Centenarians get sick less often and age more slowly

The participants were followed from the age of 70 until their death, analyzing data from national medical registers. Comparing those who lived a century with people who died earlier, the researchers came to an unexpected conclusion: centenarians not only face diseases later, but also go through aging differently, along their own special trajectory.

Unlike most older people, who quickly gain several diagnoses in the last few years of their lives, the long-term burden of diseases seems to stabilize from about the age of 90. They are more likely to have diseases affecting only one organ system, and much less often — multiple chronic conditions. The number of cardiovascular and neuropsychiatric diseases has been particularly markedly reduced.

“Our results refute the widespread view that a long life necessarily means more diseases,” explains Karin Modig, associate professor at the Institute of Environmental Medicine at the Karolinska Institute and one of the authors of the study. According to her, centenarians demonstrate not just the postponement of diseases, but a fundamentally different type of aging — with a more stable physiology and the ability to maintain internal balance despite age-related changes and stress.

This steady type of aging, experts suggest, may be the result of a unique combination of genetics, lifestyle, and the environment. In other words, living to 100 is not just luck, but a special biological strategy that has yet to be explored.