Read here the full transcript of scientist Tiffany Vora’s talk titled “How To Prepare For A Longer, Healthier Life” at TEDxGateway 2024 conference.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
Introduction: Contemplating Lifespan
Take a minute to think about how many years you’re going to live. Really think about it. Think about your health, your education, your food, the oldest member of your family, even your motivation to get out of bed in the morning. Have you got a number for how many years you think your heart is going to be beating?
Okay, everybody raise one hand. I can see you, so I need you to do it. Raise your hands. I’m going to say a number, and if you think you’re going to live longer than that age, keep your hands up. If you think you’ll die before that age, put your hands down. Yeah, don’t look at me, look at everybody else. Okay, here we go. If you think you’re going to live to be 70 years old, keep your hands up. 80. 90 years old. 100. 110.
We have one true believer right here. 120. Okay, hands down.
So what if I told you that the first person who will live to be 140 years old has already been born?
The Longevity Revolution: Are We Prepared?
Are we prepared for the changes that a longevity revolution will bring? Not just to us as individuals, but to communities, to businesses, or to whole societies? I don’t think so, and that worries me. Would you like to take a look at how the longevity revolution could change everything?
One of the big triumphs of humanity in the last hundred years has been the doubling of the average human lifespan. We don’t talk about that very often, but it’s true.
Infant mortality is down, and thanks to public health, we have safer roads, safer food, safer water, safer cities, and safer health care. What I want you to do now is imagine the global average lifespan going up beyond today’s 70 years. Imagine if more than half the people around the world lived to be 120 years old.
The Science of Aging
That sounds crazy, right? Aren’t we used to thinking of aging as something natural, as an inevitable progression of things falling apart? I know that’s how I thought about it. But fundamental scientific research is revealing something a bit different. It turns out that there are specific molecular and cellular processes that change as we age, and labs around the world are finding those out.
Today, we recognize 12 major categories of how aging manifests in our bodies. We call these the hallmarks of aging. And it turns out that these hallmarks might not only be the results of aging, but might also be the causes of aging. Now, that’s fundamentally different from a disease like diabetes, because with aging, treating the symptoms may also treat the disease.
So here’s the headline: If we understand at the molecular and cellular level how aging works, then we have the potential to be able to slow, stop, or even reverse biological aging.
Strategies for Impacting Aging
Labs around the world are starting to have some success with slowing the aging of the species that we use for science. This is important and exciting, but we care about humans, right? So scientists, companies, and investors around the world are looking at a variety of strategies for impacting our aging.
Our old friends diet, exercise, meditation, and sleep can help, and you can start working on those starting today, especially here in India with your traditions of yoga and meditation. Classic drugs and pharmaceuticals are also being explored for longevity effects, and so are cutting-edge infusions and genetic treatments.
There’s a lot of activity in this space, which is super exciting. But realistically, I expect it to take years to decades to figure out which of these strategies work in the lab and then translate those to humans. Now, a lot of these strategies are not going to survive that transition to humans. That’s okay, because that’s how science works. That’s how we know we’re using safe and effective strategies for our health, and health is complicated.
The Goal: Delaying Age-Related Diseases
To me, all of those strategies that I just showed you are not about living forever. Instead, by aging more slowly, we have the chance to delay many of the things that end up killing us, like cancer and neurodegeneration and heart disease and diabetes. That’s because the world’s leading killers are largely diseases of aging.
So even if you’re listening to me talk and you don’t want to live forever, would you like to get cancer later or diabetes later? I know that I would. The science that’s happening today is trying to make that possible, and that is why it is very, very important for you to stay alive, because the big breakthroughs are still to come.
Now, I started this talk by asking whether we’re prepared for the changes that a longevity revolution will bring. After going around the world and having conversations with folks like you, here are some big questions that I think we need to start answering. For example, let’s say I think I’m going to live to be 120 years old. Can I retire at 65?
Right. So my career might last 80 years, 100 years. I’m listening to see how you all feel about that. How we feel about that depends on our mindset and also on the context around us.
So lifelong learning would be key for a longevity future like that. Yes. But I know that I also need to be doing work that is dignified and meaningful, and I need to be surrounding myself with people like you who are curious and are interested in continuing to learn and contribute for years to come.
Now, my son, Jordan, is 12 years old. I’m helping him get ready for a 100-year career. School can only be a tiny part of that, right? He needs curiosity, dedication, compassion, empathy. He needs the ability to think about really, really big problems and then believe that he can do something about them.
Rethinking Communities and Businesses
Now let’s try zooming out a bit further. How could we make our communities better for multigenerational living? We might need new city plans or new family dynamics, maybe even new marriage dynamics. In this longevity future, there’s lots of opportunities for our businesses to deliver new products and services.
Very exciting. But how can we help our employees in their 90s work successfully with teammates in their 20s? Does your HR department have a strategy for that? How about a succession plan for a CEO who works into her 100s?
Every part of our lives stands to be impacted by the longevity revolution. Look, I mean, there’s so much here to think about. It’s such a rich space.
Final Thoughts: Embracing the Longevity Mindset
And this brings me to some final thoughts that I want to share with you. So what we need to think about now is how we’re going to move into this longevity future. I told you a few minutes ago that thanks to advances in science and technology and public health, in the last 100 years, you gained an extra life. And I told you that in the next 20 years or so, you could gain a third life. And those years could be healthy and productive.
So what will you do with that time? On the one hand, that seems like a scary responsibility. Our ways of working and living and loving and being have been learned over thousands of years. We’re going to need updates, big updates, from the society level all the way down to us as individuals.
And we can start today by thinking about our mindset. So, for example, we need to change the way we’re going to make decisions because we’ll be accountable for those decisions for a long time. For example, imagine answering questions from your great-great-great-great-grandchildren. Remember, in a longevity future, you’re still alive to answer those questions.
So, for example, how will we look them in the eyes and tell them that we knew about climate change in the 2010s, but sustainability just seemed too hard, too expensive, too inconvenient? Today, our planet is in crisis. We’re seeing catastrophic ecological damage. Our food systems are fragile. Extreme weather is only going to get worse. And societies around the world are going to shake as a consequence. And we could be alive for all of that.
And we don’t want to just survive, do we? We want to thrive. And that is why longer, healthier lives are also a gift. Because longer, healthier lives give us more time to learn, to grow, to collaborate, to experiment, to leave a legacy, and maybe even to gain wisdom.
Conclusion: Making Every Heartbeat Count
So, listen, as a scientist, I have to tell you, looking into the future is tricky. I could be wrong about this whole longevity revolution thing. But even if I am wrong about longer, healthier lives coming our way in the next 20 or so years, adopting a longevity mindset today empowers us to live lives of meaning and purpose, to ask big, bold questions, and to be part of the solutions to our biggest challenges.
That’s how we change not just our lives, but our world. So, here’s to making every heartbeat count, no matter how many of those heartbeats we have left.
