[HN Gopher] New research says "blue zones" can be explained by f...
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New research says "blue zones" can be explained by flawed data
Author : cpncrunch
Score : 197 points
Date : 2024-10-04 06:32 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.independent.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.independent.co.uk)
| closetkantian wrote:
| So what are the real Blue Zones if there are any? Where do people
| actually live the longest in other words?
| fnands wrote:
| The real Blue Zones are the friends we made along the way.
|
| The problem will always be that you need to find places that
| keep good records, and have done so for the last century.
|
| What they set out to do was to find correlations between
| lifestyle and longevity, and what they ended up finding was a
| great tool for spotting pension fraud.
| hieKVj2ECC wrote:
| so no correlations between lifestyle and longevity? doubt
| yaris wrote:
| There is correlation (and maybe even causal relation)
| between lifestyle and longevity. It's just the lifestyle in
| those "Blue Zones" is not different from the lifestyle of
| surrounding areas (or as in Okinawa - gradient points in
| the wrong direction), so cannot serve as the sure way to
| longevity.
| simonh wrote:
| That is no way shape or form invalidates any actual link
| between lifestyle and longevity. It just means you can't
| simply assume that any given example of longevity, or data
| indicating longevity, must be due to lifestyle.
| resoluteteeth wrote:
| There are it's just the outlier blue zones where people are
| supposed to be reaching very hugh maximum ages at a
| surprising rate that are probably not real. There are still
| plenty of correlations between healthier lifestyles
| generally you just shouldn't attempt to live past 100 by
| emulating what people in an alleged blue zone do.
| giantg2 wrote:
| The levels of fraud aren't that rampant. Focusing on life
| expectancy in those regions still seems to have some valid
| correlation. It was a mistake from the beginning to try to
| focus on outliers (people living over 100).
| lolinder wrote:
| Part of the research shows that when you drop the outliers
| these regions have a lower than average life expectancy.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Yeah, it does show that for some of the areas, but not
| others. The problem with these population studies is they
| do not give you answers, only new variables. In my view,
| the whole blue zone study is moot, at least in the way it
| is typically applied. What it does give us are new
| variables to study. Those smaller studied can control for
| variables that the population level cannot. They can also
| apply those studies to populations of different decent
| (genetics).
|
| The glass of wine recommendation has had many studies
| done and the results are conflicting.
|
| The eating guidelines like heavy in plants,
| mederteranian, eating to 80% full all have multiple
| studies showing benefits over the typical western diet
| and especially the typical American diet. It's a no
| brainer that if you want to live a long life you have a
| better chance of doing that if you have a reduced risk of
| heart attack, stroke, diabetes, etc.
| lolinder wrote:
| Right, I have no problem with dietary recommendations
| that are inspired by "blue zones" and then validated with
| research in other populations.
| simiones wrote:
| Most of these guidelines are based on the same sort of
| flawed population-level studies that can't control for
| many other aspects. For example, the "Mediterranean diet"
| is consumed in countries that have all sorts of other
| specific lifestyle differences that are just as likely to
| influence health and longevity - siesta, a general
| tendency not to stress or work in exaggerated amounts, a
| month or more of vacation per year, significant sun
| exposure, good social healthcare, and many others. All of
| these together have certain (mild) effects on longevity
| and health, but there is virtually no way to isolate any
| one from all of the others.
|
| There are also many studies that suggest other kinds of
| diets are beneficial, and many populations that consume
| significantly different diets and have even better health
| than the average person around the Mediterranean. For
| example, inuit populations also display generally low
| obesity and risks of heart attack, stroke, diabetes etc -
| while consuming almost the opposite of a Mediterranean
| diet or of plant heavy diets.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "For example, inuit populations also display generally
| low obesity and risks of heart attack, stroke, diabetes
| etc - while consuming almost the opposite of a
| Mediterranean diet or of plant heavy diets."
|
| That doesn't seem to be true.
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30578133/
|
| The studies backing up specific diets are not population
| level, but rather specific study groups. And yes, there
| are other healthy diets too.
| mcphage wrote:
| > what they ended up finding was a great tool for spotting
| pension fraud
|
| I mean, that's not nothing, y'know?
| 93po wrote:
| i mean there are studies that show good socialization leads
| to longer life expectancy so you're not wrong
| dsq wrote:
| I wonder if there was anything historically equivalent to the
| Antediluvian lifespans described in the Old Testament. If, for
| example, there was something in the food a few thousand years
| ago in the area of the Persian/Arabian Gulf, now underwater,
| that could extend lifespan.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| You're wondering if there was any ancient food that allowed
| people to live to 800 or 900 years old. There wasn't.
| dsq wrote:
| I also don't think there was, its more of a scifi kind of
| musing.
| quesera wrote:
| Possibly a parallel in New Orleans? Anne Rice documents
| unusual individuals that can live well into the hundreds of
| years.
| nradov wrote:
| In some ancient cultures around that region, stating that
| someone was hundreds of years old was a sign of respect for
| their wisdom, authority, and line. The numbers weren't meant
| to be taken literally.
| Terr_ wrote:
| It's likely the most significant zones simply aren't
| geographical.
|
| The numbers probably look better in the Affluent Alliance
| versus the Protectorate of Poverty, for starters.
| meindnoch wrote:
| Reminds me of the South Park episode where they discover
| Magic Johnson's secret for curing his HIV.
| gregwebs wrote:
| There's extensive literature on the lack of modern disease in
| hunter gatherers. Frontier doctors could get a case report
| published when they found cancer.
|
| Some lived long but on average their lives were short because
| they didn't have antibiotics or emergency medicine and lived in
| harsh environments that few of us would be able to survive
| today.
|
| Their wisdom appropriately coupled to a modern less harsh
| environment might lead to greater longevity. But the harshness
| is what ensures exercise, movement, unprocessed food, etc.
| meindnoch wrote:
| Their "wisdom" of avoiding cancer amounts to dying young.
| Cancer rates shoot up well beyond 50 years.
| gregwebs wrote:
| Do you have any evidence you can point to for this
| assertion? The book Good Calories Bad Calories has a
| section that reviews the literature on the subject. Disease
| and Western Civilization reviews specific populations in
| detail. Nutrition and Physical Degeneration for a
| geographically diverse primary source although it's not
| about cancer or longevity.
| dmurray wrote:
| The assertion that older people get cancer more than
| young people? You could try any medical source whatsoever
| that deals with cancer or longevity, instead of picking
| one that doesn't, e.g. [0]
|
| > Advancing age is the most important risk factor for
| cancer overall and for many individual cancer types. The
| incidence rates for cancer overall climb steadily as age
| increases, from fewer than 25 cases per 100,000 people in
| age groups under age 20, to about 350 per 100,000 people
| among those aged 45-49, to more than 1,000 per 100,000
| people in age groups 60 years and older.
