Humans live longer now than any time in known history. Is this commonly recited statement true? From a purely statistical standpoint, the answer is simple – yes. So why do I have so many paragraphs left in this article? Because statistics can be deceiving and without further investigation we can be led to some pretty erroneous conclusions.
Statistics are based on averages, so anyone in a population that dies extremely young (like an infant), will dramatically offset the figures of those who lived to a ripe old age. Infant mortality rates were very high in antiquity, so when all the numbers are crunched, the average figure for a society’s mortality rate will often end up between their 40s-50s. The modern statistical average for the United States has been reported to be 78.2 years (75.6 for males, 80.8 for females). When you add in the rest of the world, that average drops to 66.57. This huge drop is due to the addition of non-industrialized nations who also suffer high infant mortality rates.
Genetically, we are no different than our most ancient ancestors and they were not preprogrammed to self-destruct at the age of 40, like is so commonly believed. I would like to address three irritating myths regarding this subject or at least the ignorant arguments I have encountered when discussing this subject.
MYTH #1
Many people seem to believe that everyone dropped dead at the age of 40 – 45 prior to the 20th century. I have heard too many people confidently make this claim. They heard the statistic and simply assumed that everyone prior to the 20th century would have received their AARP membership at the age of 25. I am joking about the AARP, but if everyone assumes that people died of natural causes at the age of 45, then certainly 25 would be considered over-the-hill and time for the depends undergarments.
MYTH #2
Many people credit our modern longevity to medical advancements. Other technologies have been a greater contributor to human longevity than medical. Modern medicine has helped to lengthen the lives of some people, but has also prematurely cut short many lives, considering that adverse drug reactions are the leading killer of humans in the U.S. and medical errors is the third leading cause of premature death (for more details on this please read my posts under the category “Medical Mayhem” – especially “The Dangers In Modern Medicine“, “How Common Are Medical Errors” and “The Dangers Of Colonoscopies“.).
MYTH #3
Many of these same people use this statistic to support the idea that we eat healthier now and thereby live longer. People died younger because they ate all that animal fat. This proves that they have not given this subject much thought or research or they would know that heart disease and cancer were very rare just 100 years ago, so how could saturated fat be the cause of premature death?
I would assume that the average american has a difficult time understanding math and statistics. If this weren’t true, no one would buy lottery tickets or toss money down the drain at casinos. It is true that according to statistical averages, people died much younger prior to the 20th century. But the truth is, that their lives were taken by completely different causes than today. It was not cancer, diabetes or heart disease that was killing most people in times past. So what was killing them so young? Let’s take a look at what were the major causes of death in centuries past and see why other technologies played a greater role than medicine.
Starvation and Malnutrition
Probably the single highest killer of human beings throughout history. Due to droughts, locusts, floods, poverty and even war, food could be extremely scarce at times and millions of people died as a result. Children are far more vulnerable to kwashiorkor. Malnourished mothers have a higher likelihood of losing their babies, so infant mortality rates were very high among the poor as was the death of mothers giving birth (who were much younger than many mothers today). It was advancements in agriculture, distribution methods and food preservation that made it possible to get the food from one location to the area where the disaster had struck.
Communicable Diseases and Plagues
Bubonic plague, scarlet fever, small pox and a whole host of diseases wiped out many humans and once again, hit children the hardest because of their developing immune system. Medical advancements did less to help with this problem than did improved sanitation. When the garbage dump is located in the middle of town and human and animal excrement runs through the city streets, disease and plagues are inevitable. Finding a clean water supply also saved millions of lives. People in the past often drank extremely contaminated water. While visiting Saint Augustine, Florida recently, we noticed that many of the houses had cisterns in the basement that were filled from drainage of rain water from the roof. This was how they obtained their drinking water and attempted to purify it by adding chalk to the water. Many of the diseases that killed people in mass are still incurable to this day – we only prevent them by not living like pigs.
Infection
This is still one of the top killer of humans, but far, far less than before the advent of penicillin and more advanced antibiotics. Minor infections, which can now be cleared up with a simple antibiotic before going systemic, often became lethal in the past. Hunting and farming were both dangerous occupations that carried a high risk of injury, so many healthy people died as a result of an infection from even superficial wounds. Antibiotics and vaccines are the one area where modern medicine has saved millions of lives – unfortunately, we are now at a point where overuse of these drugs are quickly becoming a greater threat to human health. Hospital borne pathogens are now becoming resistant to most antibiotics.
