actions vs immutables

the tension

My morning reading included a couple of long pieces about why most of us won’t be as aged as my husband’s beloved family matriarch who passed away several years ago at 105 1/2. Not that I am sure I would want to reach 105 1/2 but options are always nice to have.

Researchers have decided that probably 90 for women and 84 for men is about the longevity we are most likely to achieve, following a thirty year improvement in that statistic across the twentieth century. The caveat, of course, is that these statistics are applicable unless some whiz bang unexpected health improvement develops, though I didn’t see any indication what the relevant science hinted saw as fitting into that designation.

As it turns out, my mother and my father’s three sisters all reached 90, three passing away within six months of reaching that august number. My maternal gran actually lived five weeks past her 97th birthday, the day she suffered a massive stroke at the care facility dining room table. She was considered the runt of the family, always had “nerves” as I heard growing up, separated from my grandfather in her late thirties (outliving him by half a century), and was the perpetual focus of my mother’s angst because of health concerns (well, as so true with my mother, that concern was misplaced and Granma outlived her son-in-law by more than a decade).

The men in my family were different. My grandfather, an early truckdriver but never a smoker, died of a heart attack at 49 so I never met him. My uncle, who everyone said was just like him, lived a few years longer but not anywhere near 84, probably because he smoked heavily, was blustery (yes, I come by it through genetics) and was as unfamiliar dedicated exercise as most people in that generation. On the other side of the family, my father passed 65 but barely. Again, a man who smoked four packs of cigarettes my entire life, drank coffee 24/7, had a gut, and got only a marginal amount of exercise.

Hmmm. So what does all of this mean about life’s immutables (characteristics that are unchanging) versus the power of habits (or actions in my thinking)? If I can’t live to 136, why should I forgo cake, real ice cream (I eat dairy-free everything as a strict vegetarian), butter, salmon, bacon which some people (I had a War College colleague whose signature relationship appeared to be with bacon) live by, or bother to exercise every day? Maybe I will start bungee jumping and driving a red Miata without my seatbelt for a thrill? ¿Qué vale la pena? I guess Adrienne, a loyal reader in Fife, was absolutely right when she told me thirty years ago it’s all in my genes.

My questions are deliberately provocative to illustrate the constant whine I have about illiteracy and actions. I am relatively confident the message of this story was not that I can do the wild and crazy things listed, even if I were so inclined, as if there is a genetic code that has already written my birth and death dates in my DNA. (That is about as unlikely as the government controlling the weather. ¡Ay caramba! If the government is so worried about defeating China over Taiwan, what on earth would give us confidence it could orchestrate something as incredibly complicated as directing a tropical depression along a path of destruction? People’s logic is just not logic at all but the desire to get an adrenaline rush from stupidity, it seems.). That it is all written in genetic code is not what science is telling us.

First, the story is discussing longevity: the length of human life. This means the studies (plural) look at huge data sets (the kind of thing my evolutionary biology son uses supercomputers to analyze) based on millions and millions of information points. The longevity cited is an aggregate descriptor rather than another of the dictionary’s definitions (length of an individual life). Ah, yes, those are two completely different considerations although they both discuss life’s length.

More importantly, the longevity of the two genders is describing averages for a huge population rather than of specific people. Of course Aunt Flo lived to be 105 1/2 while she had a daughter who tragically passed a week before turning 80. There are always people who live longer and shorter lives than 90 or 84 but these are averages for the upper limits we see among the genders. COVID, another significant further increase in maternal mortality, or a number of pervasive other medical trends can drive down those numbers as occurred with the opioid crisis of the early 21st century. It’s not that these numbers cannot change, as they can, but there appear limits on how much higher they can go on average according to the article.

Additionally, that lack of a secret message in your DNA telling you the specific dates of your arrival and departure reminds all of us that life is a whole series of interwoven factors. This is where our individual actions become relevant. Driving a car when you’ve consumed a case of beer is highly likely to kill you or kill someone else which throws you into prison for drunk driving where living conditions generally do not mean someone makes it to age 84 or 90. Having unprotected sex leading to either HiV or a sexually transmitted disease left untreated for two decades could indeed hold down one’s personal longevity. Buying fentanyl-laced heroin is almost guaranteed death sentence, regardless of age. Those are specifically actions with permanent consequences. Each of us can name other behaviors with likely comparably tragic results.

