3 Key Factors to Help You to Live to 100 as Scientists Reveal New Test
New research claims the secret to longevity may be in your blood.
For years, scientists have been trying to figure out the secrets of longevity: How do some people manage to live a long and healthy life, while others die young? A group of researchers claim to know the answer. According to a new study, the clues are in our blood.
Swedish researchers found that people who live to 100 have lower levels of three compounds in their blood.
The first compound that those who made it to their 100th birthday had lower levels of is glucose. "Very few of the centenarians had a glucose level above 6.5 earlier in life," co-author Dr. Karin Modig, associate professor at Sweden's Karolinska Institutet, wrote in the Conversation about the study, published in GeroScience.
The second compound? Creatine. Modig added that most who lived to 100 didn't have "a creatinine level above 125," she added.
The third blood marker that influenced whether someone lived to 100 is uric acid, they maintain. Uric acid has been linked to inflammation.
As part of the study researchers collected data from 44,000 people in Sweden who were born between 1893 and 1920, all with health assessments at ages 64 through 99.
Researchers followed up with the subjects for up to 35 years. Just 1,224 of them (2.7%) lived to be 100 years old.
They also looked at two other compounds. "The people in the lowest out of five groups for levels of total cholesterol and iron had a lower chance of reaching 100 years as compared to those with higher levels," Modig wrote.
"It is reasonable to think that factors such as nutrition and alcohol intake play a role," Modig added. "Keeping track of your kidney and liver values, as well as glucose and uric acid as you get older, is probably not a bad idea."
Modig did admit that longevity also has to do with luck. "Chance probably plays a role at some point in reaching an exceptional age," she wrote.
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"But the fact that differences in biomarkers could be observed a long time before death suggests that genes and lifestyle may also play a role."
