Life extension option: win a Nobel
Okay, so this option isn’t open to most of us, but winning a Nobel prize tends to add a couple of years to your life. Being nominated just isn’t good enough. You have to win.
From Biology News Net:
The researchers carried out their study to try to answer a long-standing question for economists and medical researchers as to whether social status alone can affect people’s well being and lifespan. Although the existence of some kind of effect is known from studies of monkey packs, in humans it has been difficult up till now to separate any perceived positive effect of “status” from the effect of simple greater wealth that status often brings. Nobel Prize winners were viewed as an ideal group to study as the winners could be seen as having their status suddenly dropped on them. They also come with a ready made control group they can be directly measured against - scientists who were nominated for a Nobel prize but did not actually win one.
The researchers looked at winners and nominees in physics and chemistry between 1901 and 1950 … 524 scientists, of whom 135 actually won a Nobel Prize.
The average life span for this group was just over 76 years. Winners of the Nobel Prize were found to live 1.4 years longer on average (77.2 years) than those who had “merely” been nominated for a prize (who lived on average for 75.8 years). When the survey was restricted to only comparing winners and nominees from the same country, the longevity gap widened even more by around another two thirds of a year on average.
So, what would be the implication of winning a Nobel for anti-aging research?
