The longevity industry is coming off perhaps its best run on record. The expected span of an American life has increased by about three decades since 1900 — to around 78 as of 2023. But for many people, even 78 years just won’t do.
The Methuselah Foundation, a biomedical charity, for example, wants to “make 90 the new 50,’’ and scientists at one biotechnology firm have argued that, unencumbered by disease, the body could potentially make it all the way to age 150. Even more optimistic estimates put the number closer to 1,000.
Whatever the maximum human life span may be, people appear increasingly determined to find it. Last year, nearly 6,000 studies of longevity made their way onto PubMed, a database of biomedical and life sciences papers; that’s almost five times as many as two decades ago.
Along with the creation of dozens of popular podcasts and a sizable supplement industry, that zeal has led to efforts to preserve organs, search out life-extending diets, and even try to reverse aging itself. It’s the same mix of solid science, quixotic experimentation, and questionable advice that has, for much of recorded history, defined the pursuit.
Humanity’s oldest epic is a doomed quest for immortality: About four millennia ago, the Sumerians told of a Mesopotamian king named Gilgamesh who set out to find life everlasting and briefly located a youth-restoring plant, only to lose it on his way home. Two millennia later, as the story goes, a Chinese magician named Xu Fu convinced the emperor that there was an elixir granting eternal life across the Yellow Sea. The emperor provided Xu Fu with ships and the 3,000 virgins that the magician claimed were essential to the quest. When the emperor found out he had made little progress, Xu Fu said he also needed an army, which the emperor furnished. Xu Fu set sail, and the emperor never saw him again.
The desire to live forever also animated stories of Macedonian king Alexander the Great and Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de León. They too ended in failure. It’s a lesson that was lost on alchemists, who for centuries sought to create a drink that granted immortality. Among them was Isaac Newton, who went to his grave in the early 1700s believing his alchemical research would one day prove more consequential than his laws of motion.
But even before Newton’s death, Enlightenment thinkers were trading the dream of immortality for the less ambitious goal of living a little longer. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word “longevity’’ first emerged in the 1500s. As did the first longevity diet book, after an Italian nobleman named Luigi Cornaro began to suspect his penchant for alcohol, lavish feasts, and late nights was negatively affecting his health. Henceforth, he subjected himself to sparse daily portions, including a lot of eggs, milk, broth, and vegetables, and lived into his 80s, when he wrote of his eating habits in “Discourses on a Sober Life.’’ Its advice proved arguably better than that of many of its successors, among them the ill-advised American offerings “Meat for Every Occasion’’ and “Calories Don’t Count.’’
Cornaro had stumbled upon the modern notion of caloric restriction, a practice that researchers have since shown increases the life spans of dogs, mice, monkeys, worms, and, according to one large study, maybe even humans. But Cornaro also seemingly favored other, less scientific restrictions such as abstinence, which he believed would preserve his vitality. He was misguided, but hardly alone.
By the 19th and 20th centuries, anti-aging gurus, newspaper writers, and charlatans all regularly promoted lifestyle changes: avoiding “excessive sleep,’’ forgoing water, marrying, and even moving to Nantucket (“where none die young’’).
At many times, their goal was to make money. But much of the very worst strategies came from the oldest Americans themselves, who told reporters they drank a daily bottle of “old and good wine,’’ eschewed medicine, ate candy, hunted whales, and smoked “at least one cigar every day,’’ albeit while taking a long walk.
Immortality, as the old stories warned, may be a doomed endeavor. But the pursuit of a longer life is unlikely to stop soon. As a Catholic priest noted in New York City in 1927, when he observed his followers’ intractable desire to skirt death, “Men have always been interested in the prolonging of their lives, no matter how wretched and unfortunate their lives have been.’’
