Here’s to Life
February 8th, 2008Recently I was reading through the various prediction-related links from Ian Ayers’ site (which I originally found through the Freakonomics blog). Regular readers might remember that I blogged once previously about Ian Ayers’ book “Super Crunchers”, which discussed the power of automated decision making, data crunching, and well-run randomized trials. But this time I had an even more important topic in mind - how long we expect to live. On Ayers’ site are a couple of excellent links that try to predict your life expectancy.
The Political Calculations link simply asks for your age and tells you, based on your gender, how long you should expect to live. Pretty simple. (Being 27 and male, I’m supposed to live to 76, so that’s about 50 years left.) The Northwest Mutual link is more involved. In a tongue-in-cheek style, you play “The Longevity Game”, where you answer a few questions based on your living habits, and it tells you how long you should expect to live. (Even though I’m male, I got 85. Must be because I’m a non-smoking vegetarian or something.) You can see your life expectancy rise and fall as you answer the questions, so it’s a pretty sobering process, despite all the goofy animations. I took another test and got similar results (life expectancy of 88).
We can dig deeper, though. What sorts of things should we look out for in order to lengthen our lives? There’s a pretty good color-coded graph here. Apparently the biggest killer in my age group (and every age group before mine) is “unintentional injury”. I’m not exactly sure what that involves, but it sounds like anything from falling off a stepladder to getting put through a wood chipper, Fargo-style. What shocks me is that “unintentional injury” is a leading cause of death in all age groups. I guess life is funny like that. 2nd in my age group is homicide and 3rd is suicide (no doubt these both happen more to men). So as long I avoid wood chippers, and no one (including myself) tries to kill me, I should be OK.
As you get older, you have to watch out more for typical stuff, like heart disease and cancer. I didn’t expect the flu to be so high on the list, but apparently it is too. (So next time you call in sick to work, you can tell them it’s a matter of life and death.)
Personally, I don’t dwell too much on death itself, though. Life expectancy in the U.S. has been steadily rising for many years. And from that same link, you can see that infant mortality has plunged, and that even now Americans can expect to live longer than a lot of people. Plus, you can see that a lot less people are dying from lung cancer these days, which is encouraging.
Even though we’re living longer and less of us are passing on, that doesn’t stop people from trying to predict when it will happen. The economist in me is both shocked and interested by death prediction markets (”death pools”). Though such websites are certainly quite tasteless, it’s morbidly interesting to read the rules and caveats they employ. For example, if a Death Row inmate is executed, you lose. But if they die or kill themselves in prison, you win. And apparently death pools have been around for some time, anyway, so I’m sure they’re not going anywhere.
But what would such sites do if death itself were abolished? (From natural causes, anyway.) Some people think it might be possible. In particular, the principle of “longevity escape velocity” is seductive. The idea is that if you live long enough, medical advances in longevity will outpace your own aging process, at some point hopefully extending your life indefinitely.
This is all speculation, though. The only scientifically-proven method I’ve read that prolongs your life is adopting a calorie-restricted diet. This approach has been tested on monkeys, rats, and even (willing) people. Basically, you live in a constant state of near-starvation, which causes your body to shut down the aging process. “CR” practitioners talk about a new appreciation for food that gives you a high when you eat. Some say eating is better than sex on a CR diet. I think it’s all a bit much, myself. (Though I do think it might lead to some hilarious situations. “Not now, honey - I’d really rather eat some cheesecake instead.”)
Not that I don’t think the approach is without merit. I’m aiming for a compromise, personally. Instead of weighing all my meals, for months I’ve resolved to never eat more than I need during a meal, and to eat less overall. This also prevents that “food hangover” I get when I overeat which makes me sleepy and lethargic.
So far the results have been positive. There hasn’t been a ton of long-term research in humans, but from the shorter tests people have tried (a few years), CR diets seem to prolong life. Not only that, but CR diets also seem to reduce the effects of aging overall. So not only may you live longer, but your quality of life should be higher and the signs of aging lower. I hope I can benefit from this, if only in some small way.
This may all be a moot point for me, anyway. Since I was an identical twin, I was born premature with a very low birth weight, which may be associated with a host of illnesses later in life. I also have tachycardia, where my heart rate will double suddenly and without warning, and top it all off, my late father passed away in his early 60s from brain cancer.
I don’t see all this in a negative light, though. It reminds me to live every day to the fullest, because you have no idea when it will end. But there’s no reason I can’t be smart about it. Next time I need wood chipped, maybe I’ll go to Home Depot instead.
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