[HN Gopher] Blue Zones, where people reach age 100 at 10 times g...
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Blue Zones, where people reach age 100 at 10 times greater rates
Author : ivanvas
Score : 640 points
Date : 2022-07-18 20:38 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
| k__ wrote:
| Does this account for pension fraud?
| 1-6 wrote:
| I'd like to see a post mortem on that!
| mesozoic wrote:
| Summarized it for myself and others maybe
|
| 1 Move naturally. All these activities were not widely done up to
| 100 years ago. I'd expect they're not much worse so just get
| exercise. 2 Purpose. Sure good advice have a reason to live 3
| Downshift. relax and don't be a workaholic check 4 80% Rule.
| effectively intermittent fasting? 5 Plant slant. already
| disproved by other comments. anti meat propaganda 6 Wine @ 5. but
| is this causal or just correlational, probably goes with
| downshift above 7 Belong. Really seems this is just a subpart of
| social (below) and purpose (above) 8 Loved ones first. Free elder
| care is going to add years on it's own. Can try to find that
| other ways but get cared for when you're old. 9 Right tribe.
| create peer pressure to promote positive habits
| hamilyon2 wrote:
| When do we finally regulate sugar like we do with tobacco? I bet
| nobody mentioned in article drinks sugary carbonated drinks.
| ghufran_syed wrote:
| https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/blue-zones-diet-speculation....
| fleddr wrote:
| "Knowing your sense of purpose is worth up to 7 years of extra
| life expectancy."
|
| Uh-oh.
|
| "Research shows that attending faith-based services 4 times per
| month will add 4 to 14 years of life expectancy."
|
| Looks like my atheism is is worse than smoking, who knew.
| gsatic wrote:
| Faith doesn't need to be faith in religion. Have you met sports
| fans?
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| Sports fans are not exactly known for their longevity.
| pcurve wrote:
| lol! I needed that laugh, thanks. I know you're being funny,
| but if you already hold similar belief systems and also
| practice healthy living / thinking on your own, you'll be fine.
| fleddr wrote:
| I'm technically a Roman Catholic. My parents told me that if
| I performed the rituals, like communion, I'd get a new bike
| and it would make grandma happy. My father's belief system:
|
| Dad: "It's freezing in this church".
|
| Mum: "Shhhht! We're in session, have some respect".
|
| Dad: "At least it will be warm in hell".
| jp0d wrote:
| Makes a strong case for us atheists to form some sort of
| community and chat about STEM and acknowledge our science gods
| like Einstein. Now that I think about it, we will probably end
| up entering into some sort of debate. haha..
| zaptrem wrote:
| I'm religious and this seems like some serious
| causation/correlation confusion. Maybe attending
| services/having purpose is _correlated,_ but establishing
| causation for such a thing afaik is impossible.
| physicles wrote:
| Former born-again evangelical Christian here, stopped believing
| about 10 years ago. I haven't yet found anything like the
| communities within the churches I was deeply involved in. But I
| do think it's possible to find outside religion, and I'm
| getting closer every year.
|
| I've been lucky to live for the last 10 years in a place* where
| it's easy to form lasting friendships with like-minded, earnest
| people. For me, I know I'm in the right place when I have
| friends with whom I can share my insecurities, and they can
| share theirs, and there's no judgment.
|
| From here I think it's just a matter of prioritizing community
| whenever it's time to move next, whether it's seeking out
| groups of friends from our little diaspora or making new
| friends. That makes sense to do whether I have a partner or
| not.
|
| (*never expected that Beijing would be so great in this way. I
| don't know if the expat scene in other major cities is similar;
| maybe it's just because the community is small here and the
| city attracts people who prefer not to coast through life)
| [deleted]
| mkoubaa wrote:
| I don't like the terminology of "faith-based" here. These are
| religious services, and some religions don't place a big
| importance on faith
| Qem wrote:
| Did they control for marriage and divorce? Maybe religious
| people are just more likely to marry and remain married when
| older. Lonely elderly people are at increased risk of death, as
| loneliness increase risk of mental disease and death from
| disease and accidents, when nobody is around to call help
| fleddr wrote:
| Maybe, but in that case they could just say "married couples
| live longer".
|
| I really think they're referring to the communal feeling of
| religion. Forget about the religion itself, it's an
| incredibly effective way to get to know hundreds of people,
| which enriches your life.
|
| We're social creatures and religion is social on steroids.
| ska wrote:
| > Looks like my atheism is is worse than smoking, who knew.
|
| It's plausible that the faith-based stuff is just a decent
| proxy for actually having a functional community and community
| support.
| fleddr wrote:
| Fully agree.
| rtev wrote:
| That's a strong possibility. While I'm not religious, I
| frequently envy the close community that religious life
| brings.
| zoinks-scoob wrote:
| Some religions aren't really over the moon with dogma and
| mostly just loosely hold a community together. Try a
| Friends meeting sometime and see what you think.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Friends -- aka Quakers, for anyone confused.
|
| https://simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_Society_of_
| Fri....
| chmod600 wrote:
| If the sense of purpose isn't there, usually the
| "community" behind it is shallow.
|
| I'm not saying only religion offers a sense of purpose.
| But just a bunch of nice people in a building talking
| about being nice doesn't often work.
| emmelaich wrote:
| True, but you never quite know whether people are
| adopting a pose for the sake of belonging or really
| really believe.
|
| From my own experience, I'd guess 50pc or more don't
| _really_ believe.
| quadcore wrote:
| And meditation - or mind-clearing activities
| gowld wrote:
| bscphil wrote:
| And "drinks one to two servings of alcohol a day" is a pretty
| good proxy for "has enough money to afford to drink wine
| regularly, but is in a stable enough community to not slide
| into alcoholism".
| wizofaus wrote:
| Wasn't there some study that showed one of the main reasons the
| average life expectancy in Okinawa was so high was because many
| people had just made up their date of birth after records were
| destroyed in the war in order to maximize government benefits
| etc.?
| svnt wrote:
| There is also incentive to lie about meat consumption as it is
| frequently evidence of status.
| Simon_O_Rourke wrote:
| Who would want another twenty years once you hit seventy five?
| bergenty wrote:
| Me, I don't want to die. Just watching the world go by is fun.
| dwighttk wrote:
| Get back to me when you're 75
| [deleted]
| szeil wrote:
| TaupeRanger wrote:
| Almost every 75 year old
| boutell wrote:
| Blinking repeatedly at the idea that Okinawa is in the "South
| Pacific."
| KerrAvon wrote:
| I saw the headline and I seriously assumed someone was claiming
| to have discovered that people in some areas of the world
| experienced accelerated aging.
|
| (In case it's changed, the headline when I read it: "Blue Zones,
| where people reach age 100 at 10 times greater rates")
| q7xvh97o2pDhNrh wrote:
| Yeah, I came here for the obligatory Doppler shift joke. I
| don't see one, so I'll give it a try:
|
| Maybe they're called Blue Zones because they're moving towards
| us so quickly that we can see all their wrinkles more clearly.
| So they're not really centenarians, but they just look older!
| 867-5309 wrote:
| thought you were going to say "moving towards us so quickly
| that their electromagnetic wavelengths are blueshifted"
| andyferris wrote:
| That's right - I was definitely thinking of the twin
| paradox! (For those that don't know, the twin paradox is a
| theory of relativity thing - one twin travels out into
| space and back to Earth near the speed of light and
| afterward the stationary twin is older than the travelling
| twin, so the blue-shifted twin "lives longer" at least from
| Earth's point of view).
| [deleted]
| daveslash wrote:
| That is _exactly_ how I took it at first. Came to the comment
| thread to see if I was the only one.
| robocat wrote:
| The 9 factors:
|
| _Move naturally_. The world's longest-lived people do not pump
| iron, run marathons, or join gyms. Instead, they live in
| environments that constantly nudge them into moving without
| thinking about it. They grow gardens and do not have mechanical
| conveniences for house and yard work.
|
| _Purpose_. The Okinawans call it Ikigai and the Nicoyans call it
| plan de vida; for both, it translates to "why I wake up in the
| morning." Knowing your sense of purpose is worth up to 7 years of
| extra life expectancy.
|
| _Downshift_. Even people in the Blue Zones experience stress.
| Stress leads to chronic inflammation, associated with every major
| age-related disease. What the world's longest-lived people have
| that others do not are routines to shed that stress. Okinawans
| take a few moments each day to remember their ancestors;
| Adventists pray; Ikarians take a nap; and Sardinians do happy
| hour.
|
| _80% Rule_. Hara hachi bu--the Okinawan 2500-year old Confucian
| mantra said before meals reminds them to stop eating when their
| stomachs are 80% full. The 20% gap between not being hungry and
| feeling full could be the difference between losing weight or
| gaining it. People in the Blue Zones eat their smallest meal in
| the late afternoon or early evening, and then, they do not eat
| any more the rest of the day.
|
| _Plant slant_. Beans, including fava, black, soy, and lentils,
| are the cornerstone of most centenarian diets. Meat--mostly pork
| --is eaten on average only 5 times per month. Serving sizes are 3
| to 4 oz, about the size of a deck of cards.
|
| _Wine @ 5_. People in all Blue Zones (except Adventists) drink
| alcohol moderately and regularly. Moderate drinkers outlive
| nondrinkers. The trick is to drink 1 to 2 glasses per day
| (preferably Sardinian Cannonau wine), with friends and /or with
| food. And no, you cannot save up all week and have 14 drinks on
| Saturday.
|
| _Belong_. All but 5 of the 263 centenarians interviewed belonged
| to some faith-based community. Denomination does not seem to
| matter. Research shows that attending faith-based services 4
| times per month will add 4 to 14 years of life expectancy.
|
| _Loved ones first_. Successful centenarians in the Blue Zones
| put their families first. This means keeping aging parents and
| grandparents nearby or in the home (it lowers disease and
| mortality rates of children in the home too.). They commit to a
| life partner (which can add up to 3 years of life expectancy) and
| invest in their children with time and love. (They'll be more
| likely to care for aging parents when the time comes.)
|
| _Right tribe_. The world's longest lived people chose--or were
| born into--social circles that supported healthy behaviors,
| Okinawans created moais--groups of 5 friends that committed to
| each other for life. Research from the Framingham Studies2 shows
| that smoking, obesity, happiness, and even loneliness are
| contagious. So the social networks of long-lived people have
| favorably shaped their health behaviors.
| tolstoshev wrote:
| My bet is blue zones are just places where they don't have good
| longevity records so you get a bunch of fake centenarians. That
| turned out to be the case in Japan:
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-11258071 and I think
| also in Greece.
|
| People were just keeping dead relatives "alive" for the social
| security or rent control.
| genjipress wrote:
| Andrei Codrescu had a monologue once, about how the world is in
| truth peopled by two-thousand year old men who "arrived at
| their great age with the aid of daily doses of yogurt,
| cigarettes, vodka, and dubious birth records. ... With the
| exception of their eyelashes, which reach to the ground, they
| are in very good shape."
| dekhn wrote:
| ha, my grandpa said (this would have been mid 1980s) there
| were 150-year old people living in communes in russia and I
| asked how they lived so long and he said they ate yogurt. But
| I think he must have been referring to this:
| https://www.nytimes.com/1977/09/09/archives/soviet-
| centenari...
| gowld wrote:
| What does the eyelash bit mean?
| jandrese wrote:
| Sometimes people were assuming a parent's name to avoid paying
| inheritance tax. I remember speculation about the oldest woman
| in the world may have in fact been her daughter.
| postsantum wrote:
| Another common reason is evading the draft during war due to
| old age. In my country the region with longest living people is
| infamous with high corruption rates and general poverty. It
| also has the highest natal mortality rate which might be a
| contributing factor too
| Terretta wrote:
| That's an interesting potential correlation, as I'd guess
| some percentage of Loma Linda CA are likely to have been
| "conscientious objectors" like this SDA fellow the movie
| Hacksaw Ridge was made about:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desmond_Doss
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Glad to see this up at the top. Here is another article that
| specifically talks about Sardinia and Okinawa, 2 of the
| identified "Blue Zones", and really puts it down to poor record
| keeping: https://www.vox.com/2019/8/8/20758813/secrets-ultra-
| elderly-...
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| ancorevard wrote:
| Loma Linda in California?
| pcurve wrote:
| Apparently they did a study on this..
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/25/health/longevity-blue-zone-
| we...
|
| high percentage of vegetarians, active lifestyle, religious
| folks, etc.
| amelius wrote:
| Or (a more positive take), perhaps these are places where the
| elderly are respected, and youth is not fetishized.
| tsaprailis wrote:
| I have read the same thing about Greece's Ikaria island
| centenarians.
|
| As an anecdote my grandfather born in remote mountain village
| in mainland Greece in the 1900 was actually registered by his
| father having been born in 1906 as to avoid being drafted as
| long as possible to fight in the multiple wars fought at the
| time. So birth records and certificates from that time are not
| really trustworthy.
| bombcar wrote:
| I knew someone who came over with "the boat people" from
| Vietnam when he was six or seven; but his parents adjusted
| his birthday so he would start kindergarten instead - and he
| still didn't know for sure his actual birthday day.
| Aeolun wrote:
| How do you go and register a 7 year old as having been born a
| few days ago?
| vorpalhex wrote:
| I don't think you bring the kid with you.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Or bring another kid with you. In a small village, the
| gene pool is pretty shallow and it's not hard to look
| like anyone's child.
|
| It's not like they're going to waste money on
| photographing every person in a tiny village either.
| omega3 wrote:
| With the help of a bribe.
| stickfigure wrote:
| I'm guessing that paper records were not especially
| rigorous in Greece in the early 1900s.
| scifibestfi wrote:
| > team of demographers, scientist and anthropologists were able
| to distill the evidence-based common denominators of these Blue
| Zones into 9 commonalities that they call the Power 9
|
| Incredibly embarrassing for all involved if your bet is
| correct. None of them considered that possibility?
| t-3 wrote:
| They apparently interviewed over 200 centenarians, and
| visited all the locations.
| Trias11 wrote:
| If these all are warm places, with good nature, away from
| nonsense of a big city - chances are people will live longer
| there.
| ip26 wrote:
| On the other hand, we know from other research that physical
| activity, social engagement, low alcohol consumption, and the
| Mediterranean diet are all healthy. Can it be just coincidence
| all 7 blue zones exhibit these things?
| ianai wrote:
| Or are there places with a similar diet without a history of
| longevity?
