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Long life in the genes or where you live??

ProfilePosted byOptionsPost Date

brigid

brigid Report 20 May 2016 00:50


I have come across family members who live well into 80 s or 90's

Would like to know if this unusual good health

Looking at a search i did for deaths between 1900 and 2005

For a first name and surname (exact spellings only )

ten out of the twenty three results lived to be over 70 !

Five octogenarians

seven deaths were aged 54 to 67

Only 1 child death and one teen death

The 27 year old who died was my great uncle who drowned in a vat 1910

1903 my ggfather died aged74

I haven't identified which death is my second cousin and which a g g uncle or other descendants with same name

The ones in different counties are probably unrelated

Statistically it seems a good record

I would expect there to be more child deaths in early 1900's.

Has anyone else done similar searches ?




+++DetEcTive+++

+++DetEcTive+++ Report 20 May 2016 07:36

Not particularly but it could be down to a combination of diet, lifestyle, environment, occupation and genetics. Even now statistics suggest that the life expectancy in some areas of the country is less than in others. It's believed to be linked to poverty and diet.
I did find a mother & her daughter who were both centenarians when they died late in the last or this century. In their case it must have been a genetic predisposition.

GlasgowLass

GlasgowLass Report 20 May 2016 09:51

I did research on my OH's family.
At age 36yrs he was told that due to known family history, he was pre disposed to heart disease.
Paternal grandmother died from heart disease aged 49
Her daughter died from it aged just 21yrs.
Her son, OH's father, had a heart attack at age 46.
OH was just 40 when the inevitable happened ( He and his father both survived)

I researched OH's ancestry and found that it was a common theme in the
ancestry of his paternal grandmother ( the 49yr old)

The earliest definitive ancestral death from heart disease was OH's gg grandfather He died in 1870 aged 30yrs.
From this man's direct descendants, I have located at least 10 deaths relating to the disease and most were under 50yrs old.
I found 2 deaths last week, both were siblings and both were under 30.
(They were the only paternal cousins of the grandmother who died aged 49yrs)

My research indicates a probable mix of genetics and/or environment.
Although the eary deaths were from coal mining families, most of their descendants had other occupations

On the other side of the family:
OH's maternal family were Aberdeenshire farmers.
Have not located a single death from Heart Disease in this line and all except ONE direct ancestral grandparent lived beyond 70. One or two were over 90yrs.
The "one" died from ...typhoid.

brigid

brigid Report 20 May 2016 18:37

GL sorry predisposition to heart disease is bad

i did have a gg gdad who died of cardiac synopcope but aged 74 in 1903

his g son died in 1910 aged 48 my ggfather
it is worded as debilitation of the heart .

but his 12 children didnt seem to have problems living til 66-92
only 1 died in ww1

brigid

brigid Report 20 May 2016 18:52

I did a quick experiment on SP in search engine



family name Robertson had 2019 births between 1806-1826


and 475 deaths aged 80-110



For the Black familiy members
the number of births was 814
with 202 deaths of 80 year olds or over

Bloch s had 51 and 14 older deaths respectivly



Mcfralane 485 births to 84 late deaths

so most are about 4 times as many births as elderly deaths but the

Kyle name showed up 145 births last century with only 8 surnamed Kyles reaching an age of 80 or more



the deaths could be in any years from statuary death records
the births were to give me idea of frequency of that name


I wonder why so few "old" Kyles ..your theories welcome .....several emigrated so maybe did live long elsewhere .