Health and Wellness in Review: What Have We Learned about Longevity?

Records are made to be broken. Babe Ruth proves as much with his now defunct records for career homers and most homeruns in a single season. Dimaggio’s hitting streak notwithstanding, it seems most indidivual achievements get topped sooner or later. Longevity is no exception. The book of Genesis, if taken literally, sets the old age bar pretty high. “And all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty and nine years: and he died” (Gen 5:25). We don’t know much about Methuselah, but we must assume that the last 200 years or so were pretty gruesome. Still, living longer is a seemingly ubiquitous desire.

As a result of our culture’s extension obsession, newspapers are constantly running stories on scientific studies that seem to provide data on how to keep hold of our corporeal condition. These articles are often counter-intuitive and occasionally contradict each other. For example:

According to an article on worldhealth.net, “Education may be the long-sought-after fountain of youth. After decades of studies, researchers continue to find that those who keep their minds engaged in active education live longer and stave off the ravages of aging, such as memory loss and lethargy.” This study was also picked up the New York Times, which skillfully avoided the obvious statement that its readership would live longer than the New York Post’s. The exact nature of this correlation is not necessarily clear, but it may have something to do with the fact that members of academia, due to a powerful aversion to work, are much less likely to die in a work-related accident.

If education seems a strange way to live longer, imagine the results of another study, which suggest that optimism and long life are related. Aside from giving pessimists another thing to worry about, this study should have a definite effect on mainstream American culture. Imagine a new set of T-shirts or bumper stickers that say, “I’d rather be right than live into my seventies.” Or how about, “Shit happens, but if you want to survive, you can’t say shit.”

Another study, funded by the Center for Obvious Research, stated lowering caloric intake can lengthen the human lifespan. The study went slightly deeper than looking up the word “calorie” in the dictionary. It determined, in fact, that a 25-percent reduction in calories increased the function of structures inside muscle cells known as mitochondria. You may remember mitochondria from Star Wars: Episode I. They’re the microscopic Yodas that that bind and penetrate all life, enabling Jedi to lift objects with their minds and speak in bizarre syntax. “Eat less bacon, and live longer you will.”
Perhaps from provocative is a study that states, “working unusual shifts and flying back and forth across time zones takes a permanent toll on health. Tests on more than 100 mice showed that old mice forced to live on a confusing schedules of light and darkness, simulating rotating shifts or international travel, died sooner than those on gentler schedules” (worldhealth.net). Mice involved in the study also complained about the terrible airline food and suggested that the in-flight movie, The Last Kiss, would have been better if “everyone in it were eaten by a cat in the first ten minutes.”