02/10/2009

Jump In Life Expectancy Revealed

Over half of all children born in the UK today will live to see their 100th birthday, a new report has revealed.

The study also said British children, and those in other developing countries born in the 2000s, can expect to suffer fewer serious illnesses in their later years.

According to the Lancet journal, the probably of living into your eighties in a developed world has doubled since the 1950s.

Life expectancy has continued to grow since 1840, said Danish Professor Kaare Christensen, who led the study.

"The linear increase in record life expectancy for more than 165 years does not suggest a looming limit to human lifespan," he said.

"If life expectancy were approaching a limit, some deceleration of progress would probably occur."

Researchers have indicated the modern man now enters four main stages of life - child, adult, young old age and old old age.

Old age normally eliminates the weakest men, with others entering old old age after turning 85.

Professor Christensen said general improvements in the diagnosis and treatment of illnesses, such as heart disease and cancer, has prompted the overall life expectancy jump.

However, he said life continues to pose a "lottery" which means "some obese people will live to be 100 and some thin people will die early".

(PR/BMcC)

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