Life expectancy rise in rich countries slows down: took 30 years to prove

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03244-1

by andsoitis • 2 years ago

201 448 2 years ago

Mistletoe3• 2 years ago

I wonder how Ozempic will change this? I really do expect we will all be on this soon and maybe we can resume the increase in lifespan that has been stalled by obesity, lack of exercise, and processed food.

zoklet-enjoyer• 2 years ago

I'm not fat or diabetic. Why would I take ozempic?

sidewndr46• 2 years ago

Yeah, I'm still kind of confused by this sentiment. There's a cohort that claims metformin somehow extends life as well. I'm pretty sure if a doctor prescribed me Ozempic that'd be grounds for malpractice.

jprete• 2 years ago

Ozempic seems to have a large number of positive effects for virtually everyone. It's a little premature to think everyone will be on it "soon" and there are plenty of people who won't take something even if it's universally beneficial.

nostrademons2• 2 years ago

Assuming you're not on drugs or thinking of killing yourself, you're probably not in the cohort that's dragging the life expectancy stats down.

Life expectancy is a weighted average (no pun intended), and so it's unusually sensitive to outliers. People who die early drag the average down much more than people who live close to the mean life expectancy. The biggest premature killers of Americans are obesity, drugs, car accidents, and suicide. Anything that addresses one of those causes of death has an outsize effect on life expectancy. There are 100M+ obese Americans. There are about 100,000 overdose deaths per year. Obesity, while not as lethal as drugs or suicide, afflicts 1000x as many patients, and so a treatment for it can have a large effect on the numbers.

Mistletoe3• 2 years ago

https://asteriskmag.com/issues/07/how-long-til-were-all-on-o...

https://www.wired.com/story/the-benefits-of-ozempic-are-mult...

Known as GLP-1 agonists, these drugs were originally developed to help control diabetes. But there's increasing evidence that they have other health benefits, beyond controlling weight. They seem to boost heart health, protect the kidneys, improve sleep apnea, and lower the risk of certain obesity-related cancers.

consteval10• 2 years ago

Because statistically it's unlikely you stay that way. If you do, then great.

jvans• 2 years ago

I really do expect we will all be on this

When antibiotics were first invented some people thought we'd be taking them daily as a vitamin. Turns out that's not such a good idea despite them being life saving in some scenarios

Scoundreller3• 2 years ago

My totally off-the-cuff theory is that we’ll only need a lifetime of ozempic and its clones every 3-4 generations to reset the obesity cycle.

I guess we’ll soon be able to measure the impacts on what it does to the children of parents that take it.

How have McDonalds Happy Meal sales been looking lately?

taeric11• 2 years ago

This is a thing that always blows my mind.

The accepted view is a lot like the accepted views to mono-cultures for crops. In that they are bad. The practiced take, though, is quite the opposite? Crops are dominated by mono-cultured fields. And though antibiotics are known not to be used constantly, farms seem to use them at an amazing rate.

I'd love to see a longer exploration of this. Why is it farms seem to be full of practices that we are taught are bad?

mr_toad3• 2 years ago

I wonder how Ozempic will change this?

It wont. This is about maximum lifespans. Weight loss might mean more people reach their maximum, but that maximum has proved, to quote the article: “resistant to improvements”.

sneed_chucker• 2 years ago

Did we expect it to grow forever?

latexr2• 2 years ago

If someone said “my son has stopped wetting the bed”, would you reply “did you expect them to wet the bed forever”? What if someone said “my leg no longer hurts”, would you reply “did you expect it to hurt forever”? How about “my bag of candy is almost empty”, would you reply “did you expect it to be full forever”?

The information that something stopped or slowed down is still useful without having to think it was going to go on eternally. It allows you to adjust your plans for the future.

wesselbindt• 2 years ago

my mother died
did you expect her to live forever?

Brajeshwar• 2 years ago

If not forever, but if 200-ish becomes a norm, it would be super awesome. Now, it is like, “Awesome, I know this, I know that. I need to learn that.” “Hold on, time to die.”

JohnMakin3• 2 years ago

I assure you many aspects of a society where 200 years old becomes a normal life expectancy would be a hellscape and not "awesome." We already currently have a massive societal and economic problem with aging populations as things currently are.

Ekaros• 2 years ago

200 at what qualitative life point currently? 80? 90? 100?

Spending an other 100 years like say from 80 to 100... Well you are alive, but still...

potato37328422• 2 years ago

The macroeconomic implications of that large a fraction of the population being above working age or such a large fraction of one's life not being working years are not exactly great.

geodel2• 2 years ago

And then some.

I understand some tech billionaire want to live forever by eating hundreds of pills a day for nutrition, anti-aging, disease control etc. Their life may be "great" for some definition of great.

But do billions of people on earth think that their life will become great in another 50 years even if it is rather miserable right now? I just live under rock to not know the desires of modern human.

nerdponx2• 2 years ago

The actual story here is that it's slowing down because the lower tail is growing, not because the upper tail is compressing as we hit some kind of upper limit of human longevity. That is: more people are actually dying younger, which has been gradually offsetting other people living longer.

edflsafoiewq• 2 years ago

I wonder if "life expectancy" is really such a useful metric, since it aggregates so many different things together. It's kind of like measuring "aggregate years of human life lived".

mr_toad3• 2 years ago

That’s the exact opposite conclusion of this paper.

“Our analysis also revealed that resistance to improvements in life expectancy increased while lifespan inequality declined and mortality compression occurred.”

shirro• 2 years ago

It seems reasonable to expect it to grow even at a diminished rate until everyone enjoys equivalent access to health care, nutrition, occupational safety etc but that is subject to the political environment, priorities of the electorate and the capacity of the economy. Without pandemic, famine, war or natural disaster a decline in life expectancy is generally the result of public policy for a rich democracy and not an inevitability.

I think we need to distinguish between longevity and health though. Lots of people live with chronic disease and giving them more quality of life counts for more than longer life IMO.

Vox_Leone• 2 years ago

In our relentless quest for longevity and a richer life experience, one profound consideration emerges: the role of sleep in our daily lives. Sleep, which consumes approximately one-third of our existence, represents a significant barrier to maximizing our time and productivity. If we could find a safe way to eliminate the need for sleep, we would theoretically unlock vast reservoirs of hours previously devoted to rest, transforming them into opportunities for personal and societal advancement.

kspacewalk2• 2 years ago

Enter cocaine

Scoundreller3• 2 years ago

Micro dosing cocaine might have positive impacts over long time periods.

