5 ms·

Never take health tips from oldest people, say scientists

23 points by howard941 2y ago

throw_pm23 2y ago
yeah, take tips from scientists instead. Branyas believed her longevity stemmed from “order, tranquility, good connection with family and friends, contact with nature, emotional stability, no worries, no regrets, lots of positivity and staying away from toxic people” Sounds like solid advice to me. [scientist] Sinclair said [..] improvements in vaccines for flu and shingles, statins, and other medications would help increase life expectancy among older people. [...] he said governments also needed to take action to help individuals to make healthier choices. Sorry, I think I prefer the advice from the old person.
- jraph 2y ago
  What is wrong with the sentence about the medication? This is not advice by the way. You can't take advice from old people on how to live old because they don't know themselves how they managed it. And there's the survivor bias. And that would be anecdotal. Only the scientific method and solid studies can give us insight on what makes us live longer. Advice you quoted seems harmless, and is seducing, but we don't know if this is what allowed this long life. Her advice tends towards avoiding stress and we know that stress is to be avoided, so that might (and probably is) good advice, but we know that from scientific studies and you will need to adapt the advice to you, taking in account what stresses you and what relaxes you. Some old people have been drinking a glass of wine a day or smoking a lot and that somehow didn't kill them, they might even believe that it helped them stay alive longer, and there's probably even some truth in this because they might have enjoyed it and we also know that being happier helps you live longer, but that might still be terrible advice that has all the chances to harm you. It might have even harmed them, maybe they would live even longer without the smoking and the drinking. Everybody is different and some good advice for one person might not apply to another. An old person might know what's good for them, but that may not apply to you. Only solid scientific studies will help us know what tends to work for many/most people.
  - givemeethekeys 2y ago
    > they don't know themselves how they managed it I disagree. You can definitely look at oldest people and ask them how they're different from their peers who died younger. You will get examples of choices that they made which lead to their longevity. Maybe they ate better, exercised better, slept more, didn't sweat the small stuff... or maybe they chose to get every single available vaccine to ensure against illness. Of course, they may also have "better" genes. > there's the survivor bias Well, yeah. Many people want to live "longer" - as in out survive everyone else.
    - jraph 2y ago
      That's not what survivorship bias means. More on this in my reply to your sibling comment. > Of course, they may also have "better" genes. That's part of the issue: they might have something different from you such that their advice may not apply to you. And since they have an exceptionally long life, they might not be like the majority. But you are likely to be like the majority (you probably don't know yet. If you knew you might not even need advice in the first place). But we don't hear much about stuff to avoid from people who died younger. Not that those people also know about a number of data point of 1 anyway. That's why we need rigorous studies.
  - david-gpu 2y ago
    > And there's the survivor bias Isn't that precisely the reason why you would want to ask old people, because the survivor bias has eliminated people with habits that were not conducive to a long life?
    - jraph 2y ago
      No, that's exactly the trap that must be avoided: Quoting Wikipedia [1] > Survivorship bias or survival bias is the logical error of concentrating on entities that passed a selection process while overlooking those that did not. For example, you'll hear the advice from the 1% of people who survived drinking every day and who might even think it was good for them, and not the warning from the 99% for whom it didn't work, or worse, who died from it. Unfortunately, you are 99% more likely to be like these 99% than like that 1%. (Numbers totally made up). Intuition gets in the way with this kind of stuff. It's all too easy to be willing to take advice from old people who appear wise to us for all sorts of cultural reasons, but they are most probably not experts in this stuff and they actually most likeky really don't know better. They have a number of data point equal to 1. Our intuition makes it quite hard to understand this, even for people with scientific / statistics background, but all this stuff we know from this background doesn't stop applying when it comes to old people. It doesn't mean it's not enjoyable or interesting to get an old person's view on this, but one should not forget to apply critical thinking. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
- genocidicbunny 2y ago
  > Sounds like solid advice to me. Sounds like pretty generic advice that I've heard from older people...basically all my life. Maybe there's some underlying truth that creates the commonality, but for the most part this is about on par with "Don't do stuff that will kill you" which is vapid and useless.
  - strken 2y ago
    Chronic stress is bad for you[0]. Yeah, you can call advice to avoid chronic stress vapid and useless if you want, but so many people still willingly expose themselves to it that a reminder is probably helpful. [0] See e.g. https://academic.oup.com/biomedgerontology/article/69/Suppl_1/S10/586943 https://academic.oup.com/biomedgerontology/article/69/Suppl_... for a bit of an overview
    - genocidicbunny 2y ago
