When are we officially old? Longevity expert who studies world's oldest people explains

Is age truly just a number? And are we really only as old as we feel?

Maybe it’s true that we become old when people stop saying we've ‘fallen over’ and start saying we've ‘had a fall’.

At Guinness World Records, we love celebrating the world’s oldest people, but we couldn’t help but wonder what the official cut off is.

It seems the perception of age has changed quite a lot in recent years.

40 is the new 30, 50 is the new 40 etc etc, and there was a time when you looked at people like they were ancient, but that’s the age you are now and you still feel young.

A good example of this from pop culture is the fact that the cast of The Golden Girls were around the same age as the stars of And Just Like That when the shows began.

The former, a sitcom that started in 1985, followed a group of previously married women who lived together in Miami, whereas the latter, a spin-off of Sex and the City, follows Carrie Bradshaw and her mates still in the prime of their lives and living it up in New York City.

And the difference in the way the characters look and are perceived is huge.

So how come The Golden Girls were seen as old, but Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte were still thought of as young and vivacious?

The world’s oldest man, Brazil’s João Marinho Neto celebrated his 113^th birthday last month and the oldest woman and person, Ethel Caterham (UK), turned 116 in May.

It’s safe to say that they are both officially old, but when do the rest of us join the club?

We posed that very question to Ben Meyers, CEO of LongeviQuest, who studies, documents and chronicles supercentenarians.

LongeviQuest’s Ben Meyers

Ben helps us keep track of the world’s oldest people, meaning he was the perfect person to explain the concept of old age.

He said: “From a purely numerical standpoint: one could argue we become ‘old’ when we surpass the average life expectancy (roughly 74 globally for women, 69 for men). Our perception of whether someone is old is tied to how much longer we expect them to live.

“The dramatic increase in life expectancy over the last century has therefore shifted the boundary between middle age and elderhood. A 50-year-old possibly having several decades of healthy life ahead of them is a very recent concept in human history.

The world’s oldest man João Marinho Neto on his 113th birthday

“From my perspective as a longevity researcher: people become old at different ages. Aging is a fact of life, something centenarians broadly accept despite experiencing that decline much later than most of us.

“The turning point is when a person feels they’ve lost control of the aging process. For example, an otherwise healthy older person could fall while exercising, leading to hospitalization. A week in the hospital can lead to meaningful loss of muscle and bone density, making it difficult to resume their prior activity level. This can spark a dangerous cycle in which inactivity and physical decline accelerate each other. Often, the people most susceptible to this are the most active older adults, meaning someone could transform from seeming ‘young for their age’ to ‘old’ rather suddenly.”

The world’s oldest woman and person Ethel Caterham on her 116th birthday

Ben added: “The good news is that this cycle can be broken. Moving into a nursing home, for example, often has a foreboding connotation. However, many supercentenarians are happy residents of nursing homes for years or even decades.

“María Branyas Morera, formerly the world’s oldest person, lived in her nursing home for 30 years and led an active social life. Rather than view her move into a nursing home as an irreversible sign of becoming old, she focused on the positive aspects – living near others her age, organized community events – and it helped her enjoy three more decades.

“Willpower and enjoyment of life are intangible factors which are reported by almost every centenarian. People who share those traits will keep finding reasons to delay becoming old.”

Read more about the world’s oldest people in our Human Body section.

More from LongeviQuest’s Ben: Why the world's oldest person is hardly ever a man and why women live longer

Pictures courtesy of LongeviQuest and record holder's families