We really don’t know and have made it nigh impossible to study. Obviously governments are trying to hide something.

rajamaka2• 2 years ago

For some reason I would feel disappointed if sleep was a solved issue. I feel as though perhaps I need that daily break from being conscious for my own mental health.

presidentender2• 2 years ago

One of my favorite science fiction novels deals with this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beggars_in_Spain

Loughla2• 2 years ago

What a fascinating book series that I've never heard of. It looks like it sort of takes a middle ground between Le Guin and Rand?

BeetleB4• 2 years ago

Read the novella and skip the novel.

AlexandrB2• 2 years ago

Hopefully it doesn't go like the X files episode: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleepless_(The_X-Files)

I'm all for getting rid of sleep, but given how society is structured I worry that the extra time will just end up being used for longer commutes and more zoom calls. Hardly advancement.

arp242• 2 years ago

I have a hard time imagining this will ever become a reality; the need for sleep is fairly deeply hard-coded in how our brains operate, and I believe it's also needed for some more basic cellular functions.

It's not binary I guess (sleep "once a week" is less than "sleep once a day"), but even some incremental improvements seem very far off.

One also has to wonder if it's actually desirable to have less sleep and be "on" with fewer or no breaks.

latexr2• 2 years ago

If we could find a safe way to eliminate the need for sleep, we would theoretically unlock vast reservoirs of hours previously devoted to rest, transforming them into opportunities for personal and societal advancement.

While in practice, what would happen is that we’d be doing more of the same. Bosses would be demanding more time in the office, people would be spending more time doomscrolling, nothing would change. It’s a pipe dream to think that if we had more time in the day we’d suddenly start using it more respectfully and responsibly.

jowdones• 2 years ago

On the plus side, this would solve the housing problem too. Without the nuisance of sleep requirements we would move to the offices and live, ahem, produce there 24/7. Much like cattle.

This is the great future the visionary OP envisions for us.

anthonypasq• 2 years ago

we currently spend about half our waking hours during the day at work during the week. if we got those 8 hours of sleep back then presumably we would get 4 more hours of non-working awake time.

seems decent to me. I hate sleeping, the problem is i get tired and cant avoid it.

throw0101d2• 2 years ago

Sleep, which consumes approximately one-third of our existence, represents a significant barrier to maximizing our time and productivity.

"Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon." — Susan Ertz, Anger in the Sky (1943)

tuukkah• 2 years ago

That question was solved by social media.

psychoslave• 2 years ago

Have you ever considered that sleep can actually make your life richer in interesting experiences?

rawgabbit3• 2 years ago

The current thinking is that Alzheimers and dementia are caused by the brain’s waste disposal system malfunctioning and results in an accumulation of proteins in the brain that damages a lot of important functions. This waste disposal only happens during sleep.

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/how-the-brain-flus...

pdfernhout• 2 years ago

Not suggesting anyone try this but some people claim to sleep only two hours a day with this approach: https://www.sleepfoundation.org/how-sleep-works/polyphasic-s... "Uberman Sleep Schedule: Six 20-minute naps are spaced evenly throughout the day, totaling two hours of sleep per 24-hour period."

A book on sleep and how important it is to learning and health: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_We_Sleep "Walker spent four years writing the book, in which he asserts that sleep deprivation is linked to numerous fatal diseases, including dementia. ... The values of sleep and the consequences of sleep deprivation are also brought up in the book. One particular research conducted in the past, where people volunteered themselves to sleep for only six hours in a span of 10 nights, is brought up by Walker. This resulted in the volunteers being "cognitively impaired" along with their brains being heavily damaged, regardless of the three week eight-hour sleep schedule they received later."

typeofhuman• 2 years ago

We're not living longer. We're dying more slowly.

stefs• 2 years ago

i don't think that's generally true. quality of life at old age could be increasing due to several factors. for example: decrease of hard labor and better protections for laborers, doctors telling their elderly patients to go to the gym and train their strength and people generally being more health conscious.

lovethevoid5• 2 years ago

The decline in the United States is driven by increasing numbers of deaths because of conditions such as diabetes and heart disease in people aged roughly 40 to 60.

People are asking if we should be surprised by the headline but are missing this. As suggested in the article by the researchers, there is something dragging down the average since the 2010s. Not even hitting the general expectation of ~75 years. We don’t have solid answers yet, only theories.

So yes, generally while going up against the process of aging is going to create barriers (eg can we get to 130 years old), we are also failing to raise the baseline which is the bigger issue that people might not grasp when it comes to “life expectancy rates”.

hn_throwaway_99• 2 years ago

We don’t have solid answers yet, only theories.

The exact quote you gave had a pretty solid answer, certainly not just "theories".

daveguy• 2 years ago

I think the distinction there is between immediate cause and root cause. Heart disease and diabetes (or complications thereof) is the immediate cause of death, but what is causing an increase in those diseases is theory at this point.

lovethevoid5• 2 years ago

That's not what I meant. A solid answer as to why those conditions are happening, not the fact that they are happening at all.

We have research on what can affect heart health, like what things might be linked to it, such as smoking and alcohol. We also know genetics plays a huge role.

So we don't actually have solid answers, actionable answers as to the rise of heart health issues. Look at this analysis[1] regarding how dietary guidelines specifically for fats (saturated, trans) have very little substantial evidence supporting it. Yet this gets repeated by the average person, that fats are the ultimate evil you must avoid. In another study[2] we find that reducing your fat intake still resulted in the same rates of mortality as those who ate more. This is also why more in the space are shifting away from these sort of claims ("only eat x amount of saturated fat per day") and more to general food composition (eg who cares if a fish has saturated fats, eat the fish with vegetables).

It's quite challenging to figure out, everyone has their theories. All I'm saying is we don't actually have the answers yet.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9794145/ [2]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8092457/

briandear• 2 years ago

What has been the role in demographic shifts?

dyauspitr7• 2 years ago

Wow so ozempic is going to cause expectancy to jump by 10 years over the next decade or so.

neffy• 2 years ago

Isn´t this also an issue with World War's 1 and 2? They both dented life expectancy fairly significantly, and that cohort is now aging out of the figures. If the rate of increase is being measured, then that would presumably play a small part?

