Is old age an accomplishment?
Mongolia is the country of the youth with one third of the population fitting in the age range. Wherever you turn, there are bound to be some young people laughing and going on with their lives. The fact that Mongolia is full of youth can be seen everywhere. Journalists and reporters announce it on mass media, specialists remind us, and even politicians look straight into cameras and declare the youth status of Mongolia for the whole world to hear.
However, before so proudly proclaiming this statement, one must look back to the life expectancy of Mongolia. We have to wonder how much of the population is over the age of 65. The National Statistical Office updates the life expectancy every year. By so proudly advertising that Mongolia is a country of youth, it is also implied that Mongolians live a short life.
The population just reached three million after many long years, but the life expectancy of Mongolians still remains the same. Looking back at the statistics from 1989 to 2008, people over the age of 65 were only 0.67 percent of the population. This is three to six times less than the global average expectancy by the WHO.
Of course, there would be more young people when the number of senior citizens is so little. The National Statistics Office shows that the life expectancy of Mongolians did not increase at all in the last couple of years. Mongolia is ranked at about 130th in the world through life expectancy. The population census of Mongolia in 2015 showed us that there were only 116,000 people aged over 65. Today, only 1.44 percent of the population is of the age group. This is a large part of the reason why the citizens resist the extension of the retirement age.
The Japanese do enjoy an unusually long lifespan thanks in part to their diet. They eat low calories, lots of greens and live a fairly peaceful lifestyle that let them live a few extra years in old age. It is also necessary to see who is finishing last in the lifespan area and why this happens. Before we take in all the countries of the world and list them, some various things need to be considered.
Life span is a messy statistic and a lot of factors are included into it that are difficult to account for. For this reason it is a good idea to exclude countries that rank low on the human development index because of war, AIDS, and extreme poverty reduce life spans without shedding light on the deliberate lifestyle practices of the people involved.
According to the United Nations, the average Mongolian life span is 67 years, 12 years less than the Japanese. After Mongolians, there’s a sharp nose dive in life spans as countries below it are afflicted with violence and human development issues.
Traditional Mongolian diets are very heavy in animal fats and dairy products, and low on plant sources. Vegetation in the steppes is pretty sparse. In addition to the high-fat diet, Mongolians tend to store fat more efficiently than others as a result of living in harsh winter climates for so long. Abdominal fat and a high waist-to-hip circumference ratio aid in heat production.
However, these adaptations stop being useful when you stop moving. The traditional Mongolian diet has become life-shortening for many Mongolian urbanites, and the country has seen sharp up-ticks in the usual health biomarkers: plasma cholesterol, insulin sensitivity, BMI, and blood sugar levels, among others.
Furthermore, there is a major difference between the life expectancy of men and women. Those of the medical industry are highlighting the eightyear gap between men’s and women’s life expectancy, but this figure recently rose to nine years. The cause of men living nine years shorter than women is attributed to diets and habits. Parents keep their daughters on diets while feeding their sons until their stomach is full. Similarly, they manicure and lotion their daughters’ hands while they make their sons do labor.
As men grow up, they still eat junk food while giving the best to their wife and children. In addition to this, the heavy consumption of alcohol and cigarettes shorten the lifespan of Mongolian men, who are already destined to die in their sixties, according to the national average life expectancy. Yet, it
doesn’t seem as though the people or the government care at all. In fact, doctors only care about the statistics and wave it in their faces because of their job.
Tips for a longer life - Harvard Medical School
1. Don’t smoke.
2. Enjoy physical and mental activities every day.
3. Eat a healthy diet rich in whole grains, vegetables and fruits, and substitute healthier monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats for unhealthy saturated fats and trans fats.
4. Take a daily multivitamin, and be sure to get enough calcium and vitamin D. 5. Maintain a healthy weight and body shape. 6. Challenge your mind. Keep learning and trying new activities.
7. Build a strong social network. 8. Follow preventive care and screening guidelines.
9. Floss, brush, and see a dentist regularly.
10. Ask your doctor if medication can help you control the potential long-term side effects of chronic conditions such as high blood pressure, osteoporosis, or high cholesterol.
There is a saying among Mongolians that go “Hit retirement age and die”. This may seem comedic at first glance, but it is the reality of life. We need to think about how long our seniors live once they reach retirement. Mongolians are so proud of how the population reached three million, yet the life expectancy of the people doesn’t get any longer. We have to think of all the mothers that contributed to the population by suffering the pain of childbirth and raising their children until their adulthood.
The population may have been much more if many of the people who met untimely deaths were still alive. Only then, it would seem logical to be prideful of Mongolia being a country of youth.
...The heavy consumption of alcohol and cigarettes shorten the lifespan of Mongolian men, who are already destined
to die in their sixties, according to the national average life
expectancy...