LongeviQuest Founder Ben Meyers spoke at last month’s Longevity Summit Dublin, addressing the conference at the close of its first day. In his remarks, Meyers discussed LongeviQuest’s focus on supercentenarians, whom he referred to as “the Olympians of Aging.”
Longevity Summit Dublin, one of the world’s largest annual longevity conventions, attracts scientists and biomedical researchers from across the globe. Meyers’ presentation addressed these researchers first and foremost.
Before LQ, supercentenarian research was underfunded and underdeveloped. As a result, longevity researchers were unable to learn much from supercentenarians, the world’s most successful agers. This glaring deficiency led Meyers to found LongeviQuest.
LongeviQuest CEO Ben Meyers at Longevity Summit Dublin
Meyers discussed how LongeviQuest is elevating supercentenarian research from anecdotal to actionable. LQ research has confirmed that living to 110 is far more common than was known two years ago. LQ researchers have alleviated gaps in regions which previously had few or no known supercentenarians, most notably the Global South.
LongeviQuest’s work goes beyond merely identifying supercentenarians. Meyers discussed LQ’s efforts to quantify the qualitative and provided anonymized cohort-level data samples to illustrate this concept. For instance, while many supercentenarians report having had happy childhoods, LQ data on the 200 oldest people of all time showed that over 84% of them grew up in a household with both parents present, a quantifiable measure. Other factors discussed by Meyers include age at first marriage, number of children, and spirituality, though he acknowledged that in 15 minutes he could “barely scratch the surface.”
LongeviQuest thanks the organizers of Longevity Summit Dublin for the invitation and for fostering collaboration within the global longevity research field.
See full presentation below:
