Today's 5-year-olds will likely live to 100
nationalgeographic.com
nationalgeographic.com
Life expectancy is going down while chronic disease is going up. Most of it has to do with lifestyle in ways the average person isn't aware of.
The health care system is more capable than ever before. But, lifestyles that are poor to long term health are taking the trend in the opposite direction.
At least that is what you might be able to control.
Multiply that with the fact that alcoholism not only affects the person drinking, but inherited trauma is a really terrible thing. My life expectancy and quality of life have both been severely impacted due to the drinking habits of someone who hasn't even been alive for 20 years. Maybe mild drinking will only impact your person with say: a shittier night sleeping, but a good night's sleep is one of the best things you can do for your health - and isn't even noticable perhaps until you get a few weeks in a row of it, believe me.
It's a fine line for advice, as I don't feel I'm a teetotaler, but being a culture where drinking is seen as "perfectly fine, if under control" is also not exactly the right message. My country (USA) can attribute more than a half a million deaths every year to alcohol abuse. That's not a stat one should ignore.
I actually haven't had a drink all year (and little last year). I've cut out sugary soda as well - which could be even more impactful to my overall health.
As a 40+ year old (that's scary to type), just some observations, given perspective.
This has to do with the way billing works for healthcare in the US. It's billed as sick care.
And, most doctors have almost no training on things like nutrition. So the impact of that isn't something they can help with.
If I were to suggest self study I would look at a couple things:
1. The Blue Zones. These are areas that researchers have identified where people live longer and thrive for longer. Something like 10x the number of people live past 100. Much lower rates of disease. Looking at how they live. There's a good book on it at https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Zones-Second-Lessons-Longest/dp/....
2. A good book by a dietitian. I like "The Proof Is In The Plants". Despite the author being vegan and the book talking about plants, the book covers meat and dairy along with amounts that are healthy. All of the recommendations include explainations of how this is known. https://www.amazon.com/Proof-Plants-science-plant-based-plan...
The better health habits you can lock in now, the better -- it's only going to get harder from here on out to lay that foundation.
Smart things to get started on now include: skin care, at least SPF and moisturizing, posture - watch out for gluteal amnesia and "cell phone neck," hand/wrist/finger stretching and strain care, eating low-sugar, learning to cook, finding sports/physical activity you can enjoy long-term, taking care of your eyes, follow the 20/20/20 rule, scalp massage to reduce baldness if applicable. Also paperwork: start an organized system that's mirrored and on offline, and get a basic will set up.
Save up with better health and fitness before your 40 and being 40 won't exactly feel like the end of the world. Before 40 is when you should be doing all the things you note.
Is this a thing?
The way in which I've noticed most people get themselves in trouble when they didn't start from a position of impoverishment is simply because their response to problems is to, instead of noticing and addressing them, to normalize them and spend their energy making arguments to change nothing. Which is basically baby behavior: "no sleep, no food, no potty, wait why am I crying". Everyone does end up being in "poor health" someday, but it's often a case of how long you want to continue to struggle and preserve what you have, and some people seem to give up when they're, like, 17 years old.
I think Ozempic and other similar drugs that target the hunger/metabolic pathways will be game changers. While they are expensive and inconvenient now, looking at a horizon of decades, you could easily see them becoming widely adopted.
- Healthy food is becoming increasingly expensive and seen as a luxury. The amount of sugar and carbs in the "average" product has been increasing for decades.
- Working hours are becoming less equally distributed. A lot of people work way too much, even in highly skilled jobs like lawyers, medicine interns, game developers, while other work less.
- Worker rights are being rolled back and many working environments are becoming more competitive.
Which is terrible news because that's damn hard to fix without top-down initiatives, the likes of which the US has been allergic to since the '80s (though we didn't used to be).
[EDIT] By "visit" I mean for years, not tourists.
Please, enlighten us as to what we're not aware of. If we're to trust your take more than the article, which at least references research in the field.
However, lifespan is a crude metric. Healthspan is really what we should be targeting. I don't want to live to 150 if 60 of those years are spend miserable in a nursing home hooked up to machines keeping me alive.