GuB-42• 2 years ago

The way life expectancy is usually calculated, it shouldn't have an effect. It is calculated is by looking at the mortality rate for each age group, which gives a probability of death for each age, and by simulating people growing up in such conditions, and then taking the average age of death.

By doing so, historical events outside of the study period don't have a major effect. In this study, they deliberately avoided the covid pandemic as it would have caused a significant drop in life expectancy that is not representative of a general trend. Of course, the future is not taken into account either. Despite what the name may suggest, life expectancy is like a snapshot of the studied period (1990-2019 here), not a prediction.

cdrini• 2 years ago

Frustrating that an article with a title like this doesn't include a single graph.

Mathnerd314• 2 years ago

Actual study: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43587-024-00702-3#Sec2

lynx23• 2 years ago

I always wondered why I personally know almost nobody who has managed to exceed average age. With the only exception of my previous landlady, she became 95. In my family, the average age is roughly 60, with three siblings on my fathers side dying before 50. Both my grandpas died around 50. My best friend died with 18. Many of the fellow blind people I know died below 50. And I am from a relatively rich country, with classical western standards. It is almost as if I was thrown into a local minimum while the simulation was set up. I would understand if the phenomenon was largely limited to my family, call it genes then. But it doesn't end there. I guess the personal statistics becomes only meaningful after your own death and beyond. But really, looking at how many people had to pass away early, I am beginning to get spooked.

asoneth2• 2 years ago

I would understand if the phenomenon was largely limited to my family, call it genes then

Perhaps there are other shared variables besides genes? For one thing, blindness is associated with higher mortality [1]. And even within a country, life expectancy can vary dramatically by region, city, and even neighborhood. Or perhaps the people you know happen to be more likely to share certain occupations, mindsets, levels of physical activity, or diets?

Or maybe it's just coincidence.

[1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-1...

foobiekr• 2 years ago

I wonder how much impact there will be on average life expectancy uncovering that a lot of the super-long-lived population examples have been pension fraud.

potato37328422• 2 years ago

Those people are statistically irrelevant. Not enough of them to drag the average much one way or the other.

dustyventure• 2 years ago

For every pension fraud that went on that long and took such an obvious risk with continuing to a notable age, I imagine there were hundreds or thousands of shorter frauds.

jandrewrogers2• 2 years ago

Probably not much because you can find long-lived populations that don't follow the administrative boundaries of pensions.

King County in Washington State, which contains the Seattle metro area, has a life expectancy of 86.3 years. This is higher than any country in the world. If you move one county south (Pierce), it is 75.7 years, slightly worse than the US average currently. Not surprisingly, there are many obvious factors that may contribute to this e.g. the obesity rate in Pierce County is 50% higher and the obesity rate in King County is roughly half the US obesity rate. The Seattle metro is a relatively walkable city and people do, Pierce County is not. As a matter of demographics, King County is significantly more Asian than Pierce County. And so on.

Both counties are geographically large and contain many municipalities. It is difficult to come up with a theory where pension fraud in King County is so high relative to Pierce County that it explains a >10 year difference in life expectancy.

zeroonetwothree3• 2 years ago

This source gives King County as 81 years: https://www.communitiescount.org/life-expectancy

lazerpants2• 2 years ago

Our organization (the American Federation for Aging Research) is hosting a webinar with Jay Olshansky (author of the paper) and Andrew Scott, a leading economist in longevity to discuss Jay's results on 10/22.

The gist is that this isn't quite as cut and dry as it may seem.

We also paid to make the Nature Aging paper open access.

Event: https://www.afar.org/events/webinar-lifeexpectancy-1

throwup238• 2 years ago

We also paid to make the Nature Aging paper open access.

That’s awesome! Did you make a deal with the authors to pay for the fee during publication or is this something anyone can do by approaching the journal itself?

lazerpants2• 2 years ago

Thanks! I wasn't directly involved in that discussion, but I imagine anyone can do it. It is a requirement for some grants and for some research funders.

Edit: if you need to know I would just ask the editor if it's an option

seydor• 2 years ago

$12290

llm_trw4• 2 years ago

We also paid to make the Nature Aging paper open access.

What a world to live in.

A_D_E_P_T• 2 years ago

We also paid to make the Nature Aging paper open access.

Why not just use a preprint server like Medrxiv?

Arxiv is now the default place to publish papers in physics -- and, with that established, it seems to me that it would be for the best if more institutions, researchers, and organizations in biology, medicine, chemistry, and other areas also use preprint servers.

switch007• 2 years ago

They're going to need new excuses for phasing out state pensions oops sorry I mean "raising the pension age".

readthenotes1• 2 years ago

Talking about the number of people who live over 100 along with the average life expectancy seems to be mixing two unrelated things.

To show that we are hitting a limit on our ability to extend lifetime, we really should look at having reached 95, how many people reach 105 or something like that.

To say that the average life expectancy is dropping and therefore we have reached our limit on their ability to extend the lifetimes ignores the fact that much of the reason for a stage life expectancy drop in my country is lifelong maltreatment, often self-inflicted--death-oriented decisions on drugs, nutrition, and activity.

aucisson_masque4• 2 years ago

Can we overcome ageing?

75% American are overweight..

Just let it sink a second, they speak about how many baby born after 2000 will reach 100 years old, how we are reaching the absolute limit of human survival.

75% overweight... Everyone know fat people don't live long. I bet all the studies done in the 90's that predicted we would easily be able to reach 100 years old didn't take that into account.

Zenzero• 2 years ago

There is probably a distinction to be made between

"here is the theoretical limit given adherence to modern recommendations on cardiovascular health, exercise, etc."

and

"you all didn't listen and got fat instead"

Barrin92• 2 years ago

Everyone know fat people don't live long.

studies estimate that moderate obesity takes about 2-3 years of life expectancy (defined as having a BMI of 30-35), only people with severe obesity (BMI of 40-45+) lose on average 6-13 years, comparable to smoking.

