Do we live longer than before?

Luigi Cornaro lived at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries in the town of Padua, Italy. Obese and plagued by illness at age 35, he decided to radically change his lifestyle and began following a calorie-restricted diet, which helped him lose a great deal of weight. After achieving this, he lived in perfect health until the age of 100.

Drawing on his own experience and unwittingly pioneering the social theory of medicine (a theory —I emphasize— that argues that the most important factor in longevity is a healthy lifestyle), he recorded his health advice in a charming work titled How to Live to Be 100, or Discourses on a Sober Life. In it, he criticizes those “who argue that living a long life is not a blessing because the state of health of a man who reaches 75 cannot be called life” (note that he considered 75 to be a normal old age in the middle of the 15th century).

Cornaro, on the contrary, was emphatic in asserting that one could reach old age in good health. Thus, he recounts that, despite his age (he wrote the work at age 83), “I mount a horse without assistance, climb stairs or a hill with ease, and spend my time in a cheerful and good-humored spirit, conversing with people of sound judgment or reading a book, writing (…) and playing with my eleven grandchildren.” As a believer, Cornaro constantly gave thanks to God for not falling ill, “since I have eliminated all causes of illness through my regularity and moderation.” He ate very little, although he drank about half a liter of young wine a day, as he claimed that aged wine suited him less well. He always recommended eating only those foods “with which the stomach is in agreement,” advising people to seek out what pleased both the palate and the stomach. As a young man, he ate only twice a day, a routine he expanded in his old age to four meals in much smaller portions, but with a varied diet: “Wholemeal bread, egg yolks, soups; lamb, chicken, and fish (…), bearing in mind that what causes harm is not so much the consumption of inappropriate food as an excessive amount.” The Italian believed that each person should listen to their own body, “for what does not harm others may harm me,” and vice versa[1].

A century ago, the Jesuit priest Edward Garesché—who lived to be 84—would also devote a chapter of his extraordinary guide to life to offering a series of recommendations for living a healthy life: “Do not think too much about your own health (…); get enough exercise outdoors, but not too much; eat enough healthy food, but not too much; get enough sleep, plenty of fresh air, an abundance of pure water, expose yourself to as much sunlight as needed, engage in reasonable and uplifting leisure activities, and maintain a serene and joyful spirit.” Finally, he emphasized that “a full religious life, filled with faith, hope, and charity, has a wonderful influence on the health of the body as well as that of the soul”[2]. Recent studies, incidentally, prove him right[3].

Life expectancy and longevity

I have mentioned these two cases (which are, of course, anecdotal) because there is a widespread belief that in times past no one reached an advanced age. However, according to the Book of Psalms—written 3,500 years ago—robust people lived to be 80 years old back then. Likewise, among the sages of Ancient Greece—some 2,500 years ago—Democritus lived to be 90 and Plato to be 81. St. John the Evangelist died at the age of 94—2,000 years ago—and Stoic thinkers of the same era, such as Epictetus, reached the age of 80. And 500 years ago, some members of the School of Salamanca in Spain, such as Juan de Mariana and Martín de Azpilicueta, lived to be 88 and 94 years old, respectively. Among the popes, there are several cases of extreme longevity for example, Saint Agatho died at the age of 104 in the 7th century, and Celestine III lived past 90 in the 12th century. And in Victorian England in 1855, the most common age at which English people died (statistically speaking, the mode) was 76[4].

If you’ve been surprised by these facts, you’re not alone: the spectacular increase in life expectancy at birth over the last hundred years has led to the widespread acceptance of two common misconceptions. The first is the belief that, if life expectancy at birth in the early 20th century was, for example, 35 years and has now risen to over 80, this means that back then people typically died at 35, so that a person aged 45 or 50 was considered very old. This error stems from the common confusion between life expectancy at birth and human longevity, defined as the maximum age a human being can live.

Life expectancy is the number of years, on average, that a population has left to live at a given age. Therefore, the concept of life expectancy must always be linked to a specific age: there is life expectancy at birth, life expectancy at age 25, at 65, at 80, and so on. The tremendous increase in life expectancy at birth, the most frequently cited figure, has been greatly distorted by the much higher mortality rates among infants and mothers (during childbirth) that existed in the past. Thus, as people in those times survived birth, infancy, and youth, the life expectancy of the survivors came to resemble today’s figures more and more.

The second mistake consists of linearly extrapolating the increase in life expectancy and concluding that human beings are inexorably destined to live to be 100 or even longer. This belief has two philosophical roots. The first is the scientism of modern societies, which idolizes the totem of scientific and medical progress, believing that the present historical moment is always the pinnacle of civilization. The second philosophical root is the transformation of the desire for spiritual eternity into a vain illusion of bodily immortality. Thus, modern man —skeptical and self-sufficient— has shifted his focus from the immortality of the soul to that of the body, leading him to concern himself far more with his physical health than with his spiritual health: the ascetic has been replaced by the fitness fanatic, which does not exactly seem like a step forward for civilization.

Why do women live longer?

As for the difference between the sexes, it is well known that life expectancy at birth for women (for the intellectually confused: XX chromosome) is higher than that of men (XY), a difference that holds true for nearly all age groups. Why? Those who fail to distinguish between correlation and causation might argue that, since women talk significantly more than men (except during adolescence and old age[5]), talking must prolong life.