“In 2021, an American was expected to live 76.1 years—down 2.8 years from the 2014 peak of 78.9 years. This backslide has erased all life expectancy gains since 1996, according to recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.” https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2022/life-expectancy-is-declini...
For more data check here: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/vsrr023.pdf
Granted we might reasonably exclude COVID when trying to figure out the trend, but even then it looks at best flat from 2010.
The decrease in life expectancy from 2014-2018 is well before the pandemic. Going forward when say pricing life insurance it’s worth considering pandemics or at minimum the the likely endemic nature of coronavirus variants becoming endemic.
"No", he said, "my generation might, yours is too unfit, too young, to live that long".
Not to take issue with your main point, but, I’d say that _medicine_ is more capable than ever before, but health care systems are struggling to deliver the benefits to growing populations, for lots of reasons like funding and budgets, education and misinformation, or ideology.
I think we at least can say we have them... :D
Jimmy Carter is 98. Kissinger is 100. Munger is 99. Buffett is 92, Dick Van Dyke is 97, Mel Brooks is 96,…
The body can last well into the late 90’s. It’s probably just a matter of treating people who get heart disease, cancer(s), etc that will get more people there.
The fact that some individuals survive longer than the average isn't an indication of the average outcome.
I sincerely hope that the trend does change direction, but I am currently skeptical.
Living in the U.S., though, there are some real problems with the healthcare system that came to a head at the same time as (and partly due to) the pandemic.
I just find it interesting that an someone would make predictions about drastically higher life expectancy during a period where the trend isn't even directionally accurate.
I suppose the downturns in 1967-69, 1992-1995, or, historically, the Spanish Flu period were also indicative of a massive break with the historical trend?
It's clear that COVID and overdoses are the overwhelming contributors[1].
1: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2022/...
Not some individuals - really wealthy individuals.
> Today's 5-year-olds will likely live to 100
Notably missing from the sentence: "born in rich families" and "who don't fall into the trap of lifelong substance abuse".
The handwringing about lifestyle changes is exhausting.
I'm not making judgements, just stating the fact. You obviously seem to have it all figured out though.
In other words, I'm not too worried about accidentally committing suicide or overdosing on heroin.
Whether it's a car accident, an earthquake, or an aggressive oncogene that gets activated by a cosmic ray or cup of diet pop, there are way too many things that will straight up kill us despite our otherwise healthy or privileged lifestyles.
Treating diseases does have an impact on extending the average lifespan, but early health interventions (that is, vaccinations, fewer babies dying from preventable illness or malnutrition, and women's pre- and peri-natal health care) has been far more impactful. Stretching that long-tail out in the future is going to require significant advances in treating and remediating aging and it's related indignities.
It does.
> Jimmy Carter is 98. Kissinger is 100. Munger is 99. Buffett is 92, Dick Van Dyke is 97, Mel Brooks is 96,…
The average life expectancy at birth in the US is 77.28 (men 74.5, women 80.20), and trending down. The country with the highest life expectancy at birth is Japan with 84.62 / 81.64 / 87.74.
That some people live to 100 doesn't mean people, on average, do. People, on average, don't. People with the right generics (and ideally good medical access) may.
> Jimmy Carter is 98. Kissinger is 100. Munger is 99. Buffett is 92, Dick Van Dyke is 97, Mel Brooks is 96,…
Nixon, Reagan, and HW died at 81, 93 and 94, Ossie Davis died at 87, David Tomlinson at 83, Sally Ann Howes at 91, Lionel Jeffries at 83, ...
As a quick example: in the US in 2020 and 2021, the life expectancy at birth was 76–77, but the life expectancy for 65 year-olds was 83–84: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db456.htm
Child mortality in developed countries has become very low, in the US it's around 5.5 / 1000. As a result, total life expectancy doesn't differ much between birth and 5: https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html
For men, LEB is 76.22, LE5 is 71.77 (so TLE5 of 76.77). For women, it's 81.28 and 76.76 (81.76).
That's a 6 month difference in TLE, probably not what'll make or break the nonsense that is "today's 5 years olds will reach 100".
