Aging is the great equalizer among humans. Today, the world’s oldest living person is Ethel Caterham of the United Kingdom. According to Guinness World Records, she is 116 years old. While living past 100 is a remarkable achievement, many researchers have long believed the human lifespan has a natural upper limit of about 122 years, according to a 2021 study published in the journal Oncoscience. However, new research suggests the human lifespan may be much longer than previously thought. In a July 2026 paper published in npj Aging, researchers in Russia proposed that humans may have the potential to live as long as 156 years. The human lifespan limit Russian researchers Evgeniy Efimov, Vlad Fedotov, and Leonid Malaev published a paper based on analyses of human DNA and the body’s aging process. They found that one of the mechanisms involved in aging, known as somatic mutations, may hold the key to a longer human lifespan. Somatic mutations are changes that occur in the body’s cells and accumulate throughout a person’s lifetime because of environmental factors and errors in DNA replication. Over time, they contribute to aging and are thought to help limit the human lifespan. Currently, there is no treatment that can reverse the damage they cause within human cells. While some organs, such as the liver, can regenerate cells and help offset the effects of somatic mutations, two of the body’s most vital organs cannot: the brain and the heart. That aligns with data from the World Health Organization showing that heart disease and dementia are among the leading causes of death. Why? Because each contains tissue that does not readily regenerate: neurons in the brain and cardiomyocytes in the heart. Jordan Weiss, an assistant professor and aging researcher at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine, told Newsweek: “The conditions that cost people their independent, healthy years—such as dementia and heart failure—fall heavily on precisely the tissues that cannot regenerate. So the gap between how long people live and how long they stay well is not one general breakdown of the body. It is concentrated in the organs that have no way to replace worn‑out cells.” Living to 156 years old The researchers created a model that removed the effects of somatic mutations. Without them, the model suggested, humans could potentially live as long as 156 years. However, the researchers did not discount other biological processes that contribute to aging, including mitochondrial dysfunction, epigenetic drift, telomere shortening, and loss of proteostasis. Egle Pavyde, a pharmacist and regenerative medicine researcher, told Newsweek that the study’s value lies in quantifying what scientists have long suspected. “It proves that DNA damage accumulating in our cells is one of the reasons we cannot live indefinitely but also shows that our bodies are complex systems and that it is only one piece of a much larger puzzle,” Pavyde said. The future of anti-aging The new research encourages scientists to further explore treatments aimed at preventing or repairing the damage caused by somatic mutations. “If renewable organs already tolerate decades of DNA damage without much trouble, there is little to gain from protecting them further,” Weiss said. “The harder and more valuable problem is preserving the DNA of brain and heart cells.” While the new study did not offer a way to extend the human lifespan, previous research has identified lifestyle habits that can help people age more healthfully. According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), those include “not smoking, maintaining a healthy weight, getting good sleep, getting all recommended vaccines, getting preventive cancer screenings, and treating hypertension and high cholesterol.” Luigi Ferrucci, scientific director of the NIH’s National Institute on Aging, put it this way: “People have demonstrated that if you do these things, which are all feasible, you can increase your life expectancy by 10 years. We don’t need a magic pill. The magic pill is already here.” The post Science thought the human lifespan was 122 years. A new model says we could live decades longer. appeared first on Upworthy.