War
It seems that the further we go back in history, the higher the death toll from war becomes. In the ancient times of melee warfare, the idea was to simply overwhelm your enemy with sheer numbers. If you found you were outnumbered, retreat became a suicidal option. Armies were engaged at such a close range, that turning your back on your opponent was certain death, so casualties were very high. These were very young men dying – much younger than today’s soldiers.
My wife and I were recently in Saint Augustine and took a tour of Fort Matanza where the Ranger informed us that the Spanish artillery soldiers started training at the age of 10, so they would be experts on the cannons by the age of 14. These deaths were often very young men losing their life (12 – 25), which would bring down the lifespan averages quickly.
We no longer have the stomach for the same level of losses from war as our ancestors did. Because of our ability to strike with accuracy from greater and greater distances, we suffer far fewer casualties. In the near future, more drones will be used in warfare, so we should see the death tolls from war decrease – at least on one side. In today’s modern warfare, the U.S. will lose less than a thousand soldiers within a year of war, whereas in the past they could lose over a thousand soldiers in a single battle lasting only a day or two.
For example, the U.S. has been at war in Iraq and Afghanistan for ten years now and the U.S. death toll is around 4,486. There were 3,108 Confederate soldiers killed in three days, on July 1 – 3, 1863 at Gettysburg. There were over 110,000 Union soldiers killed in combat throughout the Civil War and a total of 360,000 total deaths to just Union soldiers. These were very young men dying, so the average lifespan figures take quite a hit during periods of war.
Though modern medicine has contributed somewhat to the lower mortality rates from injury due to war, it is certainly the technology of the weapons and armor that has lessened the toll.
We can see that other technologies played a greater role in extending human lifespan than did modern medicine. At least where our ancestor’s causes of death were concerned. This is where this all gets rather ironic. If we examine this subject more closely than just a simple statistic or quick sound bite that we heard, we would see a completely different set of problems between then and now. We now NEED medical intervention just to reach the ages that our ancestors would have, if they could have adverted the problems that we have now solved (in the industrialized world). How do I know that they would have lived as long? Because many of them did, AND without any serious medical intervention.
In order to look at this clearly, we have to stop looking at the population as a whole and using averages to fool ourselves into the idea that we have improved our lifespan and quality of life so much more than the generations that preceded us. In order to do this we must remove the impoverished from the equation. Someone who lives in poverty today have a lot less problems than those of antiquity. Here in the U.S., even the most poor among us can get access to food and medicine, something unheard of in times past. This alone makes the average lifespan appear that everyone is living comfortably into our late seventies and eighties, while creating the illusion that everyone dropped dead at the age of forty in the past. Many bloggers (vegans and paleo dieters) love to debate about the diet and life-span of paleolithic humans, but we have little record from that period to really make a strong argument. For the purpose of this article, I would like to look back around 200 years ago in the United States as compared to the last couple of decades. This way we are looking at people from similar culture and genetic backgrounds.
The argument I often hear when the fact that heart disease, diabetes, cancer and other diseases were so rare 200 years ago, is that because they died so young, no one lived to an old enough age to succumb to today’s top killers. That excuse is beginning to run pretty thin now that we are seeing a higher frequency of these diseases in children. Obese and diabetic children were pretty much non-existent in the U.S. 200 years ago. What are the differences in the common diet then and now?
COOKING OIL: Two centuries ago, there were no processed vegetable oils, especially hydrogenated oils that mimic the properties of saturated fats (the hydrogenation process was not discovered until the beginning of the 20th century). Everything prior to 1900 was pretty much cooked in saturated fats such as butter, lard and tallow or tropical oils like palm or coconut. Given today’s belief, and governmental dietary recommendations, obesity and diabetes should have been rampant in children at that time with the diet being so rich in animal fat – yet it was not. Americans consume far less animal fat than they did just 50 years ago. Butter and lard consumption is a fraction of what it was prior to the war-on-fat started in the 1970s by the U.S. government. Since then, margarine replaced butter and Crisco took the place of lard. These are highly inflammatory trans fat and are used in nearly all processed foods.