Given that severe obesity is still uncommon even in the rich world it only has a small impact on life expectancy overall.

bamboozled3• 2 years ago

Combined with getting in your car and driving absolutely everywhere (most Americans)?

bequanna• 2 years ago

...studies estimate that moderate obesity takes about 2-3 years of life expectancy

This is really hard to believe. Moderate obesity has to shave at least 10 years off life expectancy.

A 70 year old man 6' tall with a BMI of ~35 weighs 260 lbs. That is pretty overweight.

Anecdotally, I just don't see many people that overweight or heavier making it into their 80s.

scarby2• 2 years ago

I'm thinking that ozempic and zepbound will have something to say about this. When ozempic becomes available as a generic (2032) it's going to be available for $10 a dose and a huge amount of people will be taking it.

Muromec• 2 years ago

Wait, doing amphetamines for weight loss is cool again and has no drawbacks of it's own?

MichaelZuo• 2 years ago

How do you know they don’t have side effects that would reduce max life expectancy?

yodsanklai2• 2 years ago

I'm not quite sure this will address the root issues. Obesity is linked with very unhealthy diet. Ozempic isn't going to address that.

EasyMark2• 2 years ago

That’s a bizarre hill to die on, I see all kinds of larger people survive into their 90s when I was living near and volunteering at a nursing home as a teenager

WillPostForFood• 2 years ago

I see all kinds of larger people survive into their 90s

So dangerous to extrapolate from anecdotal observation like this. If I see old people smoking, doesn't mean smoking is safe. It just means it doesn't kill at 100% effectiveness.

dyauspitr7• 2 years ago

I see “plenty” of life long smokers making it to their 80s and 90s too, that doesn’t mean it didn’t take out 90% of them along the way.

renewiltord2• 2 years ago

That’s the funny thing: at homes and nursing homes all around America you will find WW2 veterans. One could conclude that WW2 wasn’t dangerous from that, I suppose.

kaibee2• 2 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

throwaway20378• 2 years ago

To be clear, it looks like the health stat term "overweight" means anything greater than "normal", which includes obese.

Quick Google search:

    > what percent of australians are overweight?

First hit:

    > Over the last decade, the proportion of adults who were overweight or obese has increased from 62.8% in 2011–12 to 65.8% in 2022.

Source: https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/health/health-conditions-a....

US NIH says: 73.1% are overweight (includes obese). Ref: https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statisti...

Sure, 73.1% > 65.8%, but Australia is still plenty overweight. Both are appalling.

ywvcbk3• 2 years ago

To be fair BMI is based on Belgians from the 1850s with all the implications it has. Modern people are much taller (+15 cm for males) and eat a lot more protein.

So the line between normal and overweight is somewhat blurry. e.g. someone who is 6'3" and weighs 200 pounds is overweight. Which might or might not be the case (but you certainly don’t need to a body builder or invest a lot of time to maintain at least reasonably healthy 18-20% body fat ratio).

lolinder5• 2 years ago

Both are appalling.

Both are also largely meaningless because they're based on BMI, which is literally just mass/height^2. No measure of percent body fat, no measure of any other aspect of health, just mass by the square of height.

If you're comparing the BMI of two countries with very similar gene pools it's not a bad point of comparison (though the raw number still doesn't tell you much without more context about build types), but when you're comparing Australia to the US the gene pools of the non-European minority groups are sufficiently different to make BMI pretty worthless as a point of comparison for public health.

watwut8• 2 years ago

Being slightly overweight is associated with longer lifespan. Really look it up, the longest lifespan is slightly overweight and top of normal bmi. Lifespan gets down when you move toward obese, somewhere in the middle of overweight segment.

The worst life expectations are in underweight category.

geysersam• 2 years ago

Haha people really don't want to hear your message

It's hard to take seriously the aversion especially Americans seem to have against overweight and obesity

Funny the land of the free is so incredibly intolerant on this one point

maximus-decimus• 2 years ago

I remember a paper that said optimal weight to reduce mortality is just below overweight. slightly overweight people were living as long as "normal" weight people and being very low "healthy" weight really wasn't that great.

I don't know what they based "normal" bmi weight on, but it's not by setting the middle of the range to max longevity.

naveen993• 2 years ago

You should be suspicious of definitions where the average is abnormal. If 75% of people are over weight, maybe the definition of overweight is wrong.

These definitions are arbitrary anyway. In india they define a bmi of 25 as obese. The same indian after moving to America is not obese until a bmi of 30.

Meanwhile, the average height is also going up, which also correlates with lower life expectancy.

Cardiologists already had to back off their blood pressure guidelines when they defined the average middle aged man as hypertensive in the past.

AnimalMuppet• 2 years ago

Well, the average wasn't abnormal, and now it is, without the definition changing. That's telling us something. We're becoming fatter. That doesn't make being fatter "normal". It makes it average, but that's not the same thing. Historically, we know this is abnormal.

taeric11• 2 years ago

I'm actually a little surprised at the framing here. I didn't realize anyone thought we could overcome aging. I thought the goal was to live longer, but not to completely overcome aging. That sounds somewhat foreign to me. Is that a commonly reasonable goal for folks?

That is to say, I'm not clear that "beating aging" is what is required for "long life." Is that definitionally required and I'm just being dense?

I'm assuming this is a tiered discussion? In that nobody thinks we should freeze aging at baby stages for someone. Such that we would still want some aging, but would then try and fix a point where all aging can be stopped?

Loughla2• 2 years ago

I honestly thought the whole point was beating aging. Whether that's longer life or cancer or whatever. The point is to stay 20-40 forever, from what I can tell.

taeric11• 2 years ago

But, by the time you hit 20-40, you have already done a ton of aging?

Fair that I don't expect to be as strong in my 60s as I am now. Or when I hit 70+. If I get that far. Light weight training is plenty to get to be in good physical shape, though? Get to where you can do 10-30 pushups and run a continuous mile, and you are probably doing fine?

science4sail• 2 years ago

Is that a commonly reasonable goal for folks?

Why not? Humans have been pursuing immortality for time immemorial. "The Epic of Gilgamesh", one of the first known stories, features such a pursuit.

taeric11• 2 years ago

I think it is just a difference in how you view it? I'd expect ancient person to be noticeably ancient. Not necessarily frail, but just as an old tree has signs of aging that younger trees don't necessarily have. Not that they stopped aging entirely.