|
| [0] https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-
| prevention/risk/a...
| gregwebs wrote:
| That study doesn't include hunter gathers. Certainly
| cancer rates increase for them as they age as well. The
| point is the rate is orders of magnitude less than we
| experience today.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Who was diagnosing hunter gatherers with cancer?
|
| I lost my wife to melanoma that spread to the brain. I
| don't know how some hunter gatherer society would detect
| a brain tumor.
| tempaway456456 wrote:
| _There's extensive literature on the lack of modern disease
| in hunter gatherers._
|
| Well yeah because their life expectancy is about 45 years
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| Well we seem to now be doing worse than the hunter
| gatherer's who "had a life expectancy of about 45 years"
| with the rise in early onset cancers.
|
| https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/early-onset-cancer-in-
| youn...
|
| And on your "had a life expectancy of about 45 years", you
| have a math problem. The average life span was closer to 25
| years but was dragged down but the huge amount of infant
| mortality which is normal in humans.
|
| The Tsimane of the Amazon are know to live well into their
| 70s.
| lolinder wrote:
| > The Tsimane of the Amazon are know to live well into
| their 70s.
|
| Some of them do, but those are filtered to the most
| healthy if the lot. It's not really surprising that if
| you lose the sickly ones while they're infants the ones
| who make it to adulthood are less likely to get sick.
|
| This is further confounded when you have generations that
| have lived longer, as we do in the first world, because
| now not only do the sickly ones live long enough to get
| modern diseases, they also live long enough to reproduce
| and pass on the previously-non-viable genes. So
| generation after generation gets added that would never
| have survived without modern medicine.
|
| I consider it to be a good thing that we can optimize our
| evolution for different traits now besides raw
| survivability, but it does mean that we should expect our
| disease numbers to be higher.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| My point was that when someone says the "life expectancy
| is 45" that does not mean that everyone dies at 45.
|
| > I consider it to be a good thing that we can optimize
| our evolution
|
| We cannot "optimize" our evolution for different traits.
| Evolution is optimization to the environment. We cannot
| use human thought to optimize evolution, and that is
| eugenics anyway so no thanks.
| lolinder wrote:
| I was anthropomorphizing the natural process of
| evolution, not suggesting eugenics. I thought that would
| be obvious, but apparently not.
| giantg2 wrote:
| You can look to the Amish for some answers. They aren't
| hunter gatherers but they do live a more primitive lifestyle.
| Some studies seem to show they have lower rates of cancers.
| It's not really a secret that if you are active, eat fairly
| healthy, aeent obese, and don't drink or smoke that you will
| be significantly healthier than the baseline rates in the US.
| nucleardog wrote:
| Could be that that "more primitive lifestyle" could fall
| victim to some of the same issues that lead us to see the
| cancer rates throughout history as much lower. (E.g., lack
| of diagnosis)
|
| I took a look at the Hutterites in Canada because while
| they live a simpler lifestyle with a more traditional diet,
| no smoking, and minimal alcohol consumption, they are
| generally much less averse to modern conveniences where
| they supplement their lifestyle. Combined with Canada's
| public health system, that means they have few barriers in
| the way of receiving modern medical care.
|
| It's a bit old, but I found a study from the 80s[0] that
| found men have significantly lower rates of lung cancer
| (yep, not smoking helps) but they found an increased risk
| of stomach cancer and leukemias. Women had lower rates of
| uterine cancer. This was fairly consistent across all three
| traditional groups in North America.
|
| Other sources seem to show their life expectancy is in line
| with the general population, removing that as a factor.
|
| So not smoking helps. If I had to take a wild guess, the
| lower rate of uterine cancer could potentially be explained
| by lower rates of HPV as we now know that's the main risk
| factor for developing cervical cancer. I can't find any
| reports on the rates of STDs among the Hutterites, but I
| would hazard a guess it's "lower".
|
| Which, on the surface, makes it look like the lifestyle and
| diet (besides not smoking!) isn't having a lot of impact.
|
| [0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6624898/
| giantg2 wrote:
| "the same issues that lead us to see the cancer rates
| throughout history as much lower. (E.g., lack of
| diagnosis)"
|
| Except the Amish have access to modern medicine and there
| are modern studies investigating their population level
| disease rates.
| nucleardog wrote:
| I'm definitely less familiar with the Amish, so I did
| some looking beforehand. What I was finding that their
| willingness to use modern medicine, or to use it
| preferentially, is said to vary a lot from community to
| community.
|
| As well, I found they self-fund access to healthcare, and
| I have no idea what the dynamics would be like with that
| --would you decide not to see a doctor so you're not
| placing a burden on your neighbours?
|
| Neither's a factor with Hutterites in Canada. They're
| very willing to use and rely on modern technology (they
| probably have some of the most technologically advanced
| farming setups you've seen, have cell phones, etc) and
| there's no cost barrier to accessing healthcare.
|
| I was curious, shared what I found. Take from it what
| you'd like!
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| And note that it's not "get cancer" but "find cancer".
|
| In a harsh environment how many die of a tumor that saps
| their energy before causing any specific effect that causes
| them to seek out a doctor and presents with something the
| doctor can find without the million-dollar machinery?
|
| Let's grab our Mr. Fusion and head back a quarter century. My
| father came to visit. He had definitely declined since the
| last time we saw him but had no known major health issues.
| There wasn't anything in particular, yet what my wife saw was
| enough that she said we wouldn't see him again. Half a year
| later the big machines found the cancer. Would he have made
| it that half year in a harsh environment? No.
| bluepizza wrote:
| Highly developed countries with access to affordable or free
| healthcare seem to be real blue zones. Especially in highly
| urban areas. Hong Kong, Singapore, and the big cities of some
| countries (Tokyo, Sydney) have very high life expectancy
| numbers.
|
| Seems like getting treatment when you're sick, and having
| regular check ups to induce lifestyle changes are what makes a
| place a blue zone.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "having regular check ups to induce lifestyle changes"
|
| More likely that those areas have society level positive
| lifestyles by default, especially relating to foods (eg
| Okinawa eating until 80% full, Italy and the mederteranian
| diet, Loma Linda plant heavy diet, etc).
|
| Plenty of people get at least an annual covered checkup, but
| that doesn't mean they will make lifestyle changes. Even the
| ones that try end up like a new years resolution - not being
| strict about it or giving up after a month or two.
|
| Edit: why disagree?
| bglazer wrote:
| Isn't the whole point of this research that people Okinawa
| and Italy probably don't live any longer. In fact these
| areas have shorter average life span? So, all the stories
| about the benefit of the Mediterranean fish heavy diet are
| post-hoc rationalizations of bad data?
