8/14/2026
I recently borrowed an e-book from our library, Super Agers: An Evidence-Based Approach to Longevity by Eric Topol, a New York Times bestseller.
The book draws on a wide range of research on aging and healthspan. One study described in Chapter 2, “It’s in Your Genes?”, caught my attention.
It was the Wellderly research project, which began in 2008 at Scripps Research.
The researchers wanted to understand why some people remain remarkably healthy well into old age. Topol describes the study participants this way:
“People who were at least 80 years old and had never been sick or had a chronic illness.”
It took the researchers almost six years to identify about 1,400 people who met this unusually strict definition of healthy aging and agreed to participate. The participants provided blood samples so that researchers could sequence and analyze their entire genomes—roughly three billion letters of DNA.
The researchers had an obvious hypothesis: perhaps these exceptionally healthy older people possessed special genes that protected them from the diseases associated with aging.
They were wrong.
Topol writes:
“Despite the arduous and expensive task of sequencing and interpreting whole genomes several years ago, there wasn't much in their DNA to illuminate the basis for healthy aging.”
Their genetic risk markers for Alzheimer's disease and heart disease were only marginally better than those of the general population.
What stood out instead were their lifestyles and characteristics.
The Wellderly participants had an average age of about 84. Compared with the general population of older Americans, they were almost 30 pounds lighter, exercised more, and had more education.
They were also remarkably socially active and optimistic.
The research nurse who interviewed them found them to be unusually upbeat. Many belonged to bridge clubs, participated in dancing, maintained active circles of friends, or volunteered in their communities. Some participants were still so active well into their nineties that it was difficult to find a convenient time to schedule an appointment with them.
And there was an amusing contradiction: some were still smoking cigarettes—in some cases, as many as two packs a day.
In other words, these people weren't following some perfect longevity formula.
After years of studying them, the researchers had failed to find a simple genetic explanation for their exceptional healthspan. But that failure itself was revealing.
As Topol puts it:
“While our multiyear study failed to demystify the role of our DNA in attaining the most long-lived health span, it opened our minds to other factors.”
Topol estimates that genetics accounts for roughly 25–30% of lifespan outcomes, with lifestyle and environmental factors accounting for much of the rest.
The important distinction here is between lifespan and healthspan.
Lifespan is simply how long you live.
Healthspan is how many of those years you live in good health, without significant disease or disability.
And that distinction is important.
The Wellderly study challenge the idea that exceptional aging is simply a matter of winning the genetic lottery.
The most striking lesson for me is this: favorable genes may give you an advantage, but your genes don't necessarily determine how well you age. There are a lot more within our control than we thought.
And that is encouraging.
To be continued...