So, if you limit aging to "getting frail," I am fully there. But there are other things that happen as you age.

michaelt• 2 years ago

It's the bit of life where you can dress yourself and control your bowels that most people would like to extend. I think nobody gets into longevity research hoping they'll be able to dodder around a nursing home with a walker for 25 years instead of 15.

taeric11• 2 years ago

But you could do that by extending the bit of your life where you can do those things. Not necessarily turning off aging?

As I said down thread, this could just be a potato/potahto thing? If this is just definitionally beating getting frail, then that makes sense. But I don't know that I could pin down an age that I would want to freeze progress at. Nor do I think I expected that there would be a general age to freeze aging at. Let me keep my strength longer, but I expect I will be/look/appear older and older the older I get.

Now, granted, I'd be delighted if I have the same strength my 90 year old grandfather in law did. In his 70s, I'm pretty sure the only thing I could beat him at was a race. Lifting things or doing manual work outside, and he was far beyond what I was in my 30s.

mr_toad3• 2 years ago

That is to say, I'm not clear that "beating aging" is what is required for "long life."

Ageing is not a perfectly understood process, so what it would mean to overcome aging wasn’t clear, and there was some hope decades ago that maximum human lifespans would just keep going up indefinitely as medicine slowly eliminated the various causes of death.

But now this research concludes what has been suspected for a while - that even under perfect conditions the average human lifespan isn’t going to hit 100. Even if you eat and exercise well and have the best medical treatment, and avoid all the other things that might kill you, ageing will get you.

The medical term for this is “mortality compression”, the idea that as we remove all the ways people die early, the ages of death for everyone end up being squashed up against a limit.

It will take significant breakthroughs in technology (probably some combination of gene therapy, cancer treatments and nanotechnology) to actually stop, or reverse aging.

taeric11• 2 years ago

I think this somewhat makes sense. Just going on the discussion, I was missing that this is using "aging" as shorthand for "the degenerate effects of aging." I'm assuming the growth effects of aging would be more "maturing" or some such.

I still think calling this "defeating aging" is an odd framing. But it makes sense in the standard context here.

rawgabbit3• 2 years ago

”It tells you that something pretty negative is happening among some subgroups of the population to drag the average down, because the wealthier, more highly educated subgroups are actually doing better,” Olshansky says.”

It is expensive to live a healthy lifestyle in the US.

karim792• 2 years ago

Cutting out sugar and useless carbs, and trying to replace those things with nuts and quality proteins - more nourishing and filling substitutes, can help a bit, I think. Mostly, try to stay away from refined sugar and products containing sugar or corn syrup. And for the love of God, lots more vegetables. Less dairy perhaps?

Get an apartment on at least the third floor, in a building without a lift.

Get a pet dog which needs to be walked several times a day.

Eat lots of chili peppers[0]:

"The analysis included data from more than a half a million people in multiple countries. When compared with people who never or rarely ate chili pepper, those who ate it regularly had lower rates of death due to cardiovascular disease (by 26%), cancer (by 23%), or any cause (by 25%)."

[0] https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/will-eating-more-chilis-....

A little bit of high-intensity workout each week?

I know people who are incapable of eating lunch or any meal without a large can/bottle of full-strengh coca cola or such, ever single day. Most of whom complain about not being able to lose weight.

The science is pretty clear. Breaking out of old habits is much more challenging.

EDIT: Typos: whole -> whom, mean -> meal

bottom999mottob2• 2 years ago

The health effects of nuts are fairly overstated especially since many of them are high in PUFAs.

karim792• 2 years ago

I think my main point was about reducing all sugar, and reducing the intake of garbage carbs.

"Although nuts are high in fat, it’s mainly healthier unsaturated fat. They contain protein, B vitamins, vitamin E and minerals, including iron, potassium, selenium, magnesium, zinc and copper."[0]

[0] https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/heart-matters-maga....

throwaway20378• 2 years ago

Google tells me that PUFAs == Polyunsaturated fatty acids

Since when are polyunsaturated fatty acids considered unhealthy? As I recall, the real enemy is saturated fats.

dyauspitr7• 2 years ago

Polyunsaturated fats like omega-3 and omega-6 are beneficial.

patrickhogan1• 2 years ago

This will not age well.

defrost12• 2 years ago

For an interesting side piece:

    Curiously, however, for a system apparently stultified by the dead hand of government, Australia’s health system far outperforms the free market-based US healthcare system, which spends nearly twice as much per capita as Australia to deliver far worse outcomes — including Americans dying five years younger than us.

The shocking truth: Australia has a world-leading health system — because of governments

Source: https://www.crikey.com.au/2024/10/16/pubic-private-healthcar...

Bypass: https://clearthis.page/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.crikey.com.au%2F...

    Overall, we now have the fourth-highest life expectancy in the world.

   This is contrary to the narrative that pervades the media about our health system — one in which our “frontline” health workers heroically battle to overcome government neglect and inadequate spending, while the population is beset by various “epidemics” — obesity, alcohol, illicit drugs.

    In fact, Australian longevity is so remarkable that in August The Economist published a piece simply titled “Why do Australians live so long?”

Other references:

The Economist: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2024/08/23/why-do-a...

AU Gov Report: Advances in measuring healthcare productivity https://www.pc.gov.au/research/completed/measuring-healthcar...

alwayslikethis• 2 years ago

the free market-based US healthcare system

market, maybe, "free" market? I doubt it.

It's not a very free market when there is such a large power differential between the buyer and the seller. You can't exactly shop around for the ambulance or the hospital when you need it, nor can you realistically circumvent the artificially constrained supply [1] of doctors to get cheaper healthcare (unless you live next to the border).

When the alternative is a one-sided market like this, government becomes rather more appealing.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Medical_Association#R...

