Life span is the duration of the human organism existence. In 1998, the average life span in the world was sixty six years. Life span depends on many factors, among them the most significant are family history, diseases, place of residence, and lifestyle. The average life span of every nation is different because it depends on certain factors that always change. For instance, the average life span in the USA, in 1900 was forty nine years, but in 1998, it was already seventy seven years. The significant changes in life span were predetermined by numerous factors, but the most important one was the improvement of sanitation conditions since 1990. When the sanitary conditions were improved, other elements of modern life also changed; especially the socioeconomic measures. People started to pay more attention to their lifestyle, what they ate and how they spent their leisure time. The researchers provided a study that proved that those people who regularly exercised, had a balanced diet, avoided stressful and conflict situations lived longer. The reason is probably in that such lifestyle decreases the risk of cancer and cardiovascular diseases, which are on the top rate of death list in the USA.
The aging process is an essential part of human life. For many centuries, people have tried to slow down the process of aging and discovered some secrets that could help to be young longer. Nevertheless, aging brings both visible and invisible changes in the human organism. Aging can be divided into two stages. The first stage begins since the birth of a human being and lasts for the next two decades till the adulthood. During this period of time, the human body growths and changes constantly. The development concerns not only visible changes like physical growth when a person becomes taller, stronger but also mental changes like intellectual development. However, when a human reaches a physical maturity, his or her body experiences the reverse process. The human organism does not experience positive changes, but only negative instead. The first wrinkles and gray hair indicate that a person becomes older, and the aging process begins.
Aging process is a nonreversible and inevitable stage of human life. Every human being has to face this stage of life; however, the aging process does not correspond to a certain age. Scientists can estimate the approximate age when people begin aging, but it includes a huge age category gap because every person has its individual biorhythms that control the process of aging.
Aging and life span are interconnected because aging indicates that an organism starts losing its abilities to perform certain functions. A human may start experiencing the high blood pleasure, heart diseases, or low resistance to fatigability. The earlier human starts aging, the less his or her life span lasts. This way, it can be said that the life span regulates the time when a human becomes to age. However, if a human could have slowed down or deferred the aging of his or her organism, he or she would have had a chance to extend his or her life span. According to this fact, the main issue is aging, and the life span is the consequence of the rational style of life.
First of all, the most important are the factors that influence aging; if these factors could be intermitted, a human would have a chance to live a longer life. The process of aging is difficult to determine because every person experiences it at different age. Some people start aging when they are forty while others – at the age of twenty-eight years; there are also individuals whose organism is still young at fifty. Therefore, aging is a personal phenomenon and is predetermined by the following factors:
Genetics
A great influence on a person’s development has a genetic inheritance. If the parents of a child have some serious problems with their health, a child will probably have them, as well. For example, diabetes mellitus transfers from the parents to a child. Myopia is another disease that a child will experience because of his or her parents. Some chronic illnesses like gastritis, hepatic disorder, or heart diseases will influence the overall health state of a child as they do to their parents.
Life Style
The second important factor is lifestyle. Moreover, some researchers indicate that the lifestyle plays even a bigger role in life span than genetics, because lifestyle is the consciousness choice of every individual to lead a certain way of life that may either improve the or exhaust it. The consequences of such choice have a great effect on the overall health state and the life span in general. If a person obeys a certain schedule, sleep eight hour a day, have a balanced diet, exercises regularly and does not have any pernicious habits, the life span of such person will be longer because the process of aging will not have the same influence on his or her organism as in the case of a chronic alcoholic.
Unexpected Factors
To this category, one may categorize any social, political, or economic changes that affect the well-being of a person. Moreover, rapid climatic changes have also an effect on the process of aging in the human organism. The consequences of these changes are usually followed with stress and disorder of bio-rhythms in the human organism.
These three factors are the main sources of aging; however, one may make a conclusion that the process of aging experiences a great influence from the health state of a person. Therefore, one can draw a connection between these factors. The first stage of this chain is a health state; to this category, one may include everything that somehow affects a human well-being, it may be a lifestyle, genetics, or chronic diseases. The overall health state of the human organism predetermines its inner processes. People who suffer from constant illnesses have fewer chances to live to the extreme old age. On the other hand, those people who keep a healthy way of life have fewer problems with their health state; as a result, they are more likely to live till the age of eighty, ninety, or even one hundred years. The next chain link is aging, which is predetermined by the health state. The healthier person is, the later such process as aging occurs in his or her organism. Thus, the process of aging depends on the health state of the human organism. The last chain link is the life span that depends on the aging process.
According to the framework provided above, the process of aging has a direct connection with the life span, but there are also other factors that predetermine the development of this process within the human organism. Therefore, when one talks about the connection between aging and life span, he or she should also remember about such factor as health state that predetermines the duration of both processes.
About the author: Jessica Sanders is a bachelor in English philology and sociology at California University. Jessica is currently working as one of the best writers at https://essayswriters.com/ She also studies feminine psychology.