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Isn't the whole point of this research that people
| Okinawa and Italy probably don't live any longer."
|
| I didn't see that claim in the article. What I did see is
| that the data on centarians was shown to be invalid. It's
| certainly possible that the overall life expectancy stats
| could be distorted. In most cases (excluding Okinawa), I
| doubt that the mistakes or fraud are that rampant. The
| problem with the blue zone studies is that they
| explicitly focused on outliers from the beginning. Any
| mistakes or fraud become a big impact in a small
| population like that. If you use population level life
| expectancy, the impact should become much smaller, or at
| the very least any systemic fraud and mistakes should
| become readily visible and be able to be corrected in the
| numbers if further studies are done to measure it.
|
| The article is very emotional and seems to
| mischaracterize some things, such as claiming that every
| blue zone must fit each piece of the suggestions. The
| idea of drinking every day is probably not a good
| suggestion as there is some research contesting the
| benefits of a glass of wine a day. But let's take Okinawa
| as an example. It's uncontested that the records have
| problems, it's trending in the wrong direction (younger
| generations, probably better records), and it doesn't fit
| all the practices (eg religion). But does this invalidate
| the longevity recommendation of eating to 80% full that
| comes out of the blue zone recommendation? No. There are
| independent studies showing the benefits of this practice
| to reduce cardiovascular disease, insulin resistance, and
| obesity.
|
| So even if the blue zone centarian data is wrong (it is),
| that doesn't say anything about the suggested practices.
| Those have always needed their own studies to validate
| the suggested practices anyways. Fot example, there are
| numerous studies on the mederteranian diet that shows it
| is beneficial compared to a typical western diet and
| especially compared to the typical American diet.
| simiones wrote:
| The point is that, if the Blue Zones concept is BS and
| none of these places have high life expectancy, then
| there is no reason to discuss them in the context of
| nutrition or lifestyle recommendations of any kind. Those
| recommendations may be good or bad, but they are
| unrelated to the non-existent longevity of these "blue
| zones".
| giantg2 wrote:
| Yeah, but it's all ancient history at this point. The
| recommendations have already been proven or disproven
| through followup studies. Disproving blue zones at this
| point in time is basically moot.
| nradov wrote:
| I think you're confusing correlation with causation. There is
| no reliable evidence that having regular check ups improves
| longevity, or even benefits healthy patients at all. And
| advice given by doctors about lifestyle changes is
| notoriously ineffective: long-term patient compliance close
| to zero.
| Eumenes wrote:
| A marketing term to push TV shows, books, Business Insider
| articles, clicks/engagement, etc.
| fire_lake wrote:
| Longevity is a poor metric anyway - we need to emphasize quality
| * years
| melling wrote:
| Yes, someone always says this. Health span is the term. Maybe
| we can all use the term and skip this discussion
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/what-is-health-span
| ImaCake wrote:
| Quality of Life Years, QALYs, is a commonly used term in
| epidemiology/biostatistics.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Blue Zones were supposed to be examples of that too.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| The two are greatly correlated, so at a population level it's a
| distinction without a difference. There's no population of
| people all living to be 100 but spending their 90s on a
| respirator.
|
| The distinction matters for individual health decisions, and
| for comparing different interventions, where you can extend
| someone's life at the cost of their quality of life.
| resoluteteeth wrote:
| In theory that is a reasonable distinction (and that type of
| trade-off can come up in very specific situations like
| treatment of terminal disease in elderly people) but in terms
| of lifestyle choices there is currently no known difference
| between lifestyle choices that increase expected longevity and
| lifestyle choices that increase expected quality years.
| brushfoot wrote:
| This doesn't really address Loma Linda, California, the Adventist
| blue zone.
|
| The researcher's criticism of Loma Linda isn't that people don't
| live longer there; it's that Adventist Health purchased Dan
| Buettner's marketing company Blue Zones LLC in 2020.
|
| Adventists are teetotalers, so he questions why they'd want to be
| associated with the Blue Zones guideline of drinking "every day
| at twice the NHS heavy drinking guidelines."
|
| Which is a fair question -- but it doesn't have anything to do
| with whether Loma Linda is an area with greater longevity.
| neaden wrote:
| This seems pretty explainable by Seventh Day Adventists'
| behavioral factors leading to increased life, a group with very
| little smoking and drinking living longer isn't surprising.
| vitorfblima wrote:
| From the paper: _For example, the Centres for Disease Control
| generated an independent estimate of average longevity across
| the USA: they found that Loma Linda, a Blue Zone supposedly
| characterised by a 'remarkable' average lifespan 10 years above
| the national average, instead has an unremarkable average
| lifespan29 (27th-75th percentile; Fig S6)._
| brushfoot wrote:
| This misses the forest for the trees.
|
| The CDC looked at average life expectancy in Loma Linda
| across all demographics. Purely geographical and on average.
|
| The blue zones focused on the greater longevity specifically
| of Adventists in Loma Linda.
|
| It wasn't a question of whether living inside the municipal
| boundaries of Loma Linda automatically conferred some special
| health benefits -- clearly it doesn't.
|
| It was, "Why is there an unusually high concentration of
| outliers living here, and what behaviors cause them to live
| longer than average?"
| mcphage wrote:
| > It was, "Why is there an unusually high concentration of
| outliers living here, and what behaviors cause them to live
| longer than average?"
|
| Blue Zones LLC also provided a set of answers to that
| question, and one of those answers ("drinking 1-2 glasses
| of wine per day") is clearly not true in this case.
|
| And honestly, it's just Bayesian statistics--if they
| present 5 data points, and 4 of those data points are
| floating somewhere between data errors and fraud, then odds
| are, that last data point is flawed somehow as well.
| Certainly they would need to do some extra work to prove
| that it isn't.
| em500 wrote:
| So first it was Sardinia, Okinawa, Ikaria, Loma Linda. Then
| it's not even Loma Linda but specifically Loma Linda
| Adventists. That looks like XKCD-level p-hacking
|
| https://www.xkcd.com/882/
| wpietri wrote:
| Yeah, if the point is really about Adventists, I think
| it's better made with statistics on them. Ditto
| teetotalers or vegetarians (Adventists are often both).
| Or if it's about studying individuals with long
| lifespans, then great, let's do that.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > This misses the forest for the trees.
|
| In a large enough forest, there's always one or two
| randomly weird trees.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| yeah but there isn't a cluster of 100 trees, all sharing
| the same religion. they are a cluster, the Adventists,
| that is.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Big enough forest - say, eight billion or so trees -
| there'll absolutely be 100 weird trees in a spot
| somewhere.