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| That's not impossible, but where are the records?
| franze wrote:
| Spending a lot of time in greece in rural areas in the 90ies in
| my teens. Quite a lot of older greek did not even know or care
| about their birthday, as it was not celebrated. Name day was
| the big thing.
|
| And I loved the stories when the government introduced a new
| land registry (based on reality) and the chaos the ensured, as
| suddenly lot of land was owned 2 or more times, officially
| unknown villages were officially discovered ...
|
| I would definitely question the validity of the historic birth
| register, a lot.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| having spent a good part of my life with Greek relatives, I
| beg to differ.
|
| Birthdays might not be accurate due to difficulties in
| registering births, civil wars and fascist coups (they burnt
| every record so that people from, for example, Macedonia had
| to take Greek names) but the difference from on paper age and
| actual age is on average a few months off (plus or minus, so
| they balance in the end).
|
| They also care a lot about celebrating birthdays with very
| big family gatherings.
|
| On other note: if we believe that somewhere they kept false
| records of births, what should make us believe that in other
| parts of the World they kept perfect records?
|
| What should make us think that birth records in Azerbaijan,
| Colombia, Ohio or Fiji are more accurate?
| BeefySwain wrote:
| > And I loved the stories when the government introduced a
| new land registry (based on reality) and the chaos the
| ensured
|
| Could you provide some links expanding on this? Or a phrase
| to Google? Sounds fascinating.
| franze wrote:
| a quick google showed this
|
| https://www.elra.eu/the-present-landscape-of-land-
| registrati...
|
| The traditional land registry was from 1853 which seems was
| just a good enough description of what one owns.
|
| In 1995 a land cadastre was created and it came into law in
| 1998 to replace the old system. A land survey was started
| to move presume land ownership from the old into the new
| system. This land survery / chaos was definitely still
| going on end of the 2000 years in Crete.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _Name day was the big thing._
|
| For anyone curious:
|
| > _In Christianity, a name day is a tradition in many
| countries of Europe and the Americas, among other parts of
| Christendom.[1] It consists of celebrating a day of the year
| that is associated with one 's baptismal name, which is
| normatively that of a biblical character or other saint.[2]_
| [...]
|
| > _The custom originated with the Christian calendar of
| saints: believers named after a saint would celebrate that
| saint 's feast day. Within Christianity, name days have
| greater resonance in areas where the Christian denominations
| of Catholicism, Lutheranism and Orthodoxy predominate.[1]_
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_day
| mc32 wrote:
| Some French I knew followed this and received gifts(IIRC)
| --or at least they referenced these things as the source of
| their names --they did not ignore their actual birthdays
| though.
| tarte-au-poire wrote:
| Indeed. I had no idea it was so exotic. It's kinda of a
| old people thing. It's associated with your name a
| specific saint for it. ( multiple saint are named James
| or John or Anthony, your name day is specifically for one
| of them. Anthony of Assisi is not the same day as Anthony
| of Padou and so on on so forth.)
|
| You usually get a card from your religious grandma and a
| 20$ bill.
| mfer wrote:
| The researchers questioned these details, too. Any place
| labeled a blue zone has to have excellent records they could
| trace. One of the blue zones is in California. It's worth
| looking at their process
| nextos wrote:
| I guess as time progresses, centenarians will come from
| cohorts with records that can be better trusted. This will
| confirm or invalidate the blue zone findings.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| It's not necessarily so easy.
|
| I'm reminded of the Okinawan case, where postwar rule by
| the US introduced younger cohorts to much unhealthier
| eating habits.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| Half the residents of that town are 7th Day Adventists
| according to Wikipedia:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loma_Linda,_California
|
| Blue zones could simply be a result of The modifiable areal
| unit problem (MAUP):
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modifiable_areal_unit_probl
| e...
| mfer wrote:
| 7th Day Adventists have food and lifestyle differences
| from the surrounding population. They are the ones living
| longer. There have been a bunch of ongoing long term
| studies on them.
|
| One of the findings is that diet matters. They've looked
| at diet differences and certain characteristics show up
| for people who live longer and have more good years.
| Those same things show up in the other blue zones.
| margalabargala wrote:
| Things in common across most blue zones: middle latitudes, near
| a coastline, consistent weather, mild diet with plenty of fish,
| poor record keeping...
| atourgates wrote:
| I assume your comment is semi-tongue-in-cheek, but Loma
| Linda's the counter to several of those points.
|
| Loma Linda's core contributing factors seem to be:
|
| * High incidence of vegetarianism
|
| * High incidence of non-smokers and non-drinkers
|
| * Strong religious / social community
|
| * Access to great healthcare
|
| All while having birth records that are just about as
| accurate as anyplace else in the United States.
| TylerE wrote:
| But it conforms to many of the others... it's only 20 miles
| inland from the pacific, and has an (albeit warmer than
| normal) Mediterranean climate... "winter" lows are rarely
| below the mid 40s.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| I grew up in the Loma Linda area as a Seventh-day
| Adventist (though my family left Adventism when I was a
| teenager after reading some books that explained why some
| of its core teachings are unbiblical). My grandparents
| all lived past 90, and my great-grandfather died at 100.
|
| Epidemiologically speaking, I think SDAs in general live
| longer because they don't smoke, don't drink, and don't
| eat meat -- and have a religious community in which doing
| so is against God's law. It also doesn't hurt that they
| keep Sabbath, which means everyone who doesn't work in
| healthcare or emergency services has a mandatory day off,
| no work allowed.
|
| Smog in the whole Inland Empire area is still pretty bad,
| especially in the summer. It gets pretty hot in the
| summer, not very cold in the winter - a lot like LA, but
| hotter :)
| bombcar wrote:
| Which makes sense, if you assume that any given cohort
| will have some percentage hit 100 years; and then the
| cohorts that somehow have people removed "early" will
| have lower percentages.
|
| For example, the cohort that includes people sent to WWII
| will have many that died in that war, even if they would
| have hit 100 otherwise.
|
| And a group that "outlaws" some of the major causes of
| premature death (alcohol, smoking) would then have more
| cross the line.
| bcatanzaro wrote:
| Loma Linda is more like 60 miles from the pacific.
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Loma+Linda,+CA/Huntington
| +Be...
| pcurve wrote:
| Also smaller stature. Large and tall people have more cells,
| and higher chance of cancer.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| that conjecture is famously contradicted by elephants, and
| it's a topic of research why that is.
| Ardon wrote:
| No it isn't? Elephants develop cancerous cells at the
| same rate per cell as every other animal, but have better
| biological methods of destroying them when those cells do
| turn cancerous.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| Is there a citation for that assertion? It's possible
| elephants induce apoptosis for aberrant non-cancerous
| cells, for instance, earlier.
|
| super interesting
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Interesting correlation: Eating more meat seems to cause
| people to grow larger, but there is no strong evidence that
| being physically larger has intrinsic benefits outside of
| physical strength (which is arguably not very important).
| You do however need to eat more, you're more likely to get
| cancer, heart disease, suffer from chronic inflammation,
| etc.
|
| Interestingly, statistics about growing larger are often
| used to support more meat eating by meat advocates. There
| is a lot of talk about protein quality, and the implication
| is that smaller people are disadvantaged - as though they
| must be growing less by all measures, not just stature. It
| isn't so clear that this is true though, and there's plenty
| of evidence to suggest we shouldn't strive to grow larger
| (either in stature or in lean mass).
|
| I'm not saying there is a certain truth in there at all. I
| do find the correlations fascinating though. It defies a
| lot of what I understood about nutrition for most of my
| life so it's definitely something I'd like to see more data
| on. I'm open to a meat-based diet being superior overall
| (or any tasty diet, really).
| TheBlerch wrote:
| Actually remember reading that a number of studies have
| linked short stature with heart disease. I'm not up-to-
| date on the latest research on this. But whether shorter
| or taller you do the best you can with the factors within
| your control - nutrition, exercise, sleep, etc.
| Anecdotally two friends' fathers in elementary school
| died way prematurely, both quite short of stature.
| ekianjo wrote:
| You forgot the mating benefit. Taller people have better
| chances to find mates.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Is this true across all cultures?
| ekianjo wrote:
| I have not of any culture where shorter people are more
| popular but who knows...
| kzrdude wrote:
| My health-obsessed doctor friend told me that muscle mass
| is a good predictor for health in later life, which was
| surprising to me (I thought fitness, heart/lung etc was
| the thing). I wouldn't dismiss it. :)
| pengaru wrote:
| Except body builders tend to not live very long.
|
| Separating the effects of steroids and other growth
| hormones vs. just having a lot of muscle seems difficult.
|
| My general understanding is that overweight is overweight
| is overweight, it's hard on your body when excessive,
| even if it's muscle.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| It appears that consuming a lot of protein in and of
| itself (assuming you're not yet 65) is correlated with
| much worse health and mortality outcomes:
| https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-
| matters/protein...
| e9 wrote:
| It's harder to keep muscles as you grow old. More muscles
| is indication of good metabolism, which correlates with
| good health (less chance of getting metabolic syndrome
| etc, somewhat relevant:
| https://betterbodychemistry.com/obesity/metabolic-
| syndrome-m...)
| Swizec wrote:
| [relative] Muscle mass has a very strong correlation with
| healthy habits.
|
| You just don't see a lot of sedentary people with poor
| nutrition who have a high muscle mass index.
| BayAreaEscapee wrote:
| It makes me think of all those reports that claim that
| having a single glass of wine per day makes you
| healthier.
|
| It's probably the case that people who have just one
| glass of wine are drinking socially, and therefore have
| friends, and having friends is an indicator of having
| status and health. The alcohol itself is poison but one
| glass is more than offset by otherwise living a good
| life.
| Swizec wrote:
| Oh they studied this! It's because if you're the kind of
| person who can afford a glass of wine every day, you're
| also the kind of person who can afford health care. In
| USA at least.
|
| Here's the best source I can find right now:
|
| > The study authors write that "the observed cardiac
| benefits of alcohol have been hypothesized to be the
| product of residual confounding because of favorable
| lifestyle, socioeconomic, and behavioral factors that
| tend to coincide with modest alcohol intake."
|
| https://www.inverse.com/mind-body/health-benefits-
| alcohol-st...
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Muscle mass in that equation would be relative to
| stature, so being smaller wouldn't be a disadvantage in
| that regard.
|
| In my comment above I didn't mean to suggest strength is
| useless or irrelevant so much as that scaling it up by a
| few percent doesn't appear to confer meaningful benefits.
| Someone 5'6" is probably strong enough to do everything
| someone 6' can do in every day life, even without modern
| technology. You can generally scale down what you need
| to, and for exceptional things, you can likely recruit
| and partner to solve the problem or apply intelligent
| solutions.
|
| I'm open to being wrong. Like I was saying, this is just
| based on correlations I've been reading about lately and
| far from peer reviewed study results.
| geraldwhen wrote:
| No man would choose to be 5'6 in America. Anyone under 6'
| knows how difficult it is to date, especially online.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Of course. I'm speaking from a biological rather than
| cultural perspective (as much as you can separate the
| two, at least). I'm more so interested in what supports
| longevity as opposed to what supports dating prospects.
|
| I suppose my question is, all other things being equal,
| would we be healthier if we were of smaller stature? Some
| data indicate this might be the case, and that's
| interesting to me. I suppose my upbringing and culture
| encourage a "bigger is better" mentality.
|
| A lot of data indicate this could simply be a case of
| people growing larger because they have access to more
| food. Genes express, people grow, but the main issue
| isn't stature so much as having so much food readily
| available after they finish growing. Perhaps we eat too
| much and stature has little to do with it; it's just a
| byproduct of access to calorie and protein rich food.
| beowulfey wrote:
| That's also an interesting anticorrelation with how we
| normally relate metabolism and body size; smalller
| organisms tend to have faster metabolisms and live
| shorter lives versus much larger organisms.
|
| Maybe the key is being smaller but also having slower (or
| rather, "calmer") metabolic rates.
| DFHippie wrote:
| I believe what you want to be is a small member of a
| large species. Large dogs live much shorter lives than
| small dogs. Women tend to live longer than men (height or
| mass probably isn't the only factor here, but this fits
| the general pattern so one imagines it helps). Giants --
| people well over six feet -- tend to live shorter lives
| than people of ordinary stature. My grandmother was about
| five feet with a straight spine. With a curved spine in
| her early hundreds she was probably less than 4'6", but
| she was still there. She had about two giant lifetimes.
| If you stacked her on top of herself you would have one
| giant (until her ever more flexible spine folded in two).
