{"id":630697,"date":"2026-09-20T18:28:40","date_gmt":"2026-09-20T18:28:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/630697\/"},"modified":"2026-09-20T18:28:40","modified_gmt":"2026-09-20T18:28:40","slug":"will-you-live-to-100-the-numbers-dont-add-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/630697\/","title":{"rendered":"Will you live to 100? The numbers don\u2019t add up"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saul Newman\u2019s new book, Morbid: Debunking Modern Longevity Science, has ruffled quite a few feathers. It critiques everything from notions of expanded human lifespan to the blue zones (where centenarians are said to be more common) to the scientific claims underpinning the booming longevity industry.<\/p>\n

Morbid pulls no punches. Why did Newman write it? \u201cSheer bloody-mindedness,\u201d the scientist tells me over Zoom from his home in Australia.<\/p>\n

Newman, who holds a PhD in medical science and has worked in genomics and AI, wrote the book to sort fact from flawed research. \u201cI care about what\u2019s true,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

His media image is that of a brash, eccentric, wild-haired scientist: In 2024, he wore a suit patterned with neon Tetris bricks to collect his Ig Nobel prize (a satirical award for scientific achievements that \u201cmake people laugh, then think\u201d).<\/p>\n

The Newman I meet is quite different.<\/p>\n

\"SaulSaul Newman: The \u201cworried well\u201d are easy to sell to.<\/p>\n

Describing himself as an \u201coddbod\u201d, Newman grew up on a farm \u201cabout five hours west of Sydney\u201d. He\u2019s warm, polite, generous with his time, and a deep thinker who wants to know answers not for laurels, but for truth and understanding\u2019s sake.<\/p>\n

His expos\u00e9 of blue zones has caused much controversy. The zones are so well known that there\u2019s even a Netflix show about them and a website that describes itself as \u201ca lifestyle brand\u201d.<\/p>\n

The blue-zone concept began with demographic research in Sardinia in the early 2000s that suggested a higher incidence of centenarians. In 2004, Dan Buettner and National Geographic built on that research and identified other areas of the globe with unusually high rates of extreme old age.<\/p>\n

Buettner and his team found that, in these areas, longevity was achieved through nine lifestyle habits:<\/p>\n

purpose (have one);
\n downshift (employ a method that sheds stress, such as prayer or napping);
\n move naturally (incorporate it in to your day);
\n 80% rule (stop eating when you\u2019re 80% full);
\n plant bias (eat mostly plants);
\n wine at five (drink in moderation after 5pm);
\n belong (be part of a faith-based community);
\n loved ones first (prioritise family);
\n right tribe (be born into a social circle that chooses healthy behaviours).<\/p>\n

Isn\u2019t that good advice, I ask? \u201cSome of it is terrible advice,\u201d Newman says. \u201cDrinking two glasses of wine a day is terrible advice.\u201d<\/p>\n

To be clear, he isn\u2019t saying that all the advice is poor, but the advice isn\u2019t the point. The point is, he contends, that the demographic data underpinning the blue-zones theory is flawed, so it is not possible to say that those regions\u2019 lifestyle habits actually promote longevity. The evidence just isn\u2019t there.<\/p>\n

Newman points to Eurostat data, which shows that Sardinia and Ikaria (two blue zones) were not among Europe\u2019s leading regions for old-age life expectancy, coming in at 51st and 109th, respectively.<\/p>\n

He also cites examples from Japan and Greece, where large numbers of people recorded as centenarians or older were subsequently found to be dead or missing from official records.<\/p>\n

Newman\u2019s audit of pension records in Greece found that, of around 9,000 people cited as being over 100, at least 72% were dead, missing, or had not reached the ages recorded for them.<\/p>\n

The blue zones, Newman says, \u201care bullshit\u201d, and he goes into forensic detail in Morbid to back up this assertion.<\/p>\n

In his book, Newman, who is a research fellow at the University of Oxford\u2019s Institute of Population Ageing, details how he realised that a 2016 paper published in Nature, a prestigious scientific journal, was \u201cutterly defective\u201d.<\/p>\n

The paper had asked the question, \u2018Is there a maximum age that humans can realistically reach?\u2019 and concluded that, yes, human lifespan appeared to have a natural limit, and that the absolute limit was roughly 125 years.<\/p>\n

Why should we care about scientists arguing over data? The findings matter, says Newman, because key societal pillars \u2014 such as insurance, pensions, and healthcare \u2014 depend on accurate statistics about longevity. And if those findings are flawed, the financial and social consequences could be lasting.<\/p>\n

So what does the longevity researcher do to improve his own longevity? \u201cExercise. I don\u2019t drink, don\u2019t smoke. Go to the doctor. That\u2019s it.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s deeply concerned about the \u201cunregulated cowboy culture\u201d of longevity medicine, which he describes as \u201cthe Bitcoin of medicine\u201d \u2014 a rebranding that means \u201cnobody has to follow any rules\u201d.<\/p>\n

The \u201cworried well\u201d are particularly easy to sell to, he says. \u201cThere\u2019s a big segment of society that wants to be healthy, and they put in the effort. But they think there\u2019s more.\u201d<\/p>\n

These people are highly motivated, \u201cand if you\u2019re already doing everything you should do, that motivation has nowhere to go. So the next thing you know, you\u2019ve got peptides and highly specific diets, or whatever it is,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a sense, that\u2019s fine. The primary problem is it\u2019s leading to the erosion of actual medicine\u201d and the people being sidestepped, he says, \u201care the doctors that would normally just sit you down and say, \u2018This is what\u2019s going well. This is not what\u2019s going well\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cInstead, we\u2019re just straight into an interface with YouTube with someone who\u2019s telling us we have to munch all these pills.\u201d<\/p>\n

The health evidence we have for ageing and longevity, he points out, is plain-old, bog-standard medicine, which is based on reams of rigorous data and clinical trials.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe simple thing is to go and talk to your doctor. Because it\u2019s just that it might not be perfect, but it\u2019s the best thing we\u2019ve got, and it is miles ahead of what you\u2019ll find on the internet.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Morbid: Debunking Modern Longevity Science\u2019, by Saul Justin Newman, will be published by the MIT Press in October<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Saul Newman\u2019s new book, Morbid: Debunking Modern Longevity Science, has ruffled quite a few feathers. It critiques everything…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":630698,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[26054,1649,103,61,60],"class_list":["post-630697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-health-life","tag-health-nutrition","tag-health","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=630697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630697\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/630698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=630697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=630697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=630697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}