I had a revelation this week: I'm going to die before you.
Think about it! When was the last time you saw anyone over the age of 70 who is 6'5" tall? That's right, NEVER! I think tall women are especially screwed, but men don't fare much better. Old people are short and frail; I am neither. Something kills off tall people before short people, and I'd like to know what it is. Why does longevity favor the midgets of society but the tall must be made to suffer?
I wonder what the cause of these early deaths is? A few possibilities:
>> Tall people tend to whang their heads on low doorways and lighting fixtures thus causing signficant brain damage over time.
>> Tall people are stretched out thus causing circulation or respiratory troubles as we age.
>> Tall people are more likely to strangle themselves by inadvertently running into clotheslines.
>> Tall people are easy targets for the insane, gun-weilding sociopath.
>> Tall people may be the tallest objects in the vicinity during a lightning storm, thus attracting most lightning bolts. Ironically, such deaths would probably be preceded by someone asking "How's the weather up there?"
>> Short people eventually take out their pent-up rage by poisoning the Metamucil of tall elderly people in the nursing homes.
I'm not sure who is to blame. Are we just naturally prone to death or do we have enemies that eventually thin out our numbers. Whatever the reason, this is cause for concern. Gather forth tall ones! We must unite to preserve our tall status!
Walk tall friends! (But just keep a look out for anyone who may be out to get us.)
6 comments:
"Remember in elementary school you were told that in case of fire you have to line up quietly in a single file from smallest to tallest? What is the logic in that? What, do tall people burn slower?"
The classic short-guy's-nightmare response would be more like: Look, little man (that's how 6-2 George H. W. Bush once referred to 5-10 Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega), everybody knows tall people, particularly tall men, are not only healthier, they're more successful, smarter, sexier, and more widely looked up to (duh, but you see how heightist bias is embedded in the language). Setting aside issues of success, getting lucky, etc, experts--even short ones--have long recognized that as a society's physical well-being improves due to improved nutrition and so on, its members get taller. Over the past 150 years, the average height of Europeans has increased by around eight inches; more recently the average height of the Chinese has been increasing about an inch per decade. Conversely, research on refugees has found that 14-year-old North Korean males are six inches shorter than their South Korean counterparts, presumably due to malnutrition. At minimum this seems to mean: tall = healthy society. Many researchers have gone farther and claimed: tall = healthy you. However, this being an era of diminishing resources, a few iconoclasts argue (possibly in earshot of your coworker) that not only is small beautiful, it's better for you and the planet too.
One of the most vocal short-is-good advocates is Thomas Samaras, director and senior researcher at San Diego-based Reventropy Associates. Samaras advocates what he calls "entropy theory," which holds that increased body mass and energy expenditure means faster aging. Over the past 30 years Samaras and his colleagues have published a stack of papers challenging heightist wisdom. For example, they say, studies allegedly showing that tall people live longer than short ones don't account for confounding variables such as socioeconomic status and smoking (poor people and smokers tend to be smaller). Factor stuff like that out, they contend, and the differences largely disappear. In fact, maybe the numbers head in the opposite direction--Samaras and company interpret other studies as indicating that you die six months sooner for every extra centimeter of height. Throw in the fact that big people suck up more resources than diminutive ones and you've got a good argument that what we really need to do, as Steve Martin once encouraged, is get small.
To emphasize, this is the minority opinion. In a 2002 commentary on one of Samaras's papers, British epidemiologist George Davey Smith, who's done his own investigations into the relation between height and mortality, presents what I take to be the majority view: (1) In developed countries, taller people live longer than shorter ones and have lower death rates when all causes are considered. (2) Taller people exhibit higher death rates from a few specific causes, notably cancer unrelated to smoking and aortic aneurysm. Possibly that's because bigger people eat more as children and so are at greater risk for eating-related cancers, and, having longer aortas, have more to rupture. (3) This is more than made up for by taller people's decreased tendency to die of coronary heart disease, stroke, and respiratory disease. Davey Smith thinks that's because tall people have better lung function and because "being taller than average is an indicator of favorable childhood social circumstances."
Short folks will likely reply: This guy's missing the point. Nobody denies that, when you compare two societies, or one society at two points in time, the better-fed crowd will be taller and live longer. The issue is whether, with environmental considerations out of the mix, taller means healthier. You have to be skeptical--lots of short middle-class people aren't that way because of deprived childhoods but because they had short ancestors. One suspects Samaras may be right when he says all the variables aren't being controlled for. On the other hand, Samaras's contention that short is not just as good as but better than tall is also dubious. Rodent studies suggest that sharply cutting back on food intake will prolong life, and few dispute that pigging out in typical American fashion is a sure way to shorten it. However, the key factor here is surely not height (Samaras at times seems to be saying that we ought to starve kids in order to stunt their growth, although he tells me that's not his intent), but weight in relation to height. Since there's not much adults can do about their height anyway, why worry about it? Pending further and one hopes more illuminating research, the best bet for prolonging life seems to be: watch what you eat, and eat a lot less.
Wow. I don't know who posted that last comment, but that is some impressive research (or impressive plagiarism, whatever the case may be). I know none of the people I hang out with are that productive; therefore, my blog has already attracted outside readers! A day of celebration!
The second comment is plagiarized. It's from this URL...
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/050422.html
Well, maybe that's why the second commentator kept himself or herself anonymous, so as not to take the credit from someone else.
While many researchers claim that many studies show tall people live longer, there are virtually none. There are, however, a number that show tall people have lower all-cause mortality for a certain age range. One large mortality showed that shorter men had a higher mortality up to 70 years of age. However, between 70 and 85 years of age, men between 5'7 and 6' had a lower mortality than those over 6'.
My research has focused on looking at populations of deceased people. These studies have consistently shown that shorter people live longer. Miller, Krakauer, and other researchers have found that we lose about .5 yr/cm increase in height. (Holzenberger found a .7 yr/cm loss of life with increasing height.)
In addition, research on centenarians mostly shows people who live to 100 years of age are short and lean. (Many studies show them to be under 5'4" after adjustment for shrinkage with age.) Do any tall people live to 100 years? Yes. One report listed seven men who were between 6' and 6'3" and lived to 100 or more years.
Biologically, smaller people have a number of advantages. One includes the ability to replicate their cells for a longer period under similar lifestyles and environments. They also have much lower rates of DNA damage (Giovannelli). This is consistent with findings that within a species, the smaller individual lives longer; e.g., dogs, mice, rats, horses, cows, and Asian elephants vs. African elephants.
In spite of the inherent benefits of smaller body size, bigger people can live a long and healthy life when they follow good health rules, including a healthful diet and avoidance of overweight and smoking.
For more information:
Luisa Salaris, Michel Poulain & Thomas T. Samaras (2012): Height and Survival at Older Ages among Men Born in an Inland Village in Sardinia (Italy), 1866–2006, Biodemography and
Social Biology, 58:1, 1-13
Shorter height is related to lower cardiovascular
disease risk - A narrative review. Indian Heart Journal, 65 (2013) 66-71. Thomas T. Samaras
Reventropy Associates, San Diego, California, USA
Healthy Aging: Is Smaller Better? – A Mini-Review
Andrzej Bartke. Gerontology (International Journal of Experimental, Clinical, Behavioural and Technological Gerontology) 2012; 58: 337-343.
Departments of Internal Medicine and Physiology, Southern Illinois University School
of Medicine, Springfield, Ill., USA; Department of Physiology, King Saud University
College of Medicine, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Address of Corresponding Author
Gerontology (DOI: 10.1159/000335166)
www.humanbodysize.com
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