| achenet wrote:
| > but there is no strong evidence that being physically
| larger has intrinsic benefits outside of physical
| strength (which is arguably not very important).
|
| Tall people get paid more.
|
| [0]
| https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/05/the-
| fin...
| docandrew wrote:
| How is physical strength unimportant? Stronger people are
| harder to kill (h/t Rippetoe) and improved strength also
| helps to avoid carpal tunnel syndrome and neck/back pain
| for those of us at a computer all day.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I can't think of much a human can accomplish with
| exceptional strength that will aid them in normal day to
| day life (generally speaking). There are exceptions, but
| those exceptions would apply only to rare circumstances.
| Sort of like, say you're going to be murdered by some
| totally jacked guy, hypothetically, and all you have to
| defend yourself is your bare hands. Okay great, it would
| be nice to be ridiculously strong. But how often does
| that happen to you? Or anyone?
|
| Most predators will kill us even if we're ridiculously
| ripped, so that's not important either. In most cases,
| intelligence seems a lot more useful for avoiding or
| navigating these situations.
|
| There's also a lot to be said for having moderate
| strength in a wide range of motion. That can matter a lot
| in a much broader variety of situations where physical
| strength matters, and it's far more realistic to attain
| and sustain.
|
| Avoiding carpal tunnel doesn't require special levels of
| strength so much as normal fitness. It requires regular
| movement and preventing weaknesses. I'm not saying we
| should all vegetate at a computer, I'm saying that the
| evidence seems good that being 5% larger/stronger (or
| whatever the figure was) is not particularly helpful, and
| instead potentially harmful.
|
| For example, regular yoga will probably resolve most (not
| all) people's mobility and repetitive stress issues. They
| will not need to be large or strong for this to work.
| zacharycohn wrote:
| Speaking as a fellow Starting Strength fan: this is only
| true in the modern era to the extent that being healthy
| is better than being unhealthy.
|
| If you look at the top X causes of death in humans, very
| very few of them could have been avoided "if only the
| deceased were stronger."
| spfzero wrote:
| It helps avoid frailty and it allows you to continue
| exercising well into old age, for two things. It delays
| the downward spiral of poor fitness and weak bones that
| eventually does most of us in.
| kzrdude wrote:
| Falling and then breaking bones or getting ill otherwise
| is a common cause of death, and muscle mass and fitness
| helps avoid it.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5899404/
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Although it would help if they were stronger, this isn't
| the result of them needing to begin a Starting Strength
| program. My original point was more so that stature and
| muscle mass might not benefit you beyond a certain point
| - I don't doubt at all that being fit is still
| tremendously beneficial.
|
| It's also pure speculation. I read about this stuff for
| fun and I know just about nothing about anything. Maybe
| being larger really is a net positive and I just need to
| be pointed to the right data.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Right, and I think an important distinction here is sheer
| strength from general physical fitness.
|
| If someone is relatively weak with below average lean
| mass, lower than average markers of muscular strength,
| etc. it seems like the consensus is that they are
| statistically likely to die or get diseases earlier in
| life. On the other hand, being on the other side of that
| seems to yield diminishing returns. It's great to be fit,
| but being abnormally strong on the other hand doesn't
| appear to increase your lifespan proportionally to your
| strength.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I'm not going to argue this with you. I'm not up for
| being dragged into a stupid internet fight with a random
| internet stranger. But this might interest you:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14667430
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Humans are the longest living land mammals, beat only by
| whales. The bowhead whale is estimated to live to 200
| years. And it's a huge animal.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| African elephants do pretty well too at 55-60 years in
| the wild, but a fraction of that in captivity.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| That's an interesting point. I'm not sure how much
| genetic overlap we have with whales, but I suspect it's
| significant. I wonder what allows them to live so long
| without getting cancer, for example. I can see why they
| wouldn't get cardiovascular diseases (in humans this
| seems to be mostly induced by diet and sedentary
| lifestyle), but it seems likely that there's more to it.
| richcollins wrote:
| In the people that use meat's superior satiety to stay
| lean, you see lower inflammation, IGF-1, insulin ... etc.
| On a purely meat diet with loads of protein, my IGF-1 was
| 90, a z-score of -1.
| baal80spam wrote:
| > Large and tall people have more cells, and higher chance
| of cancer.
|
| I've never looked at it like that. Is it true?
| pcurve wrote:
| sadly data seems to indicate so. :-/
|
| https://www.wcrf.org/why-taller-people-are-at-greater-
| risk-o...
|
| https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/taller-people-
| mor...
| samscully wrote:
| It does appear to be true for humans. Though
| interestingly there isn't a correlation between species
| size and cancer risk [1].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peto%27s_paradox
| pcurve wrote:
| Just to clarify:
|
| Across different species, there's no correlation.
|
| Within the same species though, there is correlation.
| tenpies wrote:
| > poor record keeping...
|
| If I may posit an idea. It's not that poor record keeping
| leads to blue zones.
|
| It's that not caring about the trivialities of paper pushing
| and imaginary rules that current Western governments use to
| exert their power, helps one live longer.
|
| _Now why do guys like you and me know what a land registry
| is? Is this essential to our survival, in the hunter-gatherer
| sense of the word? No. What are we then?_
| mfer wrote:
| To qualify as a "blue zone" they have to have good records.
|
| Now that they know about these places, scientists have spent a
| fair amount of time studying and publishing about them.
| franze wrote:
| Strange then that i.e.: the Okinawa Blue Zone seems to have
| been dissolved in modern (record keeping) times.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3362219/
| hahajk wrote:
| Well, record keeping and also an American occupation. From
| your link: "We believe that current loss of longevity
| advantage in Okinawa is a result of diet westernization"
| mfer wrote:
| In modern times it dissolved due to diet changes. Looking
| at the blue zone in California is one of the most
| enlightening because they can control for so many factors,
| the records are excellent, and the people seem to be
| generally open to being studied. There they have found how
| diet and lifestyle plays a huge role in longevity
| franze wrote:
| In modern (record keeping) times it - might - dissolved
| due to diet changes.
|
| Nobody disputed that a healthy diet is healthy. And a
| healthy lifestyle is healthy. Whereby lifestyle is such a
| broad word that its in fact meaningless.
|
| Maybe the record keeping in Okinawa was correct.
|
| If you look for outliers, you will find outliers.
|
| If you look for correlation, you will find correlation.
|
| Does not mean they are the causation for all the
| outliers.
|
| So maybe Okinawa just had a lucky streak, which is now
| over.
| rafaelero wrote:
| The fact that these outliers share similar habits should
| put your concerns over "extraordinary" factors at bay.
| franze wrote:
| but how many communities exist with the same
| behaviour/setting/factors configuration but are not an
| centaurian-outlier.
|
| basic science, do not look for verification, but
| falsification
| SapporoChris wrote:
| The assumption being that poor longevity records resulted in
| fake centenarians. But what if it resulted in missed
| centenarians?
|
| On the flip side and more seriously. From your link: "Officials
| have found that hundreds of the missing would be at least 150
| years old if still alive." That's just silly, Japan celebrates
| their oldest on a regular basis. The false claims would and are
| scrutinized, not just by Japan.
|
| The link is from 2010. My point being yes, the absurd claims
| are investigated and debunked. It's a known problem.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| How many of these places could be explained by random noise?
|
| And what steps did the study take to make sure the results
| aren't just random noise?
| Terretta wrote:
| My bet is you didn't gather that one of the blue zones is Loma
| Linda California.
| function_seven wrote:
| So the key to living past 100 is either (a) don't drink or
| smoke, or (b) okay, fine, drink a couple glasses a day, but
| don't keep good birth records.
| Terretta wrote:
| The other thing interesting about my family members from
| the Loma Linda lifestyle is they remained healthy, active,
| and slim, until their 3-digit expiration dates.
|
| Most were still going on long walks in late 90s, only
| slowed down by vision degeneration.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| _The Danish Twin Study established that only about 20% of how
| long the average person lives is dictated by our genes, whereas
| the other 80% is dictated by our lifestyle._
|
| And then lists 9 things that fit with the idea of moving back to
| the passive solar design vernacular architecture and walkable
| mixed-use neighborhoods that used to be more the norm before we
| became victims of our own success and began tearing down SROs
| left and right and zoning Missing Middle housing out of existence
| (in the US, at least).
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy
| ETH_start wrote:
| I think we need to also remember that people cannot focus on
| healthy living without financial security. Financial insecurity
| forces people to sacrifice health, safety and wellness to make
| ends meet.
|
| Fortunately permissive zoning not only facilitates the
| emergence of densely populated and walkable mixed-use
| neighborhoods, but also significantly increases incomes. [1]
|
| Other policies that I advocate to this end are a focus on law
| and order to prevent the emergence of ghettos (Thomas Sowell
| explains how the 1960s riots and subsequent normalization of
| criminality contributed to the ghettoization of many inner city
| neighborhoods [2]), a focus on building public transit and bike
| infrastructure, and market friendly policies like a light tax
| burden, and an absence of centralized (regulatory) control over
| market interaction.
|
| [1] https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/mac.20170388
|
| [2] https://youtu.be/dvbzIwOECmY
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| In the US, walkable mixed-use neighborhoods, more bike
| infrastructure and _better access to healthcare_ for the
| masses would be a huge improvement and also reduce financial
| stress for people of limited means.
|
| Those are bits I know. This is not a rebuttal of anything.
| I'm simply unfamiliar with some of your points.
| dash2 wrote:
| That heritability was estimated based on Danes born 1870-1900.
| It's likely that heritability has increased since then because
| there's less variability in the environment: health care has
| improved, there are fewer accidents, poor Danes are unlikely to
| be malnourished, etc.
|
| This study shows that heritability is basically zero below the
| age of 60, but increases a lot thereafter:
| https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00439-006-0144-y
| hartator wrote:
| > Okinawans take a few moments each day to remember their
| ancestors; Adventists pray; Ikarians take a nap; and Sardinians
| do happy hour.
|
| That seems a little of a stretch to find commonalities.
| kosyblysk666 wrote:
| flixo4711 wrote:
| Guys, one of they key points seems to be too that all blue zones
| will have great weather and a lot of sun. There is another study
| which shows that more people die in the winter. Therefore if your
| winter is mild then it is less likely that you die
| https://www.acsh.org/news/2019/07/10/more-people-die-winter-...
| samatman wrote:
| Iceland and Norway are two of the top five countries for life
| expectancy, so this is bullshit.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Some phenomena depend on many factors. Factors with evidence
| of effect weakened by absence of other factors remain
| factors.
| jossclimb wrote:
| As a Brit, I am screwed then.
| gpderetta wrote:
| As a Sardinian living in London, it is actually not too bad.
| Winter in the Sardinian coast can be very very mild, but it
| is a large island and inland, in the mountains it can snow
| for weeks in the winter and be much colder than London.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| What about sleep? Do they sleep a consistent amount of time
| compared to industrialized zones?
| [deleted]
| 1-6 wrote:
| We're just stumbling on natural Pareto principles.
| garyfirestorm wrote:
| _One Ikarian in particular, Stamatis Moraitis, moved to America
| when he was 22 years old to pursue the American dream. He was a
| painter, and immediately started having success, bought a house,
| married, and had 3 kids. At the age of 66 years, he developed
| terminal lung cancer. Instead of dying in America, he decided to
| move back to Ikaria and moved in with his parents. He started
| breathing the air, drinking the wine, and eating a Mediterranean
| diet. After a few months, he planted a garden not planning on
| ever getting to harvest the vegetables; 37 years later he has a
| vineyard producing 200 L of wine a year. His secret he says? "I
| just forgot to die."_
|
| This is where I think the article loses its credibility
| significantly.
| kashunstva wrote:
| The story is repeated all over the internet but even reasonably
| thorough articles fail to bring medical clarity. It's always
| "nine doctors agreed", "x-rays showed terminal cancer", etc. In
| 1976, when he was diagnosed its possible, though somewhat
| unlikely he had a chest CT since scanners were just becoming
| available then. More importantly, what no accounting of this
| history mentions is a _biopsy_. Without a tissue diagnosis and
| without sophisticated imaging the story is sketchy.
| Gatsky wrote:
| This was likely tuberculosis and not lung cancer. Autopsy
| series have shown that TB is easily confused with cancers. 40
| years ago the diagnostic tools available were very crude.
|
| There is a crackpot promoting weird cancer therapies in my
| country who claims to have cured himself of metastatic sarcoma,
| but a peer reviewed medical analysis of the details suggests
| that was also TB.
| badpun wrote:
| Didn't they have lung biopsies back then?
| Gatsky wrote:
| These days lung biopsies are performed with CT scan
| guidance (CT was only invented in 1974, widespread use came
| much later), endobronchial ultrasound (post 2000), or
| surgical exploration. Minimally invasive surgical
| techniques have only been around for 20 years. Patients
| sometimes cough up cancer cells in sputum, so a definitive
| diagnosis could have been done that way. But faced with the
| prospect of a major surgical procedure, he or his doctors
| may have declined to pursue that, particularly as there
| wasn't really any treatment.
|
| I don't have the necessary evidence to say for sure, but
| misdiagnosis is at least an order of magnitude more likely
| than spontaneous/Ikarian lifestyle induced lung cancer
| regression.
| phkahler wrote:
| Japanese women have 1/8 the occurrence of breast cancer
| compared to American women. This changes when they relocate to
| the US. One study found the seafood diet to be a big factor.
