Bradley Willcox, an internal medicine physician and professor at the University of Hawaii, spoke at UGA late last month about longevity. He talked about his experiences studying 100-year-old people in Okinawa, Japan. An excerpt:

“In the area of exceptionally healthy longevity, we think that there’s substantial genetic and environmental contributions, but as to what the balance of factors are, that’s still an open question that involves lots more study and more research funding.

“It’s difficult in some populations to disentangle environmental from genetic effects, particularly with different ethnic groups who might have a very different genetic profile.

“We think that genetically isolated populations might make it a little easier to disentangle the environmental from genetic effects. We think the Okinawans are particularly good populations because they live so long. So if you’re looking for longevity genes, we figure this is a good place to go.

“If you took the average 50-year-old woman right now in this audience, she would probably live in the U.S. to about 81 years of age. If you cured cancer in the population, you might add another three years to her life. If you cure heart disease, it’s a little bit more. If you cure the major diseases associated with aging—heart disease, stroke, cancer and diabetes—you might get her up to 95. But the only way you’re going to get substantial and really long-lived people is to slow down the aging process.

“We hear often that the average life expectancy keeps growing and growing and we’re all going to live to be more than 100, but I think there are a lot of problems with that.”