We live too short and die too long

There’s an old saying, “Life is too short, so forgive quickly, love truly, laugh loudly and never avoid anything that makes you smile”. But is life really so short? Well, it all depends on how we look at it. Nevertheless, one thing is true. Despite perfunctory denials, we all desire to live long without at times realizing that the quality of life is equally important.

Walter Bortz wrote the best-seller with a catchy title, “We live too short and die too long”. The paperback deals with ageing and longevity. Bortz challenges the “boundaries” we place on the human life span, “Exactly how long do we expect to live?”  Life insurance experts bet that for most of us our life span will be 75 years. But Bortz is an optimist. He avers that several lines of evidence place human life span not only at 90 but at a remarkable 120 years. The author elaborates on his postulate by extrapolating facts after drawing evidence from mathematical models, from his own experience, and finally, in a “Eureka” moment exclaims, “It is a joy to see so many centenarians carry on with life without any hindrance”. 

Merely achieving a maximum lifespan is not the goal of his book though. Bortz wishes to bring home the point that old age can be good and its goodness depends on individual commitment to cultivating a healthy life style. This book is a must read. We may not agree with all he says but can obviously draw a good lesson and fill our lives with optimism and hope.

In his grandiloquent manner Bortz says aging must not be a sad contemplation of life rushing toward a dismal end. It has to rather be a call to regard the various stages of "development" as positive, rather than negative. The fascinating book brilliantly stretches our thinking and our expectations of good decades that can lie ahead. 

According to Bortz, we ourselves have the opportunity to design our future. “We are not impassive, non-participating witnesses in our own life story. We are the authors and the players. We are the sculptor and the marble. If our future beckons with opportunity, creative pursuit, worthiness and meaning then we can live our entire life span. But if we abandon our later years to images of despondency and dependency, our lives will be cut short”. To him, concern about “quality of life” is uppermost. He never feels shy of recommending the “prevention tripod” of diet, healthy lifestyle and enough hours of sleep and relaxation so that we can manage the “killer stress” in our lives.

Scientists today keep unraveling the secret of longevity. Recent experiments on everything, from roundworms to mice, tell us that our maximum life spans are not cast in stone but can be extended far beyond what nature intended.

In many ways, tremendous progress has already been made in extending human life. From lowering infant mortality rates (the biggest factor) to creating effective vaccines and reducing deaths related to heart problems, science has helped increase the average person's life span by nearly three decades over the past century.

But getting the average person from 80 to 120 and beyond requires research into the cellular mechanisms that cause gray hair and wrinkles, that make our bones creak and minds go weak, that make creatures shrivel, shrink and waste away. “Genetic tinkering” is the buzzword today. Much of the anti-aging research is still done on rodents, whose biological systems are similar to humans in many ways. A study out of Cambridge University in England found that what a mother eats during pregnancy and while nursing can greatly affect her children's life spans. Using mice, the researchers found that mothers fed “protein-rich diets” during pregnancy, but “low-protein diets” during breast-feeding, had pups that lived up to 50 per cent longer than those for whom this feeding pattern was reversed. If something like this could work for humans, this would translate into a difference between reaching 50 and living to be 75 years old!

There’s more. Breakthrough studies reveal that the drug “Lithium” is helping scientists unlock the ageing puzzle. Lithium is used in psychiatry to help stop mood swings but has a risk of serious side-effects at “high doses”. But the response to “low doses” is very encouraging as it targets favourably the longevity gene GSK-3 in humans," says Prof Linda Partridge of the UCL Institute of Healthy Ageing, who led the study.

After all that has been said above, if the thought of dieting, or, having your genes mucked with, doesn't sound appealing to you do not worry. Here is another and perhaps a more pleasurable way to live longer, researchers say: “FALL IN LOVE”. A study earlier this year led by Linda Waite, a sociologist at the University of Chicago, showed that happily married couples tend to live longer than unwed individuals. Married men were found to live, on average, ten years longer than non-married men, and married women lived about four years longer than non-married women. 

This is really good news. I, for one, feel like crooning with Ella Fitzgerald (one of the most beloved jazz singers of all time): "Let's Fall In Love/ Birds Do It/ Bees Do It/ Even Educated Fleas Do It/ Let's Also Do It/ Let's Fall In Love”. La...La...La...La!  

(Dr. Francisco Colaço is a seniormost consulting physician, pioneer of Echocardiography in Goa.)