S. Jay Olshansky Life Quotations

I'm not sure the least educated members of the population are missing out on the advances in medical technology as much as they are adopting harmful behavioral habits that shorten their life.

While eliminating smallpox and curtailing cholera added decades of life to vast populations, cures for the chronic diseases of old age cannot have the same effect on life expectancy. A cure for cancer would be miraculous and welcome, but it would lead to only a three-year increase in life expectancy at birth.

The Faustian trade of the 20th century was, we got 30 years of additional life, but in return we got heart disease, cancer, stroke, Alzheimer's and sensory impairments. The question is: What Faustian trade are we making now, as we go after heart disease, cancer, stroke and Alzheimer's?

What we know for sure from our work and from others' is that mice have a life span of 1,000 days, dogs have 5,000 days, and we humans have 29,000 days. Recognizing that the duration is limited, and aging is inevitable, focus the attention on enhancing the quality of the days you have.

In centenarians and supercentenarians - people over 110 - you see a higher level of fecundity much later in life.

The real problem is that there's a tendency to associate ageing with loss and decline and things that aren't desirable. But experiencing all that there is to experience in life - whether that's at the age of ten or thirty or fifty or eighty - is what life is all about.

Reducing caloric intake is the only proven method of extending life. If caloric intake is reduced to 20 percent below maintenance, you can extend your lifespan considerably.

I have little doubt that gerontologists will eventually find a way to avoid, or more likely, delay, the unpleasantries of extended life.

The only control we have over the duration of our life is to shorten it, and we do that all the time.

We're not trying to make us live forever; we're not trying to even make us live significantly longer. What we're trying to do is extend the period of healthy life.

As long as humans have existed, we have always desired to live longer. Every society, every religion, every culture. Of course, they all failed at dramatic life extension.