The evidence is convergent. Multiple independent sources reach the same conclusion, the underlying mechanism is well-characterized, and even the field's most cautious voices treat it as worth doing.
Hunter gatherer groups today offer the best model of longevity of our ancestors. Infant mortality is high (being a wild human is dangerous), but once into teenage years their life expectancy is the SAME as ours with far BETTER healthspan.
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we really have a false notion of this short lifespan due to that infant mortality thing and that for some reason was taken as as gospel and throughout our culture but it's really not
if you look at the hunter-gatherers who are actually eating a traditional diet who are able to hunt adequately enough like like our true ancestors were they are vital into old age and they live as long as us they have the same life expectancy as us but they have a much longer health span
the notion that your ancestors only lived to be 30 or 40 that's bs because if they lived past adulthood or they lived into adulthood if they didn't die from a snake bite when they were a kid or the mother didn't die in childbirth which happens in the natural world they lived to be vital and old until you know their 70s 80s and 90s
if you look at hunter-gatherers who are actually eating a traditional diet who are able to hunt adequately enough like like our true ancestors were they are vital into old age and they live as long as us they have the same life expectancy as us but they have a much longer
the generally all of the research i've seen across anthropologists time and time again suggests that if hunter-gatherers make it to young adulthood to the teenage years they live as long as we do and perhaps even longer and they certainly live better with a longer health span
no they live just as long as us in western society if they make it past childhood
so many times people pair it this incorrect notion that hunter-gatherers lead short lives and it's just so wrong if you look at them there are plenty of elderly people who are much more vital than their contingent or their correlating their correlates in terms of age in western society
if you look at hunter-gatherer populations the inuit the eskimo the maasai the uh the hunter the hadza that i just spent time with their health span is much greater than ours as western societies and if you account for the higher rates of infant mortality that occur in the wild they live just as long as us
once you look at hunter-gatherers you see as i'm sure most of your listeners have heard you talk about hunter-gatherers live well into their 70s typically if they survive childhood
also they die when they die they tend to die much more rapidly they don't have these lingering 15 years of uh you know incapacitation the way we do
their health span so their vitality dwarfs ours which means that they stay vital long into old age
it is well known that when these hunter-gatherer groups if they live until their teenage years they live just as long as westernized quote unquote humans with a much better health span
chris ryan like indigenous hunter-gatherer cultures appear to live as long as us with a much better health span they have swearing of the morbidity curve
if you live to adulthood you live as long as a westernized human with a much greater health span that's almost incontrovertible at this point
Estimates of hunter-gatherer life expectancy are confounded by high rates of infant mortality among these people this means that because many children and infants die we average all that together and say their life expectancy is low well that's not really accurate because it turns out that being a wild human is dangerous
if they live to be a teenager their life expectancy quote unquote is as good as ours with a much better health span meaning they don't have this fall off in morbidity or this fall off in sort of uh their ability to to live their lives this fall off in their their sort of functionality as they age
the reason you can look at hunter gatherer groups and I have said this so many times cie but it is very difficult to change something that has been indoctrinated into people's minds that if you look at hun gather groups across the board their low quote life expectancy is a is is connected with a increased level of childhood and birth rate um death right so it's infant mortality is high in quote wild humans