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Stephenson:Neal:Quicksilver:20:Ask your father (Alan Sinder)

From the Quicksilver Metaweb.

This page will discuss longevity.

Stephensonia

When asked point blank by Godfrey Waterhouse: “How can you be THAT old?” Enoch says: “Ask your father.”

Authored entries

  • TBA

Enoch's Apparent Agelessness

If we discard alchemy as “T'was all rubbish” as Enoch admits on page 22 — then Enoch is not living as long as he seems by a “Philosopher's Stone”. Then, he must be doing it scientifically.

Wikipedia: Longevity

Quote: “To lengthen thy life, lessen thy meals.” - Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, June 1733

Longevity is long life or existence. Reflections on longevity have usually gone beyond acknowledging the basic shortness of human life and included thinking about, and conceiving, methods to extend life (indefinitely). Longevity has been a topic not only for the scientific community but also for writers of travel, science fiction, and utopian novels.

Different people have different lifestyles. But it appears that it matters most where in the world (rather than how) you live. Health care and hygiene seem to influence life expectancy more than any other factor (from the CIA World Fact Book):

First World: 77-81 years Second World: 65-77 years Third World: 35-60 years

Even habits such as smoking do not seem to have a major influence: Japan, a country with lots of tobacco consumption, has the highest life expectancy in the world (80.91 years, CIA Fact Book 2002). Hong Kong, a dense 7 million people city with constant stress, follows Japan closely (79.8 years, CIA Fact Book 2002). So it may be just cigars in the cigar box.

Food and lifestyle make rather a small difference (all from CIA World Fact Book 2002): USA: 77.4 years UK: 77.99 years Germany: 77.78 years France: 79.05 years Italy: 79.25 years Australia: 80 years

Scientists are working to extend our life, mainly with these ideas:

It is believed that life expectancy in First World countries will have risen to 100 years by 2030, and to 120 years by 2060. Some also think hibernation of sort can add years to one's life.

Hibernation

Hibernation is a state of regulated hypothermia, lasting several days or weeks that allows animals to conserve energy during the winter. During hibernation animals slow their metabolism to very low levels, with body temperature and breathing rates lowered, gradually using the body fat reserves that were stored during the active warmer months. Some hibernating animals stir as often as once a week; Other animals sleep through the entire season.

Both land-dwelling and aquatic mammals hibernate. Animals that hibernate include mice, bats, ground squirrels, terrapins, snakes, frogs, and newts. Birds typically do not hibernate, instead using torpor, but a rare bird known as the Poorwill does hibernate. Aquatic animals can hibernate either in or out of water. Red Eared Terrapins hibernate in water, burying themselves in the mud at the bottom of a pond. Newts are capable of hibernation on land or in the water.

One animal that some consider to be a hibernator but is not a true hibernator is the bear. The reason for that is because while heart rates slow, the bear's body temperature remains relatively stable and they can be easily aroused. Other non hibernators that are thought to be a hibernator are: badgers, raccoons, and opposums.

Before entering hibernation most species eat prodigious amounts of food and store energy in large fat deposits in order to survive the winter. Some species of mammals hibernate while gestating young, which are born shortly after the mother stops hibernating.

  • Estivation - a state of dormancy similar to hibernation, except it is used in the summer
  • Torpor - regulated hypothermia for less than a day, often used by birds

Hypothermia

Hypothermia is a medical condition in which the victim's core body temperature has dropped to significantly below normal and normal metabolism begins to be impaired. This begins to occur when the core temperature drops below 95 degrees fahrenheit (35 degrees Celsius ). If body temperature falls further, down into the 80's (below 27 degrees Celsius), the condition can become critical and eventually fatal.

There are two types of hypothermia, acute and chronic. Acute hypothermia is the more dangerous; the body temperature goes down very swiftly, often in a matter of seconds or minutes when a victim falls through an ice-covered lake. Chronic hypothermia occurs when the body temperature goes down over a longer period of time.