|
| If Adventists have cracked the code for longevity, you'd
| find their other congregations with similar benefits.
| Barring that, we're just p-hacking our way to a spurious
| conclusion.
| vitorfblima wrote:
| I don't get your point.
|
| Who's claiming that living inside the boundaries of such
| zones would confer health benefits?
|
| The paper is pointing out that if you actually look at the
| data there is nothing remarkable about the region's average
| lifespan (actually lower than the entire country of Japan),
| which is what's being discussed here.
| brushfoot wrote:
| > The paper is pointing out that if you actually look at
| the data there is nothing remarkable about the region's
| average lifespan
|
| That's my point -- the region's _average_ lifespan is
| irrelevant. It 's only relevant given the misconception
| that Loma Linda itself has some special properties of
| rejuvenation.
|
| But that doesn't mean it's not a longevity hotspot. Even
| if the average lifespan there were lower than normal --
| say a large number of unhealthy people lived there -- it
| still wouldn't negate that, if an abnormally high number
| of healthy centenarians also live there.
| PleasureBot wrote:
| This is just the No true Scottsman fallacy.
|
| "Loma Linda residents have some of the highest lifespans
| in the world."
|
| "Well it turns out they actually just have average
| lifespans."
|
| "Only true Loma Linda residents have the highest
| lifespans."
|
| If you discount everyone who died at a normal age, you
| can conclude that Loma Linda residents are doing
| something special.
| brushfoot wrote:
| Loma Linda residents _do_ have some of the highest
| lifespans in the world. Not on average -- but that wasn
| 't Buettner's point. His point was that there's an
| unusual number of long-living outliers there.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| That doesn't seem to be a claim I see, he said ten years
| longer on average.
| e_y_ wrote:
| This is not a No True Scotsman fallacy ... and if you
| argue otherwise, you're falling for the No True Scotsman
| fallacy.
|
| Just kidding. But more seriously, the original claim was
| deeply flawed so it makes sense to challenge the criteria
| for the population study.
| maartenscholl wrote:
| I don't think that is right. In the Blue Zones marketing
| material, they characterise Loma Linda's 9000 Adventists,
| who make up 40% of the population, as living a decade
| longer on average. That is the claim being investigated.
| This claim is hard to reconcile with the CDC's official
| numbers which show a typical life expectancy for the entire
| area, unless living next to Adventists somehow lowers the
| life expectancy for the remaining 60% of the population,
| which would be far more interesting.
| brushfoot wrote:
| > they characterise Loma Linda's 9000 Adventists, who
| make up 40% of the population, as living a decade longer
| on average
|
| > This claim is hard to reconcile with the CDC's official
| numbers which show a typical life expectancy for the
| entire area
|
| Buettner's focus was on the outliers. Loma Linda is a
| longevity hotspot, and the question is why.
|
| He found the long-living outliers practiced certain
| behaviors that they associated with Adventism, like
| vegetarianism.
|
| Not all Adventists practice those behaviors. About half
| of Adventists eat meat, for example.
|
| But the long-living outliers were Adventist and practiced
| the behaviors that he highlighted. So that was his
| takeaway.
| maartenscholl wrote:
| Sure Buettner does focus on the older people of the
| community by interviewing them, but that does not
| generalise to the claim of the book (or the website to
| this day) that this community has a high life expectancy,
| which is shown to be false by the corrected statistics.
| This is known as a "population fallacy".
|
| By focusing on the older people only in such a small
| population, he is introducing selection bias and
| survivorship bias. Moreover, he did not control or
| compare studies. I believe there are more than one
| Adventist community in the US, yet those are not Blue
| Zones somehow?
| twobitshifter wrote:
| Why are Adventists or vegetarians outside of Loma Linda
| not super centarians, why the Loma Linda boundary?
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| > It was, "Why is there an unusually high concentration of
| outliers living here, and what behaviors cause them to live
| longer than average?"
|
| Isn't there bound to be some random noise?
| SideQuark wrote:
| There are ~9000 Adventists in Loma Linda. This is two
| categories you can split people into, then intersect.
|
| There are 330,000,000 million Americans. There are likely
| millions of categories people can be split into. Just for
| fun let's say counties (6000+) then any of a zillion other
| cross items (left handed, blue eyed, above average height,
| smells like butter, etc., etc.,Etc.) Say we find 10,000 of
| these categories.
|
| Life expectancy is decently modeled as a gaussian with std
| deviation 8 years. A 10 year excess is a z-score of 1.25,
| and 10% of samples will be at this point.
|
| The odds of TONS of subsets of size 9000 of the 330,000,000
| people that can be found in the same pair of county+trait
| from the 600,000,000 pairs is nearly 1.
|
| Thus the Adventists in Loma Linda are far more likely to be
| one of these many blips that have zero causal power than
| they are to have special life sauce. Finding them is merely
| an artifact of being able to filter data, not a special
| power of the objects.
|
| Or a simpler way: pick two binary traits, split the 330m
| Americans into 33,000 chunks of size 10,000 where each
| group has all in one of the four pairs of traits, and you
| would expect (more or less - there is some more math to do
| here) that 10% of these groups has average lifespans over
| 10 years, i.e., 3,300 of the groups are the same as the
| Loma Linda Adventists.
|
| No magic needed. Just rolling dice.
| pulse7 wrote:
| If "no magic is needed", then why don't you - or someone
| else - name, say, 5 more such groups/chunks with their
| exact characteristics? It seems that it is not that easy
| to find them... and yet someone found such a group in
| Loma Linda...
| happymellon wrote:
| It does if you read it.
|
| Loma Linda residents don't have a notable longer life span than
| the other residents of California.
| brushfoot wrote:
| The idea wasn't that averaging out the lifespan of all Loma
| Linda residents, regardless of lifestyle, would yield a
| higher number than everywhere else. It was that there was an
| unusually high number of outliers living there, and the
| question was why.
|
| The CDC's average was purely geographic and irrespective of
| lifestyle, which is different.
| iamthejuan wrote:
| https://manna.amazingfacts.org/amazingfacts/website/mediali
| b...
| iamthejuan wrote:
| Here is probably why: https://manna.amazingfacts.org/amazin
| gfacts/website/medialib...