 In reality, two theories compete to explain why women tend to live longer on average than men. The first attributes the difference to biological and hormonal factors. The second, however, attributes it to the fact that men engage in riskier behaviors: they drink more, smoke more, or take greater risks in sports or behind the wheel. For example, twice as many men as women die in traffic accidents.

Which of the two theories seems more likely to be true? A few years ago, a researcher decided to conduct a study to try to determine this. To do so, he sought out subgroups of the population in which the lifestyles of men and women were as similar as possible. This led to the so-called Cloister Study, which analyzed the causes and ages of death of nearly 17,000 Catholic religious in monasteries in Germany and Austria over the past two hundred years (in some cases, dating back to the 16th century)[6]. The conclusions were clear: although nuns lived slightly longer than monks, the difference was considerably smaller; therefore, while a biological factor persisted, “behavioral factors are primarily responsible for the differences [in life expectancy] by sex.” 

Monks and nuns live longer

But the aforementioned study shed light on many other aspects. For example, it found that the life expectancy of religious people at age 50 was two years higher than that of the general population. When considering active life expectancy without physical limitations, the advantage of religious over the general population increased to three years.

Some might believe that the longer life expectancy of religious men and women is due to the absence of friction in living with members of the opposite sex (who are so different in every way!), but this is not the case: married people —both men and women— have a longer life expectancy than those who are not married[7].

The difference was slightly greater among men than among women. In fact, in recent decades, nuns seemed to live roughly the same number of years as the general female population, but the difference persisted among monks. For unexplained reasons, “the cancer mortality rate among monks was only half that of laypeople, and mortality from cardiovascular diseases was also significantly lower among monks than among men in the general population.” Since the risk factors leading to the development of various cancers and cardiovascular diseases are not yet well understood, we can only speculate on the reasons for the longer life expectancy among religious men. It may be their diet, lower tobacco and alcohol consumption, greater time spent outdoors —where the air is also cleaner (since monasteries are generally located in rural settings)—, the external and, above all, internal silence, the lack of stress caused by “the cares of life and the allure of riches” (Mt 13:22), the existence of an orderly life with schedules and slower rhythms, being surrounded by a stable, loving community, living a virtuous life, or the inner peace based on surrender to God’s will and trust in the Divine Providence. Both monks and nuns enjoyed a healthy form of recreation, albeit limited in time and differing in nature: the nuns’ recreation time generally centered around conversation, while the monks focused on walking (a result of the natural and enriching differences between the sexes, which were considered self-evident until the advent of the foolish feminist ideology).

Tempering the enthusiasm

Let’s return to the initial question: Do we live many more years than before? To answer this question with statistical data, I have chosen a country like Switzerland, which is relatively isolated from its neighbors and meets two interesting criteria: its neutrality, which has shielded it from the major wars of the past two centuries, and its long-standing high standard of living, which mitigates the distortions caused by the reduction of poverty, poor hygiene, and shortages of food and drinking water.

Well, Swiss mortality tables show that a century ago, life expectancy at birth was 40 years; today it is 84. However, as we look further ahead, the data becomes less spectacular: a Swiss person who would have reached age 65 a century ago could expect to live until age 76, whereas today they can expect to live until age 87. And what about the Swiss person who, a century ago, reached the advanced age of 80? He or she could have expected to live 5 more years. Today, that person can expect to live 10 more years, a difference of only 5 years over the course of a century[8].

Switzerland is not an isolated case. In Spain, an elderly person who at the end of the 19th century reached the age of 80 could expect to live to 83; a century later (1999), he or she could expect to live to 87 —a difference of just 4 years[9].

 To understand why I consider these differences small, we must remember that a century ago there were virtually no antipyretics to reduce fever (Aspirin would not become commercially available until 1900). Antibiotics did not exist either, nor had DDT been invented (it would eradicate malaria in vast areas of the world, Europe included), nor had mass vaccination of the population with the few vaccines effective in reducing mortality become widespread. The dangers of smoking had not yet been identified, nor were there the advances in the treatment of cardiovascular diseases or in surgical techniques that we have today. To make matters worse, at the beginning of the 20th century there were far fewer doctors per 1,000 inhabitants, a ratio that, over the course of a century, has increased more than threefold in Switzerland and more than ninefold in Spain (though one might wonder whether this medical hyperinflation has been a positive, neutral or negative factor in terms of population health and life expectancy…).

Conclusion

These data might prompt us to take a more sober look at the supposed advantages of the obsessive medicalization of today’s society. Moreover, in light of the Cloister Study, perhaps we should ask ourselves whether our lifestyle truly leads to a healthier life —and even whether what we take for granted as a guarantee of health is such guarantee at the end of the day. Let’s not forget that modern monks do not follow habits considered healthy by the rest of the population, and yet they live longer: for example, they do not undergo annual health checkups, nor do they sleep for many hours on ergonomic pillows and mattresses (some even cut their sleep short in the middle of the night). And although they remain physically active, they do not play sports or obsess over following the latest medical or dietary trends. They simply live a life focused on its ultimate meaning, a sober, moderate, peaceful, and orderly life.

And yet, they live longer.