Scientists: short people live longer than tall ones, but it wasn't always like that

For centuries, it has been believed that a person's tall stature is a sign of his health and good heredity. And it was so — the tall ones lived longer than the short ones, died less often from diseases and more often survived wars. But today the situation has changed exactly the opposite. Two authoritative experts in the field of demography and longevity told why short people in the 21st century have more chances to live a long life.

Two scientific men, Jean-Marie Robin, an expert demographer who studies the relationship between health and longevity, and David Sinclair, co-director of the Center for Biological Research on Aging at Harvard Medical School, spoke about the relationship of growth with life expectancy in the modern world. They have a well-founded theory as to why this is happening.

Once short stature did not contribute to a long and happy life. People were noticeably lower than modern ones, as many were malnourished in the first year of their lives. Jean-Marie Robin puts it this way:

But now everything is completely different. People of short stature, who have received a good education and provided themselves with a decent income, live longer than tall people with the same income. When a person is not affected by his low social status and related problems, the issue is solved at the cellular level. On this occasion , Robin said:

Also, in very tall people, all kinds of inconveniences affect their life expectancy. The world around us is created for those who are short or have an average height.

An article on this subject appeared in Elsevier magazine back in 2003. It was noted that the correlation between great growth and longevity has a negative value. The conclusions were made after studying long-term data on millions of deaths around the world. The authors of the study made a general conclusion:

Jean-Marie Robin and his colleague David Sinclair conducted a more in-depth analysis. In particular, they studied the dependence of life expectancy on growth in professional athletes. This choice was not made by chance, because these people led a healthy lifestyle.

The studied group consisted of 2,500 male athletes. They were Finnish skiers and basketball players. Representatives of the winter sport were on average 15 cm shorter than the players. But this did not prevent them from living an average of seven years longer! After that, for the purity of the experiment, we studied the Italian military. In this case, despite the different attitude to life, the trend has persisted. Those who were 162 cm tall died two years later than their tall colleagues.

By the way, this rule also applies in the animal world. Among individuals of the same species living in similar conditions, small specimens have more chances to become centenarians.