Doctor gives honest answer when asked about maximum age a human can live to

A doctor has given his brutally honest take on the longest a human could possibly live.

Speaking about longevity and ageing, Dr. Dan Belsky, who is a professor of epidemiology at Columbia University, explained that the oldest person to ever live was a woman in France named Jeanne Calment, who lived until she was 122.

While the current global life expectancy sits somewhere around 73 years, it varies significantly between countries depending on various factors, including wealth.

Some experts believe that in a matter of decades, more and more humans will be living to triple digits.

For example, William J Kole, author of The Big 100: The New World of Super-Aging, claims that by 2050, there will be around eight times more people who make it to 100 than nowadays.

He also suggests that 'half of all five-year-olds alive right now' are predicted to hit triple digits.

Dr. Belsky explained that the oldest person lived until 122 (Getty Stock Photo)

However, when asked, Dr. Belsky gave a pretty honest answer about the age humans can actually live to.

In a chat with WIRED, he said: "We don't know. There are lots of ways of asking this question.

"The one that has made the news most recently was a comparison of the oldest person in the world over a long period of time, more than a hundred years.

"They were able to collate records and compare how old the longest-lived person was each year until today.

"So as far as we know, the oldest person ever was a woman in France, Jeanne Calment, who lived to 122 years old. She smoked for most of her lifetime. She had a lot of chocolate. She drank red wine. She made it look pretty good.

"Since then, the longest-lived person has always been younger than that. And that has invited the idea that maybe this is the natural peak of human lifespan.

Jeanne Calment lived until she was 122 (GEORGES GOBET/AFP via Getty Images)

"There are reasons to believe there is some kind of limit, but whether we've reached it or whether it's close to where we are today, I think we still don't know."

One study indicates that the absolute maximum age a human being could live to is about 150 years old, as they found that human cell resilience could potentially be supported until that point, but would completely give out not long after.

Even if an actual person never makes it that far, the scientists found that it appeared to be a finishing line for the human body.

Meanwhile, you might have heard of 'blue zones', which are areas where people typically live much longer than the average person.

These include Loma Linda in California, Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica, Okinawa in Japan, as well as the islands of Sardinia and Icaria in Italy and Greece.