The human life span may have finally plateaued. Here’s what you can do to optimize your chances for a long life — and what researchers are working on next.

A lot of what determines who makes it past the century mark comes down to genetic luck.

“When somebody says ‘What’s the best advice you can give to somebody on how to live to a hundred?’ My answer is: choose long-lived parents,” Olskansky said. “There’s a strong genetic component of how long we can live, and we can’t really control that. So control what you can control.”

New ways to slow down aging

Aging researchers generally agree that new tactics beyond traditional medicines, vaccines, and supplements will be needed to improve human health and longevity at very old ages.

“We’ve created a toolbox in medicine to go after one disease at a time,” Olshansky said. In order to advance further, aging science “needs to go after the aging process itself,” he said.

Future advances could come from innovations in genetics, cellular reprogramming, and other areas of biology.

“Big breakthroughs in a technology only happens as a result of a lot of prior work that doesn’t have any actual dramatic consequences, until it does,” aging researcher Aubrey de Grey told Business Insider. De Grey says he is focused on “damage repair” interventions against aging and is studying regenerative medicine in mice that could lead to breakthroughs for human lifespan extension. He’s currently testing different combinations of stem cell treatments, drugs (including one that’s a potential “zombie cell” killer), and a gene therapy.

“The goal is to throw together enough of these to be able to essentially cover all the bases,” he said.

Physicist and aging researcher Peter Fedichev is another aging scientist who envisions paradigm shifts that could help slow down the aging process itself. His AI-based drug company, Gero, hasn’t developed any treatments tested in people yet, but it’s partnering with drug companies including Pfizer, working on research to develop new targets for fibrotic disease.

“If we keep doing what we have been doing, the solution does not appear to be there,” Fedichev told BI. “We need to decouple aging and diseases in our minds, and we should put effort into designing interventions against aging, to prevent that decline.”