> As a quick example: in the US in 2020 and 2021, the life expectancy at birth was 76–77, but the life expectancy for 65 year-olds was 83–84: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db456.htm
The article is about 5 years old, not 65 years old. Those are basically worlds apart: for obvious reasons, the older you get the more chances you have to keep living, because you've yet to die.
Per the above actuarial tables, men's TLE65 is 83, TLE83 is 89.91. But between the two the cohort drops from 80000 to 42000.
TLE89 is 93.45 but the cohort is down to 22000. TLE93 is 96.29, but 10500 remain. And you can keep going, the actuarial table's life expectancy never reaches 0. Yet the probability of a survivor (out of 100000) does, quite a long way before the end of the table.
I don't see much actually changing the aging process itself. Just making people survive longer.
“What is/will be the quality of life for most centenarians?”
Two paragraphs in, the article shoots its own title down:
> According to demographers, today’s five-year-olds have a better chance than ever of living to be centenarians, and by 2050 it’ll likely be ...
And then proceeds to offer zero actual reasons to believe even this more realistic claim, apart from some well-known but unfortunately irrelevant life expectancy trends.
I firmly believe that living long, healthy lives (100++ years) is totally possible. But biology is hard so I won't hold my breath.
According to the actuarial tables Social Security uses [0] to estimate lifespan, a female born today has an average life expectancy of 81. 76 if you happen to be male.
Let's just focus on the female population since that number is better. What is the maximum age a given population could reach, considering all environmental factors are perfect? Is it much greater than 100? If not, won't it be very difficult to remove all of the environmental factors from consequence?
We would have to greatly reduce risks like heart disease and cancer, which collectively claim 1.2m lives a year in the US [1], which will take massive dietary changes. We'd also have to eliminate most accidental deaths, which are currently over 200k / year and include fun things like car accidents and opiate overdoses.
Assuming we make all of the changes, our world will be pretty different. People will eat a lot healthier, drive practically nowhere, and abstain from drinking and drug use. A tall order on a short timespan, but worth it if we can get there.
On the other hand, most of us like to eat what we want, drive where we want, have some drinks here and there, and receive pain meds when our risky behavior leads to an injury.
[0] https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm
Although health and wealth have both backslid, and both affect longevity...
To come to an end, LE is a rather stupid single value estimator of the rather complex mortality graph.
Nothing fills you with guilt like having a person 30 years older than you deliver your Starbucks and groceries.
Russia's geopolitical ambitions has currently been limited to forcefully annexing Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Odessa from Ukraine. They will most likely get Donetsk and Luhansk and fail at permanently annexing the other regions.
Neither will lead to a large scale global war.
They also said that in 1914.
Most of the problems are pretty much self-inflicted (addiction, homelessness) than any fundamental wealth issue.
Although health and wealth have both backslid, and both affect longevity...
and boy, Natgeo is just ignoring that 800 lb climate change gorilla.
(Not a dig on Canada; Canada's lovely - from May to October)
Nobody can prove that we're one keystone-species extinction away from calamity, but nobody can prove that we're not, and the rate at which species are going extinct due to our involvement is such that it's not crazy to be expect big changes over small timescales.
1: https://www.ipcc.ch/assessment-report/ar6/
2: https://phys.org/news/2023-02-scientists-dangerous-feedback-...
Sources: AZ drought monitor: https://www.drought.gov/states/arizona
The most powerful nuclear plant is in AZ: https://electricenergyonline.com/article/energy/category/gen...
Innovations on pulling water from the hot, dry air: https://worldwaterreserve.com/source-hydropanels/
Solar adoption in AZ: https://azbigmedia.com/business/arizona-energy-industry/ariz...
The statement above could be wrong. You could also be wrong. (Certainly very few people are acting as though they believe that CO2 emissions are going to turn the Earth into an uninhabitable flooded fireball.) But techno-optimism beats pessimism, easy. If nothing else, it makes it easier to live with yourself.
Easy money for you since you can convert to a safe currency and then pay out in the worthless currency later.
If no country meets the requirements, we just fold and there's no deal. But if one does, you've got yourself free money. If you think you'll have trouble with obtaining units, we can run it like a swap in what you believe to be safer currency.
I'll need a written contract so I'll send someone to you if you're in San Francisco.