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I. Introduction
A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) delivers a sobering message: the dramatic gains in human life expectancy that marked much of the 20th century are slowing down.
For decades, advances in medicine and public health pushed lifespans higher, but most of these gains came from reducing deaths in childhood—keeping infants alive through vaccination, sanitation, antibiotics, and better nutrition.
Now, as we enter the 21st century, those “low-hanging fruits” have already been gathered. What remains is the more challenging task of extending life by tackling chronic diseases that strike in adulthood: diabetes, heart disease, obesity, cancer, and neurodegenerative disorders.
Unlike childhood infections, these conditions cannot be solved with a single pill or vaccine. They are woven deeply into lifestyle, habits, and culture.
- Children (0–5): 90% reduction in mortality since 1850.
- Youth (5–20): 80% reduction.
- Young Adults (20–40): 70% reduction.
- Middle Age (40–60): 75% reduction.
- Older Adults (60–85+): only 30% reduction.
Most of the gains in life expectancy came from saving children, while progress for older adults has been far smaller.
This raises a profound question: What are we doing wrong to shorten our life expectancy?
II. What the Study Shows About Life Expectancy
The PNAS study analyzed mortality trends across multiple generations and found that future life expectancy will not climb as rapidly as in the past. The reason? Progress against chronic illnesses has been limited.
Medicine has become highly effective at managing numbers—lowering cholesterol with statins, reducing blood pressure with antihypertensives, and keeping HbA1c in range with diabetes drugs. But these numbers do not always translate into full health or robust longevity.
Too often, the underlying causes—poor diet, lack of exercise, chronic stress, and overindulgence—are left unaddressed.
This means that while people may live longer on paper, thanks to pharmaceuticals, they are not necessarily living better. Many spend their final decades battling multiple conditions, dependent on medications, and with a quality of life far from what they hoped.
The study points us toward an uncomfortable truth: if we want real progress in health and life expectancy, we cannot look only to science and medicine. We must look to ourselves—our daily choices, our habits, and even our deeper values.
III. Living Well in Body and Spirit: Practical First Steps
Why is it that people who live holy lives often look young and healthy, even into old age? In Scripture, we find striking examples of this vitality. Moses, at the age of 80, climbed Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments—a journey demanding strength, endurance, and clarity of mind. Later, at 120 years old, it was said of him: “His eyes were not dim, nor his vigor abated” (Deuteronomy 34:7).
Other figures in the Old Testament, such as Abraham and Sarah, lived well past one hundred years, carrying out their roles with strength and purpose.
These accounts suggest that more is at play than genetics or luck. They reflect lives oriented toward God, lives marked by discipline, reverence, and faith. Such an ordering of the soul manifests in the body, characterized by vitality, resilience, and clear-mindedness.
Even today, when we encounter people who devote themselves to prayer, moderation, and service, we often notice the same—an unusual glow of health, peace, and youthfulness.
So what does this mean for us? At the most practical level, it points us back to the everyday choices that shape our health:
- Healthy Eating: Moderation in food, favoring natural, whole foods rather than processed indulgence.
- Physical Activity: Making movement a daily habit—walking, exercising, laboring with purpose.
- Avoiding Harm: Saying no to habits like smoking, excessive drinking, or drug use, which cloud the mind and weaken the body.
- Rest and Renewal: Prioritizing sleep, quiet reflection, and Sabbath-like rest for body and spirit.
These visible practices are not just about lowering blood sugar or looking good for the next doctor’s visit. They are about living in alignment with the deeper order of our humanity, the harmony between body and soul.
IV. The Deeper Layer: Body and Soul in Harmony
St. Thomas Aquinas taught that the soul is the form of the body (anima forma corporis). This means the body is not just a vessel we live in—it is proportioned to the operations of the soul. The moral and spiritual life directly influences how the body functions.
In this framework:
- Overindulgence and gluttony (sins against temperance) disturb the order of the soul.
- That disorder is then reflected in the body—dulled senses, clouded judgment, and physical weakness.
- Modern medicine even gives us a name for it: metabolic syndrome. Conditions like obesity, diabetes, and hypertension often spring from excess in food and drink. What Aquinas described philosophically is visible today in lab values and hospital wards.
Aquinas would say this is not accidental. The body is intrinsically tied to the soul’s operations. When the soul misuses its powers—through indulgence or neglect—the body bears the consequence. Conversely, when the soul is rightly ordered, the body benefits too:
- A clear and focused mind.
- A healthier body with strength and energy.
- Sharper senses and greater resilience against illness.
In other words, the harmony between body and soul is not an abstract idea—it is a lived reality. Our moral and spiritual choices are written into our physical health. The very illnesses we face today, particularly those linked to lifestyle, often reflect disordered desires and neglected virtues.
V. The Broader Picture: Moral Decline and Its Effects on Health
The harmony of body and soul does not apply only to individuals—it also applies to entire societies. Just as a person’s disordered desires can weaken their body, a society’s disordered values can weaken its institutions, its people, and even its health.
The moral decline of Western nations provides a clear example. Over centuries, the guiding “soul” of society shifted away from truth, virtue, and faith. The result is a “body”—our culture and people—that now bears the consequences in rising chronic disease, social unrest, and shortened quality of life.
Historians, philosophers, and theologians point to several key contributors:
- Loss of Religious Foundations
- Western civilization was built on Judeo-Christian values of restraint, discipline, family, and community.
