Since it is Father\u2019s Day, I thought I would discuss something my father has always taught me to admire\u2014longevity. My father, David, has always made a big deal about living a long life. Growing up, I often heard him emphasize the age of \u201cold\u201d people. He also spoke regularly of the importance of taking vitamins and eating lots of protein and nutrients as a means to ensure a long, healthy life. He didn\u2019t just preach, he used to take 10 g of Vitamin C a day (that\u2019s 20-500 mg pills) and a host of other vitamins, probably thirty pills a day; I am not sure of his daily regimen now. <\/p>\n
Anyhow, as a result of this \u201cteaching,\u201d I can say that I value longevity. I\u2019ve learned through my scholarship that life expectancy is one of the best indicators of the \u201cwell-being\u201d in a country. If people in a country are living long lives, it can be expected that the country also has good quality health care (especially for soon-to-be mothers and children), educational opportunities, and food access for the vast majority of its people; this is in contrast to economic indicators, such as GNP (Gross National Product), which often can mask suffering among its lower classes. I cherish the opportunity to speak to older people as I realize that they have encountered a lot of things that I haven\u2019t lived through\u2014-with experience comes a fair bit of wisdom.<\/p>\n
Japan is home to the highest percentage of centenarians (with some 60,000+ of them currently); there is some debate on this, apparently Cuba may have recently surpassed Japan (ref 1<\/a>). And while I hope to reach the \u201c100\u201d mark (my dad is working towards it to–still running ~14 miles a week at age 72), I realize that a few things working against me. One I am a male. For every male that reaches 100 years, there are 6 females that do. Also, being large (6\u20194\u201d, 235 lbs) doesn\u2019t help my cause either (ref 2<\/a>). Yet, given that no statistic is deterministic, I will still eat my \u201cfruits and vegetables\u201d and wish for the best. Better still, I\u2019ll use the time I have on this wonderful planet to make it better for me, my planetary neighbors (of all species), and most of all, on this day, my children!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Since it is Father\u2019s Day, I thought I would discuss something my father has always taught me to admire\u2014longevity. My father, David, has always made a big deal about living a long life. Growing up, I often heard him emphasize the age of \u201cold\u201d people. He also spoke regularly of the importance of taking vitamins … Continue reading “100 years — father”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family-friends","category-health"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7BrNb-1h","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/solarutopia.org\/onehuman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/solarutopia.org\/onehuman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/solarutopia.org\/onehuman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solarutopia.org\/onehuman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solarutopia.org\/onehuman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/solarutopia.org\/onehuman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":169,"href":"https:\/\/solarutopia.org\/onehuman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79\/revisions\/169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/solarutopia.org\/onehuman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solarutopia.org\/onehuman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solarutopia.org\/onehuman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}