A new research has revealed that most people who love to 100 years have a ‘superhuman’ ability to avoid, rather fight major diseases.
Two major studies conducted on adults in Sweden have discovered that centenarians tend to develop fewer diseases, accumulate them more slowly and most importantly avoid most age-related conditions.
This is despite having lived longer than their peers.
According to researchers, exceptional longevity is attributed to a distinct pattern of aging in which diseases are delayed or avoided altogether.
The research vehemently shut down the widely held belief that longer life comes with more years of poor health.
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To come up with the findings, researchers analysed decades of health records to compare people who hit 100 with those who succumbed prematurely but were born in the same years.
The first study looked at health records for 170,787 people born in Stockholm County between 1912 and 1922.
Subjects of the research were observed for up to 40 years, either from the age of 60 until death, or after they hit 100.
The findings disclosed that centenarians had lower rates of diseases in late-midlife and maintained this upper hand throughout their lives.
For instance, only four percent of those who went on to hit 100 suffered a stroke at the age of 85.
Those who died between 90 and 99 made up 10 percent.
By the age of 100, only 12.5 percent of centenarians experienced a heart attack, compared to more than 24 percent of those who passed on in their 80s.
With this, researchers concluded that these centenarians are not only merely surviving serious diseases better than others but also avoiding them for much longer.
To investigate whether the key to longevity might also lie in avoiding less serious conditions, the team of researchers conducted a second study, which was published in August 2025.
This analysis included 40 different medical problems, ranging from mild to severe, such as hypertension, heart failure, diabetes and heart attacks.
They studied records for 274,108 people born between 1920 and 1922 and followed them for around 30 years, either from age 70 until death, or until they turned 100.
Only 4,330 participants, which is 1.5 percent hit 100.
The findings were consistent even when including a wider range of conditions.
This means centenarians developed fewer diseases overall, and their rate of disease accumulation was slower across their lifetime.
Cardiovascular disease was the most common diagnosis across all age groups, but it was significantly less prevalent among centenarians.
At age 80, only 8 per cent had been diagnosed with cardiovascular disease, compared to more than 15 percent of those who died at 85.
The lower rates of cardiovascular illness appeared central to their extended survival.
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The aged group also showed greater resilience to neuropsychiatric conditions such as depression and dementia throughout life.
While most centenarians did eventually develop multiple health conditions, this usually occurred much later in life, around the age of 89, and without the sharp health decline seen in non-centenarians during their final years.
In essence, non-centenarians typically experienced a steep increase in the number of health complications in the last years of their lives.
This pattern was not observed in those who reached 100, whose health decline was slower and more gradual, even into their 90s.
According to researchers, the reasons for this resilience remain unclear.
They concluded that the advantage for centenarians could be due to genetic advantages, healthy lifestyle habits, environmental factors or a combination of all three.
The team now plans to investigate which factors are most important and how they influence health throughout life.
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