Average American Lifespan

Learning From History.

According to statistics, the average life expectancy is now greater than it was when our grandparents were alive. That seems strange when I think about how old my grandparents were when they died. My grandparents lived, on average, twenty years longer than the present US average.

When we look into this, we find accidents, poor sanitation and childhood diseases were the big three that contributed to a shorter life span statistic in the past. Statistics can be confusing. Many childhood diseases can be directly traced back to poor sanitation in the home and hospital. Doctors didn’t believe washing their hands after dealing with infections, or even cadavers, and before attending women during childbirth, made any difference in deaths and disease before the late 1800’s. A doctor named Ignaz Semmeweis was scorned and ridiculed for his “hand washing theory.” After the acceptance of his theory, the death rate went from as high as thirty-five percent for Puerperal fever (AKA childbed fever) to less than one percent. Statistically speaking, if a small number of children die at birth, it changes the percentages more than if the same number die in their twenties. Zero days of age makes a larger impact on statistics than seventy-three hundred, the total days of age at twenty years. Many deaths at an early age, adult and pre-adult, were due to work related accidents.

Even though my paternal grandfather was the head of a large regional dairy in the midwest, he and my grandmother were farm based in their upbringing and their adult lifestyles. They ate foods that originated in nature, not what the FDA, other regulatory agencies and agribusinesses now call “natural.” Natural now seems to mean anything that’s grown, no matter how far removed from nature. As long as it’s not 100% created in a test tube or laboratory environment it can be called “Natural” if other criteria are met. Natural, according to present standards, can be genetically modified, grown on chemicals, heavily sprayed with pesticides and processed using substances that are toxic to humans.

My grandparents didn’t have those things in their lives, and they lived a long and productive life. My paternal grandparents did physical labor on a daily basis even at an advanced age. They had a garden and my grandfather did volunteer yard work for others. My grandmother was picky about what she fed her kids, and her grand kids, and she cooked meals from scratch, not out of a can. I can’t remember ever seeing any junk food or fast foods in my grandparent’s house. Neither of them smoked and I can’t remember them drinking, except maybe a glass of beer or wine at Thanksgiving or Christmas. My grandfather’s normal Christmas or New Year’s joke was, “I’ll have a bloody murder” but he only had one.

My maternal great-grandmother lived into her late nineties, even though she was incapacitated to a large degree due to an accident in her early adulthood. My maternal grandmother lived into her early nineties. My maternal grandfather was a high roller and died in his early sixties.

So, according to some, I’m genetically predisposed to a long life and so is my wife. My grandfather lived 30 years longer than my father. My wife’s grandparents lived much longer than her parents. If genetics is the big determining factor, what happened between grandparents and parents?

My father and mother both smoked. One or two, maybe more, alcoholic drinks per day were the norm. My father did very little physical exercise and both parents ate a canned, heavy on the junk food, prepared diet. They never had a garden that I remember. My dad would regularly spray pesticides on their lawn and I never saw him wear any kind of protection. Both my parents were convinced that modern technology would come to their rescue.

My dad died of liver disease after a long and costly battle. He’d also had problems with skin cancer. Excess alcohol has been linked with greater risk of melanoma skin cancers. Those who drink the most alcohol have a 65 percent greater risk of melanoma than those who drink the least. My mother had Alzheimer’s and osteoporosis and died from a shattered hip while in the hospital. She was a sugar and junk food junky.

My wife’s mother smoked and died from lung disease, she was also a sugar junky, heavy coffee drinker and never exercised. Her father died from prostate cancer that spread into the bones and rest of his system. He exercised in spurts, would overdo and then not exercise for long periods of time before overdoing again. He was overweight and a sugar and junk food junky.

If we were to believe what we see advertised, we’d be convinced that there’s a chemical fix for everything. According to the 2003 medical report, Death By Medicine, by Drs. Gary Null, Carolyn Dean, Martin Feldman, Debora Rasio and Dorothy Smith, there are approximately 106,000 properly prescribed prescription drug caused deaths in the US each year.

If we look at statistics, from the FBI, we find there are 8 million gun owners in the US. Last year there were 1500 accidental gun deaths in the US. Using statistics from the US Dept. of Health and Human Services, we find there are 700,000 physicians in the US. Last year there were 120,000 accidental physician caused deaths. Crunching numbers, we find accidental death by physicians are 9,000 times more likely than accidental gun caused deaths.

“Mankind is annoyed because the truth is so simple.” Goethe.