Comment by chrome on Nature Mage Ashto’s Slow Life in an Abandoned Forest - Chapter 6

@chrome She's a dragon thousands of years old how would that even work?

@Stressed person ; If humans lived for hundreds if not thousands of years. How long would they be able to have kids? My guess is a lot longer. It would be like having a 20 year old body for 4,000-5,000 years. In other words. It would not matter as much to have kids while young because the body lasts longer.

@Faceless One Men would be able to have kids for ages -they're constantly producing sperm.

Women would stop being able to have kids after a while, especially if they ovulated regularly. Eggs have a finite number per woman, which tends to get even smaller between birth and menopause. In the end, at best only some in the tens of thousands are ever useful for having kids. 

Of course, that's with normal science rules. Science fiction and magic could do things like stop ovulation cold or keep the eggs intact and in place until the person desires to use them. If a woman had Wolverine type regeneration, destroying the ovary and letting it regrow could theoretically replenish the eggs, depending on exactly how the regeneration worked. (A Wolverine-type immune system, though, would absolutely fry any chance of natural pregnancy.)

@Galactic Navy Officer By our standards that is true but how much would the human body need to change just to live for hunderds if not thousands of years? Quite a bit is my guess.. I'm not even sure we could call such people human anymore. We would need to become different at a genetic level.

@Faceless One It's not that hard in theory. The main reason our cells start breaking down is the telomerase caps at the ends getting shorter and shorter. Some cancers trigger when the telomerase shortening doesn't function properly, and those cells are frighteningly long-lived, since we're dealing with something that damages the body in such cases. 

Other reasons our bodies wear out is dealing with the effects and aftereffects of injury, disease, and parasitic creatures, and not getting proper nutrition, especially in childhood. Cultivation stories deal with this with, after a certain point, having the energy heal all such damage and feed the cells directly, while also repairing them. While less direct and in more pieces, certain kinds of fantasy and science fiction techniques do the same thing.

Science fiction especially has scenarios of being able to feed everyone properly while not destroying the planet. (Soylent Green does not qualify here, btw. That was a dying planet with the people driven to desperation.) 

You can see this in the current day. More people manage to live until they're old without many or any major health crises, and they're in better health as they age. 

(I note parasitic creatures specifically, since campaigns against them have resulted in major changes to a population's health within one generation.)

@Galactic Navy Officer Yes there are many things to consider and one would assume they would reach for the stars sooner or later to prevent some of the downsides of living longer. But the real question on my mind is if the female body would undergo changes when it comes to having a baby but now I'm wondering how often that would be and for how long. because if everyone lived longer/etc. Then the need and desire to reproduse could in theory go down quite a bit.

@Faceless One bro, it was just a passing thought, so why is there a whole a** biology lesson in the replies?😭

@Faceless One With the right spell, ovulation could probably be locked down so it just doesn't happen. It would probably be a short-lived, high reproduction race that developed it, since they'd have more of it. (There's a rabbitfolk joke in there.)

@chrome Good question. I guess it all comes down to overthinking about what it means to reproduce...

@Faceless One what's there to overthink? you fu**, someone pops the condom, you reproduce.