I always expected a strong link between Longevity & Heredity and I was somewhat worried since I've already outlived the ages my parents passed (average age 47), but this quote surprised me:
“It turns out that inheritance has surprisingly little influence on longevity. James Vaupel, of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, in Rostock, Germany, notes that only 3 percent of how long you’ll live, compared with the average, is explained by your parents’ longevity; by contrast, up to 90 percent of how tall you are is explained by your parents’ height. Even genetically identical twins vary widely in life span: the typical gap is more than fifteen years. If our genes explain less than we imagined, the classical wear-and-tear model may explain more than we knew.”
― Atul Gawande, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
This is in contrast to a 2016 study, but still low:
This has allowed to estimate that about 25 % of the variation in human longevity can be due to genetic factors and indicated that this component is higher at older ages and is more important in males than in females.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4822264/
Anyone else surprised (or encouraged
)?
“It turns out that inheritance has surprisingly little influence on longevity. James Vaupel, of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, in Rostock, Germany, notes that only 3 percent of how long you’ll live, compared with the average, is explained by your parents’ longevity; by contrast, up to 90 percent of how tall you are is explained by your parents’ height. Even genetically identical twins vary widely in life span: the typical gap is more than fifteen years. If our genes explain less than we imagined, the classical wear-and-tear model may explain more than we knew.”
― Atul Gawande, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
This is in contrast to a 2016 study, but still low:
This has allowed to estimate that about 25 % of the variation in human longevity can be due to genetic factors and indicated that this component is higher at older ages and is more important in males than in females.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4822264/
Anyone else surprised (or encouraged
)?