Symptoms shivering - but only in the early stages dry, cold skin slow pulse slow breathing drowsiness - sometimes mistaken for drunkeness - which can lapse into coma.

Never assume someone has died, as at low temperatures the body can survive very much longer than at normal temperatures.

Treatment

Treatment for hypothermia involves raising the core body temperature of the victim.

First Aid Treatment

The first aid response to someone experiencing hypothermia, however, must be made with caution.

Do not: rub or massage the casualty; give alcohol; use hot water bottles or put the casualty in hot water; treat any frostbite. Any of these actions will divert blood from the critical internal organs and will worsen the situation.

Do: call the emergency services; get the casualty to shelter; replace wet clothing with warm, if it can be done rapidly; share body heat with the casualty by sharing a sleeping bag, survival bag, etc.; give food and hot drinks; monitor the casualty and be prepared to give Cardio-pulmonary resuscitation.

If the hypothermia has become severe, notably if the person is incoherent or unconscious, re-warming MUST be done under strictly controlled circumstances in a hospital. Bystanders should only remove the victim from the cold environment, including cold or wet clothing, and get the person to advanced medical care as quickly as possibly.

In hypothermia, the heart becomes extremely "irritable", and sudden re-warming can provoke cardiac arrhythmias, irregular beating of the heart in which blood isn't pumped adequately or may not be pumped at all. Common first aid wisdom in helping someone suspected of suffering from hypothermia is to treat them as if they as fragile as if made of glass - do nothing to over-stimulate the heart.

Hospital treatment

In a hospital, warming is accomplished gradually by internal administration of fluids under careful monitoring. If the victim starts to suffer irregular heartbeats, the equipment and personnel trained for providing the appropriate treatment are right at hand.

Prevention

Most heat is lost through the head, so hypothermia can be most effectively prevented by covering the head. Having appropriate clothing for the environment is another important prevention. Fluid-retaining materials like cotton, can be a hypothermia risk if the wearer gets sweaty on a cold day, then cools down and has sweat soaked clothing in the cold air. For outdoor exercise on a cold day, it is advisable to wear fabrics which can wick away sweat moisture. These include wool or synthetic fabrics designed specifically for rapid drying.

Medically Induced

Hypothermia is sometimes induced deliberately as preparation for surgery or to maintain artificial coma to increase survival chances after severe injury.

Mammalian diving reflex

Submerging the face into water causes the mammalian diving reflex, which is found in all mammals, but especially in marine mammals as for example whales and seals. This reflex puts the body into energy saving modus to maximize the time a person can stay under water. The effect of this reflex is larger in cold water than in warm water, and includes three factors: * Bradycardia, a reduction in the heart rate of up to 50% in humans. * Peripheral Vasoconstriction, the restriction of the blood flow to the extremities to increase the blood and oxygen supply to the vital organs, especially the brain. * Blood Shift, the shifting of blood to the thoracic cavity, i.e. the chest between the diaphragm and the neck to avoid the collapse of the lungs under higher pressure during deeper dives.

Thus both a conscious and an unconscious person can survive longer without oxygen under water than in a comparable situation on dry land.

Longevity in fiction

  • The Book of Genesis: Methuselah
  • Jonathan Swift: Gulliver's Travels include a visit to the Island of the Immortals located near Japan. In Swift's work, immortality brings not joy but endless suffering as health deteriorates and everyone known perishes. Taoists also located immortality in Eastern islands.
  • James Hilton: Lost Horizon
  • P.D. James: The Children of Men
  • James L. Halperin: The Truth Machine
  • John Wyndham: Trouble with Lichen
  • Robert A. Heinlein: Time Enough for Love, Methuselah's Children, and others.
  • Arthur C. Clarke: 2001: A Space Odyssey
  • David Brin & Gregory Benford 's Heart of the Comet
  • Kim Stanley Robinson: Mars Trilogy — (Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars)
  • Roger Zelazny: This Immortal

Longevity myths

Longevity myths have been around for as long as human records. As the Guinness Book of World Records stated in numerous editions from the 1960s to 1980s, "No single subject is more obscured by vanity, deceit, falsehood, and deliberate fraud than the extremes of human longevity."

