How To Improve Your Average Longevity

The number of years of existence determined by heredity or genetics at the same time by certain environmental factors is termed as longevity. Average longevity and maximum longevity are the two types of longevity.

Average longevity – is commonly known as average life expectancy which refers to the age wherein half of the persons who were born in a specific year could have died. Maximum longevity is the oldest age in which any person lives. Average longevity is affected by both heredity or genetics and environmental factors.

Average life expectancy – also means life span. This differs with vulnerability to diseases, accidents, homicide or suicide. This is calculated for people at any age. With few exceptions, 30,000 days is the average life expectancy – 40,000 days if you are fortunate. Though, 2,000 years ago, the average human life span was less than twenty years or about 7,000 days.

Bacteria, accidents, predators, changes in weather and insufficient supply of dependable food source were the causes of short, dirty and vicious existences. This is so, if people survived birth. Infant death rates ranged from 300 or 400 per 1,000 live births in the eighteenth century, while there are only 7 deaths per 1,000 live births today.

Japan has the longest average longevity of 80 years, as reported by government figures. Likewise, in the United States, a baby who was born these days can anticipate to live up to 77 years. Fascinatingly these numbers keep on rising not only to those developed countries but all throughout the world.

Some environmental factors that affect average longevity:

1. Diseases like cardiovascular diseases and Alzheimer’s disease

2. Lifestyle such as smoking and exercises

3. Toxins – environmental pollutants encountered primarily like air and water pollutants are continuing dilemmas. Poisons in fish, bacteria and carcinogenic chemicals in drinking water and airborne contaminants are major causes in shortening life span.

4. Social class – the impact of social class in life expectancy is the outcome of decreased access to goods and services especially on medical care that stresses out to most tribal minority groups, the poor and many adults.

The depressing part regarding most environmental factors is that people are responsible for them. Denying sufficient care to everyone continues to contaminate our environment, failing to attend the essential causes of poverty have indisputable consequences. They needlessly cut down lives and significantly increase the charge of health care.

Some significant factors effecting life expectancy includes: gender, genetics, access to health care, hygiene, diet and nutrition, exercises, lifestyle and crime rates. Recent increases in the rates in lifestyle diseases, like obesity, diabetes, hypertension and heart diseases may radically slow down or reverse the tendency toward increasing life span in the developed universe.

Customary arguments have a tendency to favor socio-environmental factors also affect life expectancy; historically, men have usually consumed more alcohol, tobacco and drugs than women in most societies so they are more likely to die from plenty of associated illnesses like lung cancer, tuberculosis and cirrhosis of the liver.

Men are more susceptible to die from injuries, either it is unintentional like car accidents or intentional such as suicide, violence or war. Men are also at risk of dying because of most primary causes of deaths in the U. S. which include: cancer of respiratory system, accidents caused by motor vehicles, suicide, liver cirrhosis, coronary heart diseases and emphysema.

Based on socio-environmental effects on mortality, women still have prolonged life expectancy. This genetic difference happens since women have more resistance to sickness and other degenerative illnesses.

To improve average longevity, some of the ways to follow are:

1. Diet and nutrition – eating the right and nutritious food will help improve life span. Diseases like diabetes, heart diseases, hypertension, obesity and others can be avoided by taking balanced and nutritious foods.

2. Exercises – doing physical activities regularly, help people in lowering their weight and will get rid of related diseases because of weight.

3. Taking vitamins – it has been proven that taking good multivitamins will aid to add life span. Multivitamins act as fillers to the diet for nutrients and minerals that the body needs.

4. Lifestyle – by improving your way of living, like minimizing smoking, use of drugs and other vices.

Want to Live an Extra 10 Years?

Longevity is the Quest of Many Individuals

Instead of worrying about the quality of life we are given (or self created) we are eager to extent our longevity. Evolutionary biologists, who theorize about why some organisms naturally live longer than others, ask if there is any reason to believe that maximum human life span, already at the upper end of longevity among mammals, could be increased at all even as researchers on aging, spurred by new experimental breakthroughs, increasingly ask, Why not. At present, the mean life expectancy in developed countries is about 70 to 80 years while the documented record for longevity is 122years. Separately, geneticists studying long-lived people appear to be narrowing in on a gene common to centenarians that promotes longevity.

Aging

Aging is inevitable and is something that all humans will have to eventually face. Aging is a summary term for a set of processes, which contribute to health deterioration and ultimately to death with the passage of time (calendar age). In other words any process, which contributes to age-related decline in performance, productivity and health is a component of the aging process that deserves our attention and intervention.

Radicals

Radicals can damage cells by reacting with cellular components; this type of damage is called oxidation and can result in serious injury to cells. The traditional theory that longevity and rate of aging are determined by metabolic rate and the rate of production of free radicals has had broad appeal as an explanation for why some animals live longer than others. Animals that live fast, so the theory goes, will die young, because high metabolism produces free radicals at a high rate. According to this model, which is known as the metabolic rate/oxidative stress theory, long-lived animals should have high concentrations of antioxidant enzymes in their tissues and low concentrations of free radicals. Antioxidants can cancel out the cell-damaging effects of free radicals.

Antioxidants

While free radicals attack our cells and pollute our bodies, antioxidants allow us to fight back. Antioxidants are compounds in fruits and vegetables that may be helpful in avoiding chronic disease. Examples of antioxidants include beta-carotene, lycopene, vitamins C, E, and A, and other substances. They act as “free radical scavengers” and hence prevent and repair damage done by these free radicals. Antioxidants also help reduce inflammation, keep arteries flexible, and preserve the genetic material every cell contains to prevent mutation. It is interesting to note that, in the normal concentrations found in the body, vitamin C and beta-carotene are antioxidants; but at higher concentrations they are pro-oxidants and, thus, harmful.

Prevention

In the medical and more reputable business community, anti-aging medicine means early detection, prevention, and reversal of age-related diseases. By using advances in antiaging medicine for disease prevention we can avoid certain conditions which would kill us early, however, this does not actually extend the maximum lifespan barrier. The role of antioxidants is a particularly popular nutrition topic in the media these days; in particular, their role in cancer prevention, anti-aging, and heart health. Resveratrol is a powerful agent in both prevention and treatment of many factors associated with decreases in our longevity and health. Resveratrol is the only natural product with such strong evidence to show it stops cancerous cell development at various stages. Resveratrol supplements may contain anywhere from 10-50 mg of resveratrol, but the effective doses for chronic disease prevention in humans are not known.

Supplements

Supplements are not a substitute for a healthy diet rich in fruits and vegetables. Antioxidants are also widely used as ingredients in dietary supplements in the hope of maintaining health and preventing diseases such as cancer and coronary heart disease. The anti-aging industry is offering a dizzying array of hormones and supplements. It is best to obtain these antioxidants from foods instead of supplements. If you are interested in taking antioxidant supplements, talk to your doctor about what is right for you.

Want to Live an Extra 10 Years?