| Most of these blue zone places are islands and coastal areas
| and the low meat intake mentioned probably doesnt consider fish
| a meat.
|
| BTW the anti-cancer component of sea food is Iodine.
| samatman wrote:
| Yes, it changes, and rates are rising in Japan as well, but
| this much lower rate isn't dietary, it's genetic. Cancer is
| the leading cause of death in Japan.
|
| The Japanese are a long-lived people generally, whether in
| Brazil, Hawaii, or Japan. It's not diet; Japanese in Hawaii
| have higher rates of obesity and don't live _quite_ as long
| as a result.
| blackoil wrote:
| >Japanese in Hawaii have higher rates of obesity and don't
| live quite as long as a result
|
| So is it genetic or dietary?
| samatman wrote:
| The breast cancer? Genetic. The longevity? Genetic.
|
| Dying earlier from unhealthy lifestyle? You guessed it,
| genetic! That particular genetic response is common to
| the human species. A person of a given ancestry has a
| healthy weight for their height, and exceeding it will
| shorten their lifespan on the average.
|
| Metabolism is genetic, though, no doubt about it. A
| different species might simply be unable to put on excess
| adipose tissue, eating too much would lead to purging
| from one or both ends. A different species might be cold-
| blooded. A different species might have an exoskeleton,
| which precludes obesity for mechanical reasons.
| rat9988 wrote:
| Then it's dietary not genetic.
| blackoil wrote:
| Isn't that equivalent of saying, dying from drowning is
| not because of environment but genetic as a different
| species will very happily take dissolved oxygen from the
| water, technically true but useless analysis.
| achenet wrote:
| GP said: > Japanese women have 1/8 the occurrence of breast
| cancer compared to American women. This changes when they
| relocate to the US.
|
| That doesn't sound genetic.
| Flankk wrote:
| _The Salt Fix_ outlines how restricting sodium intake causes
| kidney issues and disturbs insulin response. It is causing
| iodine deficiency as well, which leads to thyroid problems.
| The author suggests HFCS and white sugar caused the obesity
| epidemic along with the associated health problems. This has
| been suppressed for decades by the industry. The
| Mediterranean diet is only a basic hypothesis.
| once_inc wrote:
| For what it's worth, most of the population of Earth is
| located at or near the coastal areas.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Literally every story about kooky shit is like this. If you
| walk around SF's Sunset District on a Sunday, you'll get like 5
| flyers in 10 minutes telling you that with Falun Dafa you can
| cure leukemia or some such shit.
| jquery wrote:
| Eh, someone with strong cancer fighting genes is a good
| candidate to live a long time.
| feerfreeflight wrote:
| Jarring that after years of lurking HN I come across a
| reference to someone I know personally. While I can't speak to
| the legitimacy of the original cancer diagnosis, I can say that
| family oral history from long before the Blue Zone
| popularization is filled with this kind of story. Immigrants
| (usually first or second generation) returning to the island to
| get well. Anecdotal to be sure, and there are stories in the
| same vein about many old country birthplaces, but the supposed
| healthful qualities of the island have a long history,
| stretching back into antiquity.
|
| Still anecdotal but more personal: the original immigrant
| generation that I descend from all died nonagenarians or over
| 100. There seems to be diminishing returns on that sadly, as
| each successive generation's life expectancy seems to be more
| "normal."
| mberning wrote:
| The sister in law gave us a blue zones cook book. My wife asked
| me to look at it and pick two recipes. I couldn't. I would not
| want to live to 100 if that was what was on the menu.
| hobo_mark wrote:
| From the recipes I can see at
| https://www.bluezones.com/recipes/ (which I assume to be the
| same) what on earth is it that you eat instead?
| JackFr wrote:
| Pure nonsense.
|
| https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/704080v2
|
| "Supercentenarian and remarkable age records exhibit patterns
| indicative of clerical errors and pension fraud"
| gpderetta wrote:
| This is what I commented last time this rebuttal paper made the
| rounds on HN:
|
| While I've also conjectured in the past that at least a good
| chunk of extreme supercentenarians are due to anagraphical
| errors if not outright fraud, I do not think that the paper
| support the thesis well.
|
| For starter they do not have a global model, it seems that they
| handpicked different statistics for different areas that
| support their thesis (they do not even show anything concrete
| for Japan).
|
| Regarding Sardinia, their numbers seem actually wrong: looking
| at the raw Istat data the numbers for 55 year life expectancy
| for the Sardinian provinces seem in line with the rest of Italy
| (95-96%) putting Sardinia somewhere in the middle of the (quite
| tight) Italian distribution.
|
| It is possible that the researcher averaged the data over a
| longer period of time that I bothered to look, but the paper
| doesn't discuss the methodology.
|
| Their fitting, p value not withstanding, also seem a bit
| adventurous; the fact that all and almost only Sardinian
| provinces are extreme outliers should have been a tell. The
| rest of the Italian provinces are in a tight uniform cluster.
|
| Sardinia, except for a very brief period in the mid 2010s,has
| only 4 provinces, so it is possible that messed up their data
| extraction (they show 8 provinces).
|
| Also Sardinia is not particularly poorer than the rest of
| Southern Italy and actually has a lower crime rate (which they
| suggest but not outright state is a factor).
|
| A better paper would probably try to build a single model for
| Japan, Italy and US using actual mortality, crime and poverty
| rates.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| Your posted article highlights a really great statistical
| principle that I also discovered on my own owning a really rare
| car: if someone (company) claims to have parts in stock, it was
| most likely due to a database error, not the actual parts,
| because the probability of having the parts was so low. Reports
| of highly improbable events are probably not true in general.
|
| That seems to explain incredible longevity also- if it
| basically doesn't actually happen, then instances of it are
| therefore actually instances of error/fraud.
| tempestn wrote:
| These are examples of Bayesian reasoning.
|
| Although in this case the paper's authors did attempt to
| account for such errors.
| rtpg wrote:
| But there are loads of people who hit 100. The random google
| search talks about 450k centenarians.
|
| 100 years ago is 1922. Perhaps the 100 year old person in the
| 70s is hard to believe, but 1922 is well into major
| bureaucracy existing, and where it is harder to just make up
| a person. There are of course loads of stories of identity
| fraud and the like, but by the time you would want to execute
| the fraud (I guess in your 40s?) you're looking at trying to
| do ID fraud in the 1960s.
|
| For the super extreme cases, it maybe feels worth trying to
| pull this trick off. But at one point we have confirmed that
| getting to 100 is a thing.
| jrumbut wrote:
| I believe the idea is that many of those records were
| destroyed or distorted during WW2.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| I didn't literally mean that people don't ever make it to
| 100, just that it seems plausible that incorrect reports
| (fraud, error, etc.) are orders of magnitude more common on
| a global level. Imagine trying to study longevity with data
| that has 4M or 40M erroneous centenarians and only 450k
| real ones.
|
| Some of these isolated 'blue zones' are cults/small
| communities that may also have a conflict of interest in
| convincing people that their way of life leads to
| longevity.
| ChrisLomont wrote:
| That paper has not been published, despite being posted several
| years, and the top comment under it seems to supply a decent
| counter claim with evidence. My guess is it's not as accurate
| as to support your claim of "pure nonsense."
| JackFr wrote:
| You make a fair point, but the problem is, I read the
| article.
|
| And it is utter bullshit, published in a fourth tier journal
| by a non-scientist with something to sell.
|
| "Blue zone", "power 9", "vitality compass" -- please spare
| me. This is pure pseudo-scientific crap.
| ChrisLomont wrote:
| SJR ranked the journal in the top third - not great, but
| not "fourth tier."
|
| And it got published, unlike your rebuttal.
|
| It's also got 170+ citations, none of which I found to
| claim to debunk the paper. Many of those citations are in
| good journals.
|
| Do you know any papers published in good journals rebutting
| this one?
|
| Maybe you should carefully write up your objections and
| publish that. You certainly are going to great lengths to
| claim it's crap.
| biophysboy wrote:
| It's also super common to use memorable names and phrases
| in scientific literature/presentations. It's common in my
| field (biophysics). I don't know why "blue zone" is so
| pseudoscientific.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _spare me_
|
| Communicational style comes from environment, inclination,
| choice and target, and may suggest but not prove (low)
| quality of content.
|
| Many are irritated e.g. by the style (apparently very
| frequent in the USA), in articles and books, using the
| pattern "John one day left the house and a number of things
| happened; he had graduated there and does this for a
| living. Now, the science" - odd conflations of narrative
| and data following the sequences of a novelist instead of
| theoretical structures: nonetheless, they do frequently
| have juice to extract.
| jquery wrote:
| I bet it's a bit of column A, a little of column B. Healthy
| diets and lifestyles will earn you a few extra years, and
| fraud gets you the rest of the way.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| I was a 4th generation Seventh-day Adventist myself. My great
| grandparents and grandparents all lived very long lives, and so
| did many people we knew. For them, living a physically healthy
| life is part of their religion, and it does increase longevity.
|
| My family left when I was a teenager, and I never looked back
| -- but I'm writing to say that at least the Loma Linda site
| isn't nonsense.
| elevaet wrote:
| Does exercise play an important role in Seventh-day Adventist
| healthy living, or is the healthy lifestyle more about diet,
| and not smoking/drinking/drugs?
| iamthejuan wrote:
| Yes. Following NEWSTART.
|
| Nutrition, Execise, Water, Sunlight, Temperance, Air, Rest,
| and Trust in GOD.
|
| See: http://www.faculty.umb.edu/alexandrine_noel/AlexINFO/n
| ewstar...
|
| Many testifies being healed from cancer as well, I know
| some personally who are following these principles.
| janaagaard wrote:
| > Wine @ 5. People in all Blue Zones (except Adventists) drink
| alcohol moderately and regularly. Moderate drinkers outlive
| nondrinkers. The trick is to drink 1 to 2 glasses per day
| (preferably Sardinian Cannonau wine), with friends and/or with
| food.
|
| I thought that the "one glass on wine per day" recommendation had
| been debunked. Is it still debatable?
|
| Here is one source:
| https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/aug/23/no-healthy-l...
| oezi wrote:
| The study which the Guardian piece is based on:
|
| https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0140-6736%2818...
|
| A more recent follow-up that finds some benefits of low levels
| of alcohol for older people:
|
| https://www.thelancet.com/article/S0140-6736(22)00847-9/full...
| dxbydt wrote:
| Is a 2016 National Geo docu.
|
| Features Stamatis Moraitis. Dead.
|
| Features Dr. Ellsworth Wareham. Dead.
|
| Features Marge Jetton. Dead.
|
| Features....oh well I don't want to spoil your day. They are all
| dead.
|
| https://abcnews.go.com/Health/photos/photos-greek-isle-resid...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellsworth_Wareham
|
| https://adventist.news/news/blue-zones-icon-jetton-dies-at-1...
| melling wrote:
| They all lived to be 100. Not bad.
|
| I suppose if we hoped they'd get to 110, we might actually have
| to do a bit of research.
|
| At the moment, we're simply relying on getting lucky to get to
| 100.
| axlee wrote:
| Terrible take. How old were they when they died? Of course, if
| you are 95+, you are very likely to die soon, but you you are
| still part of a 2% percentile of longevity, and that's with
| western actuarial tables that don't reflect at all longevity in
| other places.
| anamexis wrote:
| What is your point? I would expect anyone over 100 would be
| extremely likely to die within 8 years.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| Per the 2019 Social Security actuarial table, a 100 year old
| man has a 34% chance of dying within one year:
| https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Two years ago my grandmother took a photo with 3 other
| centenarians at her assisted living center. She was the
| oldest by 3 years. I just searched their names and two of
| the others passed away within a year of the photo.
| khuey wrote:
| Per the SSA actuarial tables a 100 year old man has a 95%
| chance of being dead 6 years later and a 100 year old woman
| has a 92.5% chance of being dead 6 years later.
| culi wrote:
| Despite all the media attention and even research on the "Blue
| Zone diet" or "Blue Zone exercise regime" or other lifestyle
| aspects, I think the real missed point is often missed.
|
| The thing that all of these Blue Zones have in common isn't diet
| or exercise but community. The 7th Day Adventists of Loma Linda
| California are extremely communal. Icaria is a Greek Island where
| a bunch of Catholic communists got expelled to during the Greek
| Civil War. In Nicoya, Costa Rica intergenerational households are
| by far the norm and extremely important. I could go on about the
| rest
|
| The effect is called the Roseto Effect by sociologists
| (popularized by Malcolm Gladwell). It's likely the same effect as
| another sociological term called the "Health Immigrant Effect"
| which shows how immigrants to the US often have much better
| health outcomes for a few generations before matching up with the
| rest of the population. It also is significantly confirmed by the
| results of possibly the single longest running study in
| Sociology: The Harvard Happiness study. Which finds that the
| strongest predictor of good health is good social relationships
|
| It turns out community makes you live longer, have much fewer
| chronic health conditions, etc. It shouldn't really be surprising
| given humans are probably one of the only 2 known eusocial
| mammals
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| How do you live well over 100? Just say you do.
| schrodinger wrote:
| It's not impossible. I've got a friend who is 84 and still
| traveling the world and sexually active, and everyone in his
| immediate family has made it past 100. He also got covid twice.
| Really depends.
| woevdbz wrote:
| Any statistic calculated over a large enough number of places
| will yield some outliers, even if nothing actually distinguishes
| these places other than luck. It is unclear that the
| characteristics described have any predictive value.
