If in the past, life expectancy was 50ish, and is now expected to rise to 100, would this mean that signs of aging (grey hair, wrinkles, bones and muscles becoming weaker) would happen later in life at around 70-80?
In: Biology
Average life expectancy is an average. This is something that people often forget.
If a family walks in, including a mother (31), a father (33), a baby (1), a toddler (3), and a grandpa (67), the average age of that group is 27. If they all died together in a car crash, the average life span of that family was 27. Do you see how that kind of number works?
In times past, we lost lots of people in infancy and early childhood. Ages 0-5 were the danger years. About 45% of babies died.
If you survived those years, and childbirth if you were a woman (around 1 in 30 births were fatal) then you had a pretty good shot at making it to 65.
65 was the average life expectancy for a human being who survived infancy for most of history.
Then came three amazing innovations:
Antibiotics
Vaccinations
The Sanitation Movement
These three things have extended the average life expectancy by 20 years.
(The Sanitation Movement is the reason we have sewer systems, the reason we do not have public spittoons, the reason we wash our hands after going to the loo, the reason we have food safety standards, and the reason we have PSAs right now about keeping a safe distance and wearing your mask.)
So, ageing in the future will likely continue to look like ageing has looked in the past. We have not prevented ageing. We have allowed it to happen. And that’s great, because dying young sucks.
Latest Answers