Age isn't what it used to be

[Jdsk]

...
At best evolution had designed our body to have a service life of some thirty years, whilst society has almost tripled the expectancy - there's only so much you can do with a body, whose cells (unlike plants and some animals) actually have a count down/auto destruct sequence embedded in them....

I don't know of any scientific evidence that we have "a service life of some thirty years". Where we have records we know that people lived to well over that. The change in average life expectancy is due to decrease of avoidable causes of death.

Jonathan

[Jdsk]

Latest figures, which include the effect of the outbreak:

Screenshot 2024-01-11 at 16.14.45.png
https://www.theguardian.com/society/202 ... n-a-decade

Yep. Rising life expectancy has stalled.

Are we not surprised?
...

If you take COVID out of the equation the recent stall has not been seen everywhere. We should look for causes of why the UK is different.

Jonathan

[pwa]

Latest figures, which include the effect of the outbreak:


Screenshot 2024-01-11 at 16.14.45.png
https://www.theguardian.com/society/202 ... n-a-decade

Jonathan

Yep. Rising life expectancy has stalled.

Are we not surprised? At best evolution had designed our body to have a service life of some thirty years, whilst society has almost tripled the expectancy - there's only so much you can do with a body, whose cells (unlike plants and some animals) actually have a count down/auto destruct sequence embedded in them....
At best we have been designed as sex machines, the point after which mother nature no longer gives a thought about us... and if you think that's hard try being a crane fly, a male mantis or a male ant
We're not meant to live forever

However fit one is right now relative to one's age, we are on a downward trend with an inevitable end, and the tricks needed to maintain reasonable function become more and more prominent as the years pass. My mother now has about 15 pills a day to control this, that and the other, and just about manages to get to the shops by herself when the weather allows. Every year she sees her abilities decline, and she plans for when she can no longer do things. But she is nearly ninety and never expected to live so long. Without modern medicine she would have left us in her late 70s.

At that time she came to visit us one day and my wife was concerned that she seemed unwell. Agitated, out of breath, feeling faint. My wife got her in the car and took her to a doctors' surgery. They told her to drive directly to a hospital in Cardiff. She was looked at there and my wife was told to get her back in the car PDQ and take her to another hospital where an urgent heart condition could be dealt with. Waiting for an ambulance for that transfer might prove fatal, she was told. A day later my mother had her pacemaker fitted and her health picked up. Modern medicine at work, in an imperfect way.

[Jdsk]

When asked my age enquirers are often amazed and place me at 10 to 15 years younger than I am. I am convinced that the cycling and the fitness it endows is a factor in that.
...

It's just about impossible to tell what has caused what in an individual.

...

How old people look and how old people feel are both getting a lot more attention eg:

"How old are you, really? The answer is written on your face":
https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/sc ... -your-face

"The Gene That Makes You Look Older Than You Are":
https://time.com/4311822/gene-aging/

Jonathan

[Cugel]

Humans have a preference for the visual so tend to judge everything, including age, by how things look. But there are many other ways to gauge someone's "age", not least of which is behaviour, including mental behaviour.

People can have all sorts of looks. What these looks signify is highly confused by mass media fashions in "looks". Personally I prefer to observe how people act & think. Some people of few years seem to be very old before their time, when observed via behavioural criteria and attitudes. Others of many years still seem wonderfully child-like. Mind, yet others seem awfully childish.

[cycle tramp]

Deleted

[Jdsk]

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However it's still better than being in working class Victorian England when life expectancy dropped to about 19 years of age....

Have you got a source for that, please?

Jonathan

[cycle tramp]

Deleted

[Pinhead]

...
However it's still better than being in working class Victorian England when life expectancy dropped to about 19 years of age....

Have you got a source for that, please?

Jonathan

Yes that is crap

[cycle tramp]

Deleted

[Carlton green]

...
However it's still better than being in working class Victorian England when life expectancy dropped to about 19 years of age....

Have you got a source for that, please?

Jonathan

Yes, data is almost always good - though sometimes it can mislead.

This Wikipedia article might help, certainly there are and were some shocking low life expectancies. There’s certainly some link between life expectancy and wealth or rather poverty.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy

[Jdsk]

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However it's still better than being in working class Victorian England when life expectancy dropped to about 19 years of age....

Have you got a source for that, please?

Nope... it was in a book from the library ages ago.. however a quick look on Google does suggest that the Victorian lower class worker's average life span was 25 years, but there is a differential between those working in the city (access to food with vitamins, alcohol, smog, and interesting social diseases from... er... ladies of a certain type of viture) to those in the countryside (cleaner air, more chance of eating food with vitamins, less social diseases, bit more chance to be killed by a threashing machine, horse, or livestock).. if you were middle class the web indicates you might make it to 50 or 60 if you were lucky...

Yes, there were massive inequalities.

Unfortunately it appears that there still are, as cited upthread.

Jonathan

[cycle tramp]

Deleted

[Psamathe]

...
At best we have been designed as sex machines, the point after which mother nature no longer gives a thought about us... ...

There is an answer to that. And with increasing numbers adopting ...

Ian

[Cugel]

Nope... it was in a book from the library ages ago..

Yes, there were massive inequalities.

Unfortunately it appears that there still are, as cited upthread.

Jonathan

It's also worth remembering that figures both in the past and present are influenced my several major life steps and the care and treatment which is provided if things don't go to plan - things like being born and giving birth, not being injured in a work accident, or avoiding diseases, as well as treatment for any issues which are due to someone's DNA... there's probably some figures somewhere of the number of people trampled by horses whilst in Queen Victoria's London

Not that long ago (in Victorian & Georgian times) there were many death certificates or similar records stating, "Died of teeth". This covered a multitude of detailed death modes but fundamentally referred to the deader's inability to eat properly because of a serious mouth infection, as well as the spread of gob-rot jurms to various other critical body parts. The seriously rotted and diseased teeth were also an indication of a generally damaging life circumstance - although not always, as plenty of the well-orf had gob-rots too. (The slave-grown sugar in everything didn't help, especially with a lack of modern dental hygiene techniques).

Nowadays there is a serious increase in gob-rot due to essentially the same causes: poverty, sugar and self-indulgence or self-neglect in dietary habits. NHS dentistry is disappearing fast but the private variety is very expensive to unaffordable for many. We still have tons of sugar in every package of soopermurkit junkfud. The poor find themselves unable to achieve a full nutrition. Even the well-orf suffer from lives of self-indulgence, self-neglect and self-abuse. Add in also the various eating disorders emanating from cultural scarifying.

Humans, eh? We're so destructive and inept. "It's a wonder we can even feed ourselves". But of course, many can't, in one way or another.

Will "Died of teeth" become the new cancer? Bad toofs and associated gob-rots & plaques may already be a factor in many heart diseases and early dementias. And who knows what else.

PS for those who require "the data" - find it yourself.