| stellalo wrote:
| > Research shows that attending faith-based services 4 times per
| month will add 4 to 14 years of life expectancy.
|
| I'm wondering what confounder is behind this
| achenet wrote:
| community and also I _suspect_ (but cannot prove) that various
| rituals which engage the "spiritual" parts of the brain (e.g.
| prayer, meditation, certain controlled substances) have an
| anti-inflammatory effect.
| kyawzazaw wrote:
| I wonder what kind of interview process happens at Two Sigma for
| someone like the author.
| namecheapTA wrote:
| I've always wondered how many poorly documented people have
| registered themselves as a decade or more older than they are, to
| start collecting senior benefits sooner.
| fleddr wrote:
| A way to summarize it: undo many of the "advances" of the last 50
| years, and live the longest. Perhaps they weren't really advances
| after all.
| tom_ wrote:
| Don't you tell me which zone is for people reaching age 100 at 10
| times the normal rate!
| franze wrote:
| Keeping aside the record keeping issues.
|
| If you search for outliers, you will find outliers.
|
| Looking for correlation between these outliers, does not equal
| that the correlation between them, is the causation of each of
| these outliers.
| akira2501 wrote:
| It also leads you to ignore important questions. Like.. if
| people know fast food is "bad" for them, but they still eat it
| at a higher rate than some other part of the country. WHY?
|
| It's insane to think you can just go in there, remove things
| that have been established for one reason or another, measure
| weight loss and then call it success. You have no idea what
| you've just manipulated.
|
| I have no idea why this is in a journal. This should be on a
| "PR Newswire" type site.
| jossclimb wrote:
| Seems like the authors have something against marathon running.
| pwpw wrote:
| Further factors not discussed here that I think bear importance
| are gun and automobile use in these cultures. Speaking for
| America strictly, guns and cars account for a significant number
| of deaths. I wonder how those two factors look in these
| communities.
| emmelaich wrote:
| Couple of factors not mentioned but I think matter:
| 1. similar latitudes - not too hot but definitely not cold
| 2. proximity to the sea 3. low sugar diet
|
| Some of these could be cause or effect of others.
| throwaways85989 wrote:
| Is the blue a reference to the phrase turning grandpa "blue" for
| pension aka keeping him post natural mortem in the freezer?
|
| Several countries on this list are "low" trust societies?" so the
| data could be explained very well with it.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=404IeUzGNZ4
| xcskier56 wrote:
| No, the author, Dan Buettner has a consulting practice around
| helping companies, orgs, municipalities implement the lessons
| from Blue Zones to help build healthier environments.
| https://www.bluezones.com/ Where the Blue came from I'm not
| sure.
| klyrs wrote:
| My mind went to "blue haired grannies"
| https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ElderlyBlueHaire...
| bks wrote:
| This ^^ https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/643186/why-old-
| ladies-ha...
| IncRnd wrote:
| "They are called Blue Zones because when Buettner and his
| colleagues were searching for these areas, they drew blue
| circles around them on a map." [1]
|
| [1] https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/blue-zones
| fredski42 wrote:
| I believe it was because those areas were marked on a map using
| a blue marker.
| hammock wrote:
| Now do Green Zones with the highest rates of generational wealth
| preservation.
| standardUser wrote:
| "Research shows that attending faith-based services 4 times per
| month will add 4 to 14 years of life expectancy."
|
| No, it will not.
| ushakov wrote:
| > The trick is to drink 1 to 2 glasses per day
|
| here we go again -_-
|
| what are they gonna "find out" next?
|
| > "Lessons from the happiest people on planet"
|
| > The trick is to take 1 to 2 MDMA per day
| gist wrote:
| One issue that I have is that article uses 100 as an arbitrary
| cutoff vs. say 99 or 97 whatever. What areas have higher than
| average let's say 95 year olds? Nothing special about 100 vs.
| let's say 99 or 101 other than people love that number like they
| love 1 million.
| gridder wrote:
| I don't know about the other 4 locations, but regarding Sardinia,
| yes, it's true. No frauds involved. It's the climate, the food
| and the simple living style.
| citilife wrote:
| The largest factors seem to be purpose and community:
|
| > Belong. All but 5 of the 263 centenarians interviewed belonged
| to some faith-based community. Denomination does not seem to
| matter. Research shows that attending faith-based services 4
| times per month will add 4 to 14 years of life expectancy.
|
| > Loved ones first. Successful centenarians in the Blue Zones put
| their families first. This means keeping aging parents and
| grandparents nearby or in the home (it lowers disease and
| mortality rates of children in the home too.). They commit to a
| life partner (which can add up to 3 years of life expectancy) and
| invest in their children with time and love. (They'll be more
| likely to care for aging parents when the time comes.)
|
| > Right tribe. The world's longest lived people chose--or were
| born into--social circles that supported healthy behaviors,
| Okinawans created moais--groups of 5 friends that committed to
| each other for life. Research from the Framingham Studies2 shows
| that smoking, obesity, happiness, and even loneliness are
| contagious. So the social networks of long-lived people have
| favorably shaped their health behaviors.
| JackFr wrote:
| Also, informal record keeping.
| Terretta wrote:
| Like Loma Linda California, as opposed to, say, neighboring
| zip codes?
| santiagobasulto wrote:
| This looks far from a scientific study. But it still is a fun
| reading and good guessing game.
| slyall wrote:
| I was thinking that if Covid continues at it's current level we
| are going to see a huge drop in the number of people reaching
| 100.
|
| Not many people are going to survive catching covid 20 times in
| their 80s and 90s.
| DennisP wrote:
| Hopefully the universal covid vaccines will work out.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| My 90 year old great uncle got Omicron when vaccinated and is
| still alive and kicking. A recent fall which he almost fully
| recovered from was probably harder on him.
| n0th3r-curious wrote:
| Thanks for sharing! I wish they teach this right in high school,
| so they can focus on healthier life choices (instead of
| intoxicants).
| renewiltord wrote:
| The idea of people living that long doesn't sound outrageous.
| Asian American women today have an average life expectancy of 89
| years. That's the _average_.
|
| But this shit
|
| > _One Ikarian in particular, Stamatis Moraitis, moved to America
| when he was 22 years old to pursue the American dream. He was a
| painter, and immediately started having success, bought a house,
| married, and had 3 kids. At the age of 66 years, he developed
| terminal lung cancer. Instead of dying in America, he decided to
| move back to Ikaria and moved in with his parents. He started
| breathing the air, drinking the wine, and eating a Mediterranean
| diet. After a few months, he planted a garden not planning on
| ever getting to harvest the vegetables; 37 years later he has a
| vineyard producing 200 L of wine a year. His secret he says? "I
| just forgot to die."_
|
| LOL if you have ever traveled in poor places like India, you'll
| find a living armada of people who are all telling you this. But
| when the moment comes, they go to the hospital. There are no
| believers in foxholes.
| mmaunder wrote:
| "Research shows that attending faith-based services 4 times per
| month will add 4 to 14 years of life expectancy."
|
| Well shit.
| aaaaaaaaaaab wrote:
| Do weekly planning meetings count?
| [deleted]
| ChrisLomont wrote:
| This has been debunked in general if I recall. It turned out
| only to be true for the majority religion in a region (and not
| help for others), and then turned out to be the social
| connections got people better services and health support.
| Religion was not useful for the effect.
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| It sounds weird they say 4 to 14 years. What does that mean?
| Does it mean on average it adds 8 years? But since this is all
| about averages anyway why not just state the average?
|
| Or does it mean always 4 and never more than 14?
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| 4-14 is probably something like the 95% confidence interval
| fleddr wrote:
| We live in a timeline where conspiracy theorists turn out to be
| right and now this.
| SQueeeeeL wrote:
| It turns out having a community and feeling of purpose in life
| actually has tangible benefits, who would've thought.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| Or it could be that a sky demon bestows blessings on the
| cultists who worship it. You never do know!
| mmaunder wrote:
| Joining a group that believes in magical sky dwelling beings
| that grant eternal life in utopia provided you worship them
| enough isn't the only path to community and purpose.
| steve76 wrote:
| fleddr wrote:
| Yet I challenge you to find one more effective.
|
| Whether by force/dogma or voluntary, a uniformly religious
| community connects at least weekly and includes all.
| Through this meeting, you get to know pretty much
| everybody, what they do, their families, their businesses.
| Which serves as a platform for making friends, finding
| partners, business opportunities, the like.
| setuids wrote:
| maybe, but it's still a pretty easy way to do it
| latency-guy2 wrote:
| But it's one of many, and is one of the simplest ways to
| join a community as they are literally everywhere.
|
| For the time/effort needed to join this community (plural),
| its pretty much free, maintenance isn't all that much
| either. People a few hundred years ago already did the hard
| part.
|
| Not a bad deal. And all you have to do is suspend a little
| disbelief in something for a while.
| bergenty wrote:
| It isn't but we haven't found another system that works as
| well yet. The delusion really gives purpose to life. We
| haven't found another way to provide a comparable delusion.
| akavi wrote:
| The delusion is also a "costly signal" that you're
| committed to the group.
| bergenty wrote:
| What do you mean by costly?
| enviclash wrote:
| For an expat like myself, the community aspect is the most
| difficult part. How can you create a community if you are hopping
| countries every 4-6 years?
| ip26 wrote:
| I don't think you do. How can you possibly build strong
| relationships if you're here today, gone tomorrow?
| pdamoc wrote:
| Learn Argentine Tango. If you live in a big enough city, most
| likely there will be a tango community. Classes 2 times a week,
| one practica and one milonga and puff most of your week is
| covered.
| IncRnd wrote:
| Have a co-expat hop countries with you.
| stevesimmons wrote:
| > How can you create a community if you are hopping countries
| every 4-6 years?
|
| Stop hopping before you get old and infirm. Become part of the
| local support network helping those older and less fortunate
| than yourself. In turn, you get helped by those around you.
| bergenty wrote:
| Religion. I'm as atheist as you can get but I still go to
| Catholic Church on weekends just to form community. Religious
| people are also generally good upstanding people (if you ignore
| their bigotry against LGBTQ people)
| tomtheelder wrote:
| I get the principle, and honestly I think so many non
| religious folk lack that sort of community in a big way,
| but...
|
| > Religious people are also generally good upstanding people
|
| I think _people_ are generally good upstanding people. I don
| 't think religion has anything to do with it.
| bergenty wrote:
| Let me rephrase that, anecdotally I've found there is a
| relatively higher percentage of upstanding people compared
| to the general population.
| Maursault wrote:
| Love how headline is ambiguous, makes it sound like that from
| birth in Blue Zones, it only takes a decade to reach 100yo, as if
| only in the Blue Zones, the Earth orbits the sun 10 times faster,
| or there is some other effect causing rapid aging there.
| blackoil wrote:
| I was expecting some story about Interstellar like time
| dilation.
| madiator wrote:
| Yeah, I read it first as places where you unnaturally age very
| fast.
| emmelaich wrote:
| Agreed, I thought of the Ray Bradbury story
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frost_and_Fire_(short_story)
| t6jvcereio wrote:
| Alcohol? Really? I thought we'd gotten rid of that urban myth...
| t-3 wrote:
| I'm not sure I buy their list of what makes people live longer,
| but I found it interesting that 3/5 locations seem to be ~40
| degrees north latitude (and 3/5 islands, all locations are very
| near oceans/seas). It makes sense that all locations would be in
| warmer areas, as that vastly reduces the dependency on meat
| consumption, but more bias towards the equator would be expected
| if that was all. 40 south only touches the edge of Australia and
| the tail of South America, but I wonder how the life expectancy
| compares?
| ochoseis wrote:
| > It makes sense that all locations would be in warmer areas,
| as that vastly reduces the dependency on meat consumption
|
| Are you implying causation or correlation? For example, I can
| imagine northern latitudes having more variable stocks of
| animals (and other food) during bad winters, so averages matter
| less than extremes.
| t-3 wrote:
| I'm just reasoning that if crops don't grow half the year,
| you're much less likely to eat a plant-based diet, which is
| one of their points for living longer.
| docandrew wrote:
| Maybe there's just a higher number of elderly there in general,
| from people retiring to warmer climes?
| mrtksn wrote:
| There's a recent video from Yes Theory on the topic:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xhtc3EX12Z8
|
| TL:DW; They go to a Blue Zone village Seulo in Italy's Sardinia
| Island and spend some time there. The village looks pretty normal
| in general, they use technology they have plastics all over the
| place, they eat meat drink wine - albeit locally sourced. On
| thing that stands out is, maybe, the active lifestyle of the old
| people and strong community.
| danuker wrote:
| It could be that their diet changed in the past 100 years.
|
| There are many more studies linking diet and health.
|
| Here is a non-profit presenting them.
|
| https://nutritionfacts.org/
| skrap wrote:
| Should be marked [2016], it seems.
| pastor_bob wrote:
| It seems counterintuitive that:
|
| 1. Moderate drinkers outlive nondrinkers. Moderate being 1-2
| drinks a day, which IMO is a lot.
|
| 2. Diets high in carbs seem to be ok.
|
| I guess low caloric intake and low stress outweigh any of the
| negative effects of the above
| jandrese wrote:
| 3. Don't get fat.
|
| Having a diet high in carbs is fine so long as it is reasonably
| well balanced and you aren't getting fat on it. It just really
| easy to get fat on carbs.
| ska wrote:
| I suspect (2) only seems counter-intuitive due to relatively
| recent trends in nutrition marketing, this stuff is often
| pretty cyclic.
