Youth up to 44 years old. Who are the old people then?

Old age is called the twilight of life, the second youth, the golden age of life or the third age. This is the last stage of a person’s life that cannot be avoided. This stage has been known or will be known by everyone whose life is not tragically interrupted in their youth. But who is officially called old? What about the young?

So, those who are close to or have already crossed: the official age of 65 years, the World Health Organization and most developed countries call the “deadline for transition” of a person to the “elderly” category.

At the same time, according to data for 2023, WHO classifies people from 18 to 44 years old as youth. The average age is from 45 to 59. Elderly people are considered to be from 60 to 74 years old, old – from 75 to 90. Over 90 years old are already long-livers.

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In 2017, the committee of the Japanese Gerontological Society, which for three years carefully and objectively studied the process of growing up/aging (for example, walking speed or strength of handshake) in different age groups, concluded that 75-year-olds are now considered “older” people. People over 90 years of age are called “very old.”

The famous Stanford economics professor John Chauvin, based on mathematical models, proved that If you have a 2% chance of dying in the next year, you are called “old.”

In 1920, that age was 55; today it is 70. If you have a 4% chance of dying in the next year, you are considered “very old.” In 1920 this corresponded to 65 years, today – 76 years.

In the same study, “middle age” is considered a man 60 years of age or older, while for women, “middle age” begins at 65 years old, in 1920 it began at 40 years old. Professor Chauvin argues that “stopping working at 60, when a citizen can still go to work regularly, receive a salary and be useful to society, does not make sense (and is good for society).”

Another study by Warren Sanderson and Sergei Shcherbov from Stony Brook University in the US, funded by the European Research Council, found that The age of 65 that most people consider “old” is simply not true.. Scientists suggest that Instead of counting how many years a person has already lived since birth, we should consider how many years he has left to live based on average life expectancy.

In 2015, life expectancy at birth in England was 79 years for men and 82 years for women. According to this study, a healthy lifestyle that increases life expectancy also increases the length of middle age, leaving the last 15 years of life as the period when a person is considered “old.” “Middle age begins at age 60,” the researchers conclude.

“Age is nothing more than a simple number. You are as old as you feel,” say 70-year-olds who continue to work, play sports and lead normal (and sexual) lives. The famous Harvard genetics professor George Church, who was a pioneer in mapping the human genome and is now working to discover a mechanism for “reversing the aging process,” agrees with this.

A few months ago, on ABC’s 60 Minutes, Professor Church said: “We’ve discovered eight different mechanisms by which we can reverse aging in laboratory animals. When genes associated with this phenomenon fall down, we can bring them back up by adding more copies of the genes. Clinical trials in humans will begin within the next few years, once the clinical trials already being conducted in dogs are completed.”

In his laboratory at Harvard, more than a hundred scientists from around the world are working on a program that will allow for older people, improve their quality of life by genetically improving the function of the kidneys, heart and other organs affected by the aging process.

But until then, if we want to delay the day when we feel “old”, we need to watch our diet (eat little and healthy food), exercise daily, not smoke and drink alcohol in small quantities (red wine is acceptable), sleep more (get enough sleep), live with less stress and show more love to others.

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