3 ms·

To add to your point Okinawans once had the greatest life expectancy on Earth and the majority of their diet was carbs too. Since the introduction of “western

To add to your point Okinawans once had the greatest life expectancy on Earth and the majority of their diet was carbs too. Since the introduction of “western diet” post WW2 the majority of their diet is still carbs and yet they now show significant increase of Chronic disease (obesity, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, fatty liver disease and kidney disease) and lowered life expectancy.

copperx 7y ago
What is that disease attributed to? Do you know?
- AimForTheBushes 7y ago
  An inflammatory diet from western influence. That's what my assumption would be.
mikekchar 7y ago
It turns out, though, that Okinawan long life expectancy was actually due to rampant pension fraud rather than long life. I can't remember the exact date, but it would have been around 2008, a reporter went to visit the oldest people in Japan (most of whom were living in Okinawa). They started at the oldest and found that the person wasn't home ("visiting relatives"). So they went to the next oldest. Similar story. They went through the top 20 and couldn't find any of them. The government clued in and investigated and it turns out that Okinawan doctors were making a tidy profit by agreeing not to file death certificates. This enabled families to continue to claim pension benefits on behalf of their supposedly aged relatives. After the the smoke died down the went back and looked at Okinawan life expectancy taking pension fraud into consideration and discovered that it was pretty much exactly the same as the rest of Japan. The original life expectancy/diet studies had relied on government information rather than actually interviewing people. I'm sorry I don't have a citation for you as I saw this in a documentary in Japan on TV.
- will_brown 7y ago
  That’s a great story and I’ll look into it. However, I do believe they legitimately have the most centurions and I have read about autopsies on centurions which found they showed no signs of chronic disease. Of course that is surviorship bias, but assuming the total number of centurions is true, especially given the small population, I think there is more there there.

copperx 7y ago

What is that disease attributed to? Do you know?

AimForTheBushes 7y ago
An inflammatory diet from western influence. That's what my assumption would be.

mikekchar 7y ago

It turns out, though, that Okinawan long life expectancy was actually due to rampant pension fraud rather than long life. I can't remember the exact date, but it would have been around 2008, a reporter went to visit the oldest people in Japan (most of whom were living in Okinawa). They started at the oldest and found that the person wasn't home ("visiting relatives"). So they went to the next oldest. Similar story. They went through the top 20 and couldn't find any of them. The government clued in and investigated and it turns out that Okinawan doctors were making a tidy profit by agreeing not to file death certificates. This enabled families to continue to claim pension benefits on behalf of their supposedly aged relatives. After the the smoke died down the went back and looked at Okinawan life expectancy taking pension fraud into consideration and discovered that it was pretty much exactly the same as the rest of Japan. The original life expectancy/diet studies had relied on government information rather than actually interviewing people. I'm sorry I don't have a citation for you as I saw this in a documentary in Japan on TV.

will_brown 7y ago
That’s a great story and I’ll look into it. However, I do believe they legitimately have the most centurions and I have read about autopsies on centurions which found they showed no signs of chronic disease. Of course that is surviorship bias, but assuming the total number of centurions is true, especially given the small population, I think there is more there there.