Many years back there were two neighbouring villages in the U.S. Scientists and university professors observed that the life expectancy in one of the villages was more by over 8 years compared with the other one.
They decided to carry out a research and understand the reasons. The more they delved into it the more they were fobbed mainly because conditions in both of the villages were similar except for the fact that there was more obesity in the village where people lived longer. Heart attacks and strokes were also less in this village.
Eventually they gave up since they couldn’t find answers. Some years later other scientists discovered that the village where people lived longer and suffered less from disease were descendants of Italians and in the other village lived, descendants of the Dutch.
They came to the conclusion that due to ‘community living’ among the descendants of the Italians and the closeness among families, people were happier and lived a less stressful life leading to better health and longer life despite obesity. However, this was before the advancements in medicine over the last several decades.
The Secrets Behind the Longevity
Community living is so important that some governments are now funding programmes. There is of course no doubt that the advancements in medical sciences have greatly contributed to life expectancy due to which people in the richer nations now live longer. At the same time there are other contributing factors that enrich life and allow people to not only live longer but healthier, such as diet and spirituality.
A longer life has also contributed greatly to the population of the world which was just 1 billion during the early 1800’s and has now crossed 7.5 billion and is expected to reach 11 billion in less than 100 years from now.
Top 20 Countries
So let’s see which are the top 20 countries where people live the longest:
Norway, Canada, France and Liechtenstein 81.9 Years
Sweden 82.1 Years
Italy, Australia and Luxembourg 82.3 Years
South Korea, Hong Kong and Israel 82.5 Years
Switzerland and Guernsey 82.6 Years
Andorra 82.9 Years
Iceland 83.1 Years
San Marino 83.3 Years
Macau 84.6 Years
Singapore 85.2 Years
Japan 85.3 Years
Monaco 89.4 Years
Expectedly, it is the high earning countries. Now, scientists recognize the fact that living longer does not mean living a life of quality since ageing has its serious associated problems and are working on the possibility of slowing down the ageing process.
Source for the average age: CIA.com
Photos: Shutterstock / design: Martina Advaney
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