In the 17th century, before the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, the average life expectancy was between 40-50 years. After cultural and industrial revolutions, people started to think more freely and work more efficiently with the help of developing technology. Today, since we have advanced health care systems and very effective medicine as well as knowing what kind of eating and living habits lead to a well-balanced body, we live longer.
The most important factor leading to a long life is the remarkable advancement in healthcare and medicine. Although healthcare system is gettting more capitalist these days, new drugs and new ways of treatment are made available and cheaper every second. For example, before penicilline was found out, the World went through plague epidemics. Also, now that polio vaccine is in use today, there are very few cases of people with polio. In addition to these, before antiretroviral drugs were discovered, AIDS was regarded as a killer but now people carrying HIV virus can live an almost completely healthy life.
Another factor enabling people to live longer is that they now have deeper knowledge and better understanding for the human body, that is, what is good for the body and what is bad for it. Since people have learned much about living a healthier and longer life, the are more careful about their diet and they are more careful as to how much they exercise. In other words, doing exercise regularly and avoding eating junk food have played a vital role in living far longer in recent decades.
To sum up, nowadays people are leading a much longer life compared to the past. That is because scientists and health-care professionals have developed better cures for life-shortening or fatal diseases and people’s level of education and awareness to have a healhier life has increased significantly.