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| The whole Blue Zone thing cracks me up. They think everyone will
| live longer on a plant based diet? Tell that to the Inuit and
| Sami who have genetically adapted after generations of eating
| very few, if any, plants.
|
| If they Blue Zones do exists, they exist because people are
| eating their traditional genetic diet.
|
| And if they eat plants, what plants? Should someone of Irish
| decent eat wheat even though they are more likely to have Celiac?
|
| I have Sami heritage. I was also a Vegan at one time. A healthy
| Vegan. The plant based diet was literally killing me with
| hyperglycemia and immune issues. These people who think there is
| one true diet are dangerous adn do not know the first thing about
| nutritional genetics.
| InMice wrote:
| For all the nutrition wars raging these days about plant based
| vs animal etc I really agree with you. Modern transportation of
| the industrial age shuffled humans around the globe everywhere.
| Prior to this distinct groups were adapting in distinct biomes
| for thousands upon thousands of generations. Some were pure
| carnivore, some were high carb almost all plants, some in
| between.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| If you search for a nutritional genomics, I think you'll be
| pleasantly surprised. There are plenty of researchers who are
| trying to do the hard work or telling people how important
| genetics is to our personalized health. The University of
| North Carolina at Kannapolis has a very good program.
| coffeefirst wrote:
| Right, the hype is nuts. My read is regardless of the flaws in
| demographic data, one observation does seem told hold up: if
| you go somewhere that's been slower to adapt modernity, and
| introduce western levels of inactivity and hyperprocessed food,
| you get all the same maladies.
|
| Which I think is a good sign? It suggests you don't need island
| magic, you don't need to settle these purist debates or figure
| out The Answer(tm). The only thing that matters is addressing
| the two really bad things that are obviously pathogenic.
|
| And then we can argue about moderate drinking until the end of
| time.
| dghughes wrote:
| My guess is blue zones are countries that have good social
| programs and medical systems. Also helpful are regions where the
| environment isn't going to kill you.
| nradov wrote:
| Also helpful are regions where the _people_ aren 't going to
| kill you. Either directly, or by selling you fentanyl.
| cs702 wrote:
| Paper:
|
| https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/704080v1
|
| Abstract:
|
| _> The observation of individuals attaining remarkable ages, and
| their concentration into geographic sub-regions or 'blue zones',
| has generated considerable scientific interest. Proposed drivers
| of remarkable longevity include high vegetable intake, strong
| social connections, and genetic markers. Here, we reveal new
| predictors of remarkable longevity and 'supercentenarian' status.
| In the United States, supercentenarian status is predicted by the
| absence of vital registration. The state-specific introduction of
| birth certificates is associated with a 69-82% fall in the number
| of supercentenarian records. In Italy, which has more uniform
| vital registration, remarkable longevity is instead predicted by
| low per capita incomes and a short life expectancy. Finally, the
| designated 'blue zones' of Sardinia, Okinawa, and Ikaria
| corresponded to regions with low incomes, low literacy, high
| crime rate and short life expectancy relative to their national
| average. As such, relative poverty and short lifespan constitute
| unexpected predictors of centenarian and supercentenarian status,
| and support a primary role of fraud and error in generating
| remarkable human age records._
|
| Nice work. It just won a 2024 Ig Nobel Prize. Well-deserved, I'd
| say:
|
| https://improbable.com/ig/winners/#ig2024
| comboy wrote:
| So there's this short little book "Food rules" by Michael
| Pollan. Not much content but seems like the author went through
| a lot of research. He comes to conclusion based on this tons of
| data that all we really know for sure is that people living in
| these blue regions are living much longer and it seems to be
| related to what they eat. That it is basically the only solid
| and stable data point we have. Welp. (I'm overstating it a bit,
| but not by that much)
| mannykannot wrote:
| The one thing that this paper does is demolish the claim that
| people living in these blue regions are living much longer
| than average.
| lolinder wrote:
| I think a lot of commenters either didn't read the abstract
| or assumed from its tone that it was supportive of the idea
| of blue zones.
| mfer wrote:
| Except, it misses the point and doesn't really do that
| while being persuasive.
|
| According to the Blue Zone researchers, some of the Blue
| Zones are disappearing because the generations that came
| after the oldest live differently and much shorter. By
| differently, their eating, body movement, and other
| characteristics are different. Looking at the whole
| population doesn't segment for differences between
| generation. So, nuance is lost.
|
| In some areas, like the Blue Zone in the US other research
| is finding the people who live there are healthier than the
| surrounding populations. Then you have to ask, what area do
| you average over for your measurement and statistics?
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Then you have to ask, what area do you average over for
| your measurement and statistics?"
|
| This is a big thing that I didn't seen in the paper this
| article is based on. It seemed like the author was
| comparing adjusted numbers from the blue zone with
| unadjusted numbers from non-blue zones. Without
| comprehensive investigation of error rates and even
| different error mechanisms by locale, it seems like a
| poor comparison to make. Comparing life expectancies is
| better than comparing outlier centarian numbers, but you
| are right that it depends on what other areas we are
| using as the baseline or average (and I take it a step
| farther by saying it depends on what error adjustments
| need to be made to _both_ data sets).
|
| The whole blue zone idea is a bit misapplied though.
| These population studies find new variables to look at.
| Then you have targeted studies to investigate thos
| variables. Discrediting the centarian numbers doesn't
| discredit the findings on stuff like a mederteranian diet
| having better health outcomes than the standard western
| diet, etc.
| mavhc wrote:
| Or now better records are kept the incorrect data dies
| off
| mfer wrote:
| There was a study I read about in Barrons that was noting
| that places a western diet goes the health care costs
| then start going up. Other studies have found that a
| western diet leads to more unhealthy outcomes (increased
| disease and earlier death).
|
| I state this to point out that there are other variables
| at plan than just changes in record keeping.
| moi2388 wrote:
| Healthcare spending goes up. As you'd expect from a
| country starting to become richer.
|
| Also, please show reliable studies that show that western
| diets lead to more unhealthy outcomes.
|
| Compared to what, third world diets with their
| insufficient nutrition and starvation?!
|
| Furthermore food studies are notoriously badly done.
| mannykannot wrote:
| It is very much to the point, addressing the specific
| claims and methodology of a specific (and apparently
| somewhat influential) study.
|
| You are, of course, free to speculate that there are
| other issues related to longevity than those considered
| in the study in question, but even if these suppositions
| are correct, in no way would this justify saying the
| paper being discussed here misses the point. The point
| _is_ that the blue zones study is too flawed to support
| any definite position, which includes both its own
| conclusions and the more nuanced issues about which you
| speculate.
| mfer wrote:
| > It is very much to the point, addressing the specific
| claims and methodology of a specific (and apparently
| somewhat influential) study.
|
| Except, the author doesn't discredit specific claims of
| the Blue Zones. For example, the Blue Zones might take an
| area and state there is a higher rate of centurions who
| are healthy and capable. The counter to that might be the
| average life span in the region isn't an outlier. In one
| case you're looking at a targeted subgroup and the other
| your looking at the population as a whole. One
| observations doesn't disprove another.
|
| This is just one example. It's why I call the work
| misleading.
