[ExI] Paleo lifespan

[J. Stanton]

> From: Kelly Anderson
> Serious question to the paleo dieters... Why would we emulate a diet
> that resulted in a 25 year life span? I understand the bit about us
> being evolved to the diet, but we also were living short fast
> difficult lives at the time. Is that what we want to return to? It
> just seems counter intuitive to me.

That's a common myth, cleanly addressed here:

http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/faculty/gurven/papers/GurvenKaplan2007pdr.pdf
"The average modal age of adult death for hunter-gatherers is 72 with a 
range of 68-78 years. This range appears to be the closest functional 
equivalent of an "adaptive" human lifespan."
[...]
"Illnesses account for 70 percent, violence and accidents for 20 
percent, and degenerative diseases for 9 percent of all deaths in our 
sample."
[...]
"Post-reproductive longevity is a robust feature of hunter-gatherers and 
of the life cycle of Homo sapiens. Survivorship to grandparental age is 
achieved by over two-thirds of people who reach sexual maturity and can 
last an average of 20 years."

It is important to note that to a first approximation, 0% of 'civilized' 
people would survive to such a lifespan without the benefit of emergency 
rooms, antibiotics, stents, bypasses, joint replacements, and a 
pharmacopoeia of medications...let alone contribute positively to the 
society in which they live.

In other words, this is a functional human lifespan...and our functional 
lifespan, here in 'civilization', is currently *decreasing* even though 
absolute lifespan is increasing:
http://www.gnolls.org/864/the-lipid-hypothesis-has-officially-failed-part-2-of-many/

Further reading:
http://donmatesz.blogspot.com/2010/02/paleo-life-expectancy.html
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/07/mortality-and-lifespan-of-inuit.html

JS
http://www.gnolls.org