THE TRUTH BEHIND MODERN LONGEVITY AND LIFESPAN
“Average life expectancy at birth was short due to high infant mortality rates. If you made it to 21, you could expect a long life. In Medieval times, life expectancy at birth was about 30. If you could make it to 21, life expectancy went up to 64.”‘Methuselah’ from the first link below
“People who survived childhood most commonly lived 68 to 78 years.” Dr. Michael Gurven, UC Santa Barbara anthropologist, whose specialty is ‘hunter-gatherer lifespans,’ from today’s article There are so many myths floating around concerning health that some would argue the best option would be to discard most of what we think we know and question everything. I remember reading a study — probably 25 years ago — by an individual who made some strong and controversial assertions regarding modern lifespans. This person had written (without reciting from the genealogies of GENESIS) that if infant mortality were factored out of the equation, lifespans today are no better than they were thousands of years ago. Putting it another way; while modern medicine has certainly increased lifespan, it has not done so in a manner consistent with many people’s beliefs — via MORE DRUGS and MORE SURGERIES.
This point was driven home in a recent article by Ilana Strauss (Does Medicine Actually Make People Live Longer?) for of all publications, HUFFPO. After stating her premise, “The truth is, our early ancestors didn’t all die at 30 — and medical science has given us less of a boost than you think,” Strauss went on to make the same observations that most of us would share. Essentially that if we believe the standard line (many would call it propaganda), all things great and glorious pertaining to human health, past, present or future (long lifespan being chief among these), are the obvious result of technological advances in healthcare; primarily in the realm of “sanitation, antibiotics, and vaccines.” Before tackling the latter two, let’s take a deeper look at sanitation.
Strauss quoted widely from numerous interviewees, including Dr. Jan Vijg, a professor of GENETICS at New York’s Albert Einstein School of Medicine, and Daniel Lieberman, a professor of evolutionary biology at Harvard University in Boston. Here is a cherry-picked paragraph that if you read between the lines, reveals a couple more of those dirty little secrets — namely that thanks to our own stupidity, modern healthcare is not only completely and utterly unsustainable (HERE), but may be quietly killing as many behind the scenes as it’s heroically saving in front of the rolling cameras (HERE and HERE).
“In the grand scheme of human longevity, the contribution of modern medicine is minor. In fact, it’s barely moved the needle. Life expectancy only increased significantly a hundred years ago or so. And contrary to popular belief, this change had little to do with modern medicine. The most important thing is not medication; it’s sanitation. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, people learned how germs work and started doing things like building more sewers, boiling water for childbirth and making sure drinking water was clean. We can thank public health far more than we can thank medicines.”
Dr. Lieberman then went on to state of medications / vaccines; “They’ve basically got us back to where we used to be.” It’s not tough to grasp that people today are dying from a whole different array of diseases than in years gone by — mostly diseases of lifestyle whose names are familiar and can be found on these lists, HERE and HERE. It’s also not hard to see that medication is not doing what’s been claimed of it (DIABETES provides a classic example). But what about VACCINES? Everyone knows that vaccines are the single biggest reason for increased lifespans. Or are they?
Strauss went on to cite experts who showed that while mortality rates were certainly improved — at least temporarily — by the introduction of ANTIBIOTICS, they were barely budged by vaccines. In fact, if you look at THIS GOVERNMENT GRAPH published in 1999, you can clearly see that this assertion (vaccinations have dramatically decreased American death rates) is not only not true, their mass (forced) introduction in the early 1960’s actually corresponded to higher mortality rates.
What are my recommendations as far as living a long, healthy life are concerned? Avoid as many CHEMICALS as possible, eat a WHOLE FOOD DIET of vegetation and animals that ate vegetation (GRAINS are not vegetation), and get plenty of physical activity out in the sunshine (HERE or HERE). Oh, and don’t forget that eating less takes stress off your digestive system and helps manage the health of an aging gut (HERE). Other helpful DIY SOLUTIONS can be found simply by clicking the link. And since since it’s still a good way to reach the people you love and value most, be sure to like, share, or follow on FACEBOOK if you appreciate the free information found on our site.
