The secret of a long life?.

[tony1951]

This is what the office of national statistics say
National life tables, UK 2011 to 2013-2.pdf
With increased stress, pollution in air and water, too many harmful chemicals in foods, not enough physical activity, less access to health care, increased alcohol and drugs consumption, harmful and unnecessary medications.
It has got to be declining rapidly

This nutcase bollox about air pollution really boils me up. Since 1990 air pollution has reduced by 80%. If anybody wants I can supply the graphs to show that. EDIT: There, I did it. They are below.

When I see stuff like that I am absolutely certain that the originator of the quote is spouting politicised nonsense about air pollution.

Some of it is fair enough - drugs - alcohol - known bad things and some increase.

What you don't quote are massive increase in morbid obesity and general over-weight (known life limiting issues) and decrease in physical activity levels. Many of us like me at 75 have photos of family in teh 1950s and 1960s. They are starkly different in build and fattness than people are today. I look at the young women in photos of my family and friends in the 1960s and 1970s and they look like models by comparison to the whales of young women today. This is going to bring a massive decline in healthy years lived.

Graphs from the government:

Emissions of air pollutants in the UK – Particulate matter (PM10 and PM2.5)

www.gov.uk

 

[22tempest]

"It makes you wonder how much of a long life is down to pure genetics"

Or spending six million dollars on bionics!

 

[career707]

True, I've been to the UK twice and it was truly a shock!!

People everywhere, just everywhere and many of them didn't even speak English...!?!

The roads were crowded and - most striking - no forests, just spots of woodland here and there, mostly agricultural landscape och huge cities, everyone of them with hundreds of thousands inhabitants.

It was impossible even to see the sky with the stars any night, the light pollution was intense.

I was there once in November and people walked around in T-shirts during the winter, it was like +20c!! They hadn't had had any single snowfall even in late November.

It felt like high summer but the sun set like 1900 - truly weird..!!

Can I just ask.....what made you visit twice? If I was living in Sweden once would have been enough.

 

[Miles]

The other thing is…there’s no point living to a 100 if you don’t do the things you want to and have to live life like a monk
I like to enjoy things in moderation and make the most of it anyway you can live a so called clean life and still get hit by a bus lol

No cure for life is there

 

[Byronic]

This nutcase bollox about air pollution really boils me up. Since 1990 air pollution has reduced by 80%. If anybody wants I can supply the graphs to show that. EDIT: There, I did it. They are below.

When I see stuff like that I am absolutely certain that the originator of the quote is spouting politicised nonsense about air pollution.

Some of it is fair enough - drugs - alcohol - known bad things and some increase.

What you don't quote are massive increase in morbid obesity and general over-weight (known life limiting issues) and decrease in physical activity levels. Many of us like me at 75 have photos of family in teh 1950s and 1960s. They are starkly different in build and fattness than people are today. I look at the young women in photos of my family and friends in the 1960s and 1970s and they look like models by comparison to the whales of young women today. This is going to bring a massive decline in healthy years lived.

Graphs from the government:

Emissions of air pollutants in the UK – Particulate matter (PM10 and PM2.5)

www.gov.uk

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View attachment 1023337

You are absolutely right about people being overweight / obese.

When I was a kid one the 1950s poor people were thin; now it seems to be the opposite.
Leaves me wondering though whether they are adequately nourished given the massive sales of convenience and junk food in recent decades - how genuinely "nutritious" is it?
Levels of fat?
Levels of sugar?
Levels of salt?
Levels of Type 2 Diabetes in Britain?

When I was a kid most mums cooked at home from very basic ingredients which were not highly processed and which were not particularly expensive either.

I have a different point of view on the question of air pollution, respectfully.
We had terrible smogs in London into the war 1960s - largely caused by coal fires in most houses.
The Clean Air Acts pushed changes in society which stopped those smogs - absolutely right.

However levels of less visible fossil fuel pollution are likely to be much higher these days - simply look at the vast increase in road vehicles, annual mileage, airplane usage etc.
The increase in "Greenhouse gases" is not imaginary.

 

[JohnnySweden]

Can I just ask.....what made you visit twice? If I was living in Sweden once would have been enough.

It was once for pleasure and once on business, no choice in the latter case.

 

[JohnnySweden]

This nutcase bollox about air pollution really boils me up. Since 1990 air pollution has reduced by 80%.

There is however still a lot of pollution and some newer forms are also a lot more dangerous.

 

[crissdee]

You do what you want to do of course. Smoking, alchohol, obesity, inactivity in that order will kill you pretty quickly and rob you of many years of happy, healthy life.

But no one can know that for sure. I had a great aunt who drank a pint of Guinness every day of her life from the age of about 7 (she lived in a pub, and had anaemia, a sailor customer recommended the Guinness as a cure and it worked) She lived to be the last of 7 siblings and died in her 90s. Another uncle of the same generation smoked roll ups from the age of 12 until he died in his 90s because his wife had died a few months earlier and he just gave up on life. Nobody knows how long we've got....

 

[JohnnySweden]

You are absolutely right about people being overweight / obese.

Even here obese people have been a common sight!?




However...

The United Kingdom has a significantly higher obesity rate than Sweden.

While approximately 16% of the adult population in Sweden lives with obesity (BMI ≥ 30), the corresponding figure in the UK is around 26%, meaning one in four British adults is affected.

Both nations follow a global trend of rising overweight and obesity rates over recent decades, though the rate of increase has recently started to plateau in high-income countries.

 

[tony1951]

True, I've been to the UK twice and it was truly a shock!!

- most striking - no forests, just spots of woodland here and there, mostly agricultural landscape och huge cities, everyone of them with hundreds of thousands inhabitants.

How England’s largest forest went from commodity to conservation haven

Kielder in Northumberland is balancing commercial production with conserving peatland and rare plants and animals

www.theguardian.com

It depends where you go Johnny. Kielder forest has 150 million trees and covers 250 sq miles in Northern England.

I live very near the southern edge of it - about 7 miles away. It is all a plantation and a commercial forest for producing timber and they cut about half a million tonnes of timber there every year.



There is no getting away from the fact that you and I live in very different countries. We have over 70 million people on a small island - it happens to be the small island that gave us all the modern world - since it is where the industrial revolution happened.

There is a price to pay for all of that - one is population density - something you refer to in the rest of your post.

England has about 430 people per square kilometer of land, whereas Sweden has 26 people per sq kilometer.

Governments have pursued a policy of attracting migrants to try and pay the bills for the massive Ponzie scheme of social security. This has brought in 11 million more people since 1995.