Impact of height and weight on life span | Hacker News Reader

Impact of height and weight on life span

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

19 pointselsewhen8 comments

Admittedly this is tough for me to read, as there is nothing I can do to change my height.

Of course they are trying to answer the entropy question. I find page 264 particularly interesting [1].

So basically, breast cancer isn't caused by obesity per se. But just having more breast cells. Or atleast that's my interpretation.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2393304/?page=6

Many men wants to be taller and many women wants bigger breasts. Yet both of those appear to shorten ones life span.

Maybe we should just be happy with what we have.

Length of life isn’t the only goal. Quality of life matters too.

Romantic relationships aren't essential for quality of life. In fact, romantic relationships are biologically designed for "preparing" you to become a mother-father couple for the purpose of child rearing. Sex and romance are ultimately for the good of the species, not the individual.

If you want to be happy, cultivate friendships.

Taller, more attractive people probably have an easier time making friends.

the Abstract refers to " data for decreased groups" and "a study of 1679 decreased men and women".

- i may be in decline, but at least i'm not decreased

This article is from 1992. For those in this field, has there been further development on this topic?

Not in the field, but evidence is strongly stacking behind the notion that lifespan is largely related to energy metabolism. [1]

Larger species tend to have slower metabolisms than smaller species, but larger specimens within a species tend to have faster metabolisms than smaller ones (eg smaller dogs live longer than larger dogs, but larger species such as humans live longer than dogs). It's thought that part of the reason behind this odd relationship, is because there are multiple factors behind energy metabolism. One being a species genetics, another being caloric intake for instance.

It get's further complicated when studying actual cellular pathways used in metabolizing energy (such as AMPK, MTOR). Recent (even Nobel prize winning [2]) research has shown that, these pathways don't just regulate energy metabolism, they also influence cellular/DNA repair [3]. The gist being, there's an inverse relationship, where the body doesn't do well at cleanup/repairing old cells when it's busy metabolizing and building new cells (such as when your eating/growing).

[1] - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7994661/

[2] - https://www.bluezones.com/2018/10/fasting-for-health-and-lon...

[3] - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5713320/

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