| mannykannot wrote:
| You are using "might" more than once here. I have my
| opinions too, and FWIW, this looks like motivated
| reasoning, holding the response to a much higher standard
| of proof than the original claim.
| mywacaday wrote:
| I listened to an interview with the author during the
| week, in short as soon as you start getting reliable
| recording of births and clamp down on old age welfare
| fraud the phenomenon disappears.
| jimberlage wrote:
| Kinda depends on how much you value inductive vs.
| deductive reasoning, but the authors make the deductive
| case that:
|
| - There's strong incentives to misreport in these areas
| (the compelling example from Sardinia was that the person
| is alive for the purposes of pension fraud, but really
| dead)
|
| - People who are incentivized to report people being
| older than they are will do so
|
| And the inductive case relies on data, which is presumed
| to be totally flawed because of the misaligned
| incentives.
| lolinder wrote:
| > According to the Blue Zone researchers, some of the
| Blue Zones are disappearing because the generations that
| came after the oldest live differently and much shorter.
|
| Of course they would say that. But if these zones are
| _simultaneously_ recording births better and reducing
| welfare fraud, and if 80%+ of the centenarians either had
| no birth certificate or were actually dead, I 'm going to
| need more than "but they're also changing lifestyles" as
| an explanation.
|
| We're talking here about _unusually_ long life, not just
| "he's still going strong at 85" long. No one here is
| arguing that people who are active and eat right don't
| have a longer healthspan, but that's a concept that's
| provable without the so-called Blue Zones.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Not exactly. It establishes that error rates are high in
| those areas, demolishing the centarian numbers. It doesn't
| give much investigation into the averages at all. Where it
| does, it seems to compare adjusted numbers of one data set
| with unadjusted numbers of another. If you really want to
| get into the averages, you'd have to determine error rates
| and adjustments for each specific area, probably by
| jurisdiction or record keeper, and then compare them. The
| problem is, nobody is going through that process for the
| entire world so we just use the face value numbers until we
| want disprove a specific area and then compare the adjusted
| numbers against unadjusted numbers. The data is too massive
| to rigorously investigate. But this whole effort is moot.
| What tangible benefit comes from disproving blue zone data?
| These population level studies aren't meant to provide
| answers. They're meant to provide new variables. Each of
| the blue zone longevity recommendations have their own
| studies to either prove (food stuff) or disprove (drinking
| wine daily) them.
|
| So yeah, it's great the errors in the data have been called
| out it's a bit surprising that the author interviewed is so
| angry in the article. I guess it's fitting that he got the
| _Ig_ nobel, since this correction doesn 't have any
| applicable impact to end result, which were additonal
| studies investigating the individual suggestions/variables,
| such as specific dietary practices.
| adamc wrote:
| If the error rates are high, there is no reliable signal
| that these areas _are_ different, so how the hell can
| looking at their "new variables" help?
| giantg2 wrote:
| Go look up the studies that came out of it.
|
| It would be different if these were new studies, but this
| is all in the past. This new finding of unreliability
| doesn't have any impact, hence the _Ig_ nobel instead of
| the real nobel.
| taeric wrote:
| Any chance you can point to the specific studies?
|
| And the ignobel isn't supposed to be that the research
| had no impact. Is it?
| giantg2 wrote:
| There are roo many to list. You can search each topic in
| Pubmed.
|
| The Ig nobel is a satirical award for trivial
| achievements.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ig_Nobel_Prize
| jfcoa wrote:
| The Ig Nobel is not for trivial achievements, it is to
| "honor achievements that first make people laugh, and
| then make them think." This takes different forms.
|
| The part of the wikipedia article you are referencing is
| an inference from a particular article: "A September 2009
| article in The National titled "A noble side to Ig
| Nobels" says that, although the Ig Nobel Awards are
| veiled criticism of trivial research, history shows that
| trivial research sometimes leads to important
| breakthroughs."
|
| The definition of "blue zones" never had anything to do
| with average longevity. The entire concept is predicated
| on unusual numbers of centenarians, not long average life
| spans. In fact, as is pointed out in the Ig Nobel winning
| paper, Blue Zone places like Sardinia, Okinawa, and
| Ikaria have always been paradoxical: they are supposed to
| have higher numbers of unusually long lived people, but
| have shorter average lifespans than the rest of their
| countries. The paradox goes away with the finding that
| the count of centenarians is incorrect. There's nothing
| left to the Blue Zone concept without the centenarians.
| giantg2 wrote:
| It's hard to believe it's not satirical...
|
| "Ig Nobel Prize Winner Dr. Elena Bodnar demonstrates her
| invention (a brassiere that can quickly convert into a
| pair of protective face masks)"
| nradov wrote:
| There are basically zero studies which prove anything
| about particular foodstuffs. It's all observational
| studies with small effect sizes and multiple uncontrolled
| confounding variables: junk science.
|
| We know we need certain essential nutrients to prevent
| deficiencies, an energy intake surplus causes weight
| gain, and a few substances like trans fat are
| problematic. Beyond that, people seem to be making claims
| and recommendations not backed by hard evidence and
| frequently confuse correlation with causation.
| giantg2 wrote:
| We aren't talking about unequivocal proof. If someone
| asks what they can do to increase longevity, it's
| perfectly reasonable to tell them about studies that show
| strong correlations and mention the way the confounding
| factors play a role.
|
| You might be interested to look into some of the twin
| studies that put twins on similar exercise regimens and
| differening diets. They seem to be the strongest evidence
| possible for this sort of thing. Hardly what I would call
| junk science.
| nradov wrote:
| The exercise part I can believe as we have somewhat
| better quality evidence there. But if you have seen
| dietary studies on twins that actually meet evidence-
| based medicine criteria then I would greatly appreciate a
| citation as those would be interesting to read.
| giantg2 wrote:
| You can search for your own. This should be just as
| rigorous as any exercise studies.
