No, You Don’t Have 9 Lives

?? In this Nexus:?

?? Lifespan, longevity, healthspan – what’s the difference?

?? Average lifespan of human?

?? Leading causes of death globally

?? Risk factors of the leading causes of death

?? How not to die too early?

While in the first Nexus I shared my own story on how I got interested in longevity, this time I want to focus more on the basics. My first couple of Newsletters will be lighter in content, as I am sure some of my subscribers are new to the topic, thus, I want to do a proper introduction. Therefore, let's start from the terminology.

Lifespan, Longevity, Healthspan – What’s the Difference?

There are 3 different terms – lifespan, longevity and healthspan, and it is important to understand the distinction.

• Lifespan is the total duration of an individual's life (time period from birth to death) or the longest period over which the life of an organism or species may extend, according to the available biological knowledge concerning it.
• Longevity is closely related to lifespan, but it specifically refers to the length of life, particularly when it is unusually long. It often implies living to an old age while maintaining good health and vitality. Longevity describes the ability to live a long life beyond the species-specific average age at death.
• Healthspan describes the period of one's life that is spent in good health or free from chronic illness and debilitating conditions. The focus of healthspan is not just on the length of life, but on the quality of life in terms of health and functional capacity.

For me healthspan is the most important term of the 3, because who wants to live to 100 or beyond if you are not enjoying it or if you are attached to your bed.

Last year, I gave a talk on longevity and for that occasion I created this visual above to explain the differences between the terms. I also wanted to show the distinction between them by raising 2 important questions. ?

1.???? How to live longer?

2.????How to live a high-quality life for as long as possible?

In today’s Nexus , I will try to answer the first one.

Average Lifespan of Human?

According to the WordData.info the average age of death (or the average lifespan) is a few years lower at 68.9 years for men and 73.9 years for women (2021 data). There are of course regional differences. For example in the US these are 73.5 years for men and 79.3 years for women, while within the European Union – 77.7 and 83.3 years respectively. Within the last 60 years (i.e. since 1960), the life expectancy increased by 18.1 years for men, and by 19.3 years for women. This is of course due to the advancements in medicine and healthcare, which will definitely be the topics in the further editions of Nexus . The TOP20 countries based on life expectancy are provided in the table below. Are you a lucky one?

So as we now know some of the statistics on the average lifespan, lets try to answer the first question I raised at the beginning of this Nexus : how to live longer. Or to make it more dramatic – how not to die too early. For me it is like solving a problem (or like CAPA in the Quality Management System) – if you don’t want something to happen, you need to implement corrective and preventive actions. Similarly, if you don’t want to die too early, you need to know the main causes of death and see what actions you can implement to avoid them.

What Does Science Say?

?Leading causes of death globally

According to World Health Organization (WHO) in 2019, the top 10 causes of death accounted for 55% of the total 55.4 million deaths globally (1 ). The top causes of death are associated with three broad topics: cardiovascular (ischaemic heart disease, stroke), respiratory (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lower respiratory infections) and neonatal conditions. At a global level, 7 of the 10 leading causes of deaths in 2019 were noncommunicable diseases. When COVID-19 pandemic stroke, the reported numbers in 2020 alone were 1.8M deaths worldwide, while a true estimate according to the WHO might be around 3M deaths that year. This means that COVID-19 infection would be in the 3-4 place in the diagram below for that year.

Of course, the causes of death varies by region and by country development level. In high-income countries, deaths are increasing for all top 10 diseases except two - ischaemic heart disease and stroke. Nonetheless these two cardiovascular conditions have remained in the top three causes of death, with a combined total of over 2.5 million fatalities in 2019. In addition, deaths from hypertensive heart disease are rising.