      It's vapid because it's largely non-actionable advice. To a large degree, we don't get to pick whether or not we are stressed, the world picks that for us, and at the same time it's highly personal, so what worked for one person may have the opposite effect for another. I see it as almost equivalent to saying that the key to your long-livedness was that you ate food and drank liquids. No shit sherlock, you'd have been dead a long time ago if you never ate any food or drank any liquids.
      - strken 2y ago
        Do you really think most people avoid stress? I personally do all sorts of stressful things for reasons that probably aren't worth it, and I bet most of the western world does too. I bet someone, somewhere, made it to 100 even though they worked 60 hours a week with an untreated anxiety disorder and slept an average of six and a half hours during their working life. It's more like saying your longevity was because you ate lots of vegetables and walked to work every day. That is a real factor of longevity. Whether it's "good" advice is a matter of perspective, because everyone already knows they should eat vegetables and exercise and the advice won't change many people's habits, just like everyone already knows they should quit their shitty job and go to sleep at 10:30pm, but both pieces of advice are certainly actionable.
- readthenotes1 2y ago
  Trust the Scientist, not your own lieing eyes :)
2cynykyl 2y ago
Maybe the point is that taking advice from ANY single person is a bad idea since thay are making conclusions from a sample size of 1, while a "scientist" is telling you things that are statistically more likely to help you?
- jraph 2y ago
  Exactly, that's the whole point. It's quite unintuitive but us mere mortals are not experts in our own health/longevity. We know our own bodies better than anybody else experimentally speaking, but we don't know shit about how it works for the most part and we know even less how others work. Unless it's your area of expertise of course, but then I hope you'll avoid spreading unproven advice.
  - sillyfluke 2y ago
    The guy quoted in the article, Faragher, seems completely unaware of his biogeronologist collegue Valter Longo at the USC Davis School of Geronology and Longevity Institute, whose recommendations have picked up mainstream adoption by the public. Of course, he is probably aware of Longo but he is probably unaware that his statements as quoted in the article, contradict Longo's own first hand research and other additional research on centenarian studies. In fact, the unhealthy habits that Farragher says are common among most old people are in fact not common lifelong habits of centenarians, according to Longo. If Faragher is aware of the contradiction then he should state on what evidence and research he is disputing Longo's findings. Based on his research, Longo's recommendation is basically: Eat vegetables, complex carbs and whole grains most of the time, fish ocassionally, meat very rarely unless over 65, and fast some of the time. Longo in fact claims that these are supported--along with epistmilogical and clinical studies-- by centarian studies which are literally first-hand detailed interviews with 100+ year-old people. Farragher's incomplete explanation of survivorship bias also seems to have confused other commentators in this thread.
    - jraph 2y ago
      I don't understand how your comment answers mine, and what is your actual concern. Assuming Longo conducts good scientific research, the whole article might as well mean "Don't listen to any single old people, read studies from people like Longo". > In fact, the unhealthy habits that Farragher says are common among most old people are in fact not common lifelong habits of centenarians, according to Longo. I don't know, but this is certainly not the main point of the article. I suppose you are taking issues with the two following quotes: > What you see with most centenarians most of the time – and these are generalisations – is that they don’t take much exercise. That's where he says "most". Do you have a source to contradict this? > Quite often, their diets are rather unhealthy Do you have a source to contradict this? Note that "quite often" is not quite precise, and doesn't mean "most". Anyway, it takes only some centenarians to have unhealthy habits for the point to still stand. When receiving advice from a centenarian, you don't really know that you are not speaking to one of those. I would even argue that it's not even necessary, because as I developed in another reply to you, nobody actually knows what allowed them to live long. They might as well have some specific genes allowing them to do all sorts of things that would be unhealthy for many people but that have no serious consequences for them.
dukeofdoom 2y ago
Never take health tips from pill pushers. The medical business is a business is a business! Doctors being the most notorious pill pushers on this planet. Diet, exercise and good sleep, keys to longevity. Popping pills key to early death. Authority figure mad about someone ignoring their authority, is so old, it's stuff for fairy tales.
- nope1000 2y ago
  > Doctors being the most notorious pill pushers on this planet How about science podcasters advertising supplements?
  - ravenstine 2y ago
    You mean neuroscientists hawking powder made from desiccated leaves and stems aren't actually experts in nutrition? ;)
  - dukeofdoom 2y ago
    They generally don't give ouy things that can kill you...though might be useless. Doctors on the other hand ... let's just say cemeteries are filled with people that listened to their doctor
- efilife 2y ago
  > Diet, exercise and good sleep, keys to longevity. So simple. Why didn't I think of this earlier
up2isomorphism 2y ago
What if the scientist himself is very old?

