Blog: The Brain Dialogues, filtered by tag: Longevity

PROFESSOR PERMINDER SACHDEV, MD, PhD "How old would you be if you didn't know how old you were?"  Satchel Paige (1906-1982) A great demographic change of the last century has been the ageing of our population.  The good news is that we are increasingly living to an older age.  At present, about 15% of Australians are aged 65 years or over, and this proportion is likely to be nearly 25% by the middle of the century.  A girl born today can expect to live to the age of 94 years and a boy to the age of about 92 years.  An increasing number of older people are over the age of 80 years, which is… Read More

DR CHARLENE LEVITAN Centenarians are the fastest growing age worldwide. We can learn about ageing by studying the extremes, especially those who are models of "successful ageing". So how do we live to 100 in good physical and mental health? Approximately 30% of longevity is contributed to be our genes. Parents of centenarians live an average age of 10 years longer than the average life expectancy of the population. Centenarians are four times more likely to have a sibling in their early nineties. The remaining 70% of ingredients relate to the our life style. Montefiore participants in the… Read More

HEIDI DOUGLASS | h.douglass@unsw.edu.au Yes, it’s true.  Women live longer than men.  In fact not only does evidence suggest that we females have always outlived the blokes, it appears that as more time passes the gap is increasing.  Currently Australian women can expect to live, on average, 5 years longer than our male counterparts, which is the same for most developed nations of the world.  Why is this so? No-one knows for sure, but there are a number of theories.  According to CHeBA’s Co-Director Professor Perminder Sachdev, the first thing that people will say about this topic is that… Read More

HEIDI DOUGLASS | h.douglass@unsw.edu.au It's official. Centenarians are the fastest growing demographic in Australia, which means that the likelihood of living to 100 and beyond is increasing exponentially. Today, females born in a Western country have a 40% chance of reaching 100. And the odds are increasing. Much of this is, of course, down to advances in medical science and its ability to keep our bodies functioning far longer than that of our predecessors.....but what about our brains? With an ageing population comes a myriad of implications, good and bad. Positively, we get to live… Read More