Risk Factors of the Leading Causes of Death

So let’s take the leading causes of death (in high-income countries) and analyse their modifiable risk factors, to understand what you personally can do about it (References: 2 ,3 ,4 ,5 ,6 ,7 ,8 ,9 ,10 ,11 ,12 ,13 ,14 ):

And the winner is - tobacco industry, as smoking is a risk factor for 10 out of 10 most deadly diseases. Not the best contest to be a winner in though... Tobacco industry is followed by the food industry, as obesity and poor/unhealthy diet were identified as risk factors for 7 and 6 out of 10 leading causes of death respectively. Sedentary life style and hypertension (which are closely related to the unhealthy diet, obesity and low physical activity) are also risk factors for 6 out of 10 causes of death. Occupational exposure to chemicals and dust as well as air pollution contributes to the higher risk of all respiratory diseases.

How Not to Die Too Early?

As you can see - it is a no brainer what you have to do in order to live longer:

• Quit smoking anything that you smoke. And by that I mean not only regular cigarettes, but also vapes, waterpipes, cigars, cigarillos, heated tobacco, roll-your-own tobacco, pipe tobacco, bidis, kreteks, smokeless tobacco products and whatever else I haven't listed. None of them are more saint than the others. And if you think that you will continue smoking, take some fancy longevity supplements in parallel and you will live happily ever after, well the chances are much lower for that. I will dedicate a one angry Nexus on smoking in the near future ??
• You are what you eat, so don't be a crap bag. Your body weight, diet, hypertension and hyperlipidemia is mostly about what you put in your mouth. Salt and sugar are not by an accident called the white death. Other big evils are fast food (which always come with a super sweet soda), processed meat and snacks, deep-fried food, candies and sweets, high-fat dairy and food containing trans fats (found in many processed foods). While I am not a saint myself eating some of those, it is in rare occasions and for sure it should't be your regular diet.
• At least start walking. In the recent years much more emphasis in research is put on the physical activity when discussing topics related to sleep, mental health, stress resilience, metabolism, longevity, etc. If you think that doing sports is not your thing - well the least you can do is walk. Skip car whenever you can, go to a store nearby by foot (not by car), get a dog that you will be obliged to take for a walk, use any other tactics that works for you, but please move! Try to do at least 7k steps a day, ideally 10k. By the way, training your lower body is highly important as in older age one of the most common causes of death is accidental injuries, which usually happen due to falling.
• Check your blood pressure. Do it regularly and track data over time. How can you know if you have a hypertension, if your baseline is unclear? For example, my regular blood pressure is lower that the average for my age. Moreover, according to World Health Organization , an estimated 46% (almost half!!!) of adults with hypertension are unaware that they have this condition, and only around 1 in 5 adults (21%) with hypertension have it under control.
• Never skip any prophylaxis program. These are there for a reason. If it is time for you to do a check for prostate cancer or colorectal cancer, or for whichever other prophylaxis program, go and do the test! Family doctor usually tell you upfront what is coming. During my university days I was involved in scientific research evaluating thermovision in the diagnosis of breast cancer. I had a chance to speak with all those women in our study, already diagnosed with this condition. You can’t imagine how many of them come too late, knowing that there is a lump there for quite some time and showing up only when it started hurting or bleeding. By that time most probably it has spread to the other organs, making the available treatments less effective.
• Get vaccinated. Really just get the damn shot. Vaccines is one of the biggest and greatest invention in the history of medicine, prolonging our lives most significantly compared to other innovative treatments. Since the invention of vaccines in late 18th - early 19th century, youth mortality rates (younger than 15 years old) has dropped from around 46% to 4.6% globally (this percentage is currently much lower in high-income countries). Also there are currently vaccines available not only for infectious diseases, but also for the prevention of cancer (Human Papillomavirus vaccine). Note: If there is a topic around vaccinations, I ask people not to tell me if they are against vaccines because I most probably won’t be able to communicate with them normally in the future...
• Protect yourself, no one else will. The last risk factor has two elements air pollution and occupational exposure. While you cannot change the air pollution situation without drastic changes in your life (like moving to a different location), or you won't change your job due to occupational exposure, you can get yourself as protected as possible in your working environment. Diligently wear a mask or take other safety measures as required if you face the exposure to dust or chemicals. People tend to underestimate what drastic consequences these can cause.

Hope you enjoyed the read. As you now know the very basics on how to live longer, in my next Nexus Newsletter I will discuss the core elements of longevity and healthspan. Make sure to subscribe and share your thoughts!