As I was cycling home today, I was thinking of my son who just turned 6 years old. In another 6 years he will be 12, another 6 he’ll be a student at 18, then a graduate at 24 etc.
At the end of block 8, I had a wonderful career in California. One night at a business dinner in a Scottish castle, I met the love of my life. The third time I met him, he proposed. In block 9 I retired from my job and moved to Europe, and my boss re-hired me to work remotely. OH and I started a consulting business together. Now in block 12, I have already outlived previous generations. However, my sibs are all in their 80s and still going strong–running the family ranch and businesses. So you never know. Don’t look back–look forward.
P.S.: I have something to strive for–OH’s family all lives to 100!
Quick summary: during the 20th century life expentancy rose by 30 years in rich countries. If this trend would have continued in the 21st century, 25% of women would live to 110 YO and 6% would live to 150 YO. Something happened along the way, and the analysis of current trends suggest a ceiling, max 15% of women will reach 100, and max 5% of men.
One interesting follow-up question discussed in the SA article is to think about “healthy years” instead of total years.
The fun implication for men is that no matter how self-righteous we are, the death cause will probably be linked to stubbornness. Huge risk factor.
That is massively important point. There seems to be a lot of evidence coming to light that apart from some genetic probability, the odds of getting many old-age diseases depends greatly on lifestyle choices in earlier years.
When this is mentioned, some people think it means forgoing all that they enjoy in life so they can tack on a few more years but this simple not true and is akin to people coming up with weird and wonderful reasons why they should continue smoking.
There was a chap in Business Insider magazine this week who took up cycling when he was 75 years old. He’s now 96 and still cycling and still enjoying many other aspects of his life as he’s still fit and healthy.
But seriously, somewhere I read that at least for us poor guys, if we were to live long enough prostate cancer would get us. Seems there is a fail-safe built in somewhere and isn’t 120 supposed to be the upper limit?
You’ve got a one in nine chance of getting it and only one in 39 will die of it so in no way is it inevitable.
I was listening to a podcast this evening on taking supplements to increase longevity (short answer - waste of time but I think that was pretty obvious) but if you are 40 you have 1/750 chance of dying within the next year and if you are 95 you have a 1/6 chance.
That life expectancy 30y increase is deceiving - if you were male and past the early infancy death you’d be all set anyway. (women had an additional child birth risk).
In your case - i.e. when you already lived until middle age the gain wasn’t so big, and the final years are a prolongation of misery. No wonder these new space capsules are having such a spectacular run - all these seniors with prolonged life can’t bear its pains.
This. They have learnt to prolong lives no doupt, with bags of pills plus more pills to ease the side-effects of those pills, a few stents, a bypass, a transplant here and there, you name it, they can do it all the way to hook up people to machines, from mobile to immobile ones.
The thing today is not to survive but to decide - each for oneself - how to survive.
Do I want to ruin a wonderful life by going through all the possible but painful and cumbering prolonging possibilities up to the stage when alzheimer hits me and I can’t even reminisce my beautiful life anymore?
I appreciate you’ve got me on your ignore list but this isn’t what they are talking about.
Current thinking is that if you end up, in your old age, having transplants, stents, Type II diabetes, chronic back pain and so on in your old age, you probably didn’t look after yourself earlier in life.
To give yourself the best chance of living healthily when you are in your advanced years, you need to live healthily in your earlier years.
There is little evidence that pill popping supplements will have any effect at all on a healthy person so it’s more a case of exercise, rest, and relatively healthy eating.
There is a substantial amount of evidence which shows this is the most important thing you can do to be healthy in old age.
Recently I feel like I have aged years in the space of a few months. I feel like I was static between 50 and 60 and then suddenly “KERPOW!” Hey grey beard, artheriitis, wild nose hair and everyday a new ouch.
It. makes sense if you think about it. Children grow slowly, then BOOM all of a sudden they shoot up like radishes on a cowpat, stay like that for a while then BOOM another growth spurt, sometimes even with some parts growing faster that others, the skull grows faster than the ear bones. It is suggested that is the reason why teens dont listen to their parents.
What I am trying to say is that we have growth spurts when we are young, so why not when we are old?
Uff! Now I need a nap.
There’s evidence that what you have experienced happens twice in life - once around 40 years old and once around 60 years old.
The body ages quite dramatically.
It probably explains that situation when you meet someone you haven’t seen for a year or two and you begin to utter “Don’t you look well…” but then quickly change your mind and talk about the weather instead.
I’ve always thought there is definitely an elderly person look which people either have, or they don’t have. There doesn’t seem to be any middle ground.
Although maybe perception changes as you get older too.
I disagree here. Unless you are pampered from birth there is no way you can look after yourself in the way suggested. Life happens and unless you have bad genetics your body repairs its self,