23 points by howard941 2y ago

yeah, take tips from scientists instead. Branyas believed her longevity stemmed from “order, tranquility, good connection with family and friends, contact with nature, emotional stability, no worries, no regrets, lots of positivity and staying away from toxic people” Sounds like solid advice to me. [scientist] Sinclair said [..] improvements in vaccines for flu and shingles, statins, and other medications would help increase life expectancy among older people. [...] he said governments also needed to take action to help individuals to make healthier choices. Sorry, I think I prefer the advice from the old person.

jraph 2y ago
What is wrong with the sentence about the medication? This is not advice by the way. You can't take advice from old people on how to live old because they don't know themselves how they managed it. And there's the survivor bias. And that would be anecdotal. Only the scientific method and solid studies can give us insight on what makes us live longer. Advice you quoted seems harmless, and is seducing, but we don't know if this is what allowed this long life. Her advice tends towards avoiding stress and we know that stress is to be avoided, so that might (and probably is) good advice, but we know that from scientific studies and you will need to adapt the advice to you, taking in account what stresses you and what relaxes you. Some old people have been drinking a glass of wine a day or smoking a lot and that somehow didn't kill them, they might even believe that it helped them stay alive longer, and there's probably even some truth in this because they might have enjoyed it and we also know that being happier helps you live longer, but that might still be terrible advice that has all the chances to harm you. It might have even harmed them, maybe they would live even longer without the smoking and the drinking. Everybody is different and some good advice for one person might not apply to another. An old person might know what's good for them, but that may not apply to you. Only solid scientific studies will help us know what tends to work for many/most people.
- givemeethekeys 2y ago
  > they don't know themselves how they managed it I disagree. You can definitely look at oldest people and ask them how they're different from their peers who died younger. You will get examples of choices that they made which lead to their longevity. Maybe they ate better, exercised better, slept more, didn't sweat the small stuff... or maybe they chose to get every single available vaccine to ensure against illness. Of course, they may also have "better" genes. > there's the survivor bias Well, yeah. Many people want to live "longer" - as in out survive everyone else.
  - jraph 2y ago
    That's not what survivorship bias means. More on this in my reply to your sibling comment. > Of course, they may also have "better" genes. That's part of the issue: they might have something different from you such that their advice may not apply to you. And since they have an exceptionally long life, they might not be like the majority. But you are likely to be like the majority (you probably don't know yet. If you knew you might not even need advice in the first place). But we don't hear much about stuff to avoid from people who died younger. Not that those people also know about a number of data point of 1 anyway. That's why we need rigorous studies.
- david-gpu 2y ago
  > And there's the survivor bias Isn't that precisely the reason why you would want to ask old people, because the survivor bias has eliminated people with habits that were not conducive to a long life?
  - jraph 2y ago
