3 ms·

I thought I heard something in this direction once, that a woman adds years to her life in a linearly scaling fashion with the number of children she bears, whi

I thought I heard something in this direction once, that a woman adds years to her life in a linearly scaling fashion with the number of children she bears, which plateaus beyond some count like 5 or 6 I think it was. I think this news came around the time they discovered maternal-fetal “chimera” cells which apparently go in and fix stuff in mama IIRC. Sometimes I wonder about all these medical records we gather and how they'd contribute to measuring stuff like you point out. With all the data enumerated in the future it should be a relatively straightforward analysis right?

Gatsky 9y ago
There are definitely tangible health benefits. Giving birth and breastfeeding reduce the risk of breast and ovarian cancer. The protective effect for breast cancer goes away if the woman becomes pregnant when she is older however. Pregnancy also reduces the risk of multiple sclerosis. For most of human history however, the dangers far outweighed any benefits, with maternal mortality being a major cause of death. There are probably many other fascinating things going on as you highlight. I should add that there could be selection bias going on - perhaps those that have children have existing social, economic, psychological and health attributes that also predict successful ageing.
- jxramos 9y ago
  Great comment, this provoked some day dreaming about mammalian physiology around the design of live birthing trading against maternal mortality where live birthing clearly wins in the risk/benefit evolution of such species. I'm very curious how maternal mortality distributes across other mammals, is it a pretty constant thing? I'm also curious about the aggregate extension of life women have experienced from birthing vs those tragically lost during child birth, say the sum of the ages of all such lost women, how those two figures would stack up. Looking at this hit http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs348/en/ http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs348/en/ gives a figure 385 per 100,000. "Maternal mortality refers to deaths due to complications from pregnancy or childbirth. From 1990 to 2015, the global maternal mortality ratio declined by 44 per cent – from 385 deaths to 216 deaths per 100,000 live births, according to UN inter-agency estimates. Doing some back of the envelope calculations 100,000 sample size 385 maternal deaths in sample (picked the higher figure) 30 average maternal age at death (my own guess, leaning high) 11,550 years lost (385*30) 1 age increase per birth (my own guess, leaning low) 99,615 added years from successful births 88,065 net added years of life to mothers in sample. Even if I choose a more pessimistic mortality rate of 1000 per 100,000 it's still a net positive with my figures; I roughly estimated that the break even point is 3226 deaths per 100,000 according to the above calculus. This analysis only works because the mortality rate is a thankfully such a small fraction, but tragically not 0. I wonder if there was ever a period in human history where the mortality was ever above 3%?
Toast_25 9y ago
Of my two grandmothers, the one that died had the most children.

Gatsky 9y ago

There are definitely tangible health benefits. Giving birth and breastfeeding reduce the risk of breast and ovarian cancer. The protective effect for breast cancer goes away if the woman becomes pregnant when she is older however. Pregnancy also reduces the risk of multiple sclerosis. For most of human history however, the dangers far outweighed any benefits, with maternal mortality being a major cause of death. There are probably many other fascinating things going on as you highlight. I should add that there could be selection bias going on - perhaps those that have children have existing social, economic, psychological and health attributes that also predict successful ageing.

jxramos 9y ago
Great comment, this provoked some day dreaming about mammalian physiology around the design of live birthing trading against maternal mortality where live birthing clearly wins in the risk/benefit evolution of such species. I'm very curious how maternal mortality distributes across other mammals, is it a pretty constant thing? I'm also curious about the aggregate extension of life women have experienced from birthing vs those tragically lost during child birth, say the sum of the ages of all such lost women, how those two figures would stack up. Looking at this hit http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs348/en/ http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs348/en/ gives a figure 385 per 100,000. "Maternal mortality refers to deaths due to complications from pregnancy or childbirth. From 1990 to 2015, the global maternal mortality ratio declined by 44 per cent – from 385 deaths to 216 deaths per 100,000 live births, according to UN inter-agency estimates. Doing some back of the envelope calculations 100,000 sample size 385 maternal deaths in sample (picked the higher figure) 30 average maternal age at death (my own guess, leaning high) 11,550 years lost (385*30) 1 age increase per birth (my own guess, leaning low) 99,615 added years from successful births 88,065 net added years of life to mothers in sample. Even if I choose a more pessimistic mortality rate of 1000 per 100,000 it's still a net positive with my figures; I roughly estimated that the break even point is 3226 deaths per 100,000 according to the above calculus. This analysis only works because the mortality rate is a thankfully such a small fraction, but tragically not 0. I wonder if there was ever a period in human history where the mortality was ever above 3%?

Toast_25 9y ago

Of my two grandmothers, the one that died had the most children.