Editing Maximum life span (section)

=== Non-demographic evidence ===

Evidence for maximum lifespan is also provided by the dynamics of physiological indices with age. For example, scientists have observed that a person's [[VO2 max|VO<sub>2</sub>max]] value (a measure of the volume of oxygen flow to the cardiac muscle) decreases as a function of age. Therefore, the maximum lifespan of a person could be determined by calculating when the person's VO<sub>2</sub>max value drops below the basal metabolic rate necessary to sustain life, which is approximately 3&nbsp;[[millilitre|ml]] per [[kilogram|kg]] per minute.<ref name="Nokes Lore">{{Cite book | vauthors = Noakes T | year = 1985 | title = The Lore of Running | publisher = Oxford University Press }}</ref>{{Page needed|date=January 2018}} On the basis of this hypothesis, athletes with a VO<sub>2</sub>max value between 50 and 60 at age 20 would be expected "to live for 100 to 125 years, provided they maintained their physical activity so that their rate of decline in VO<sub>2</sub>max remained constant".<ref>Nokes (1985) p. 84.</ref>

[[File: Age dynamics of the body mass.svg|thumb|Average and commonly accepted maximum lifespans correspond to the extremums of the body mass (1, 2) and mass normalized to height (3, 4) of men (1, 3) and women (2, 4).<ref name="Age dynamics">{{cite journal| vauthors = Gerasimov IG, Ignatov DY |title=Age Dynamics of Body Mass and Human Lifespan| journal = Journal of Evolutionary Biochemistry and Physiology | volume = 40 | issue = 3| pages = 343–349|year=2004| doi = 10.1023/B:JOEY.0000042639.72529.e1 |s2cid=9070790}}</ref>]]