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It is random chance, plus a little genetics. Looking at the top 43 oldest people alive [1] I can see that 20 of them are from Japan. That's almost 50%! While n
by Strom 10y ago
It is random chance, plus a little genetics.
Looking at the top 43 oldest people alive [1] I can see that 20 of them are from Japan. That's almost 50%! While not conclusive proof, I think it at the very least heavily suggests that living long isn't about random chance. Whatever is going on in Japan seems to be working very well.
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[1] http://www.grg.org/SC/WorldSCRankingsList.html http://www.grg.org/SC/WorldSCRankingsList.html
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- chrischen 10y agoJapan has a higher standard of living.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Strom 10y agoWhat definition of standard of living do you have in mind? I know of several and Japan doesn't lead in all of them. What's even more important is that even the definitions where Japan leads it doesn't do so by as big of a margin as it does in the extremes of human longevity. Take Switzerland for example. It also has a high standard of living, and ranks #2 just after Japan in average life expectancy. [1] Yet there's not a single Swiss person in that top 43 oldest people list. Of course Switzerland has a much smaller population (8M) than Japan (127M). However we can use a combination of countries. Let's take the top 10 countries by average life expectancy. The first is Japan with its 127M people, and the other 9 (Switzerland, Singapore, Australia, Spain, Iceland, Italy, Israel, Sweden, France) have a combined population of 227M people. Yet even with almost double the population, in regards to the top 43 oldest people, this combination only gives us 6 entries (France 3, Italy 2, Spain 1) against Japan's 20. A high standard of living certainly has an effect, but I feel it barely scratches the surface of the full answer. -- [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe...
- melling 10y agoI guess you've never heard of Blue Zones? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Zone https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Zone
- SamReidHughes 10y agoJapan didn't 70+ years ago.
- chrischen 10y agoActually they got pretty wealthy pretty quickly after the war.
- SamReidHughes 9y agoYeah but they spent the first 40 years of their life with a lower standard.
- ekianjo 10y agolol that number cOmes from the fact that in japan nobody checks who is alive so that folks can get the pension of the deceased for a long time. thaT was uncovered a few gears agp. so Japanese data is utter bullshit.
- lordnacho 10y agoThe other standout fact is they're all women, except one. Either it's genetic (woman's metabolism does something?) or women have some sort of interaction with the environment that helps them survive to old age.