SUGAR: Sugar consumption was very low in the 18th and 19th century. The average american consumed less than 30 pounds of sugar per year, whereas the average child today can eat as much as 150 pounds of sugar per year – and this is simply calculating the refined sugar and corn syrup consumed and does not account for the higher amount of starch consumed presently (8-11 servings of starchy grains). Modern grains have been bred to have a much higher carbohydrate content than grains from just 100 years ago. By the time today’s children reach 50 years of age, they will have consumed over 8,750 pounds of refined sugar – that’s more than 4 tons of sugar cycled through their arteries.
MODERN WHEAT: Today’s wheat is nothing like its ancestor. The modern high-yield, semi-dwarf wheat used today in processed foods and baked goods is a genetic hybrid of its ancestors. This wheat was not introduced into the human food supply until the 1960s and became 98% of the wheat supply by the 1980s. Since the 1980s, there has been a quadrupling of Celiac’s Disease and many other intestinal disorders, such as Crohn’s Disease, Ulcerative Colitis and other forms of IBS have been steadily on the rise. Researchers have found many other gluten intolerant diseases in patients other than Celiac Disease and have identified certain antibodies created by many people’s immune systems with the sole purpose of attacking wheat gluten (link). These antibodies are responsible for many other autoimmune diseases, such as Rheumatoid Arthritis (since dropping wheat from my diet, all of my joint pains slowly disappeared over the first year) . Here is a quote from a website called The Natural Recovery Plan.com (click here to read the entire article):
The hybridisation and genetic engineering of wheat has resulted in a staggering 500 fold increase in the gluten content of modern-day wheats compared to the wheat our forefathers would have known and this may be one of the prime reasons behind the massive rise in incidence of gluten intolerance and coeliac disease in recent decades.”
If you wish to read one of the best detailed research on the history of our modern wheat and the problems that have possibly arisen from it, I highly recommend Dr. William Davis’ terrific book “Wheat Belly” and visit his site here.
These are just some of the differences in diet from the 19th to the 20th century. Both sugar and vegetable oil (containing mostly linoleic acid) are highly inflammatory to the human body, especially the arteries. To read my documented accounts of the damage I have seen from linoleic acid that is infused to TPN patients, please read my article, “The Truth About Soy”. I also have a detailed article on the damage I experienced from the high sugar content infused with the TPN entitled “The Effects Of Sugar On The Arteries”. Besides seed oils and sugar, there are many other variables to consider, such as flavor enhancers (MSG and artificial sweeteners), preservatives, coloring and let us not forget GMOs (genetically modified organisms), such as “Round Up Ready Seeds” by Monsanto. (I will be covering this in an upcoming article).
It is not inevitable that our ancestors would have suffered the same fates as our seniors today had they lived longer. To be fair, I decided to look at a very small group of men who would have lived similar lifestyles. Let’s take a look at U.S. Presidents and you may find it quite surprising. If we look at the first 5 presidents, we will see that they all lived well beyond the age that those diseases should have showed up in one or more of them.
George Washington – 67
John Adams – 90
Thomas Jefferson – 83
James Madison – 73
James Monroe – 80
I wonder why these men didn’t drop dead at 40? John Adams was 61 years old when he was inaugurated. Why would the people vote in a president who was already past the average life-span of a human? Because these were men of means, they were able to avert all of the other problems that killed poorer people in huge numbers. Starvation, poor sanitation and infections were less of a threat to someone above the poverty level (safer occupations), so these men lived to ripe old ages. George Washington is the youngest death in this list, but he did not die of natural causes. Washington was bled to death by his doctor (medical errors were killing people prematurely even then). Had he not been bled to death, he still may well have died anyway, because he had a respiratory infection and this was a time before antibiotics. Even so, he still lived to the age of 67 (my father had his first heart attack at the age of 66 and without the use of stents, it would have been a fatal heart attack). Let’s take a look at the last 5 presidents (excluding Obama, because he is still too young to know his fate).
