More Life, Less Severe Illness, but More Years of Illness

Global trends in life expectancy, at birth, at 30, and at 60, continue onward and upward at a fairly slow but steady pace: approximately two years every decade for life expectancy at birth and a year every decade for remaining life expectancy at 60. The research linked below crunches the numbers for the much of the world from 1990 to 2013, an extension of similar past studies to include more recent data. The authors show that lives are longer and age-related illness less severe, but the period of time spent in disability or illness has grown. We are machines. Very complex machines, but nonetheless collections of matter subject to the same physical and statistical laws regarding component failure and damage as a car or an electronic device. Aging is damage, and a substantial portion of the trend in life extension is caused by an incidental, unintentional slowing of the pace at which that damage accrues. This slowing results from diverse causes, including control of infectious disease and reduction of the life-long burden imposed by infection, increased wealth and consequently greater access to medical care of all types, and an improved capacity to treat age-related medical conditions as they emerge. None of this is aimed at aging per se, and the historical trend in rising life expectancy has been slow precisely because there has been neither the ability nor the attempt to meaningfully intervene in the aging process. What happens when you slow down the pace at which damage ac...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs