4 ms·

Goes to gym, plays sports, active social life. I'm sure those contribute to healthy aging.

sametmax 8y ago
> At 88, he hits the gym twice a week, plays on a curling team in winter and drives from Tsawwassen to Vancouver for Sunday dinners with his daughter. Yeah, that seems more a cause than an effect.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
  The main thrust of the article is that being active and sociable might not be enough, that people who live longer may have genetics that protect against disease.
0xcde4c3db 8y ago
They contribute, but on their own they're not likely to add decades to lifespan or otherwise drastically reduce the risk of age-related disease and disability. An effect is clearly there, but it's just not big enough to explain the range of results seen. Much of this is likely to be a complex of gene/lifestyle interactions. It's known that some people metabolize saturated fat differently because of genetic variations, for example [1]. Likewise, there is a great deal of variation in physiological responses to exercise, for which genetic variation is a prime suspect [2]. To understand how dicey a lot of recommendations are, be sure to look not just at the average outcomes in the studies, but also the range and distribution. Abstracts and news articles often obscure a situation in which some get worse, some have no significant change, and some respond unusually well. Others spin the situation to say that everyone benefits from an intervention... as long as you include enough outcome measures that at least one of them improves for each subject and ignore all the outcomes that get worse [3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apolipoprotein_E https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apolipoprotein_E [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26767377 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26767377 [3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25717010 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25717010

> At 88, he hits the gym twice a week, plays on a curling team in winter and drives from Tsawwassen to Vancouver for Sunday dinners with his daughter. Yeah, that seems more a cause than an effect.

TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
The main thrust of the article is that being active and sociable might not be enough, that people who live longer may have genetics that protect against disease.

0xcde4c3db 8y ago

They contribute, but on their own they're not likely to add decades to lifespan or otherwise drastically reduce the risk of age-related disease and disability. An effect is clearly there, but it's just not big enough to explain the range of results seen. Much of this is likely to be a complex of gene/lifestyle interactions. It's known that some people metabolize saturated fat differently because of genetic variations, for example [1]. Likewise, there is a great deal of variation in physiological responses to exercise, for which genetic variation is a prime suspect [2]. To understand how dicey a lot of recommendations are, be sure to look not just at the average outcomes in the studies, but also the range and distribution. Abstracts and news articles often obscure a situation in which some get worse, some have no significant change, and some respond unusually well. Others spin the situation to say that everyone benefits from an intervention... as long as you include enough outcome measures that at least one of them improves for each subject and ignore all the outcomes that get worse [3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apolipoprotein_E https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apolipoprotein_E [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26767377 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26767377 [3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25717010 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25717010