Has Tom Robbins Had It Right All Along?

pan, nymphIn one of my favorite books, author Tom Robbins makes a case for a way to promote longevity which doesn’t require vitamins or supplements of any kind. In “The Jitterbug Perfume” he follows the 1000 year life of King Alabar during the 10 centuries prior to the 21st. During feudal times it was customary to execute the king by means of a poisoned egg. All that was necessary for this to occur was a single strand of grey hair or a flagging performance in the private chambers of the king. This policy was to ensure a strong and virile leader sat on the throne, since his job was to lead knights to battle to protect the kingdom. His success was rewarded with a generous harem to assure bountiful heirs to the throne.
As the story goes, when the time came, the job of administrating the fatal poisoned egg fell to the king’s number one consort, or queen. Because of his unusual wisdom and compassion, Alabar’s queen decided to conspire with him to circumvent his death. When a traitorous grey hair was discovered by the court magician the king’s execution was ordained. As planned, the egg’s lethal dose was diluted, and after his faked death the queen dug him up and he fled the kingdom. He traveled East, and after spending an enjoyable time with Pan and his nymphs, he wandered into a secret sect who had discovered the secret to eternal life. He spent enough time with them to learn the basics of their ways and so was able to maintain himself in the prime of life. Although breathing properly and eating right were cornerstones of this sect’s secret, the Tom Robbins twist for a long life was to fool the body’s genes into believing a man’s reproductive powers were still necessary and in use.
The basic premise is that our DNA has but one function; to assure the survival of the species. To this end our DNA will perform the job of cellular cleansing and faithful cell replication as long as they believe the body is still performing it’s procreative function. Once our DNA determines we are no longer procreating it slacks off and ageing and cellular degradation begin.
Tom Robbins’ theory received an unexpected confirmation from an anthropology study of hunter/gather societies. A mathematical model by Stanford University biologist Shripad D. Tuliapurkar and colleagues affirmed that human evolution would have preserved genes that favor both male and female survival for as long as they can reproduce.
So the moral of the story is to use it or lose it. It seems our sex lives may have a great deal to do with the health and length of our lives. Sounds fair to me.
Bob Parmelee parmsplace.com