Blue Zones - Places In the World Where People Live to 100 and Stay Healthy
singularityhub.com
singularityhub.com
That's not true. In Sardinia and Okinawa studies have shown that genetics play a significant factor in longevity. For example, Sardinians have historically tended to reproduce later in life. This has favoured genes that contribute to longevity, or at least it has selected against those that contribute to early mortality.
A healthy lifestyle will contribute to a longer life, but it's misleading to imagine that everyone could achieve 100 if they just made the effort.
That link doesn't reference your exact idea, but I thought that was part of that. However, since I can't grep my collection I can't prove if that's actually something Heinlein said, or a confabulation on my part.
Genetics of life history in Drosophila melanogaster. II. Exploratory selection experiments. Genetics. 1981 Jan;97(1):187-96. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6790341?ordinalpos=139...
...and a long line of work following from there.
Besides these more direct effects, I wonder what other unintended effects mass-increased longevity would have. Imagine everyone retiring around 75 instead of 65, 30+ years of retirement instead of 20. The younger generation, either through private sense of obligation or government taxes are going to be facing a huge burden. With that kind of economic burden, there may be even less incentive to have children, especially at younger ages, and thus even fewer tax payers to support the retired masses. At the same time lot of the jobs that would've been available to younger rising stars remain occupied by a group that is retiring later and later. So there would be a squeeze on both the expenses front and the income front. For an individual, especially if you could _expect_ and _plan_ for a longer life, it may be individually fulfilling, but on the whole, I'm not sure that it would result in some kind of ideal society, especially in the transition.
Sure, if you have a stress free life you'll live longer. If you eat 30% fewer calories, you'll live longer as well.* But you'll be poor and hungry.
*Although that was a really crappy study. They excluded all the primates that died from the statistical analysis.
Perhaps there's no "wrong" way to live life, and the people who die young and the people who die old are both happy with the choices they made.
One notable difference was that the whole part about Sardinia revolved around a group of people roasting whole lamb and then washing it down with copious amounts of wine. "Low on meat" diet, right :-)
As far as I remember their conclusions were (a) eat less (b) stay active (c) keep an interest in life. With (c) being the most important part.
"The only way to determine whether a cluster is a "real" cluster or just a "chance" cluster is to do a full scale epidemiological study, which is an expensive and time consuming process, and may still give disappointing results." http://pmep.cce.cornell.edu/profiles/extoxnet/TIB/epidemiolo...
The whole thing immediately looks very suspicious if you go to http://www.bluezones.com/ Obviously somebody is out to build a cult and make a lot of money.
Sub points Excersize can lead to stress - incorporate a lifestyle of excersize Have good relations with family -- less stress but out of your controll often Organic food is good.