Longevity

The Psychology of Aging class has been fascinating, much more interesting than I ever could have imagined. Some of the things that have come up in the class reinforce what I suspected. Unfortunately, looking at a family member's penchant for ignoring medical advice, then taking this class and hearing all the medical support that backs up those suspicions has been a little unnerving.

Meanwhile, there are two projects for the semester. One is due tomorrow, and requires that we take life-expectancy surveys on two sites and compare the results. I was a little worried about this thing, as I figured all my chronic issues don't correlate with a long life.

However, these studies aren't very scientific. I mean, I'm going to get points off for not using condoms when I've been married for 13 years and don't have to worry about pregnancy? I think they'd need to be far more in depth to really answer this anywhere close to accurately.

The results? For one, it says I'll live to 85.87 years and the other says I'll live to 87 years of age. Unfortunately, there were too many smokers in my lineage who lived reasonably long lives, but they probably could have lived longer. I have no real accurate measure.

Want to find out for yourself how accurate or inaccurate it may be?

http://www.northwesternmutual.com/learning-center/the-longevity-game.aspx

http://gosset.wharton.upenn.edu/mortality/perl/CalcForm.html