Jimmy Carter – Still living at 88
Ronald Reagan – 93
George H. W. Bush – Still living at 88
Bill Clinton – Still living at 66
George W. Bush – Still living at 66
Ronald Reagan is the only one who has passed on – and he was 93 at the time. So why would I list these last 5 when the only one that died was older than any of the first 5 presidents and the rest are still alive, even beyond the average age of death? Because I wanted to take a more detailed look to determine if all of these men would still be alive had they not had the modern medicine and procedures we have today. The bigger question that we have to ask ourselves is how in the hell did the first 5 presidents live to those ages without medical intervention – especially with all that animal fat they ate daily? Remember, even a ruptured appendix or gall bladder would have taken their life at that time. Certainly with modern antibiotics, George Washington would have survived the influenza and may well have lived as long as John Adams or possibly longer.
Ronald Reagan did live to the age of 93, but also had a serious tumor surgically removed from his colon in 1985 – without treatment he may have died many years earlier. Reagan also suffered with Alzheimer’s disease for at least the last decade of his life and many believe he began suffering signs of the disease even while serving as President. Without medical intervention, he certainly would have died at a much younger age. There is no record that Adams was not of sound mind (John Adam’s health history). Most all of the founders were very active even late into their lives. George H. W. Bush now suffers from vascular Parkinsonism and is confined to a wheelchair, John Adams was not in a wheelchair at 88. Bush Sr. also underwent a procedure to reduce his thyroid gland (radioactive iodine), because he suffered with Graves disease (the doctors overdosed him, destroying too much of the gland. Since then his life has been dependent on hormone medications). Adams also suffered hyperthyroidism, but his went untreated.
Bill Clinton is still with us, but clearly would not be without modern medicine. Clinton began having cardiovascular health problems at the age of 48 and underwent a coronary bypass surgery at the age of 58. It would be safe to say that Bill Clinton would have most likely never seen the age of 60 without modern medicine.
George W. Bush had precancerous skin lesions removed from his skin a few times. Of course we are told this was caused by that enemy-in-the-sky we call the sun – which was strictly put there to kill us. Could Bush have actually had more sun exposure than Andrew Jackson, who led his troops throughout subtropical states like Louisiana and Florida? “W” has had access to sunscreen his entire life, Jackson did not and lived to the ripe old age of 78 with a lead bullet imbedded in his chest from a duel he had while in his forties (Jackson’s health record). Bush could have died from cancer far before the age of 65 – and he didn’t have a bullet stuck in his chest for more than 30 years. Jackson had no access to sunscreen while in the hot Florida sun. Sunscreen could likely contribute to the high number of melanomas seen today, but it’s extremely profitable to the manufacturers (I’ll save that for another rant).
Many people today would never see their 60th birthday without some sort of medical intervention. So even though we solved all of the killers that plagued our ancestors, we found a way to level the playing field by creating a whole new set of killers. Though we have invented medications, treatment and procedures for many of them, they hardly improve on the quality of life. We may live longer, statistically, but we live sickly, racked with pain and dependent on medications starting at middle age. If we could improve our lifestyle and eat real food, like our ancestors, we could possibly live longer and with more vitality than ever before in history. Had our ancestors eaten the crap we do, without our modern medicine, their lifespans would have been much shorter and we may not have even survived as a race.
Modern technology has given us toxic food, but plenty of medications, surgeries and other medical procedures to keep us breathing well into our decrepit eighties. Unfortunately, the party is about to be over. The medicine is not improving at the same rate that our diet and lifestyle is decaying. We are beginning to see a shortening of the average lifespan that I believe will continue if something drastic is not done to fix the standard american diet (SAD). I will continue with more evidence on this is an upcoming post. I apologize for not posting anything in a while. I actually have dozens of drafts written that I simply haven’t had time to proof read and edit, so the next several articles should follow very shortly. Thank you for your patience.
Glad you’re back, Wolverine. Good post questioning our assumptions about longevity. The assumption *antibiotics save more lives* also deserves scrutiny. Abx may save lives in the short-term for acute infections but also shorten lives by creating gut problems when over-prescribed for conditions that would have cleared up just with good diet, rest, and a healthy immune system.
Thanks a lot. I did mention that I believe that antibiotics are now becoming more of a detriment because of the overuse. When I had a sepsis after my transplant (it nearly killed me), it was a very multi-drug resistant strain, Obviously a hospital borne variety. The doctors were really frightened that nothing was going to kill it. This problem is only going to get worse in the near future.
Thanks for also pointing out that their overuse may also be at the bottom of all the gut problems we are seeing on the rise in the U.S..
Terrific post. Posted to my Facebook page, hopefully people will read and learn.
