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Topics: News, World News, Health, Mental Health
Kit Roberts
Life expectancy is a tricky thing to pin down as there are so many different factors involved.
When it comes to any given individual's life expectancy, lifestyle obviously plays a big part. Factors like diet, exercise, and habits like drinking alcohol and smoking are all factors, and are all things that we have some control over.
And then there's the general wear and tear that comes with ageing.
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Even reaching your 60s is enough for some countries to start edging you towards that 'pensioner' definition, but there are plenty of sprightly so-called pensioners who make very clear that they're not done with their time on Earth just yet.
Such people in their 80s and 90s actually do have a leg to stand on, because a study involving thousands of people has determined that life can continue way beyond the 100-year mark.
Conducted by statisticians at Tilburg and Rotterdam's Erasmus universities, the study looked at the age at which 75,000 people in the Netherlands died in the 30 years up to 2017.
Rather than focusing on life expectancy, the researchers wanted to determine how long a single individual could live as long as they look after themselves, and if their life wasn't cut short by an illness or other circumstance.
After looking at the ages the people in the study were at the time of their death, the researchers determined that a person's maximum lifespan plateaus in their nineties.
People are able to live longer than that though, with women having a slight edge over men when it comes to lifespan.
The researchers suggested it is unlikely for a human to live beyond 115, with a maximum lifespan for a female topping out at 115.7 years, while men were estimated to reach a maximum age of 114.1 years.
Commenting on the findings, Professor John Einmahl, one of three scientists conducting the study, told AFP: "On average, people live longer, but the very oldest among us have not gotten older over the last thirty years.
"There is certainly some kind of a wall here. Of course, the average life expectancy has increased. Nevertheless, the maximum ceiling itself hasn't changed."
In spite of the researchers' findings, Einmahl admitted there are instances of people bending the norm and living beyond these suggested maximum lifespans.
At the start of the year, the world lost its oldest person, as French nun Sister André passed away at the grand old age of 118. Following her death, Guinness World Records named US-born Maria Branyas Morera the oldest person in the world, at 115.
Morera currently lives in a nursing home in Catalonia, Spain, but she was born in San Francisco on 4 March, 1907.