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38032644/
| comboy wrote:
| That's my point.
| modeless wrote:
| I think a single "Welp" at the end of the comment is not
| communicating that clearly enough.
| seydor wrote:
| keeping in mind that they live in countries with higher
| life expectancy than most countries anyway. Indeed they may
| not even be outliers within those countries.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| Ozempic is showing that life expectancy is mostly avoiding
| obesity, heart disease, and diabetes, but not a specific
| magic food. It is just calories, vitamins and minerals.
| uxhacker wrote:
| No as Ozempic mimics the reaction of the body to certain
| classes of food such as fibre and probiotics.
|
| For most people if they eat more fibre and probiotics we
| would not need Ozempic.
| mfer wrote:
| A while back I dug into the research of this author and I was
| not impressed. Some examples of things that caught me poor and
| leading...
|
| * The Blue Zones claim that most places that list many
| centurions are false due to bad record keeping. Only a few
| places have good enough records that are trustworthy. In this
| authors research he called out places that were not blue zones
| as examples of bad data against Blue Zones.
|
| * In Okinawa the Blue Zones claim that only the oldest
| generation fits the Blue Zone model. That more recent
| generations eat poorly and have bad health. That this Blue Zone
| is going away. This researcher has focused on the more recent
| food and health of younger generations to discount it being a
| Blue Zone for that oldest generation.
|
| * In the US he fails to find fault in record keeping (last I
| dug into it) with the only location that is considered a Blue
| Zone. Instead he focuses on generalities.
|
| There are more examples like this.
|
| This all seems disingenuous. It's not to agree with Blue Zones
| but rather to look at his arguments against those put forward
| for Blue Zones.
|
| I keep thinking of the phrase "Lies, Damn Lines, and
| Statistics"
| minifridge wrote:
| It is definitely a bit fishy.
|
| I am sure there are other places with bad record keeping
| which were not included in the study to deflate the pvalues
| of book keeping.
| gpderetta wrote:
| Yes, I did a bit of investigation and I commented on it the
| few times this article made the rounds on HN:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20633769
|
| I don't think it is just bad statistics, it is very poor data
| extractions.
|
| Just an example:
|
| "Like the 'blue zone' islands of Sardinia and Ikaria, Okinawa
| also represents the shortest-lived and second-poorest region
| of a rich high-welfare state"
|
| Sardinia[1], at 83.8, had in 2018 one of the EU highest life
| expectancies, certainly higher than the rest of Italy (83.4).
| Like the rest of Italy it was badly hit by COVID in 2020.
| Life expectancy at 55 is 30.6 vs 30.1 for the rest of Italy.
| I don't know how to match it with their Figure 2 that shows
| the all Sardinian provinces being extreme outliers in
| negative other than they completely misinterpreted the data.
| Also the same graph shows 7 blue dots for Sardinian
| provinces, historically Sardinia had only 4 provinces and has
| had 8 only for a short period in the mid 2000s.
|
| [edit: The newer version of the paper[2] is different and
| doesn't have figure 2]
|
| [1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/demo_r_mli
| fex... (Sardegna In the table).
|
| [2] https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/704080v3
| gpderetta wrote:
| Figure 2 is now Figures S2 and S3 in the newer paper. Table
| S1 is also relevant: all four Sardinian provinces that
| appear in that table have existed only from 2005 to 2016.
| The other 4 historical provinces do not appear. I can't
| help but think that they didn't somehow account for that
| and it messed up their data.
|
| Although the fact that those four provinces stick out as
| extreme outliers in their graph should have clued them that
| something was wrong.
| CareerAdvice01 wrote:
| I come from one of these blue zones on the southern coast of
| Europe. That low income low literacy people live longer, provided
| they have good genetics seems plausible to me. These people tend
| to lead a semi-agrarian life and remain active well into their
| 80s. Their more educated higher income counterparts will probably
| have spent their life being sedentary and their retirement in a
| coffee shop indulging themselves. If food plays a role, it's only
| insofar as them being less indulgent. Otherwise I believe the
| obsession on diet is only because it is one factor that is
| relatively easy for people to change. Genetics plays a huge role,
| because if your body betrays you early on, you won't be able to
| remain active and focused on life in your later years. Climate
| probably also plays a role because again, you need good climate
| to remain active all year round. So does family. Seeing your
| family everyday keeps you planted in life. Healthcare might also
| play a role. Our healthcare is much more caring than the one in
| the northern European states.
|
| They should make a study focusing on northern European retirees
| who decide to live here on the coast. We have quite a few of
| those and I wonder whether they tend to live longer compared to
| their counterparts back home.
|
| The allegation that its simply fraud is ridiculous. If someone in
| the village dies, the whole village would know before sunset, and
| pretty much nobody dies at home anyway. And what about
| inheritance? Or paying rent? No, that's completely ridiculous.
| Not to mention that pretty much everyone is highly religious
| around those parts and not giving your relatives a proper
| Catholic burial is one of the worst things you could do. Not even
| a staunch atheist would stoop that low.
| fn-mote wrote:
| > The allegation that [it is] fraud is ridiculous.
|
| No? Even the writeup gives specific examples. Number of pension
| payouts to Greek 100+ year olds was cut by 72% after an audit.
|
| Even if they had a proper Catholic burial. Never underestimate
| the power of greed. In a predominantly low-income area great-
| grandpa's pension might be what is keeping you from losing your
| home.
| lolinder wrote:
| > That low income low literacy people live longer, provided
| they have good genetics seems plausible to me.
|
| That it seems plausible is why the story has circulated for so
| long, but that doesn't make it true. We do research precisely
| to check what _seems_ plausible against actual data.
|
| Since you're using a throwaway anyway, can you share which part
| of the Southern coast of Europe you live in? Maybe together we
| can find data that would help.
| seydor wrote:
| Unfortunately the fraud is real. The fact that blue zones are
| islands makes it easier to hide the fact from authorities (if
| it is widespread practice that many people exploit)
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| how would islands help? it means they're isolated and static
| compared to areas with lots of people flowing in and out.
| seydor wrote:
| In the past they were the opposite, hard to move out,
| everyone knows each other, the priest can agree not to
| register the death
| s_dev wrote:
| >Climate probably also plays a role because again, you need
| good climate to remain active all year round.
|
| You can be active in any climate. Spain is too hot during the
| summer so the Spanish aren't active during those hours. If it's
| too cold you can use a gym or even exercise at home.
|
| >and pretty much nobody dies at home anyway.
|
| That's just not true. A lot of people die in their sleep in
| their beds.
|
| >The allegation that its simply fraud is ridiculous.
|
| It's not ridiculous.
|
| Your whole post is just littered with statements that just
| aren't true.
| kelipso wrote:
| You can have a proper burial and just not submit the death
| certificate to the government.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| The one part of the blue zone theory that does make sense--a
| lifestyle that involves a lot of physical activity. Which goes
| along with what we know elsewhere.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| The people in the village know, but the culture is such that
| they aren't going to rat out the family for the fraud. The
| priest has nothing to do with the state bureaucracy.
|
| That happens all over the place. People get busted for
| collecting grandmas social security checks all of the time in
| the US. When I was in college in the mid-90s, I rented an
| apartment from a dude who died in the early 80s.
| eadmund wrote:
| > drinking 1-2 glasses of wine per day
|
| > the astounding thing is that one of the guidelines is that you
| should drink every day at twice the NHS heavy drinking
| guidelines. That is a recipe for alcoholism.
