Life expectancy

[Guest guest]

Every so often people who don't particularly care about how they eat bring up

the question, " If modern food is so bad for us, how come people are living

longer? " Recently, I've had an opportunity to look at some actual numbers.

I've received a genealogy of my family going back to the 1600s. Some of the

entries didn't have both dates of birth and dates of death, so I ignored them.

I didn't see any children that died at infancy, so they may have been excluded

from the history as well. This was a VERY small set of numbers, so

statistically it's insignificant. I just thought it was interesting.

Beginning with an ancestor born in 1634 and stopping with anyone born after

1900, this is what I saw.

The minimum age of death was 26.

The maximum age of death was 98.

The average age of death was 63.

Over half of them (57%) lived to be older than 65.

If I exclude anyone who was born before 1900 but lived into the 1900s, the

average age of death actually went UP to 68.

I don't know if anyone else thinks this is interesting, but I did. I think the

concept that some people have that before modern food/modern medicine, people

just didn't live very long is just plain wrong.

Terri

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[Guest guest]

Thinking off the top of my head here...life expectancy, defined as the

average lifespan of a human, indeed may have increased. It's very

plausible that the distribution of lifespan, and therefore the average,

has shifted upward if the variability is changing, especially in a non-

symmetrical way. I.e. People aren't really living longer, but the

number of children who ARE now living due to the 'eradication' (or

reduction) of childhood diseases is no longer pulling the distribution

down, not to mention the number of people now living due to transplants

and other modern medicine. Unfortunately, the effects of diet and

health can't adequately be extracted and reported due to the

confounding effects of drugs and other procedures/medications. Would

be an interesting study to try though if I had time and access to a

database.

[Guest guest]

One area that modern, western style medicine is very good at dealing

with is emergencies and accidents. Statistically, if you save the life

of one young child that is gravely injured in an accident, you've

greatly increased the average lifespan.

Many advances have been made in maternity/prenatal/newborn care that

will also statistically increase the average lifespan. 200 years ago I

may not have survived my pregnancy due to preeclampsia.

I think that it's in the day to day living and chronic health

conditions that things have deteriorated.

Lynn

[Guest guest]

I've been doing a lot of interesting research. In the US, we have this idea

that we are the most " advanced " , that people live longer here and that people

are healthier here. The information I've been finding does NOT support this

idea.

According to the CDC, for infant mortality, the US ranks 29th (tied with

Slovakia and Poland) out of 37 countries reporting. That means 28 countries

have a LOWER infant mortality rate than the US!

We don't do much better for life expectancy. The US ranks 26th out of 37

countries reporting.

One other interesting piece of information. Healthcare costs per person in the

US is NEARLY DOUBLE the healthcare cost per person of any other country, even

those with higher life expectancies and lower infant mortality.

With all the money that is spent in this country on healthcare, you would think

that we'd have less infant mortality and a greater life expectancy. But that's

not what's happening. With all these statistics, do you think any of ther

" experts " might ever come to the conclusion that it has something to do with

what people in this country eat??????? All the money spent on healthcare can't

even begin to make a dent in the consequences of eating fake, chemically

manufactured, empty " food. "

Terri

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