- As secularism grew, moral absolutes were replaced with relativism (“what’s right for you may not be right for me”).
- With fewer people anchored in faith, consumerism, entertainment, and ideology filled the vacuum.
- Rise of Materialism and Consumer Culture
- The industrial and technological revolutions shifted focus from community well-being to individual comfort and wealth.
- Advertising and media glorified instant gratification and indulgence.
- Sexual Revolution and Breakdown of the Family
- The 1960s sexual revolution, supported by contraceptive technology, disrupted traditional understandings of marriage and family.
- Divorce rose, birth rates fell, and children grew up with less discipline and moral guidance.
- Philosophical Shifts
- Postmodernism denied absolute truth, promoting skepticism and relativism.
- Utilitarian and individualist philosophies measured morality by personal pleasure or efficiency, neglecting deeper virtues like courage, temperance, and faith.
- Expansion of the State and Decline of Personal Responsibility
- As governments expanded welfare and services, individuals and families lost some sense of responsibility for one another.
- Rights came to overshadow duties, encouraging entitlement rather than virtue.
- Entertainment and Media Influence
- Television, film, and social media normalized violence, promiscuity, and rebellion against authority.
- This reshaped moral imagination, making once-unthinkable behaviors appear normal or even desirable.
- Educational and Institutional Shifts
- Schools and universities, once rooted in classical and Christian traditions, shifted to secular ideologies.
- Instead of cultivating virtue, many now emphasize relativism, self-expression, and identity politics.
The outcome is what we might call a hylomorphic imbalance at the societal level: the “soul” of Western civilization—its guiding beliefs—has turned away from transcendence and virtue. And the “body” of society now reflects that disorder in weakened bonds, cultural confusion, and widespread disease of both body and spirit.
VI. The Virtues That Heal
If moral decline contributes to both personal illness and societal decay, then renewal requires more than prescriptions or policies—it requires virtue. St. Thomas Aquinas and the classical tradition recognized that virtue is the ordering of the soul that brings harmony to the body and to community life.
Temperance
Temperance is the habit of moderation—learning to say “enough” when desires pull us toward excess. In food, drink, or pleasure, temperance protects the soul from being enslaved to appetite. Physically, it prevents obesity, diabetes, and the cascade of chronic illnesses that spring from overindulgence. Spiritually, it trains us to desire rightly, choosing lasting goods over fleeting cravings.
Fortitude
Fortitude is the virtue of perseverance and courage. It gives the strength to endure the difficulty of exercise, to rise early, to push through discomfort for the sake of growth. In the health context, fortitude helps us resist laziness, procrastination, or the temptation to give up. It is the backbone of lasting change.
Prudence
Prudence is practical wisdom—the ability to choose well in concrete situations. It helps us decide whether a food will nourish or harm, whether rest or activity is better at a given time, whether a medical intervention is truly necessary or simply convenient. Prudence bridges knowledge and action, ensuring that good intentions translate into healthy outcomes.
Justice
Justice is the virtue of giving each their due—to God, to neighbor, and even to ourselves. When we steward our health, we do not live for ourselves alone; we preserve our strength to serve others, carry responsibilities, and avoid burdening our families and communities with avoidable illnesses. In this way, justice links personal health with the common good.
Virtue as Effort and Grace
Virtues can be cultivated through discipline and habit, but Aquinas reminds us that they can also be given by grace. Effort is needed—choosing better foods, walking daily, practicing moderation—but so is divine help, which strengthens our will and aligns our desires with higher goods.
This dual path—discipline supported by grace—restores balance between soul and body. When the soul is rightly ordered, the body reflects it in greater vitality, resilience, and health.
Hear more about virtues at this Link.
VII. Conclusion: A Call to Reflection, Not Guilt
The findings of the PNAS study remind us that medicine alone cannot carry us much further. The great gains in life expectancy have already come from lowering child mortality, but the more complex challenge now lies in chronic illness—the diseases of lifestyle, indulgence, and neglect. Pills may normalize our numbers, but they cannot restore balance between body and soul.
This is not a reason for guilt or despair. Instead, it is an invitation to reflection. What if our health decisions were guided not by fear of the next lab result, but by a desire to live with harmony, clarity, and purpose? What if lifestyle changes—eating better, moving more, resting deeply—were not just medical advice but acts of virtue, shaping both body and soul?
St. Thomas Aquinas taught that when the soul is rightly ordered, the body follows: strength, resilience, and sharper senses. The reverse is also true—when the soul is disordered, the body bears it in disease. The slowing of life expectancy is more than a medical statistic; it is a mirror held up to our times, showing how moral decline manifests in physical decline.
The way forward is not only new treatments, but renewed virtue: temperance, fortitude, prudence, and justice. These can be cultivated through effort and received through grace. When embraced, they restore balance, align our desires with truth, and allow health to flow from the inside out.
So the question is not only: How many years can we add to life? But also: What kind of life are we adding to our years? The answer lies not in fear, but in choosing to live in harmony—where body and soul work together, and health is a reflection of virtue.
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References:
- J. Andrade, C.G. Camarda, & H. Pifarré i Arolas, Cohort mortality forecasts indicate signs of deceleration in life expectancy gains, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 122 (35) e2519179122, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2519179122 (2025).
Image credit:
- Thomas Aquinas by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, 1650 – By Bartolomé Esteban Murillo – Own work, Amuley, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33176874
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