WalterBright7• 2 years ago

You can't exactly shop around

The vast bulk of health care is by appointment, not a dash in the ambulance.

xbmcuser• 2 years ago

To me that is the funny thing today if you look at markets Chinese markets under it's communist system are actually freer than US. China is not interested any 1 company getting a monopoly and becoming more powerful than the government so they promote finance multiple companies resulting in a truer capitalist market than the US.

wisty• 2 years ago

There's also a lot of regulation and lots of subsidies (the US has similar per capita public spending to Canada - old people on Medicare are not cheap). If something is so heavily regulated and subsidised that the private sector is only there to outsmart the government to line their pockets, it's inferior to even a public system.

froh• 2 years ago

"free" is newspeak for "rules only apply to the poor, ie.e the lower 99.9%"

drdec• 2 years ago

>the free market-based US healthcare system
market, maybe, "free" market? I doubt it.

The consumer of healthcare is doubly removed from the price of healthcare. This is the opposite of a free market.

The patient did not pay the doctor, the insurance company does. In most cases the patient does not pay for insurance their employer does.

So the normal pricing forces of a free market are removed.

Then we need to talk about certificate of need laws which restrict the supply...

FollowingTheDao• 2 years ago

There is no free market when pain and distress is involved, that is for sure.

When I am psychotic I cannot exactly choose which psychiatric hospital I want to check into and ponder about the price to put it off for another day.

And this is what the free market did to psychiatric hospitals: https://www.wral.com/holly-hill-hospital/21507953/

mattmaroon• 2 years ago

The American health care system is also highly regulated. There’s nothing free about it in any sense if the word.

N_A_T_E• 2 years ago

Is the US health system free market? The government provides healthcare via Medicare and Medicaid for seniors, the people for whom life expectancy and healthcare quality have the highest correlation.

defrost12• 2 years ago

The quote is from a Crikey reporter, I (an Australian) wouldn't agree that the US health system is classic free market .. but it appears to have more regulatory capture by vested commercial non government profit orientated interests than by social policy best outcome for the masses civil authorities.

( Describing various systems in various countries as either communist of free market capitalist is pretty simplistic, it's not much as a linear spectrum either )

I'd also argue that the foundation for a high life expectancy doesn't start with good health care for seniors .. unless the metric is "life support via artificial means" .. life expectancy is grounded in healthy living and excerise from an early age well maintained with good health programs.

mitthrowaway2• 2 years ago

the people for whom life expectancy and healthcare quality have the highest correlation.

What do you mean by this? Fatalities among the young will have a much larger impact on lowering nationwide life expectancy than fatalities among the elderly.

dahart2• 2 years ago

It’s a mixed bag, but the funding source doesn’t necessarily make it a controlled market, to the degree that Medicare and Medicaid pay non-government providers and allow competition (which again, is mixed). Medicare and Medicaid coverage make up one third of the US population. The other two thirds are on group/employer insurance, private insurance, or no insurance at all.

For non-seniors, the medical insurance system certainly sometimes doesn’t feel like a free market from the consumer perspective, but the insurance companies are private for-profit institutions, and the medical providers are too, so it may well fit the definition.

dyauspitr7• 2 years ago

The issue with most of these is that they have better health outcomes overall but when it comes down to the uncommon cancer your mom has, she will have a much higher chance of survival in the US. The difference is a lot of poor folk without adequate healthcare die of relatively straightforward conditions like diabetes while if you do have healthcare you end up getting the state of the art though it might bankrupt you.

defrost12• 2 years ago

There's nothing in the Australian health care system that precludes people with uncommon conditions seeking specialist treatments either in Australia or abroad.

she will have a much higher chance of survival in the US.

Without a deep dive it looks ballpark the same, to be honest.

AU Cancer Survival Rates:

    The 5-year survival for cancer in 1991–1995 was 55% and by 2016–2020, the rate had increased to 71%. Even with decreasing mortality rates and increasing survival, the number of deaths from cancer has been increasing.

15 Aug 2024 - https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/cancer/cancer-data-in-austra...

US Cancer Survival Rates:

     Five-year survival rates have also been increasing for an even longer period of time. The overall cancer survival rate was 49 percent in the mid-1970s. It currently sits at 68 percent

2023: https://www.cancercenter.com/community/blog/2023/01/cancer-s...

grecy4• 2 years ago

when it comes down to the uncommon cancer your mom has, she will have a much higher chance of survival in the US.

A few years back my Mum in Australia was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer, given 12 months to live.

For just shy of 3 years she had radiation, chemo, trial drugs worth nearly a million a pop all in a brand new cancer Center. Because she lived a couple of hours away she got free transport to and from and free hotel. Not pay and claim it back, fully free.

She was on an enormous cocktail of drugs that dad would get at the pharmacy that raised a lot of eyebrows for the strength of the opiates among other things.

For three years they never paid a cent. They never paid a cent of health insurance, never had private cover, never had a deductible. That would all be the same if they had never worked or took a decade off to pursue some hobby.

Trust me when I say it was stressful and emotional enough without adding money or paperwork or insurance into the equation

The comparison to my friends in the US who couldn’t get a separated shoulder fixed because it was “out of network” or had to move hospitals the day after a C section because the insurance didn’t want to pay anymore is downright disgusting.

For real people living their lives the two systems are vastly different.

cjbgkagh2• 2 years ago

AFAIK Australian healthcare system is mixed public private with a heavy lean on private. The healthcare market is open to market forces as the government works through subsidies. Plus I think many of the hospitals are religiously run institutions which helps protect from private equity influence.

The US has massive government regulation and dysfunctional state intervention in healthcare if not directly then vicariously with rules around Medicare. The US government helps make the dysfunction that private equity later exploits.

So I’m not sure that it would be correct to use Aus and the US as examples of the either end of the private / public continuum.

I would use UK or France as an example of a public system and Singapore as a light touch private, and perhaps India or Turkey as a laissez-faire system.

The UK and France systems appear to be degrading and do not appear long term affordable and I think they will soon be adopting Canadian style Maid systems to cut cost.

Germany is a weird one because it seems like half the doctors there are homeopaths and the Germans love their insurance but I’m not sure if they get value for it.

Personally I’d prefer the Australian or Singaporean style systems but I’d classify those as mostly private.

defrost12• 2 years ago

Australia absolutely has a hybrid health care industry with layers; health, medical, surgery, pharmacy and mostly outcomes based regulation rather than much assistance to maximise financial profits.

The current system grew out of a more fully public system under a many years past Whitlam government, people like the universal health for all aspects and wanted additional private services in the mix. It's evolved from there, with government oversight directed towards keeping things accessable and fair.