|
| Conversely, low(er) caloric intake relative to expenditure
| being probably good has been scientific consensus for many
| decades.
| tomtheelder wrote:
| 1. Is just generally not really true. They are referencing
| debunked science. My strong suspicion is that these communities
| probably drink the same or less than average overall.
|
| 2. Carbs are unfairly vilified. Unless you are doing something
| very particular like keto or you are a powerlifter or something
| then a big majority your diet should be carbs. You need just a
| bit of fat and a bit of protein. But not all carbs are created
| equal. They probably aren't slamming back a liter of coke a
| day.
| kfajdsl wrote:
| AFAIK low carb diets are generally good when you are largely
| sedentary (like most Americans).
|
| If you're active, you probably want to be eating your carbs.
| bscphil wrote:
| Re 1: the "average" may not matter all that much. The study's
| suggested 2 drinks per day _is_ the same as the American
| average, which according to some web sources I found is 1.94
| drinks per day (among adults). [1]
|
| The difference may be that the variance is not that high. 16%
| of Americans binge drink [2], which drags the average up - a
| significant plurality doesn't drink at all. The truth in this
| case could be _consistency_. No binge drinkers, a consistent
| level of wine purchasing indicating a high level of wealth in
| the community.
|
| [1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-
| now/2017/12/28/ho...
|
| [2] https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/data-stats.htm
| wyclif wrote:
| FWIW, it's not hard to buy Cannonau:
| https://www.totalwine.com/wine/red-wine/cannonau/c/000236
| bscphil wrote:
| Looked this up. A standard serving of wine is 5 fl oz.
| Two servings a day makes 10 fl oz, and let's say we're
| talking about a household of two adults for 20 fl oz. At
| $20 per 750 mL bottle, that's $15.77 a day or about $5757
| a year. I think that's well beyond the range of
| affordability for the median household, even in wealthy
| countries like the United States.
| mbil wrote:
| The oldest living cat drank "an eyedropper full of red wine"
| every two days
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creme_Puff_(cat)#Lifestyle
| fleddr wrote:
| 1. Indeed a controversial finding as 1-2 drinks a day being
| favorable was a classic finding which somehow got debunked
| about a decade ago. I suspect not because it isn't true, but
| instead because of the wildly different context. Stressed out
| people in a high productivity country drinking a few glasses of
| wine per day may soon turn into more. The alcohol acting as
| some kind of pain relief, rather than something to enjoy in
| moderation during a two hour lunch.
|
| 2. One thing that shouldn't be missed from the study is portion
| control. To never be full. I can personally attest that I feel
| at my best when empty. It's not the same as hungry, I'm talking
| about the state of having your last meal digested. I remember
| an older study about these centurions concluding that they were
| almost always "slightly hungry".
| codeflow2202 wrote:
| When speaking about Sardinia they keep saying that their diet was
| mostly vegetarian:
|
| "The classic Sardinian diet is plant based, consisting of whole-
| grain bread, beans, garden vegetables, and fruits. Meat is
| largely reserved for Sundays and special occasions. Sardinians
| drink wine moderately."
|
| Truth is that the Shepherds (the centenaries are mostly found in
| this group) were actually eating more animal protein and fat
| compared to the rest of the population.
|
| https://snipboard.io/gbi9JY.jpg
|
| They can keep lying to most people just because you can't
| understand Italian but whenever people from those towns are
| interviewed they always repeat that they were not vegetarians.
| Here a quick translation from this yt video:
|
| Graziano who got to 102 got asked if he got to 102yo because he
| had always followed a mediterranean diet. He asked what's that?
| It means that you always ate vegetables. Vegetables are bad for
| you, I ate the grass of 100 sheeps because I ate the sheeps. And
| indeed he only ate meat, meaning that this whole alimentation
| thing should be checked again.
|
| https://youtu.be/LQTocSMm7tw?t=647
| orcasushi wrote:
| The meat is bad for you propaganda. Cannot believe people
| buying that. It is known for millennia that a varied diet
| including vegs fruits and yes meat and fish is healthier then
| skipping any of those. But somehow now when overpopulation
| makes our hunger for meat less convenient it becomes suddenly
| unhealthy.
|
| Of course I understand that the antibiotic and and heavy metal
| infested meat and fish we eat is way less healthy then the meat
| our ancestors would eat.
| darthrupert wrote:
| Why wouldn't people buy it? It's put forth by reputable
| science whereas the "meat is good for you" position is mostly
| preached by the jordan petersons of this world. At least I
| have better things to allocate my energies than figure out
| whether obvious charlatans are actually correct.
| d0mine wrote:
| What science? The science that says that shepards who eat
| meat can live 100+?
|
| Nutrition beyond basics is freakishly complex and nuanced.
| There is no place for blanked statements such as "meat is
| bad" here.
| waffleiron wrote:
| >The science that says that shepards who eat meat can
| live 100+?
|
| And some smokers live long lives, we should look at these
| things not as isolated anecdotes but as risks on
| population levels.
|
| >Nutrition beyond basics is freakishly complex and
| nuanced. There is no place for blanked statements such as
| "meat is bad" here.
|
| Or "meat good", for that matter.
| cies wrote:
| If you live in 1500 north europe and your diet in winter is
| mostly grain in the last months, then a bit of meat and dairy
| is very important for not getting nutrient deficient.
|
| If you live in modern day north europe the typical meat and
| dairy you get is heavily polluted and often processed. You
| can get veggies, fruits, seeds, nuts, legumes, mushrooms all
| year round. You can be fully nutrient complete based on the
| and skip the toxins in meat and dairy (and i forgot fish,
| especially sea fish is usually very toxic with mercury
| nowadays).
|
| The gold standard tool is cronometer.com; try to make a diet
| there with only plant/fungi source and you probably only lack
| some b12 (which we used to get from drinking untreated
| surface water).
|
| Saying we need animal products is simply not backed up by
| science. You are commenting on a book that has shown that
| some of the healthiest+longlived groups of people on the
| planet are vegan or near-vegan (okinawa and the adventists in
| calif).
|
| What you sprout is unfounded "meat is needed for a balanced
| diet" propaganda. The plant based diet is backed by lots of
| research.
| codeflow2202 wrote:
| While for some people a plant base diet might well be good
| if well constructed and supplemented this is not always
| true on a population level. The average person isn't drs
| Greger disciple and will not wake up early in the morning
| to be measuring his foods to be sure that his intakes are
| following the RDAs.
|
| Combine that with the fact that nutrients from vegetables
| are not as easily accessible by our bodies, meaning that
| for some people with digestion problems it could cause
| dangerous deficiencies.
|
| And last but not least, yes meat can be contaminated or
| polluted, so you should be very careful when choosing your
| cuts. But the same can be said about vegs and fruits I'm
| afraid:
|
| "European citizens have been exposed to a dramatic rise in
| the frequency and intensity of residues of the most toxic
| pesticides on fruits and vegetables sold in the EU. This
| report and its primary conclusion contradict official
| claims that toxic pesticides use is declining and that food
| residue levels are under control. This report also exposes
| a complete failure by Member States and the European
| Commission to implement EU Regulation and protect
| consumers. "
|
| https://www.pan-europe.info/sites/pan-
| europe.info/files/publ...
| waffleiron wrote:
| > While for some people a plant base diet might well be
| good if well constructed and supplemented this is not
| always true on a population level.
|
| The majority of meat eaters also have vitamin and
| micronutrient deficiencies, I don't think plant based
| diets are the issue here but general culture. Bread and
| salt have iodine added, but when B12 gets added to plant
| milks it's suddenly "supplemented". No, most diets have
| vitamins supplemented, and most western people are having
| sub optimal diets.
| codeflow2202 wrote:
| What meat eaters? If we are talking about health
| conscious people the ones eating meat will always have an
| advantage compared to people who eliminates food groups.
|
| If you are comparing a health conscious vegan to the
| average fast food freak then yes, I can agree with you.
|
| Still, the deficiencies caused by meat avoidance are
| usually more dangerous with worse consequences.
|
| https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/16031619455
| 1.h...
| cies wrote:
| The Blue Zones book shows that people in all times where
| able to eat healthy. You are commenting on a post about
| this book.
|
| Toxins are bad. But all research has shown that
| persistent toxins are much more common in animal products
| than in plant foods. In some German research they found
| glyphosate concentrations were lowest in vegetarians and
| vegans.
| codeflow2202 wrote:
| I'm not aware of those studies so I can't judge. What
| meat are you talking about? From which country? Was it
| cheap supermarket meat or locally sourced from a trusted
| butcher? I hope all of those questions are taken into
| consideration when judging which foods we should avoid.
|
| But still I don't buy this whole meat avoidance stunt.
| Most studies show only small effects linked to meat
| avoidance which can be usually be well explained by the
| fact that vegetarians are usually health conscious
| people:
|
| https://snipboard.io/Be32mu.jpg
|
| https://tinyurl.com/57uv9raw
| harpersealtako wrote:
| The problem with the evidence and research around the
| "plant based diet" is that there is an ulterior motive for
| most of the research (legitimate ethical concerns around
| meat eating) which taints a lot of the data.
|
| For example, Dan Buettner (the author of Blue Zones)
| suggests that Okinawans eat a 98% plant based diet which
| is...I won't say "fraudulent" because I think it's possible
| it's an honest mistake but it's definitely not "correct" at
| all. It's based off of some sketchy anecdotal accounts of
| WWII starvation diets where the only ate potatoes. Western
| centenarian researchers and health gurus repeated that
| factoid a bunch and it became "the okinawan diet is
| basically a potato-heavy vegan diet" in some twisted game
| of telephone.
|
| In actuality both modern and ancient Okinawans have the
| highest meat consumption in Japan. Lard is the go-to frying
| oil even for vegetable dishes. The largest proportion of
| calories come from animal products. The Okinawan diet is a
| high fat, high carb, moderately high meat diet whose main
| "secret" is conscious portion restriction (the local "eat
| until you are 80% full" mantra). They do eat plenty of fish
| too, just not as much as the mainlanders (the idea that the
| okinawan diet is low in fish is crazy because the okinawans
| have a super unique and proud local history of fishing and
| seafood foraging traditions).
| wruza wrote:
| _You can get veggies, fruits, seeds, nuts, legumes,
| mushrooms all year round_
|
| Idk about production methods, but am forced to eat
| vegetables due to a medical condition. First concern, it is
| still not healthy after half a year and few consultants.
| Second, all highly available fruits and vegetables are so
| _identical_ piece-wise that their semi-synthetic origin
| isn't even a question to me, please correct me if I'm
| wrong. I think that access to really healthy /natural
| vegetables is as expensive and nontrivial as to healthy
| meat. I even know where I can get healthy meat in bulk
| (village economies), but have no idea where to start with
| plants.
| cies wrote:
| > all highly available fruits and vegetables are so
| identical piece-wise that their semi-synthetic origin
| isn't even a question to me
|
| I dont undertstand this.
|
| > but have no idea where to start with plants
|
| I'm willing to help, please send me a message
| (hncies@altmails.com).
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| nature is variance. only commercial growing will make
| things taste the same.
|
| not to mention whenever i eat a homegrown fruit or
| vegetable it tastes so much more vibrant than anything
| I've had at the supermarket.
| cies wrote:
| for plant foods yes.
|
| for meat it is different, usuallu people do not like to
| eat it without applying technology (heating (baking),
| salting, spicing with plant products, saucing with plant
| products) to it.
|
| we do not actually like meat in its raw form, or when we
| have to manually strip it from animal bones.
| michalu wrote:
| I am sorry but your comment is ridiculous. You're
| commenting on article that represents part of "lots of
| research" and it just shows to be propagandistically
| skewed.
|
| Correlation is not science. It has its place in science but
| it's pretty limited tool. Sardinian research shows the
| longest living people there are meat eaters.
|
| There's even a solid reason to believe that most of your
| "heavy research" if based on fake science:
| https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/blue-zones-diet-
| speculation...
|
| Why did I say your comment is ridiculous, because it simply
| is for anyone who has basic understanding of macro and
| micro nutrients and their presence in food. Especially
| amino acids. Plant based diet may work only if you are an
| office worker with minimum activity and access to synthetic
| vitamins.
|
| Majority of pro-vegan drives are ideologically charged or
| have business intent behind them.
| fsflover wrote:
| > It is known for millennia that a varied diet including vegs
| fruits and yes meat and fish is healthier then skipping any
| of those.
|
| Any citations? I have one for your with a different evidence:
| https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/whats-the-
| bee....
| virtualritz wrote:
| My bet as someone who has traveler to Sardinia often is that
| this is much less about meat consumption and rather more about
| stressors like lifestyle, quality of air, water etc.
|
| Even if the people ate meat there at the same proportion as a
| modern city dweller did: no hormones, probably orders of
| magnitude less toxins, traces of pharmaceuticals etc.
|
| A lifestyle that doesn't know many sources of anxiety or stress
| and includes daily physical activity (walking instead of
| driving for a start) and an air quality opposite that of any
| big city just remove a lot of sources of what mostly kills
| people that could live longer otherwise.
|
| Heart disease, cancer, stroke and (possibly) Alzheimer's
| disease.
|
| The Mediterranean diet also means you can strike diabetes off
| the list.
| dghughes wrote:
| I agree about your environmnet being a big factor. But I have
| to wonder what the skin cancer rate is in the sunny
| Meditteranian.
| woutersf wrote:
| Recently there was a study on here that said the sun is
| good for you. And its effects were underrated.it threw a
| shadow over big pharma because 1 in very many gets skin
| cancer.
