Aging Myth #1(of 6) People Are Living Much Longer Hardly a day goes by when someone doesnt remind us of how we are living much longer now than we used to. As surprising as it may be, according to Dan Georgakas, author of The Methuselah Factor, 1995, the life span of a human being has not changed since recorded time. With the event of good sanitation practices, septic systems, and, later, antibiotics, the collective average life span of a given population has increased. In the 1700s, the average person lived for 20 to 40 years in Europe. Today, we live, on the average, to our mid-seventies. This increase did not occur because individuals are living longer, but because there are significantly fewer deaths caused by childbirth, infant deaths, and infectious diseases spread by the lack of sanitation. Georgakas says that once someone reaches the age of 60, someone in todays world lives no longer than the people did at the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Dr. McDougall says in Twelve Days to Dynamic Health, 1991, that once a person in the 1970s reached the age of 45, he only lived about 6 years longer than a person who lived back a hundred years before that time. We no longer die young of acute, infectious diseases and at childbirth. We primarily die of chronic diseases like cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and strokes, which are usually preventable by our diet and lifestyle choices. How long do the old age specialists, gerontologists, say we are designed to live? Up to 100 years old, and in good health. |