At the time those words were written Guinness had never acknowledged anyone as having reached the age of 114, but longevity has increased in recent years. The first three people to be acknowledged by Guinness as reaching 114 have all been subjected to doubt by others,and the first two people Guinness accepted as reaching 113 (both male though the 113-plus age bracket has since been shown on the order of 90% female) are both no longer regarded as having done so.

Even today with Jeanne Calment the recordholder at an indisputable age of 122, the facts remain clear:

Fewer than fifty people in human history have been documented as reaching the age of 114.

Fewer than twenty of those people who reached 114 have reached the age of 115.

Only six people are known undisputedly to have reached 116, only four reached 117, and only two 118 and 119.

Calment is the only person verified to have lived to 120.

Yet in the face of the ages that can be validated by investigation,we are still confronted with claims that the observed extremes have been far exceeded - longevity myths.

Leaving aside claims in mythology of lives into the thousands of years, and biblical claims like Methuselah, there have been reports for centuries that persist today of people decades, even generations, older than have ever been shown authentic.

A National Geographic article in 1973 treated with respect some claims subsequently disproven and retracted, including the notorious Vilcabamba valley in Ecuador, where locals pointed to ancestors' baptismal records as their own. Also in that article were reports of very aged people in Hunza, a mountain region of Pakistan, without documentary evidence being cited.

It is typical that extreme longevity claims come from remote areas where recordkeeping is poor, but generally observed life expectancy is rather lower than in the areas where genuine claims are typically found. The Caribbean island nation of Dominica was lately promoting the allegedly 128-year-old Elizabeth Israel (1875??-2003) but has a smaller population and lower life expectancy than Iceland, where the documentation is very good and the longevity record is 108.

The Caucasus mountain region of Abkhazia was the subject of extreme claims for decades, inspired by the desire of Stalin to believe that he would live a very long time, the most extreme claim there being that of Shirali Mislimov (1805 ??- 1973 ). An earlier claim of similar lifespan from South America was for Javier Pereira (said to have been determined to be 167 years old by a dentist looking at his teeth!). There have likewise been a scattering of extreme claims from Africa, the most recent being Namibia's Anna Visser, who died in January 2004 at an alleged 125 or 126.

The most extreme claim in the 20th century was a wire service story announcing in 1933 that a Chinese man, Li Chung-yun, born in 1680, had died at age 256 (mathematical error as in original).

In prior centuries there have been other claims, one of the best-known being Thomas Parr, introduced to London in 1635 with the claim that he was 152 years old, who promptly died and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Greater English claims include those of the allegedly-169-year-old Henry Jenkins (apparently concocted to support testimony in a court case about events a century before) and the supposedly 207-year-old Thomas Carn (died in 1588 by most reports).

Longevity myths did not come in for serious scrutiny until the work of W.J. Thoms in 1873, and the odd wire correspondent looking for a captivating filler reports extreme undocumented claims to this day: in early 2000 a Nepalese man claimed to have been born in 1832, citing as evidence a card issued in 1988. In December 2003, a Chinese news service claimed (incorrectly) that the Guinness Book had recognized a woman in Saudi Arabia as being 131.

Responsible validation of longevity claims involves investigation of records following the claimant from birth to the present, and claims far outside the demonstrated records regularly fail such scrutiny. The United States Social Security Administration has public death records of over 100 people said to have died in their 160s to 190s, but often a quick look at the file immediately finds an obvious error.

The work of sorting genuine supercentenarians is a continuous process, and a news story must never be taken for authoritative fact if no validation is cited.

more soon