Thanks, Bob. I really appreciate you spreading it on.
Very nice article on a subject and myth that bugs me too. I’m sure like a lot of us in the Western world we can all think of people who have heart problems or cancer in their third or forth decade.
If you can find a book called “blood red roses” it might interest you. It is about mass graves found at the battle of Towton (1461). The authors published tables of age at death from several battle fields showing a marked decline in age at death (in battle) through history.
Thanks Neal. Several people I knew died last year from stokes and heart attacks in their early 50s. With all of the obese and diabetic kids we see today, we are about to witness a shortening of the human life span soon. There will be many people die before their parents. I plan to cover that in detail in an upcoming post.
“Blood Red Roses” does sound like something I would enjoy reading. Thanks for the heads up on it. I’ll check it out.
Fab article. I’ve always had a suspicion that the ‘our ancestors didn’t live beyond 40’ line to be a load of rubbbish. There are communities today, pre-industrial, isolated groups who live to a ripe old age. The Ikarians (people from the Greek Island Ikaria) have reputed longevity and i’m certain their lives haven’t changed for hundreds of years. Good food, strong community, outside work etc. One thing i will disagree on though is vaccination. I’m a 100% paid up member of the anti-vaccine gang and i would urge you to go a bit deeper into that story. Leave you with this little taster though: The Rockerfellas bought Encyclopedia Britannica back in the late 1800s and as a result all negative commentary relating to vaccination vanished. A total whitewash. Keep up the good work!
Thanks for the comment Lisa. Statistics can be very deceiving and averages will show that we live longer, but the devil is in the details and certainly the reasons for better averages have been very deceiving.
The issues surrounding vaccines are very complicated. I agree there are modern day problems associated with them, mostly because the manufacturers have turned it into a profit driven business and overuse them – and of course, require some questionable additives to extend shelf life. I have done considerable research on the subject, but have not written any articles on it yet, because it is very complicated and easily misunderstood.
Vaccinations are not so necessary once a society has cleaned up its act with better sanitation, clean water, etc.. But in countries where conditions are still quite medieval, vaccinations have saved many lives. When you live in a sewer and infant mortality rates are sky high, statistics will not consider drug side-effects, simply mortality rates. By comparison, I also don’t consume grains and believe that they are ultimately not healthy for humans in the long run, BUT, if I lived in a country where starvation is the leading killer, I would gladly eat grains. Developing diabetes, arthritis, or heart disease in forty years is of little concern when you are facing starvation and death within a few days.
So, in the context of my article about human longevity, I believe that the vaccines in are still relevant and have saved many lives in impoverish nations. Yet, as I mentioned in the article, they do not play nearly as great a role in saving lives and improving public health as much as simply better sanitation and clean water has. One of the main reasons for the article was to illustrate why modern medicine HAS NOT played the larger role in achieving modern longevity for a society. Typically, everyone credits modern diet and medicine, when in reality they are both shortening life spans, while other technologies have contributed to longer life spans.
Now, the pharmaceutical companies have gone bananas with the idea of vaccinations and immunize for ten times the amount of diseases as they did when I was a child. I had to just live through chicken pox, measles, mumps and other childhood diseases. I believe that it is ridiculous that they inoculate babies for hundreds of diseases – quite a shock to a little system. Flu shots are another ridiculous idea. Given the fact that in order to meet the demand, the pharmaceutical companies must begin to produce them around two years prior to their release. How in the hell are they going to know which strains of flu will be going around two years from now? I think that Dr. Oz and Piers Morgan inadvertently proved the effectiveness of these snake oil shots when Morgan ended up getting the flu just days after Oz gave him the shot. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving individual than Morgan.
Thanks again for your comments.
You’re absolutely right. Better sanitation and a richer diet (absent of grains and sugar) are the primary factors behind our improved state of health…with regards to the so called ‘childhood diseases’ at any rate. I don’t know if you followed up with an article on vaccination but I’d love to read it when you do. The subject is vast and would take decades to unravel. The only thing I have noticed however is that the more an individual looks into the issue of vaccines the more likely they are to be against them – entirely. There are some excellent articles here http://www.vaccinationcouncil.org/
countless documentaries on youtube etc. I am so far into this now that I’d be considered an unhinged anti-vaxxer, conspiracy theorist crank. That said, I am entirely convinced that the practice of vaccination not only represents an understanding of human biology that is outdated (check out Gaston Naessen’s Somatids, Bechamp germ theory etc.) but was, from its infancy, born out of a callous, eugenicist mind-set and propagated for profit. It can boast not one single benefit to us and, I believe, is causing severe and un-monitored damage that is getting worse with each generation. Seriously – BIG subject.