The US appears to have "massive government regulation and dysfunctional state intervention" as the end result of a lot of fingers in the pie bending regulation toward "middlecare" providers that don't apply splints or save lives, just diddle about with insurance schemes. (Admittedly that's just an impression from afar).

The US government helps make the dysfunction that private equity later exploits.

My feeling is the US government is largely an arm of private interests in many matters.

Health Care in Australia embraces public policy such as Food Regulation to ban and limit additives, parks and sports grounds to encourage exercise, limiting access to tobacco, and some interesting national level drug acquisition deals to keep pharmacy costs low.

These cause a flow on of less per capita input into the medical side; lower heart disease, less smoking related issues, etc.

biztos3• 2 years ago

I had private health insurance in Germany. It was quite expensive and had a very high deductible — so pretty bad incentives around routine health care, I never made a claim in 13 years.

The upside was that if you needed, say, a brain transplant for ten million Euros, as long as it was medically necessary they would pay for it.

Now I have a policy elsewhere that is cheaper, still covers me when I go to Europe, and has a much better copay structure while being 100% private. Downside is I can’t afford that brain transplant, but I’ll probably be OK for everything else.

rr808• 2 years ago

Always when I read this I think they are comparing too very different societies where healthcare is just one factor. Americans are so much less healthy than Australians due to lack of exercise, poor diets, stress, no holidays, guns and crime. Its a miracle that if the US health is nearly as good as Australians it shows how great the US healthcare system really is.

defrost12• 2 years ago

Part of the Australian national, state, and local health care system is policy to encourage healthy life styles and to discourage, limit, or ban food additives, tobacco, etc.

Back in the 1970s the AU Government was running campaigns such as Life. Be In It: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNjEge3Awl8 (many short segments airing with commercials on TV).

Planning requirements typically require open spaces, walking paths, sporting facilities, etc.

A "healthcare system" needs to be more than simply "immediate care for the injured, sick, and|or dying".

grecy4• 2 years ago

it shows how great the US healthcare system really is.

You think paying vastly more for much worse outcomes is a good thing??

Boy do I have a GREAT used car for you!

saturn86012• 2 years ago

Its a miracle that if the US health is nearly as good as Australians it shows how great the US healthcare system really is.

Or its a ticking time bomb: 39.6% of Americans are Obese(BMI 30 or higher). Fast forward 15 years and this will probably collapse the country. It certainly will be the No 1 issue in the country bar none. Ozempic may actually give the country a chance of some sort of future.

mbostleman• 2 years ago

Free market-based US healthcare system? Which US are we talking about?

globular-toast3• 2 years ago

"Free market" is one of the best examples of a technical term people use with complete confidence despite not knowing what it really means. Furthermore, even if you do know what it means you probably remember it as something you learnt on day 1 of economics class before learning all the reasons they never really exist and what governments try to do about that.

grecy4• 2 years ago

Australians (and other outsiders) use that term when talking about aspects of the US because that is the Hollywood picture of how the US functions. That is the lie that is sold, and people outside have no way to know it’s not true. Even today there are hundreds of millions of Americans who say they live in a free market and that it’s the best thing ever.

bratbag• 2 years ago

The us system is what a free market approach inevitably degrades into when consumers don't have a real option to say no to a service.

tightbookkeeper6• 2 years ago

demographics in the US are very different than Australia, I suspect those in the bottom 1/3rd of US health drag it down significantly.

koyote2• 2 years ago

I assume you are referring to a larger amount of people living in poverty in the US?

Could this also (partially) be explained by the cost of healthcare? Something like a downwards spiral where average people end up poor either due to direct costs of healthcare or neglecting their own healthcare due to cost?

atwrk• 2 years ago

Demographics (I assume you mean race?) can't be the reason. West Virgina is IIRC almost exclusively white and has a lower live expectancy than North Korea.

WalterBright7• 2 years ago

The US is hardly a free market health care system.

For example, Medicare.

defrost12• 2 years ago

If you wish you could take that up with Bernard Keane who wrote the piece.

https://www.crikey.com.au/author/bernard-keane/

Bernard is well across many aspects of US, UK, and AU political views, government systems, media etc. with his own particular views as we all have.

In context he's writing for an Australian audience about a conservative Australian trope that the Australian health system is weighed down with government meddling and would do better with, for example, a "US free market" approach.

I think we all appreciate that's an illusion, a myth spun for children.

dahart2• 2 years ago

Depends on what you mean by health care. Medicare is insurance, not care, and while insurance is part of the system, Medicare often pays private healthcare providers for service. Medicare only insures ~14% of the US, less than one sixth and is only available for people 65 and older. For those reasons, your example maybe doesn’t demonstrate what you imply.

zeroonetwothree3• 2 years ago

I expect it has more to do with Americans’ high level of obesity and other poor lifestyle factors.

axpvms• 2 years ago

Australians are not exactly a svelte lot either, ranking 10th in the OECD countries for obesity (US is the third), and on par with the UK.

Pikamander23• 2 years ago

Obesity's definitely a factor, but other developed countries haven't seen the same level of stagnation despite their own skyrocketing obesity rates. For that matter, Americans also smoke less compared to most of Europe.

There's likely at least one other major factor, and I would assume that it's some variation of "inability to access high-quality care for financial reasons" given how much of a wealth disparity there is in various healthcare outcomes.

ap99• 2 years ago

Maybe the worse outcome related to other factors, e.g. diet or obesity rates.

The figure I see thrown around is America has a 40% rate of obesity.

Australia looks like it's 32%.

European countries look like 20-30%.

I think these rates alone could explain life expetancy regardless of health care system.

apwell236• 2 years ago

yep exactly. 'healthcare' should be called 'disease care' . Most ppl are too far gone to recover from their illness by the time they go to the doctor.

All the medicines they prescribe are merely to manage symptoms. I have GERD and reflux. I was given PPI after many many tests. How does taking PPI extend my lifespan. Whatever has gone wrong with my body is still there.

How is this not obvious to ppl making this absurd correlation between hospital care and lifespan.

