The Nice People Thread, No.16: A Universe of Niceness.

silvercar

zagubov wrote: »

She's like the archetype of everybody's great-uncle Bert who smoked 80 woodbine a day and lived to their 90s. Some people are genetically optimised by sheer dumb luck, and they have no message for us.
It might have been interesting if such people went on a restricted calorie diet like the ones that make animals live longer; then we might learn what the real human longevity limits are.

We need to be looking at a large sample of people who lived over say 110, rather than the single person who lived the longest. These outliers are unreliable as examples for the rest of us.

ETA: also, is height an issue? Both Calment and the second longest living were both under five ft. Wikipedia doesn't give the height for the others. Plus a lot of the longest living Americans were afro-American, is that significant?

I read somewhere that height influences because the fewer cells you have the fewer that can turn cancerous. Thin people for the same fattiness will have less cells.

zagubov

I know that Scandinavians are the most cancer-prone people in the world, and also that there is a relationship between height and cancer risk, which I also presumed was due to having more cells.

I don't know why some countries seem particularly prone to longevity. Some countries probably have more reliable records due to the types of governments they had, and others may not have had such thorough records, or may have lost them in revolutions, civil wars and other disruptions. The 20th was a busy century, history-wise.

Pyxis

silvercar wrote: »

We need to be looking at a large sample of people who lived over say 110, rather than the single person who lived the longest. These outliers are unreliable as examples for the rest of us.



I read somewhere that height influences because the fewer cells you have the fewer that can turn cancerous. Thin people for the same fattiness will have less cells.

Well, small breeds of dogs live on average several years longer than the largest dogs, so it could be something to do with the strain on the heart.
However, smaller dogs tend to be livelier than large dogs.

Perhaps smaller dogs secretly raid the olive oil at night! :rotfl:

I know that people who grow very tall due to Growth Hormone defects tend to die young, but I think that's possibly due to other associated problems rather than just their height.

It would be interesting to compare the causes of death of taller people with those of shorter people.




Edit. One study I just found indicates that short people are more likely to die from heart disease, so disproving my theory! Tall people are more likely to die from cancer as they have bigger organs, so more likely to have cell that turns cancerous.

zagubov

Pyxis wrote: »

Well, small breeds of dogs live on average several years longer than the largest dogs, so it could be something to do with the strain on the heart.
However, smaller dogs tend to be livelier than large dogs.

Perhaps smaller dogs secretly raid the olive oil at night! :rotfl:

I know that people who grow very tall due to Growth Hormone defects tend to die young, but I think that's possibly due to other associated problems rather than just their height.

It would be interesting to compare the causes of death of taller people with those of shorter people.




Edit. One study I just found indicates that short people are more likely to die from heart disease, so disproving my theory! Tall people are more likely to die from cancer as they have bigger organs, so more likely to have cell that turns cancerous.

You're entering interesting areas of Biology there!:beer:
You may want to google Peto's Paradox. If you're good with numbers you might also find Metabolic Theory of Ecology worth finding out about.

Pyxis

zagubov wrote: »

You're entering interesting areas of Biology there!:beer:
You may want to google Peto's Paradox. If you're good with numbers you might also find Metabolic Theory of Ecology worth finding out about.

Correlation/causation problems, too!

LydiaJ

zagubov wrote: »

She could possibly have lived longer; the retirement home she stayed in got tired of her visitors and started banning them, then her health quickly declined. Her lifestyle wasn't conducive to longevity as she smoked and drank spirits over extremely long time periods, although she never had a days illness nor did she develop dementia.

Pyxis wrote: »

That is very, very telling.

Maybe that's the message for us?

I believe there are significant findings that social isolation is negatively correlated with longevity.

Science_Daily wrote:

Previous research from Holt-Lunstad and Smith puts the heightened risk of mortality from loneliness in the same category as smoking 15 cigarettes a day and being an alcoholic. This current study suggests that not only is the risk for mortality in the same category as these well-known risk factors, it also surpasses health risks associated with obesity.

Link to quote

zagubov

LydiaJ wrote: »

I believe there are significant findings that social isolation is negatively correlated with longevity.


Link to quote

As Pyxis says, that is the message for us. Nobody doubts it was the drop in visitors that lead to her decline and death.

Having said that, nobody really knows what the cause of her longevity and robust good health was.

michaels

Thinking of Niks this evening.

ukmaggie45

Just a quick visit to wish you all a very Happy New Year...

Thanks Michaels, it's a while since we heard from Niks. Hoping that things are going well for her.

Hugs to all from Liverpool.

PasturesNew

Happy New Year NPs.
Especially Niks... who I think of daily.