| sizzle wrote:
| Also they could be eating local, fresh ingredients without the
| processed preservative-filled junk food and sugary drinks we
| get on demand for $1 in the western world on every street
| corner.
| crispyambulance wrote:
| There are MULTIPLE factors involved in getting to a population
| that is high in centenarians. Diet is only one factor and
| finding some meat-eating-only shepherds in such a population
| doesn't prove THAT MUCH unless, I guess, someone simply wants
| to confirm that a fad-diet "can work" for some folks (while
| ignoring other factors like physical activity, stress, and
| lifestyle).
| codeflow2202 wrote:
| Gonna cite myself:
|
| "People from the anglosphere comes with their own idea of
| health, which is for the most part originated by their past
| religious idea of purity more than rock solid science. Many
| of them can't accept studies which prove that a good life can
| sometimes also come out from what they view as a "sinful"
| behavior.
|
| Old Italians never saw meat eating and alcohol consumption as
| a negative aspect of life and enjoyed it just because it was
| part of their culture.
|
| And, against all these calvinist principles, they still
| enjoyed a pretty long life."
|
| Thanks, I have admit that imagining an early 1900 shepherd
| "following a fad diet" made me laugh.
| thorin wrote:
| I've spent a bit of time in Sicily, Italy and Sardinia. I agree
| with what you're saying, but I bet the locals eat less meat and
| better quality meat than the average American. They're also
| active and outside a lot.
| grapeskin wrote:
| The meat quality disparity is definitely true.
|
| I can tell when I'm eating American beef because it stinks.
| As in there's literally a hint of feces in the smell and
| flavor. Pork also has an indescribably foul taste. I was born
| and raised in America and avoided mammal meat quite a bit
| because I couldn't stand the foulness. It wasn't until I
| moved out of the country that I realized beef and pork don't
| have to taste awful.
|
| I can still tell immediately when I'm eating an imported
| piece of US beef. People I know who've traveled to American
| and find out that I'm American often mention the foulness of
| US meat whenever the topic of US food comes up (without me
| mentioning it).
|
| Some people probably don't notice it or they're so acclimated
| to it that it tastes good. But when I see "finest US beef" on
| a menu, I'm ordering local chicken. And definitely not US
| chicken since that stuff is pumped full of saline and "flavor
| enhancers" to the point it looks like a breast implant.
| peanut_worm wrote:
| I strongly doubt that. I am in Europe right now the meat is
| the exact same quality if not slightly worse than what I am
| used to in America barring fast food.
| thorin wrote:
| In the UK at least virtually every town has the option to
| buy locally farmed possibly organic meat direct from the
| farm which is almost always fantastic. It might cost
| twice as much as supermarket meat (which is also ok at
| times), but at least you have a choice. UK / Europe also
| have several small private butcher shops in each town
| some of which give great quality and can provide exactly
| what you want, suggest cuts and recipes, same goes for
| fruit and veg - often cheaper than supermarkets. I didn't
| see much of these kind of options in the US.
| harpersealtako wrote:
| I agree, I've been all over Europe and never saw any
| significant difference in the quality of raw meat and
| poultry. I do know there is a lot of _misinformation_
| about US meats over there though, like the "chlorinated
| chicken" nonsense you hear all the time from the brits
| which is thinly veiled protectionist propaganda by the
| domestic meat industries (who have no problem importing
| their poultry from Brazil!).
| ginko wrote:
| Where you are in Europe makes a HUGE difference here.
| finikytou wrote:
| i lived in new york for years, tried all the wholefood,
| american wagyu whatever grassfed. some of the meats were
| good but costed me like 65$ a kilo.
|
| in Paris you get better quality meat for 30-35$. and if
| you put 65$ you get something out of this world.
| codeflow2202 wrote:
| Yes, meat consumption in the USA is huge. But I think the
| greatest difference between the 2 countries is our distrust
| towards food processing. Italy is a country very resilient to
| innovations which can be sometimes a sin, but some other
| times a blessing. But we are losing that too. When I was a
| kid mcDonalds could barely survive here. Nowadays new ones
| are popping everywhere, and young people completely lost this
| culture we had about genuine foods.
| lucideer wrote:
| > _eat less meat and better quality meat_
|
| Both of these are probably true but the latter is more likely
| the significant margin.
|
| Also may be worth noting the type of meat: e.g. the Sicilian
| staple I'm most familiar with myself is spleen.
| bongoman37 wrote:
| As someone raised in India I didn't get the American
| dislike for organ meats. I love the liver, the tongue, the
| brain, and pretty much all the parts of the animal in their
| various forms. Most American meat preparations taste bland
| and uniform with really minor variations.
| harpersealtako wrote:
| What are you considering as "American meat preparations"
| though? It's not all salt/pepper/butter/lemon here. Not
| even considering immigrant cuisines (which is doing a
| disservice because that's our entire thing, like ) there
| are hundreds of local meat preparation styles from
| southern barbecue variations to cajun food to native tex-
| mex and southwest styles and beyond.
| codeflow2202 wrote:
| My favorite spread as a kid (and still now) is basically
| mashed chicken liver:
| https://memoriediangelina.com/2014/11/21/crostini-di-
| fegatin...
| tpush wrote:
| > [...] but the latter is more likely the significant
| margin.
|
| No, it really isn't.
| lucideer wrote:
| Well we've got a thread here discussing why the former
| might not be a significant factor - care to elaborate on
| why you think otherwise?
| tpush wrote:
| Because all high-quality scientific evidence points to
| eating less meat making a big difference, and there being
| no evidence that different quality meat makes any
| significant difference whatsoever.
| stuckinhell wrote:
| That is unbelievable, and people wonder why the trust in the
| media is at all time low.
| checkyoursudo wrote:
| Is a dude and his company hawking a bunch of books and a
| diet/lifestyle plan really related to "trust in the media"? I
| don't tend to think of self-help salespeople and reporters,
| journalists, or even TV talking heads in the same way, though
| maybe more related to the latter, I suppose.
|
| By the way, I am also under the impression that he doesn't
| mention that Okinawans eat, on average, way more Spam than
| their less Blue-Zoney(R) counterparts.
| mbg721 wrote:
| Every once in a while, there's a news interview with a
| 100-year-old who swears that their secret to a long life was to
| drink enough whiskey to take the edge off all the cigarettes. I
| can't help but think that all these individual anecdotes are
| little more than confirmation bias.
| codeflow2202 wrote:
| People from the anglosphere comes with their own idea of
| health, which is for the most part originated by their past
| religious idea of purity more than rock solid science.
|
| Many of them can't accept studies which prove that a good
| life can sometimes also come out from what they view as a
| "sinful" behavior.
|
| Old Italians never saw meat eating and alcohol consumption as
| a negative aspect of life and enjoyed it just because it was
| part of their culture.
|
| And, against all these calvinist principles, they still
| enjoyed a pretty long life.
| mbg721 wrote:
| Old Italians probably also had numbers on their dial other
| than 0 and 11; Anglospherizans aren't known for nuance.
| dpq wrote:
| I can't quickly find the paper but I recall having read
| something along the following lines: there were several areas
| in Greece where people consumed meat and cheese heavily but the
| life expectancy was decent. A subsequent investigation showed
| that the villagers had a very common SNP (mutation) which
| reduced the efficiency of LDLR (essentially making their bodies
| ingest less of the "bad" cholesterol into the bloodstream). And
| the theory went that since these populations had the same diet
| for centuries, everybody who was not very adapted to it sort of
| died out / was outcompeted in a Darwinian way by folks who had
| this genetic adaptation. So yes, a Sardinian villager may live
| to 102 eating solely mutton; it doesn't mean that the outcome
| would be as good if you took a random sample of Californians
| (for instance) and had them use the same diet.
| codeflow2202 wrote:
| This hypothesis is still part of some anti-meat propaganda.
| They start from the idea that red meat is bad, and then they
| retroactively try to adjust their "science" with creative
| solutions. Research done in Italy about the Sardinians showed
| that the people who got to live longer where specifically the
| shepherds. They had a very peculiar life style which brought
| them to get much more exercise and to eat more animal sourced
| foods. The remaining townfolks had a more "average" lifespan
| even though they shared the same genes.
| shafyy wrote:
| Oh yes, the big bad lettuce lobby :D
| codeflow2202 wrote:
| To be exact the ones putting money into meat replacements
| aren't produce farmers but the processed food giants.
| ponzao wrote:
| You joke, but it has been going on for a while: The
| Global Influence of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church on
| Diet (https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/9/9/251/htm). And
| obviously as mentioned by another the processed food
| industry etc.
| the_du_ wrote:
| You think lettuce cant be big or bad? Look into the
| lettuce king of the southwest. Yes lettuce, and not the
| devil's.
| docmars wrote:
| "[By 2030], you will eat less red meat." -- World Economic
| Forum, an international organized crime network
| codeflow2202 wrote:
| It's kinda happening already:
|
| Ireland https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/apr/
| 22/northern... Netherlands https://www.theguardian.com/en
| vironment/2021/dec/15/netherla... Belgium
| https://www.brusselstimes.com/251313/government-advisors-
| pro...
| nradov wrote:
| Cholesterol isn't "ingested" into the bloodstream.
| orangepurple wrote:
| To expand upon this, Cholesterol is wrapped in lipoprotein,
| and pathogenesis is caused by malfunction of lipoproteins
| due to proximal oxidative and inflammatory effects upon
| them.
| kelp wrote:
| So what's the cause of high cholesterol and how do you
| lower it?
| zackees wrote:
| justin66 wrote:
| https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/high-
| blood-ch...
| theNJR wrote:
| Buckle up
|
| https://peterattiamd.com/why-there-is-no-bad-or-good-
| cholest...
| tpush wrote:
| > [...] due to proximal oxidative and inflammatory
| effects upon them.
|
| No, this is not true.
| orangepurple wrote:
| It absolutely is true for many reasons; one of them is
| uptake of ox-LDL by macrophage and their conversion into
| foam cells.
|
| More info: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK326741/
|
| Additionally, ApoB is an excellent biomarker of
| cardiovascular health risk.
| tpush wrote:
| I agree with ApoB being _the_ marker for CVD risk. What I
| 'm disagreeing with is the statement that pathogenesis is
| caused by inflammation and/or oxidization; instead I'd
| say it's the number of particles that's the primary
| cause, with the rest of the mechanism following.
|
| Might just be semantic quibbling, though.
| richthegeek wrote:
| Standard Darwinian competition wouldn't matter here - people
| generally finish breeding (ages <35) long before they have
| trouble from cholesterol (ages 40+) or other minor dietary
| issues.
|
| You could consider in the same way as the explanation for
| altruism - that families and communities who can rely on
| helpful old people to raise the children perform better and
| out-compete families/communities without that resource.
|
| We should also consider that any dietary pressure will have
| only existed for at most a few thousands of years which, in
| evolutionary terms, 1000 generations perhaps, is basically
| nothing.
| svnt wrote:
| 1000 generations is plenty of time for a new mutation to
| potentially achieve fixation in a relatively contained,
| small-ish (in human terms) population.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _people generally finish breeding (ages <35) long before
| they have trouble from cholesterol (ages 40+) or other
| minor dietary issues_
|
| You're speaking to modern times. Rebeccu, for instance, is
| a gorgeous town abandoned by Sardinians in the 14th century
| because of famine. Furthermore, the children of a famished
| mother are less likely to survive to reproductive age, and
| a family whose elderly died of famine will be less stable
| than one with multi-generational structures in place. These
| prenatal, neonatal and group selection dynamics bias the
| dice.
| rat9988 wrote:
| I'd suspect in the case of famine those who digest the
| cholesterol would have the highest survival rate. It
| still doesn't add up.
| svnt wrote:
| You don't need famine; a wealthy societal elder is better
| positioned to marry his or her children and grandchildren
| into situations where they will have more children and
| their children will be better provided for. An elder male
| could continue reproducing by finding additional mates.
| There is good evidence that male genetic diversity is
| much lower than we would expect if most of our ancestors
| were monogamous.
|
| Bugs might reproduce primarily constrained by their LDL
| uptake but humans are far more complex.
| m0llusk wrote:
| That is not true. One of the many factors that make human
| tribes competitive is grandparents. Grandparents can help
| in many ways especially with child rearing and retain
| knowledge not available to younger people. Having more
| healthier and longer lived grandparents enhances the
| relative fitness of those of breeding age. There is a
| similar effect with homosexuals tending to contribute to
| tribal fitness thus enhancing reproductive fitness of the
| tribe.
| oicu812 wrote:
| >> similar effect with homosexuals tending to contribute
| to tribal fitness thus enhancing reproductive fitness of
| the tribe.
|
| If they want to reproduce, don't they have to search
| outside their tribe for a sperm/egg donor and possibly
| surrogate? So at least 50% or more of their reproductive
| health comes from outside the tribe?
| 1shooner wrote:
| Are there any data to support this?
| smt88 wrote:
| Not yet. My ex is a geneticist who studies the
| evolutionary basis of aging and this is one of the
| hypotheses for human longevity being what it is, but
| there isn't hard proof so far.
| franciscop wrote:
| Wait, when people (mainly Americans) say "Mediterranean diet"
| do they think it's mainly a vegetarian one? That would be so
| wrong in so many levels, I am from a coastal really
| Mediterranean city and we def eat meat and fish (both
| traditionally and currently).
|
| The main differences I'd say from growing up with local food
| compared now with other international food is the extra use of
| olive oil (vs other oils or butter), that normally in our food
| it's easier to tell where the ingredients came from vs some
| other more processed diets, extra bread/wheat use, and that
| even when we eat meat, it's not a "meat fest" like American
| bbq, it's normally accompanied with other food. And of course
| the use of local ingredients, which is particular to our diet
| but I'd guess most "regional diets" have this in common (with
| their particular ingredients).
| rowanG077 wrote:
| It's not that surprising considering the cultural shift. If you
| don't say meat is bad you are anti establishment.
| bobbyasdfasdf7 wrote:
| The shepherds are still eating way less meat than Americans.
| 70% of their protein is coming from vegetables, whereas 70% of
| Americans proteins comes from animals, see here: https://pubmed
| .ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10405679/#:~:text=Statistica....
| harpersealtako wrote:
| This is a running theme for Blue Zones and centenarian research
| data, just a bunch of really blatant falsehoods packaged as
| trendy diet advice (e.g. suggesting that the Okinawan diet is
| low in meat, which is based on some weird game of telephone
| around discussions of WWII starvation diets, when in reality
| the Okinawans get a large proportion of their calories from
| lard and have the highest meat consumption in Japan). I
| wouldn't quite call it a "scam" but I would call it extremely
| misleading.
| m_mueller wrote:
| And besides, if you get the chance, please try Okinawan bacon
| dishes. They are awesome.
| taneq wrote:
| Seems to me that this kind of article always comes to the
| conclusion that the best / healthiest / longest lived / etc.
| diet is one that the authors feel is virtuous in some way. It
| might just be coincidence but it's an odd one if so.
| kfarr wrote:
| Interesting how #1 seems to imply but not explicitly call out the
| relationship (or lack thereof) with motor vehicles. Their
| widespread usage in the US is one of the contributing factors in
| obesity.
| jppope wrote:
| And cars kill a lot of people too...