Yes, there are individuals who smoke until they are 103, drink half a bottle of gin daily, and never met a daily carton of deep-fried, chocolate-dipped ding-a-lings they could pass up. But how many of these people are there? The reason we read about them is that they are the exceptions rather than the rules.

Many (guilty, as charged here, too often) of us are loose with working with cause and effect rather than coincidental data. Cause and effect is much harder to prove, even if we as individuals are sure it must be true. That is just reality; our preferences for explanations often fail, falling into the coincidence category when examined in detail. This is that scientific method thingy I keep raising. Science is unconvinced a causal relationship exists until one has evidence—actual hard data—of one action leading directly to another without some alternative possibility explored as the explanation.

Scientists are hard on this, even if we are seeing more peer reviewed papers withdrawn these days. This last piece means that when someone attempted to take the argument the original hypothesis made, then could not replicate the results, so the study has to be withdrawn from reputable scientific publications. As my husband loves to say, well that is gauche is you can’t actually back up your published paper with support..

Yet in day-to-day conversations, we don’t equire that level of scrutiny. (In far too many chats, we don’t even have filters but I suppose that is another matter for another column.) We simply don’t ask people—as I ask you at the end of each column—to provide the evidence for some of the propositions they offer in daily conversatons. Instead, we are letting sloppy thinking (it hardly qualifies as logic until it’s flawed, I suppose) to substitute for a serious argument. Conjecture has become the substitute for thought about arguments as the basis for why we do lots of things. I understand most of the time that isn’t how conversations proceed but that vagueness has its costs.

If you’re deciding whether to put the sugar into your coffee before you pour versus after, then the cause and effect concerns probably don’t matter. Deciding whether to smoke as a fourteen year old, however, with ample data to that smoking causes cancer is wholly different. In the latter case, ingesting a known addictive carcinogen has serious ramifications that actions could alleviate—or exacerbate.

Yet in the contemporary world of dis- and mal-information, the slopping thinking passes as normal because of “free will”. Well, yes, one in most non-authoritarian states, especially today’s USA, the notion that freedom supercedes everything else is fairly widespread. Yes, some of this is facilitated by medical care, often at taxpayer expense under Medicare or Medicaid, offering respites from pretty deadly consequences for a while but it always seems to catch up. And none of us live forever nor will we. Sloppy thinking, however, is ubiquitous today which has some definite ramifications.

In my own case, I think a lot about my choices because I was such an incredibly unhealthy kid. I was terribly overweight for decades. I am lucky I never had sky high cholesterol or needed a knee replacement. My parents smoked so I was 17 before I realized everything did not reek in a home. It was by grace that I chose never to smoke as my best friend in Bangkok picked it up. I could elaborate formerly bad habits but I am so lucky I seem to have made it this far.

I am far from a paragon of health but would like to at least make it to that 90ish target, if not further. Apparently my kids laugh about my habits, when they talk, for fear I will live well past the longevity average. I don’t know if they fear that or welcome it but I provide them comic relief it seems.

It appears that 90 for women and 84 for men is a ripe old age. Perhaps, if we bother considering it at all, we could celebrate those numbers. Instead of assuming we all will be 100, we would do better to realize not all actions are healthy, then ask ourselves if we are willing to suffer the consequences of being unhealthy or worse. I don’t think most of us have that conversation with ourselves, do we?

Then again, you’re probably out enjoying a beautiful mid-October afternoon where you’re enjoying rather than thinking so much. A good idea.

Rebuttals? Observations? Thoughts? Please hurl them my way as longevity and health are major issues in the future of this country and the world. I would like to hear how you see this unfolding.

Thank you for taking time to read this. Thank you especially to those who are subscribers. Your time and resources are valuable so I appreciate both.

Be well and be safe. FIN

Carissa Wong, ““Slowing growth in life expectancy means few people will live to be 100”, NewScientist.com 7 October 2024, retrieved at https://www.newscientist.com/article/2450908-slowing-growth-in-life-expectancy-means-few-people-will-live-to-100/?utm_source=nshet&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nshet_121024&utm_term=Newsletter%20NSHET_Health%20Check