Human lifespan has already peaked, climate change a factor: Report

While experts believe medical advances to increasingly help in providing solutions to complex riddles associated with human health, a recent report refutes the same suggesting human lifespan to have already reached its peak.

“These traits (height, lifespan and physical performance) no longer increase, despite further continuous nutritional, medical, and scientific progress. This suggests that modern societies have allowed our species to reach its limits. We are the first generation to become aware of this,” Jean-Francois Toussaint from Paris Descartes University in France was quoted by a PTI report.

For the study, a team of experts looked at 120 years worth of historical information to conclude that humans have biological limitations and that anthropogenic impacts on the environment – including climate change – could have a deleterious effect on these limits.

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“The current declines in human capacities we can see today are a sign that environmental changes, including climate, are already contributing to the increasing constraints we now have to consider,” he said. “Observing decreasing tendencies may provide an early signal that something has changed but not for the better,” he added.

After studying data from a pool of studies, experts suggested human height to have decreased in the last decade in some African countries. This was suggestive of lack of proper nutrition in some societies.

All in all, the report suggested that humans will not continue to improve after a point, we are gradually moving toward hitting a plateau which will manifest in increasingly fewer sports records being broken and more people reaching but not exceeding the present highest life expectancy.

(With inputs from PTI)