Medicine doesn't have shit of new breed of diseases and disorders ppl are dying from. Doctors don't have answers to any of modern illnesses so how does it matter if access to a useless person is govt funded or 'free market'.

yodsanklai2• 2 years ago

The shocking truth: Australia has a world-leading health system — because of governments

In the US, government is elected by people. You can't blame a gvt for not doing what it hasn't been mandated to do.

defrost12• 2 years ago

Hilarious .. next you'll be saying the two party sink-hole the US electoral system gravitated into is representative of the population at large.

Are you touring with this material, or is it off the cuff standup?

SteveSmith16384• 2 years ago

When did the people specifically asked for this kind of system?

blitzar2• 2 years ago

We get the government we deserve.

weberer• 2 years ago

the free market-based US healthcare system

The healthcare system in the US is far, far from a free market. Most people would describe it as a crony capitalist market. There's a lack of transparency, lack of competition, and lobbyists of established players have too much say in the lawmaking process.

defrost12• 2 years ago

See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41856242

apwell236• 2 years ago

  "less likely to die from drug overdoses. Older age groups are also less likely to die from chronic diseases such as circulatory problems and heart disease. Cancer mortality rates are lower in Australia than they are in all other Anglophone countries, except among American men aged over 65. And Australians are also less likely to die in road accidents than other countries"

So what does this have anything to do with healthcare system ( govt or free market) .

Looks like you conflated two unrelated things ?

anomaly_• 2 years ago

Next to the USA, Australia provides some of the highest earning opportunities for medical specialists thanks to its very well-developed private sector. A doctor might clock AU$300/400k for a 0.5FTE role at a public hospital, and then bring in another AU$500/600k+ from their private practice (and that's a very low figure for a lot of specialities). As a result, Australia can attract and retain extremely high-quality doctors with the public sector essentially riding the back of the earning potential provided by the private sector. Interestingly, I think the reason you don't often see full private specialists is that due to lack of market forces applying to public healthcare, the public system crowds out the private system on complex/innovative care -- so as a specialist you need to retain a public presence to get access to the high-profile work that you use to support your private billings.

graeme• 2 years ago

Anyone know of a good source like Our World in Data for tracking life expectancy across countries?

Our world in data hasn't updated life expectancy past 2021.

I've half wondered if it's because the article is optimistic but life expectancy has stalled since 2020. Coild also be the underlying data hit a snag. Would love to see an update

https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy

zaik• 2 years ago

   Overall, the study found that children born since 2010 have a relatively small chance of living to 100 (5.1% chance for women and 1.8% chance for men). The most likely cohort to see a full century are women in Hong Kong, with a 12.8% chance.

How do you quantify the chance of a teenager living to 100?

ivanjermakov• 2 years ago

Either they use some prediction model (accuracy of which is comparable to any 100-years-ahead predictions) or they keep hostage time travelers from 2120s.

jjk1662• 2 years ago

It's assumed that the odds of dying at a given age are frozen. So if someone is currently 15, their odds of making it to 100 are their odds of surviving 16 times their odds of surviving 17 times their odds of surviving 18, and so forth. If you're in the US, as of 2021, for all ages over 11 your life expectancy decreases by less than 1 year per year, and if you've attained the ripe old age of 119, your life expectancy is only one month shorter than that of someone 2 years younger than you.

Many demographic trends like fertility rate are treated the same way. While it is not a very accurate prediction for how long a current young person will actually live, it's a consistent metric that doesn't rely on a particular model of future events. It's good for discussions like this where we're more interested in how the value is changing than the actual value itself.

kazinator• 2 years ago

There is a limit to how far you can postpone death without actually reprogramming the DNA. We have likely plateaued it. We are not going to have people living to 200 by just doing more of what we are doing, with greater fervor.

hackernewds2• 2 years ago

overall, the study found that children born since 2010 have a relatively small chance of living to 100 (5.1% chance for women and 1.8% chance for men). The most likely cohort to see a full century are women in Hong Kong, with a 12.8% chance.

I do not understand how some of the conclusions about reaching the limitations of reducing aging or reached given this simple data. not to mention a direct quote that is very inspirational in the article itself

"if we cannot imagine it today, does not mean it is not possible"

Pooge2• 2 years ago

I'm not surprised; most deaths are attributed to unhealthy diet, lack of physical activity and alcohol consumption. [1, 2]

I'm not noticing people eating more healthily, so it only makes sense that life expectancy isn't going up anymore.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/causes-of-death [2]: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/cardiovascu...

andrei-akopian• 2 years ago

https://ourworldindata.org/causes-of-death

More people die of Suicide than Malaria aparently.

Somehow what actually kills people, is different from what you think kills people.

n8cpdx• 2 years ago

The youth are drinking less, and great non-alcoholic substitutes are becoming available for a wide variety of beverages. I hope these trends make a difference long term.

I’ve had to make very few compromises to still enjoy life while staying alcohol free - I can even have a decent bottle of wine, or a rum and Coke should I be in the mood for one.

https://theconversation.com/youth-drinking-is-declining-myth...

Pooge2• 2 years ago

The youth are drinking less

What little life expectancy they gain by drinking less - and not stopping completely - is completely overshadowed by their high-sugar, high-sodium, meat-heavy diet.

Eumenes• 2 years ago

Why should Americans trust public health or the government after decades of utter failure? Every single measurable data point of health has decreased under the 'experts' watch. Record cancer, obesity, heart disease, mental health disaster, etc. The messaging around the covid vaccines and masking was a disaster.

Same thing is happening in Europe and other developed nations. UK considering giving ozempic to unemployed? How about subsidized or free gym memberships instead? Things are going to get alot worse before getting better. The established intuitions will continue to double down no doubt.

sharpshadow• 2 years ago

“…the rate of improvement in life expectancy in the decade of 2010–19 had dropped below that seen between 1990 and 2000. People were still living longer, but not by as much.”

“The analysis looked at the period of 1990 to 2019, to avoid the distorting impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

At least life expectancy was still growing before COVID. Now after the introduction of dirty (mass production was not the same quality as the small batches used in leading studies) COVID vaccines, plus the virus itself which caused some trouble to not fully healthy people, we will see a life expectancy decline. Excess deaths did already rose worldwide.

Meanwhile they want you to get more dirty vaccines..

Edit: typo

Life expectancy rise in rich countries slows down: took 30 years to prove

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