|
| Say what? The article implies that 1 glass of wine every day or
| two (i.e., half of 1-2 per day) is heavy. That seems frankly
| insane to me.
| mike_hearn wrote:
| _> The UK government 's guidelines on how much it is safe to
| drink are based on numbers "plucked out of the air" by a
| committee that met in 1987. According to The Times newspaper,
| the limits are not based on any science whatsoever, rather "a
| feeling that you had to say something" about what would be a
| safe drinking level. This is all according to Richard Smith, a
| member of the Royal College of Physicians working party who
| produced the guidelines._ [1]
|
| One might think that having admitted this Smith would be
| circumspect, apologetic and more careful with his claims about
| health in future. Of course he did the exact opposite:
|
| _> However, Mr Smith says this doesn 't mean alcohol is not
| dangerous. He later told The Guardian that this would be a
| "serious misinterpretation" of his comments. He also argued
| that the figures were "in the right ball park", and called for
| heavier taxes to cut consumption_
|
| The numbers were based on no evidence but also amazingly in the
| right ballpark. No contradiction there if you work in public
| health. Sure enough, ten years later the guidance had become
| even more extreme [2], with men and women now becoming
| biologically identical and the government telling citizens that
| even one drop of alcohol was dangerous:
|
| _> The report recommend an upper limit of 14 units per week
| for both adult men and women, and then included the much-
| derided "no safe limits" observation._
|
| This highly ideological guidance might have been because:
|
| _> Members of the expert group include prohibitionists and
| anti-alcohol campaigners_
|
| [1]
| https://www.theregister.com/2007/10/22/drinking_made_it_all_...
|
| [2]
| https://www.theregister.com/2016/01/22/stats_gurus_open_fire...
| Schiendelman wrote:
| Are you saying that defining half of 7-14 (or 3.5.7) drinks per
| week as heavy seems insane to you?
|
| Current science proposes that even 2 drinks a week
| significantly increases cancer rate, and is the current
| suggested limit for health - I suspect it would be lower but
| for reactions like you're having. It seems likely that double
| or triple that is indeed unsafe.
|
| Media is very careful not to shame their readers:
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/alcohol-cancer-risk-what-to-kno...
| alxfoster wrote:
| According to the CDC, NIH and other respected credible,
| mostly objective federal health research groups have all
| suggested up to 2 drinks per day for men and 1 drink for
| women is not only safe but also beneficial, citing that
| moderate drinking "reduced risk of heart attack,
| atherosclerosis, and certain types of strokes". Obviously
| this would not be the case for people prone to alcoholism or
| some other complications or contraindications. Sources:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6761695/
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/about-alcohol-use/moderate-
| alcoh...
| kelipso wrote:
| More recent research has come out pretty much destroying
| the claim that moderate drinking "reduced risk of heart
| attack, atherosclerosis, and certain types of strokes". So
| CDC, NIH suggestions are outdated and they'll probably
| update it in a year or two (hopefully lol).
| eadmund wrote:
| > Are you saying that defining half of 7-14 (or 3.5.7) drinks
| per week as heavy seems insane to you?
|
| Yes. I assert that drinking 31/2-7 drinks a week sounds
| moderate. One or two drinks a week is light. Heavy drinking
| would be something like 24 or more.
|
| I define the heaviness of drinking by intoxication, not
| cancer risk.
| tokai wrote:
| Drinking any amount of alcohol everyday is heavy. And frankly
| alcoholic.
| mavhc wrote:
| Alcohol is just as bad for you as smoking according to the
| data, the only safe amount is 0. Why it's not packaged with
| giant warning labels is another question entirely
| Aerroon wrote:
| What always seemed questionable to me about Blue Zones is how
| they account for unnatural causes of death. A decade ago
| centenarians would've had to live through two world wars and the
| devastation and famine they caused. How do you compare a
| population that went through that to a population that didn't?
| seydor wrote:
| Why hasn't the Ignoble Paper been published somewhere? Note that
| it was first drafted in 2019
| stonethrowaway wrote:
| Technically speaking (the best kind of speaking) you didn't need
| new research to conclude this. All you had to do was ask "is this
| a pop science book?" and "will I hear about it at my next family
| gathering from the one person who thinks of themselves as
| qualified on subject matter but is in fact the furthest from the
| truth?"
|
| If you answer yes to both, you may safely discard the material as
| simply a means for the author to advance their career.
|
| Other greatest hits from this genre: Grit, Deep Work, Why We
| Sleep, Thinking Fast and Slow, How Not to Die.
| mywacaday wrote:
| Interview with the author from an Irish national radio station
| here: https://www.goloudplayer.com/episodes/what-are-blue-zones-
| an...
|
| Starts at 1:10, also the radio slot is a light hearted one, not
| serious scientific discussion.
| Rocka24 wrote:
| Absolutely incredible.
|
| I've seen a number of byproducts of the "Blue Zone trend" namely
| in youtube videos and dinner party conversations from so called
| health experts. The creator of Blue Zones (Dan Buettner) does
| seem to profit off of this as well, one quick look at the website
| shows a Blue Zone cooking course sale and other marketing schemes
| that could trap the unwary.
| https://www.bluezones.com/about/history/
|
| I'm not questioning whether or not the intent was malicious but
| he does stand to gain quite a lot. Happy to see this being
| exposed. In a semi related sense I highly recommend checking out
| Bryan Johnson's (founder of Braintree Venmo) Blueprint protocol,
| I've been following his work for a number of years now and it is
| scientifically backed although the for profit arm of his
| initiative just reared its (ugly?) head recently with him selling
| supplements and dietary goods that are vetted by his agency.
|
| https://protocol.bryanjohnson.com/
| jf22 wrote:
| What's the difference between Johnson and the other 40,000
| wellness hackers who make the same claims?
| BobbyJo wrote:
| The extreme to which he is taking things and the level of
| rigor he is (seemingly) applying, are the differences I see.
| He has a lot more time and resources at his disposal than
| most wellness hackers.
| jf22 wrote:
| Isn't this just marketing, though?
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| I live in a community that was part of the Blue Zones project,
| that has cultural ties to one of the original Blue Zones
| geographies. While I think there is something to the general idea
| - eat well, limit stress, have a sense of community, keep moving
| physically - it was always clear that there was a lot of
| pseudoscience going on. The videos put out by the project in
| particular (I think maybe it was a Netflix program for a while?)
| had a lot of unsubstantiated but authoritative sounding
| statements. Regardless, I felt like the overall message was
| positive and got people thinking about how they were living. That
| said, there was a merchandise angle on it, and thinking back
| there are ideas we've talked about as a community that Blue Zones
| could have stewarded - but they would have been outside their
| established game plan.
| Flatcircle wrote:
| Been saying this for years. It's so obvious.
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