focus to use all its efforts and strength to fight the challenge that has come. The same is the case with what happens at a cellular level. So, when a cell gets rogue as it keeps happening in our bodies continuously the bodies might not have the energy and the space to fight it out as it usually does. These rogue cells could lead to small things like a pimple or a boil or a bigger one like a tumor.

If we look at all living organisms though the basic structure of most of them are similar, the life span varies drastically. On one side you might have a yeast which is a single-celled organism which only survives a few hours to forms of jellyfish which just refuse to age regenerating themselves again and again. There is also the Greenland sharks called Somniosus microcephalus which are about the size of whales which are believed to live to be beyond 600 years not even reaching sexual maturity till they are 150 years old. There are also the pine trees of California, many of which are believed to have been in existence from the time of the Pyramids.

Writer Dan Buettner introduced the world places which he called Blue Zones. These were places were majority of people live to closer to hundred years and Buettner had identified some places across the globe where this was already happening. He was then visiting these places and trying to understand their lifestyles and routines to help understand what the real reason for their long life’s could be. His visits are findings are also available on Netflix as a series by the name of Blue zones.

While there were several reasons that he had identified like

1. Eating less or rather not overeating
2. Having fixed mealtimes and leaving a good gap between dinner and breakfast
3. Good exercise which makes you sweat
4. Eating a more vegetarian based diet
5. Following a relaxed lifestyle with maybe less stress

These were things that we have always been told but what surprised Buettner was that many of these places' people daily consumed alcohol, had meat and fried food and there were a few who even enjoyed their share of smoke etc. which were against the normal routines that we are often suggested to follow.

One common discovery in all these places was very strong social circles where people met regularly in these groups of friends and spent time amongst them and also a regular purpose which would be some sort of work or past time or hobby which these people followed passionately on a daily basis whatever be their age.

It is also widely felt that people who live in places where temperatures swing between extremes during the year build better immunity against a lot of normal diseases.

While I continue on my quest to figure out what could be the underlying factors to such longevity in selected people or people living in certain areas as research on ageing or rather reversing ageing continues the day would probably not be far before we evolve into the killer terminator cyborg type of species ?in the terminator series where even after being blasted to a several small pieces all those pieces join back to recombine to the structure as it was before.

Like I said earlier in the article there are already organisms within our own earth which already follow this pattern... To continue getting more updates on building longer lives or other interesting topics do subscribe to my LinkedIn page, Rejo's Business Bytes, or my website, rejofrancis.com