What the Oldest Alive Can Teach the Rest of Us

Paul von Zielbauer
Thu, 05 Mar 2026 17:07:43 -0800
Lifestyle

The longevity industry now wants to sell you not only supplements and anti-sag skin treatments but also peptide injections, IV drips and biological age tests that, let's face it, tell you what you already know. Big Wellness is a $20 billion business built on a premise that is simultaneously true and commercially inflated: Aging is partially negotiable and that the terms of that negotiation are still being worked out.

On the other hand, clinical research — actual science — offers some interesting facts about how and why we may live very long lives.

Two new studies, published within days of each other last month, provides the most useful evidence yet on what separates people who reach 80 or 100 in genuinely good shape from everyone else. Neither study is a sales pitch and together they give a detailed look at what human bodies actually do, at the cellular level, when they age well.
Updated: Thu Mar 05, 2026

The longevity industry now wants to sell you not only supplements and anti-sag skin treatments but also peptide injections, IV drips and biological age tests that, let's face it, tell you what you already know. Big Wellness is a $20 billion business built on a premise that is simultaneously true and commercially inflated: Aging is partially negotiable and that the terms of that negotiation are still being worked out.

On the other hand, clinical research — actual science — offers some interesting facts about how and why we may live very long lives.

Two new studies, published within days of each other last month, provides the most useful evidence yet on what separates people who reach 80 or 100 in genuinely good shape from everyone else. Neither study is a sales pitch and together they give a detailed look at what human bodies actually do, at the cellular level, when they age well.

Let's take a closer look at each.

The Body That Produces Fewer Fires

Swiss researchers drew blood from dozens of centenarians — people between 100 and 105 years old — and compared it to blood from people in their 80s and from healthy middle-aged adults. What they found was unexpected. The centenarians did not have stronger defenses against cellular damage. They had less damage in the first place. Their bodies were producing fewer harmful molecules, less inflammation and fewer signs of metabolic trouble than people decades younger than them.

Most of us, as we get older, are running a body that is constantly putting out small fires — low-grade inflammation, oxidative stress, metabolic strain from eating ultra-processed food. The centenarians in this study were not better at fighting fires. They were simply not generating as many. Their internal environment had stayed calmer and more stable over a longer period of time.

That distinction matters because it reframes what healthy aging actually looks like.

It is not about taking more supplements to boost your defenses but, rather, about reducing the chronic, low-level damage that accumulates when people don't move enough, sleep enough or eat well enough over many years.

The centenarians' bodies suggest that sustained, modest habits — not expensive interventions from Big Wellness — are what keep the machinery running.

Old Brains Can Stay Pliable — If You Put in the Work

A separate study published in Nature looked at the brains of people in their 80s who had unusually sharp memories — so sharp that they tested like people 20 to 30 years younger. The researchers found that these so-called super agers were still growing new brain cells at roughly twice the rate of their peers, in the part of the brain responsible for memory.

This is significant because most people assume that brain decline after a certain age is inevitable. This study suggests otherwise.

The brain appears to retain more flexibility than we had thought. That flexibility may be connected to the same habits that kept the centenarians' blood profiles looking young: physical activity, mental challenge, adequate sleep.

The study also found something sobering. Alzheimer's disease appears to damage the physical structure of brain cells before any of the standard warning signs show up. That means the disease may be further along, in some people, than anyone realized.

That's not a reason for despair, but it is a reason to take seriously, right now, the habits that appear to slow that process down.

Habits That Help You Live Healthier for Longer

What this latest research strongly suggests is that your body and brain will function well, for as long as possible, if you gave them what they need consistently: purposeful movement, sleep, real food without 40 chemicals added to it and brain-taxing work — reading new subjects, learning a language, becoming an expert in something — that is just hard enough to keep the mind functioning like a confident blade.

The centenarians in the Swiss study were not following an optimized protocol. They were remarkable because their bodies had stayed in a kind of equilibrium — calm, stable, efficient — for a very long time.

The evidence points to sustained, ordinary habits as the mechanism. That's less exciting and far less expensive than buying pills or injections and far more likely to actually work.