Why are we living longer?

[kloofnek]

Anyone got any theories as to why people a living longer ?

[starone]

I take a few pills which I think help. If it had not been for the discovery of penicillin I would have died sixty years ago - not long discovered then so I am glad of that. Otherwise, medicine itself, including surgery, has made great strides.

[emmie]

the usual things, generally better diet, national health service, eradication of many diseases that would have killed you, particularly children. Better medicines, understanding of how the body, mind works, not sure really can add more, loads of reasons.

[tamborine]

How long is longer? My OH was 62 when he died but his g'ma was 99 while his mother was 95.

[jno]

better health, better food, fewer wars (men), less dying in childbirth (women)

[EDDIE51]

I and at least 3 of my family would be dead long ago if it was not for prompt hospital treatment using modern techniques.

[emmie]

for every long lived person there are any number dying early from cancer, obesity, heart disease, my o/h was in early sixties so didn't get his 4 score years and ten.

[Sqad]

Not an easy question to answer......

Better food eh! but we are all getting fatter....diabetes and coronary artery disease is still a scourge....can't be that.

From what i can see it is all down to better health care.......antibiotics, heart surgery, anti-cancer therapy and transplant techniques..................................a
ll
this against our fatter, smoking and immobile population.

[emmie]

generally we do have access to better, more plentiful types of food, whether one takes it on board is a different matter, it's why i mentioned about heart disease and other associated problems with obesity.

[jno]

obesity is a relatively new phenomenon, isn't it, Sqad? (On anything like its current scale, I mean.) Our parents got by on austerity war and postwar diets ( if they survived the war).

If so then it may start to have an effect on life expectancy rates, as you suggest.

[Old_Geezer]

It's true, we must be living longer. Never before have I lived as long as I have today.

[tamborine]

My mother's genes are all long lived into their late 90s.....I expect to bore answerbank a lot longer, bad luck - lol

[jno]

I lived longer when I was one of Cleopatra's handmaidens in a former existence, OG. I avoided the post-Octavian purges and retired to my reed hut on the banks of the Nile, and died at 97.

[tiggerblue10]

Improvements in healthcare, more germ fighting products, cleaner environment (debatable!), general cleanliness. I'm just guessing here by the way.

[Old_Geezer]

But it's cumulative jno. That'd make you 118 now !

[bednobs]

em, isn't it three scoreyears ans ten?

[jake-the-peg]

We're not

At least in the US it's thought that the increase in obesity means that todays children may be the first to live less long than their parents.

http://thinkprogress....expectency/?mobile=nc

Can't find a UK link but I think the same applies over here too

[emmie]

i have always used that, but it's no matter as he didn't make it.

[Sqad]

Jake....i that what the OP meant by "we" ...is the present generation.

I agree with your comments re. the future generation (our children).

[jno]

healthy life expectancy still rising in England and Wales, jake. Not Scotland and N Ireland but that may be for other reasons

http://www.guardian.c...life-expectancy-rises

[Mosaic]

Part of the answer lies in how statistics are gathered and understood.
So for example if you were living in the All Saints area of manchester in 1841, huge numbers of children died at or around birth, or from childhood illnesses, meaning that in that time and place your chances of reaching your 5th birthday were small. In addition many women died in childbirth, and harsh working conditions combined with appalling living conditions meant old or ill people did not survive long.
So statistically, the average lifespan of that population was 17 years or so.
That means in reality that people lived a 'normal' lifespan if they didn't get carried off by diseases early in life and were tough enough to shake off the bronchitis and vitamin deficiency that plagued them all the time.
People have always had the same capacity to live a long time, but 'recent events' (historically speaking) like the conditions in the industrial cities up to 1945 have skewed our understanding.
And of course, better understanding of how to control infectious diseases has been an enormous boon to survival.