Re: Life Expectancy in Okinawa

[Guest guest]

At 06:10 PM 6/20/2007, you wrote:

Hi folks:

The okinawan life expectancy chart I had mentioned in an earlier post

can be found on the home page of the 'Okinawa Centenarian Study'

website here:

http://www.okicent.org/

It shows that between 1960 and 2000 life expectancy rose from 72 years

to 83. So if it is now going down that must have started very

recently.

Also, bearing in mind the lag between a lifetime of good habits and the

final 20-yr stretch between 80 and 100, it's likely that we won't find

lifestyle-mediated changes in centenarian statistics for a good while;

it's hard to imagine 80-yr-olds who have eaten modestly and wisely their

entire lives suddenly jacking that in and gorging themselves on Big Macs

for however many years they have yet to live, and it seems to me as

though the potent years for CR-derived longevity advantages are likely

those between 30 and 70. Or, as Rodney put it earlier, and it bears

repeating,

" . . . and I would not have expected kids eating KFC to have much of

an

effect on life expectancy data in the short term, since CVD is

something which only shows its effects on mortality after many

decades of poor nutrition. But certainly changes in diet recently

are very likely to have a major effect perhaps thirty years down the

road.

Even so, it will take a long time for life expectancy to fall back to

the level it was at in 1960, when the vast majority alive then had

lived most of their lives in a much more traditional way. "

Maco