Posted September 2, 2017: by Bill Sardi
Notice the word “hope.” Don’t be starting to expect you will live beyond what life insurance actuaries have planned or you will gum up their projected profitability schemes.
Before readers even get past the first paragraph of this report, I can hear many saying in the back of their minds, “Oh, I never want to live that long.”
That is because modern medicine has instilled into everyone’s mind an indellible image of wrinkled, feeble, drooling, mindless, incontinent, wheelchair-bound seniors as what they have to look forward to if they live exceptionally long. If that is the negative image you have of old age, watch for my next report that takes you to a geographical place where humans simply defy the biological clock hands of time, don’t need doctoring and don’t even look their age.
I recall the covert political effort on behalf of the life insurance companies in the GW Bush era when the President’s medical ethics advisor Leon R. Kass went on a speaking tour to say government will not fund technology that would cause humans to live beyond the years God intended. Dr. Kass actually gave a speech before an audience of Jewish seniors trying to talk them into rejecting any life-prolonging technology and into dying on time.
With that in mind, we skeptically read a breaking news story that follows other recent reports that place a limit on the human lifespan. The headline at Yahoo News says: “Scientists say human lifespan has limits.” Makes one wonder if they are getting humans who are commonly living into their tenth decade now to set their expectations lower.
Don’t think efforts to cull human populations aren’t underway. I’ve cited the British Health System, under threat of financial collapse, has been intentionally withholding water from fragile, infirm (overmedicated?) nursing home patients to dehydrate them, a form of death that leaves no fingerprints.
In 1993 a new program in the US to vaccinate nursing home residents against the flu killed 92,000 seniors and the whole fiasco was hidden from view. Don’t think programs to cull human populations aren’t underway.
I can hear these words whispered behind closed doors: “Whatever you do, don’t give the masses the hope they can live that long.”
But enough of that for a moment, let’s pause to read what researchers in The Netherlands actually reported.
Dutch researchers say after analysis of 75,000 deaths in Holland they pinned the maximum human lifespan for females at 115.7 years and 114.1 years for males. That doesn’t mean any significant portion of the population in developed countries will live that long, but a few will.
While the number of people in The Netherlands living to 95 years of age has tripled in recent times, the maximum lifespan has not budged, say researchers.
Yes, but grouping everybody who is not making a concerted or directed effort to live longer into the same pool for analysis is a flawed approach. The problem with analysis like this is that it aggregates all of the data into an average as if you must be average.
Smokers (who live 10 years less), over-eaters, drug abusers, people who frankly don’t want to live long, are clumped in with the few that are actually attempting to be the first generation of humans who consume an anti-aging pill.
Right now, the few people who do live beyond 110 years (super-centenarians) do so for what appears to be disparate reasons. One super-centenarian attributes their superlongevity to smoking a cigar, another to their nightly glass of wine, yet another to eating chocolate. Pray tell, what to make of those stories? Actually, I sorted them out and all of them point to a known biological mechanism – hormesis (hor-mee-siss).
Scientific American covered this story a couple of years back in their report entitled: “What doesn’t kill you…” As researcher Mark Mattson instructs: A little bit of something bad may be good for you.
Dr. Mattson says lifestyles that are not biologically challenging do not breed longevity. Overabundance of convenience foods, lack of physical exertion (couch potato society), what Mattson calls a “precipitous diminution of biological challenges” has reversed some of the advances in life expectancy.
Yes, humans are living longer but could live a lot longer if they re-introduce certain biological stressors like fasting and/or consumption of plant molecules (like resveratrol) that mimic food deprivation. Mattson suggests pungent and bitter molecules in plants such as garlic and onions may have beneficial effects by activating internal antioxidant defenses.
According to Mattson, a slight amount of biological stress (exposure to mild radiation like radon gas; food deprivation (fasting) and molecular mimics of the same (resveratrol, garlic), or in the cases of super-centenarians that drank modest amounts of wine, smoked a single cigar or ate a limited amount of chocolate, maximum lifespan could be achieved.
Of course, humans don’t need to smoke cigars or guzzle down inebriating wine to live longer. They can consume a measured amount of molecules found in red wine (resveratrol, quercetin) or garlic (allicin) to stress their body just enough to activate internal defenses.
According to current research, it is possible to biologically engineer an indefinitely long lifespan. This is especially true if a longevity seeker recognizes what causes the human body to age.
While the research community keeps pointing in different directions so as to prolong their research grants, the unequivocal driver of aging is overmineralization. This means known strategies (avoidance of supplemental iron, copper, calcium overload; use of mineral binders/chelators) can be applied.
The deception is glaring and it makes a careful analyst like me wonder why such drivel is even considered for publication in scientific journals and released by news media except to take away the hopes of modern man to live many decades free of the ravages of aging.
Don’t think Social Security doesn’t know humans are going to continue to live longer and longer. Even Social Security actuaries realize further gains in life expectancy cannot be halted. By the year 2090 they predict American men will have gained 5.6 more years of life expectancy, women another 4.7 years. That is the intermediate projection. The best-case life expectancy may be extended another 10.5 years for men and 8.9 years for women according to a report published at Forbes.com.
Chris Conover, author of The American Health Economy Illustrated, notes that: “over the past half century, 100% of the increase in the size of government was attributable to growth in tax-financed health care.” Since 1929, U.S. health expenditures have totaled nearly $60 trillion. Nearly $30 trillion of that has been spent just within the past decade, Conover reports.
We may just end up with a society of debilitated super-seniors being taken care of by all the young adults. There won’t be any jobs but to take care of the aged. What a perverse society that would be!
Unfortunately, we are already living in that society. Unless “hormesis” becomes a voluntary practice outside of the practice of medicine, we are going to see this nightmare continue to unfold.
Hormesis also goes by the name “the Mediterranean Diet.” But its full benefits only go to those who limit their food intake and practice intermittent fasting (just don’t eat till 12 noon and you kick in the hormesis effect) or limit their wine to a glass or two (and it needs to be aged wine that is loaded by polyphenols like resveratrol and quercetin), and even then daily long-term wine intake can lead to cirrhosis of the liver. Why not a red wine pill? That idea has been around since 2004 and has yet to really catch on.
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