Why Millennials won’t live as long as Gen X

This week, Dr Zac Turner explains how you can try to live to 100 years old.

Question: I read today that only 150 years ago, the expected lifespan was 40 years old. Imagine a midlife crisis during your 20s.

Now I’m no statistician, but one can safely assume by following that trajectory our future younger generations will be living until they are 120 years old. Can this really be true?

I feel like I’ve missed out, and I’d like to do something about it. What can I do to make sure I live until 100? – Dane, 63, Victoria

Answer: Hi Dane, In the words of the Beach Boys, “Wouldn’t it be nice.” It certainly would be great to live in a world of perfect models and graphs where we can predict and decide on how best to prevent future problems long before we even have to treat them.

Science and medicine have continued to make groundbreaking development in the 21st century – just look at how advanced our progression was for finding a covid vaccine.

With regards to your question, there have been several studies that have attempted to provide a framework of how we can predict intergenerational life expectancies and, more importantly, how many years we can expect to keep improving and then just how long we can stay at our peak.

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This is one of the key areas that I predict will begin a new area of specialisation and that is the area of futurist medicine – the study of optimising health longevity.

Recent studies have shown the health of Millennials is in decline. We all think of young people as being in the prime of their life, however, research has shown poor mental health, high-calorie diets and lack of exercise have really surged health problems in Millennials.

The tipping point, or at least the peak for different generations, is what is described as the point where the body is less likely to increase new neuronal pathways for complex problems and begin to be less malleable to future situations where adaptation is essential.

For Millennials, this is now thought to be around 27 years, whereas Gen Y up to 30 years and shock and horror, Gen X had numbers up to 31 years.

To put this in perspective, Millennials suffer more from substance abuse disorder, high blood pressure, hyperactivity, Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis and high cholesterol than Gen Y or X did at the same age.

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There are other large factors at play such as increasing climate disruptions, social isolation from infectious pandemics, reduced resources and an ever-widening socio-economic gap that will see depression and suicide increase, which has been seen over the past year.

If nothing is being done to mitigate many of these issues then potentially our children and their children will become more vulnerable to the health risks of a changing planet and simultaneously be ever more connected with media while feeling more isolated than ever before.

Our bodies and immune systems follow several paths but imagine if we can start to ‘cheat’ the system and turn back on receptors and cells that enable us to better adapt and be less susceptible to disease and environmental pollutants.

So, with a race to extend lifespans, what exactly do the technologies and innovations influencing studies have to say about whether our children’s children will live past a hundred years old?

Here are five frontrunners we can expect the children born in the last 10 years to have access to by their 30s-40s:

Gene Therapy

Imagine if we could take out the genes in our DNA which cause ageing, cancer and other disorders? Scientists have already cracked this code, and new procedures have shown promising results that could potentially lead to doubling our life expectancies.

Sophisticated Diagnostic Techniques

Doctors can now detect life-threatening diseases earlier, with more accuracy.

Whether it’s skin, teeth, hair, wee, poo, bones or blood we can now give readouts that can literally give you information about ways to have more energy.

3D Printing

Waiting lists for organs are hopefully expected to be torn up as new developments in 3D-printed body parts continue. This has already happened with arms and legs and currently we are growing human tissue over animal organs, supplanting their cells and genes with the human host rather than needing a human organ.

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Innovative Medicine

While medicines have played a key role in improving life expectancy over the last century, the next generation of medical treatments are using existing treatments, but in new ways.

For instance, several diabetes drugs have proven themselves to be tremendously effective at helping patients defy some ageing processes through several different mechanisms.

Advanced Vaccines

Scientists are currently working on pairing new and old vaccines. Among the new combinations showing promise is the practice of giving a tetanus booster prior to a patient receiving a newer cancer vaccine to help it to be boosted and more effective in targeting certain types of brain cancer. At the same time, what we consider to be vaccines could one day mean an edible food or drink with ingestible substances that can also help to train and optimise our immune system.

Over the next few weeks I will be doing deep-dives into each of these innovations in health.

It is indeed an exciting time to be alive and for generations that are retiring even more so, as 70 becomes the new 50. If after reading this you’re as keen as I am to start improving your body and mind then I’ll offer Dr Zac’s quick tips for living until 100 or longer:

• Get moving and keep those step counts high as people who keep walking and exercising will reduce many issues later in life

• Keep limber and stretchy, which means that for every time you go to the gym or do exercise you should be doing something that keeps muscles from tightening up

• Eat smaller portions and follow a healthy diet according to a nutritionist

• Kickstart the basics like swapping out normal food items for ones that have less sugar, stopping smoking and increasing sleep

• Finally, do things to your body that are kind, we don’t always need to be starving, sweating and striving. Take a walk, call your mother or friends, sit down right where you are and take your shoes off and feel the grass beneath your feet – longevity and functionality will become first and foremost about connectivity.

Dr Zac Turner has a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery from the University of Sydney. He is both a medical practitioner and a co-owner of telehealth service, Concierge Doctors, and is also a qualified and experienced biomedical scientist.