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Kill _and maim._
| Tade0 wrote:
| My maternal grandparents are in their mid 90s and my paternal
| grandmother lived to 97 (minus one week).
|
| My maternal grandfather's 8 siblings are alive - save for one who
| died in a car accident.
|
| One thing they all have in common is that they survived a war
| which took 15% of the population of this country at the time.
| Generations after them didn't have nearly the same life
| expectancy.
|
| This is all anecdata, but perhaps there's some selection bias
| contributing to the result here.
| borroka wrote:
| "One thing they all have in common is that they survived a war
| which took 15% of the population of this country at the time"
|
| I think what you are hinting at here is that war was an
| artificial selection event that operated on and increased the
| prevalence of some trait related to longevity, say "robustness"
| or "ability to resist deprivation" or "quality".
|
| It is an hypothesis that could be tested, and one that is based
| on the theory that genes primarily determine longevity and not
| "lifestyle", as those years of food deprivation, physical and
| emotional trauma, rampant spread of diseases and general "bad
| times" could be very well be, according to a theory that sees
| "lifestyle" as the major factor in the observed variation of
| longevity, determinants of earlier, but post-war, deaths of the
| affected population.
| aaaaaaaaaaab wrote:
| It must be the intermittent fasting during war!
| HanShotFirst wrote:
| I read the books and enjoyed them.
|
| - To respond to one criticism seen widely here, the authors claim
| to have validated ages with historical municipal birth records in
| all the Blue Zones. I cannot speak to these particular zones, but
| I've been doing genealogical research on my own ancestry and I am
| absolutely blown away by the ubiquity and detail of both
| municipal and Catholic church records in Sicily in the 1800s.
| Preunification Italy was under the rule of various northern
| European countries and was heavily influenced by their standards
| of record keeping. I cannot say if this applies to the other
| countries in the book, but generally speaking, just because these
| records are old doesn't mean they are bad.
|
| - One thing that was very notable in the books but isn't
| discussed very much is that, with the exception of the Loma Linda
| cohort, the Blue Zone areas are all quite poor. They all
| primarily eat food they are able to grow or harvest themselves,
| out of necessity, which encourages simple and consistent diets.
| They have routine, simple lives that are made fulfilling by
| concentrating on community, family, and friends. They are content
| with what little they have and do not strive for more than they
| need.
|
| I found the books quite inspiring. I think the lessons learned
| are good, even if they won't get me to 100. In any case I've felt
| much better and lost weight on a closer-to-Blue-Zone diet than I
| did before.
| arlort wrote:
| > Preunification Italy was under the rule of various northern
| European countries and was heavily influenced by their
| standards of record keeping
|
| The only part of italy under rule of northern european
| countries was the northeastern portions which were part of the
| Austrian empire (if you consider austria as northern european,
| which it usually isn't)
|
| Sicily was last under "northern european" control in the 13th
| century
| bennysomething wrote:
| What are the books called, I'd like to read them too.
| lstamour wrote:
| https://www.bluezones.com/books/
| bennysomething wrote:
| Thanks
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Well, that "Registered trade mark" '(r)' mark added to the
| "evocative anchor" does give a strong sense (with much of
| the rest in the communicational side) that somebody is
| exploiting a way to pay the mortgage.
|
| ...In some cultures.
|
| Edit:
|
| Disambiguating in case of confusion, having written
| <<Communicational style comes from environment,
| inclination, choice and target, and may suggest but not
| prove (low) quality of content>> just before:
|
| style does not remove potential for good content - yet, to
| some cultures, if you present your work that way you give a
| strong image that you are there to pay a mortgage.
| downboots wrote:
| There may be an analogy here to the story about the bullet holes
| in shot-down planes?
|
| [0] https://hackaday.com/2019/08/01/abraham-walds-problem-
| solvin...
| jacobkg wrote:
| I lived in Loma Linda for a few years (in Southern California, 60
| miles east of LA), which is one of the blue zones
|
| It is predominantly a 7th day Adventist community. Notably they
| prioritize healthy lifestyle and typically are vegetarian as well
| as avoiding alcohol, caffeine, etc.
|
| There is also a big medical school and hospital complex in the
| city and many people that live there work in the healthcare
| field.
|
| There are of course plenty of other explanations.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Another fun fact about Loma Linda is that it was one of the
| last places in the country to get USPS service on Saturdays. Up
| until around 2010 they had regular mail deliveries on Sunday
| instead.
| arboghast wrote:
| While I agree with most of the critics towards the article and
| the author (who by the way, is a friend of Peter Diamandis who
| also happens to run a scammy longevity clinic), (some) reasons
| behind the longevity of many of those centenarians have been
| identified: low mTOR activity and high omega 3 intake. mTOR
| (mammalian target of rapamycin) is a nutrient sensing enzyme
| particularly sensitive to some amino acids like Leucine found in
| meat and whey protein.
|
| Rapamycin (Sirolimus), an immunosuppressive drug was found to
| considerably inhibit mTOR activity. Past clinical trials recently
| showed considerable lifespan extension in multiple animal models
| and will likely work in humans. It's one of the too drugs found
| in the ITP trials (1). If I'm not wrong, they are even starting
| trials now and new ones will come soon. That's because, as the
| name implies, that enzyme is part of all mammals.
|
| Lots of people experiment with safe dose ranging from 5 to 10mg
| once a week and report lots of benefits, few side effects (doses
| aren't as high as if used by organ transplant receivers).
|
| I'm in my 30s so I'm not willing to take any risks with those. I
| move, I eat a Mediterranean-ish diet, take Vitamin D3, K2 and
| Omega 3d and eat no sugar. But if I was past 60 I'd definitely
| ask my doctor.
|
| That being said, this is not radical life extension. That would
| likely be possible with upcoming therapies like partial
| reprogramming or senolytics. But it definitely is promising and
| will possibly help living a longer and healthier life if
| repurposed for other diseases than simply immunosuppression.
|
| (1) https://www.nia.nih.gov/research/dab/interventions-
| testing-p...
| wtetzner wrote:
| > (some) reasons behind the longevity of many of those
| centenarians have been identified: low mTOR activity and high
| omega 3 intake.
|
| I wonder how true this is, given that carbs trigger mTOR harder
| and longer than protein, and the Mediterranean diet seems
| pretty high-carb.
|
| In any case, if you're worried about mTOR, intermittent fasting
| is probably the simplest life-style change you can make.
| nostromo wrote:
| Whenever you read a paper creating a new term (like "Blue Zones")
| -- you can guarantee that the author also has a book out with the
| same name.
|
| And so... https://www.amazon.com/dp/1426209487
|
| They usually also have a company with the same name that sells
| speaking engagements or consulting... https://www.bluezones.com/
|
| And of course, you need a modestly astroturfed Wikipedia
| article... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_zone
|
| And don't forget a TED Talk!
| https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_buettner_how_to_live_to_be_100
| yreg wrote:
| I understand that you consider this a bad thing, but why?
|
| Why shouldn't a person who believes they discovered some
| phenomenon name it, write books and give talks on it?
| dotancohen wrote:
| Exactly. Does anyone discount Newtonian physics because the
| author published Philosophiae Naturalis Principia
| Mathematica?
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica_
|
| "Registered trade mark"?!
| rtpg wrote:
| There's an incentive for the work to be right, explainable
| and having transposable advice.
|
| A common thread I see in discussions about age and about
| weight gain is about how a lot of it is determined by
| genetics. If you are trying to sell a diet book, are you
| going to dig into the genetics part a lot? Probably not![0]
|
| Flavors of this exist in all domains, of course, and it's not
| that the causal relation is "writing a book on the effect
| makes the research bad". But when you show up with a problem
| and the solution in one package, there is a question about
| whether this is research or whether this is a sales pitch
| (likely something in between).
|
| [0]: not taking a position on the actual veracity of the
| genetics back-and-forth.
| rendaw wrote:
| Because it creates a conflict of interest, where their income
| depends on the continued significance and validity of their
| research results.
|
| And when a researcher this fanatically believes in their own
| research, were they properly free of biases going into the
| research? Is writing the book the consequence of amazing
| research results, or did they plan to write the book from the
| start (maybe seeing it as the only way to make investment
| into the research worthwhile)?
| yreg wrote:
| The conflict of interest is always there since almost any
| scientist wants to discover something and be right. That
| doesn't mean everyone does bad science, but it's not
| possible to be unbiased.
|
| I'd say the motivation to name a phenomenon and make a mark
| in the science history might be much higher and more
| widespread then to sell a book.
|
| Science cannot depend on scientists being unbiased about
| their work. It has to depend on verification, reproduction
| of experiments, meta analysis and so on.
| svnt wrote:
| Scientists are likely to be assessed on the basis of
| their general credibility, not the standing of a single
| paper.
|
| Maintaining general credibility typically requires not
| overstating your claims, especially when dealing with
| sparse data.
|
| Publishing a single paper and then making money on
| promoting lifestyle changes based on your discovery is
| not science, and would be (I would say correctly) side-
| eyed by many scientists. The author's credibility is now
| inexorably bound up with a single statement that has been
| reduced to marketing.
| roughly wrote:
| Boy, wait till you hear about capitalism
| aaron695 wrote:
| Blue Zones have been talked about on HN for 13 years
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
|
| pg famously talks "middlebrow" comments on this specific Blue
| Zones topic 10 years ago
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4692598 -
|
| "The problem with the middlebrow dismissal is that it's a
| magnet for upvotes."
|
| _Currently_ the top comments are what pg was worried about (I
| 'd say). This is an old concept. The top comments are not
| pulling out any big guns to say why it's wrong but are getting
| upvoted.
| wfme wrote:
| Thanks for the links, a nice little read.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Blue Zones LLC is mentioned at the very beginning of the
| article.
|
| > In 2004, Dan Buettner, CEO of Blue Zones LLC, was determined
| to uncover the specific aspects of lifestyle and environment
| that led to longevity.
|
| You could have just read that
| psKama wrote:
| Thanks a lot for the insight. I wish, I had read your comment
| before reading the article so could have saved some time.
| Terretta wrote:
| Seems sort of the opposite of appeal to authority: condemning
| if making a living.
| ativzzz wrote:
| If one does a good deed, but does so with the intention of
| telling others about the good deed to gain social status, is
| the deed still good despite the ulterior motive?
|
| Isn't the point of starting a business to make money off a
| product that is useful to people and makes their lives better,
| hence people willing to trade their money for that product? If
| healthy living can be a product, what's wrong with monetizing
| it?
| billfruit wrote:
| The Bible seems to think that not a good thing. "But when you
| do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what
| your right hand is doing"- Mathew 6:3.
| elevaet wrote:
| tl;dr: bias
|
| I think the problem is that there is an obvious incentive for
| the author to achieve research findings that support their
| enterprise, and ignore the facts that are contrary. It's an
| opening for corruption/conflict-of-interest.
|
| That's not to say that it's not possible that they are both
| correct in their findings and able to make money off it, but
| it does reduce their credibility.
|
| Who's advice do you take more seriously, the guy with a horse
| in the race, or the guy without?
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| The problem is trying to monetize something _new and
| unproven_ by claiming some kind of significant _virtue._
|
| Charging money to provide value under conditions where it's a
| proven and known means to add value is not controversial. But
| merely virtue signaling on something you can't prove is a
| common tactic of con artists.
|
| See: Theranos, for example.
| ByThyGrace wrote:
| This is great. Do you have more examples (of self interest-
| driven neologisms) at hand?
| chid wrote:
| The first one that comes into my mind is this
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_posing
| Sin2x wrote:
| Everything by Nassim Taleb.
| ReaLNero wrote:
| Master class in marketing and manufacturing desire!
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