- I used the Live to be 100 Life Expectancy Calculator to see how old I’m supposed to live.
- He said I would live to be 96, but I could live even longer with a few lifestyle adjustments.
- Experts say that many genetic and environmental factors influence how quickly or slowly we age.
Dr. Thomas Perls, who created the free “Live to be 100 Life Expectancy Calculatorsays people often complain to him that “we don’t yet know how to get people to these very old ages healthy” – but his decades of research on centenarians doesn’t support that idea.
“We do, we absolutely do,” he said.
America is terrible life expectancy rate may give you the impression that it is difficult to be over 70 in the United States. But in reality, our low life expectancy projections are more indicative of the fact that it is difficult for young Americans to grow old in the first place. This is due to a unique and devastating mix of social issues in the United States, with deaths linked to drugs, bad food and guns all playing one disproportionate role.
Some of the variables that contribute to a long life are more controllable than others. And, much of what determines who lives to be 100 is genetic. But the most malleable pillars of healthy aging include diet, lifestyle habits like smoking or using sunscreen, relationships, and managing stress.
So Perls developed a 10-minute, 40-minute quick quiz aimed at helping people calculate how well their own health habits are really on track to maximizing longevity. I decided to put it to the test, by being brutally honest about my own health habits, to see how long I could live.
The calculator said I’d live to my mid-90s
When I filled out the calculator on LivingTo100.com, the questions and answers flew. It took me about 10 minutes from start to finish, and it was enough to find my latest cholesterol and blood pressure readings first.
The questions included prompts about how you deal with stress, questions about your weekly habits, including whether you see family or friends “who are practically like family” at least three times a week, and specific nutritional and medical details, including how often you eat red meat, fries or cake, and how many times a week you exercise.
From a healthy aging perspective, the questions made sense. I knew from previous reports that good relationships, stress management, daily exercise, and sleep are all essential for longevity.
But when it comes to on-screen diet questions, the level of granularity left me feeling a little sheepish. How often do I Really eat sweets like chocolate bars or pastries: 1-2 days a week or is it more like 3-5? Do I snack on vegetables or fries more often? And what is my weekly intake of white bread, french fries, and other sugary white carbs? We know these are nutritionally inferior to the nutrient-dense, cholesterol-controlling whole grains that have long been associated with longer lifespan and lower rates of heart disease. I was starting to worry about the impact of the bagel I had for breakfast on my score.
Finally, there it was. The hard number that tells me my life expectancy: 96!
Live to be 100 Life Expectancy Calculator
Soon my whole family wanted to take it – and the results were amazing.
Honestly, living to be 96 is a bit daunting considering I haven’t even hit 40 yet. It was definitely older than I would have imagined. I immediately sent my family a link to the tool. “I just tried” was all I said, but before the day was over, everyone had finished it.
I suspect my family isn’t unique in this – don’t we all want to know how long we might live? The idea of having a little more certainty about the limits of this one life, of knowing how long one could stay there, is both terrifying and comforting.
Surprisingly, my death estimate was about 10 years higher than the number my brother Ironman got – but that was about 10 years less than my mother’s life expectancy of 105. The great variability between us was a good reminder that it really is just an educational tool, intended to provide general information on healthy behaviors. It is not a precision medical device.
“Stop with the white bread!” the calculator seemed to be screaming at me
Hearty soups filled with beans are a staple in many parts of the world where people regularly live to a very old age.
Westend61 via Getty Images
After revealing my death prediction, the website asked me if I wanted to see recommendations to improve my lifespan. Of course, I thought, why not go for 100?
I was a bit taken aback when the website suggested that the first thing I could do to improve my longevity, over the century mark, would be to improve my diet. While other recommended lifestyle adjustments like flossing more or being smarter about sun exposure could add an extra year of life, at most, diet changes could result in another half- decade for me, said the calculator:
“With your current consumption, cutting fast foods from your diet could add 4 years to your life expectancy.” And, “Reducing sweets in your diet to once or twice a week or less could add a year.”
There was also a line in there about taking an aspirin daily to improve lifespan, but research on that idea has been so back and forth for the past few years, I kind of ignored it.
As a science and health journalist, I have for a long time keep an eye on the studies and evidence-based nutrition guidelines, and I understand how unprocessed diets of healthy foods like fibrous vegetables, whole grains, and beans are so often inextricably linked to some of the best lifespans. I consider myself a relatively healthy eater – by no means a health weirdo – but a conscious consumer who prefers snacking on nuts or plain yogurt, and almost never drinks sugary sodas or sugary juices. So it was a little alarming, at first, to hear that cutting back on bagels (tear) and a little less candy (OK, fine) might help improve my longevity the most.
This matches what we know about the longest living people in the world. They thrive in places where daily movement and healthy eating habits are integrated into the environment, with no drive-thrus or packaged snacks offered on every corner.
“We might feel like healthy living is free – but it’s not actually free and it’s certainly not easy,” Daniel Belsky, a longevity researcher at the University of Columbia. That’s why he thinks trying to change the environments people live in, rather than focusing on individual behavior change, would be a more sustainable and equitable recipe for better longevity.