Yes Lisa, the subject of vaccinations is a very hot topic at this time with extremely opposing views. I really should write a piece on it, but would have to do a lot more research first to absolutely confirm what facts I have and believe.
I think at the very minimum, we are now injecting far too many different illnesses into babies. Even non-life-threatening childhood diseases, like chicken pox, measles and mumps are being inoculated against. In my day, we just had to endure them and our immune system learned how to properly work because we did go through them.
Many of the diseases that we now inoculate for have not been seen in this country for more than a century and not necessarily because of the shots. Many of them came as a result of unsanitary conditions or people living in too confined of an area. Just our better sanitation would keep these disease away and there is probably no reason to vaccinate everyone at birth for them. There are certainly a lot more details to this topic and I hope to cover it one day soon. Thanks for writing.
Off topic. Glad your post came thru my mailbox, Wolverine. Just telling my hubs about you last night and was worried about you since you haven’t posted so long. You’ve been through such an extreme health ordeal that I just hope continue to do well.
Thank you for your concerns Charlene. I have been through some extreme health issues and many of those who also got the same transplant continue to pass on. Another one of my transplant friends died a couple of months ago, which left only me and one young woman as the last surviors from the group who received intestinal transplants at Jackson Memorial in 2010 (the last 2 out of 5). The young lady is in serious heath trouble and the doctors say she may require a second transplant.
So all things considered, I have not much to complain about. Though earlier this year I was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma, a rare form of cancer, which we caught very early. After treatments, it appears to be in remission at this time. All of this should give me plenty to write about in the upcoming months, so I hope to have something new soon. Thanks again.
Thank you very much for the info. I have suspected that refined grains and vegetable oils were the suspects themselves. Depending on which (witch?) Doctor you ask, I had, or did not have a heart attack. After five years of having to take stations for high cholesterol, I had an event. I suspect it was angina. The heart surgeon said I needed a quadruple bypass, but there was something else they found, Type 2 diabetes. This was probably the side effect of the stations. There is no good advice from those doctors for diabetes. My numbers are usually under 120 in the morning. Keeping the sugar down and the carbs plus eating fish and lean meats has kept my numbers low usually under 110. No thanks to those docs. I won’t give up eggs. Being in a semi rural area of PA, We get eggs locally and fresh! Also veggies grown locally. There is a butcher who owns his farm. No extra drugs or improper feeding. We can even get buffalo locally. Keep up the good work. I pray you get much better soon. Rob Frasca Tamaqua PA
Love your posts, Wolverine! This makes me especially grateful that I was raised as a Christian Scientist, without medicine or doctors, as was my 88-year-old mother. Subsequently, I studied Natural Health and learned vicariously about some of the things that you, unfortunately, have had to suffer through. Good nutrition and biologically correct living is the way to long life. I wish you well Wolverine, and will follow your blog with great interest.
Thank you Hillary for the encouraging words. I am glad to hear that you are healthy and doing well. Good nutrition is certainly the way to good health and a long life, problem is, there are so many lies being told these days about what is healthy eating. It is in the best interest of food corporations to convince all that their food is healthy and somehow prevents one disease or another. They spare no expense in bogus studies to prove such and have very deep pockets to heavily advertise the results of these less than sincere studies.
There are many people today who believe they are eating healthy, when in fact, they are not. Cereal companies spend fortunes to convince everyone that their products are healthy, when cereal is probably one of the least healthy foods today. By the time these grains go through all of the processing, including an extrusion press which subjects the dough to tremendous pressure, most of the proteins are denatured due to the high heat created and are nothing the human body can recognize. The ridiculous amount of processing needed to produce modern foods is probably one of the reasons we see so many food allergies at this time. If the body cannot recognize these proteins, it will consider it an attacker and mount an immune response. This just one example of many highly processed foods being promoted as a part of a healthy diet.
Thanks again for writing and I hope that you continue with great health.