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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 Jap
by tolstoshev 4y ago
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 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.
- ancorevard 4y agoLoma Linda in California?
- pcurve 4y agoApparently they did a study on this.. https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/25/health/longevity-blue-zone-wellness/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/25/health/longevity-blue-zone-we... high percentage of vegetarians, active lifestyle, religious folks, etc.
- margalabargala 4y agoThings in common across most blue zones: middle latitudes, near a coastline, consistent weather, mild diet with plenty of fish, poor record keeping...
- pcurve 4y agoAlso smaller stature. Large and tall people have more cells, and higher chance of cancer.
- baal80spam 4y ago> Large and tall people have more cells, and higher chance of cancer. I've never looked at it like that. Is it true?
- pcurve 4y agosadly data seems to indicate so. :-/ https://www.wcrf.org/why-taller-people-are-at-greater-risk-of-cancer/ https://www.wcrf.org/why-taller-people-are-at-greater-risk-o... https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/taller-people-more-prone-to-cancer-64995 https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/taller-people-mor...
- samscully 4y agoIt 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peto%27s_paradox
- pcurve 4y agoJust to clarify: Across different species, there's no correlation. Within the same species though, there is correlation.
- steve_adams_86 4y agoInteresting 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).
- _vdpp 4y agoHow 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.
- zacharycohn 4y agoSpeaking 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."
- kzrdude 4y agoFalling 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/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5899404/
- jjtheblunt 4y agothat conjecture is famously contradicted by elephants, and it's a topic of research why that is.
- Ardon 4y agoNo 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 4y agoIs there a citation for that assertion? It's possible elephants induce apoptosis for aberrant non-cancerous cells, for instance, earlier. super interesting
- atourgates 4y agoI 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 4y agoBut 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.
- bcatanzaro 4y agoLoma Linda is more like 60 miles from the pacific. https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Loma+Linda,+CA/Huntington+Beach,+CA/@33.8578684,-117.9101637,10z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x80dcab92206e4d73:0xcd1f51ac8ed3b285!2m2!1d-117.2611527!2d34.0483474!1m5!1m1!1s0x80dd2422f9c82ab5:0x45ed85c9a4663b01!2m2!1d-117.9988026!2d33.6594835!3e0 https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Loma+Linda,+CA/Huntington+Be...
- TimTheTinker 4y agoI 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 :)
- 4y ago
- tenpies 4y ago> 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?
- genjipress 4y agoAndrei 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."
- gowld 4y agoWhat does the eyelash bit mean?
- dekhn 4y agoha, 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-centenarians-say-its-diet-work-and-family-not-yogurt.html https://www.nytimes.com/1977/09/09/archives/soviet-centenari...
- jandrese 4y agoSometimes 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.
- tsaprailis 4y agoI 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.
- Aeolun 4y agoHow do you go and register a 7 year old as having been born a few days ago?
- stickfigure 4y agoI'm guessing that paper records were not especially rigorous in Greece in the early 1900s.
- omega3 4y agoWith the help of a bribe.
- vorpalhex 4y agoI don't think you bring the kid with you.
- Scoundreller 4y agoOr 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.
- bombcar 4y agoI 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.
- scifibestfi 4y ago> 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 4y agoThey apparently interviewed over 200 centenarians, and visited all the locations.
- franze 4y agoSpending 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.
- BeefySwain 4y ago> 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 4y agoa quick google showed this https://www.elra.eu/the-present-landscape-of-land-registration-in-greece/ 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.
- mfer 4y agoThe 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
- teruakohatu 4y agoHalf the residents of that town are 7th Day Adventists according to Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loma_Linda,_California 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_problem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modifiable_areal_unit_proble...
- mfer 4y agoTo 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 4y agoStrange 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/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3362219/
- mfer 4y agoIn 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 4y agoIn 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.
- postsantum 4y agoAnother 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 4y agoThat'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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desmond_Doss
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- ip26 4y agoOn 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 4y agoOr are there places with a similar diet without a history of longevity?
- peoplefromibiza 4y agoThat's not impossible, but where are the records?
- hn_throwaway_99 4y agoGlad 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-supercentenarians-fraud-error https://www.vox.com/2019/8/8/20758813/secrets-ultra-elderly-...
- Trias11 4y agoIf these all are warm places, with good nature, away from nonsense of a big city - chances are people will live longer there.
- Terretta 4y agoMy bet is you didn't gather that one of the blue zones is Loma Linda California.
- function_seven 4y agoSo 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 4y agoThe 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.
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- amelius 4y agoOr (a more positive take), perhaps these are places where the elderly are respected, and youth is not fetishized.
- SapporoChris 4y agoThe 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 4y agoHow 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?
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- tomBlalock 4y agoA vegetarian diet contains less Methionine. A low Methionine diet is inversely correlated with lifespan, stature, age at puberty, etc.