Chrousos on Longevity: Stress, Not Biology, Cuts Our 132-Year Potential Short, Pediatric Expert Says

On a pedestrian street near Ilisia in Athens, a large sign at the entrance of a building reads National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Medical School. Beneath it, in smaller letters, is the Unit of Clinical and Translational Research in Endocrinology, and in the smallest print, the name of its director: Professor George Chrousos. Journalist Dimitris Danikas, accompanied by photographer William Faithful, arrived there for an 11:30 meeting that had taken many calls and messages to arrange. The interview was limited to forty minutes. It was published by Proto Thema on November 25, 2025.

The credentials the paper lists are considerable. Chrousos is described as one of the 250 most prominent clinical researchers in the world, with more than 1,100 scientific publications, 29 edited books and over 74,000 citations. By the ISI database's count he is the most cited clinical pediatrician and endocrinologist anywhere, and Google Scholar ranks him 37th among scientists globally. He chairs the Department of Pediatrics at the Athens Medical School. He previously headed pediatric and reproductive endocrinology at the US National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and holds a clinical professorship at Georgetown University.

His headline claim concerns lifespan. Humans, he says, are built for 132 years, an estimate that applies to every generation, with an average life span of roughly 105 to 110. He attributes the gap mainly to stress, difficulties and pressure. Not all stress counts: when a person feels in control of a hard task and completes it, the result is what he calls eustress. A cancer diagnosis, by contrast, brings negative psychological stress, though he notes that treatments now allow patients to face it with hope, and says he knows women with breast cancer who treated it as a fightable enemy and lived longer and well. Asked about hyaluronic acid, he said it cannot do anything bad.

On aging cells, Chrousos said cells are programmed to die, but that science now knows how to regenerate them. Eggs and sperm are effectively renewed cells, yet in older parents they carry accumulated DNA mutations. That, he said, explains why children of older parents face a higher probability of genetic problems. He called 37 the ideal upper age for a woman to complete childbearing, after which fertility gradually declines. Many children with learning difficulties, ADHD or autism spectrum conditions show mutations in various genes, he said, and plotting parental age against the chance of a developmental condition yields a straight line. Prenatal testing exists for certain diseases but not autism, which is polygenic.

Looking ahead, he expects genetics to indicate a child's chances of autism or ADHD within a few years, though he would not say five. The answers will come as probabilities for conditions such as autoimmunity, allergy, obesity or autism. Certainty applies to monogenic or oligogenic diseases. Thalassemia, now managed with drugs and transfusions, is his example, and he expects gene therapy soon and the quick resolution of such diseases.

On artificial intelligence, he said he and colleagues already use it, as a lever without judgment or emotion, and that it will improve medicine rather than threaten it. He compared it with the stethoscope, used for 200 years, and portable ultrasound, which can reveal gallstones. With 44,000 genes expressed in each cell, he said, no person can hold them all in mind, but AI can calculate the result at the push of a button.

On heredity and environment, he said humans differ genetically by one part in a thousand. If one identical twin has schizophrenia, the other has a 50 percent chance of developing it, the rest being environment. Diagnosis is clinical and usually comes in adolescence. He rejected equating mental illness with violence, and said about 1 percent of the population has psychopathy, meaning lack of conscience, which a good upbringing can keep harmless.

He described the first two years of life as the period when trust and bonding form, with judgment, logic and morality developing over the following three to four years and complete by six. He said the sense of justice is innate. In American prisons, he said, about 85 percent of inmates were abused in their first five years, leading to secondary psychopathy and failed emotional self-regulation. The title of the piece points to his ranking for longevity: sleep first, diet second, exercise third. The excerpt ends mid-answer, as Chrousos begins discussing separation and stress.