    No, that's exactly the trap that must be avoided: Quoting Wikipedia [1] > Survivorship bias or survival bias is the logical error of concentrating on entities that passed a selection process while overlooking those that did not. For example, you'll hear the advice from the 1% of people who survived drinking every day and who might even think it was good for them, and not the warning from the 99% for whom it didn't work, or worse, who died from it. Unfortunately, you are 99% more likely to be like these 99% than like that 1%. (Numbers totally made up). Intuition gets in the way with this kind of stuff. It's all too easy to be willing to take advice from old people who appear wise to us for all sorts of cultural reasons, but they are most probably not experts in this stuff and they actually most likeky really don't know better. They have a number of data point equal to 1. Our intuition makes it quite hard to understand this, even for people with scientific / statistics background, but all this stuff we know from this background doesn't stop applying when it comes to old people. It doesn't mean it's not enjoyable or interesting to get an old person's view on this, but one should not forget to apply critical thinking. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
genocidicbunny 2y ago
> Sounds like solid advice to me. Sounds like pretty generic advice that I've heard from older people...basically all my life. Maybe there's some underlying truth that creates the commonality, but for the most part this is about on par with "Don't do stuff that will kill you" which is vapid and useless.
- strken 2y ago
  Chronic stress is bad for you[0]. Yeah, you can call advice to avoid chronic stress vapid and useless if you want, but so many people still willingly expose themselves to it that a reminder is probably helpful. [0] See e.g. https://academic.oup.com/biomedgerontology/article/69/Suppl_1/S10/586943 https://academic.oup.com/biomedgerontology/article/69/Suppl_... for a bit of an overview
  - genocidicbunny 2y ago
    It's vapid because it's largely non-actionable advice. To a large degree, we don't get to pick whether or not we are stressed, the world picks that for us, and at the same time it's highly personal, so what worked for one person may have the opposite effect for another. I see it as almost equivalent to saying that the key to your long-livedness was that you ate food and drank liquids. No shit sherlock, you'd have been dead a long time ago if you never ate any food or drank any liquids.
    - strken 2y ago
      Do you really think most people avoid stress? I personally do all sorts of stressful things for reasons that probably aren't worth it, and I bet most of the western world does too. I bet someone, somewhere, made it to 100 even though they worked 60 hours a week with an untreated anxiety disorder and slept an average of six and a half hours during their working life. It's more like saying your longevity was because you ate lots of vegetables and walked to work every day. That is a real factor of longevity. Whether it's "good" advice is a matter of perspective, because everyone already knows they should eat vegetables and exercise and the advice won't change many people's habits, just like everyone already knows they should quit their shitty job and go to sleep at 10:30pm, but both pieces of advice are certainly actionable.
readthenotes1 2y ago
Trust the Scientist, not your own lieing eyes :)

2cynykyl 2y ago

Maybe the point is that taking advice from ANY single person is a bad idea since thay are making conclusions from a sample size of 1, while a "scientist" is telling you things that are statistically more likely to help you?

jraph 2y ago
Exactly, that's the whole point. It's quite unintuitive but us mere mortals are not experts in our own health/longevity. We know our own bodies better than anybody else experimentally speaking, but we don't know shit about how it works for the most part and we know even less how others work. Unless it's your area of expertise of course, but then I hope you'll avoid spreading unproven advice.
- sillyfluke 2y ago
  The guy quoted in the article, Faragher, seems completely unaware of his biogeronologist collegue Valter Longo at the USC Davis School of Geronology and Longevity Institute, whose recommendations have picked up mainstream adoption by the public. Of course, he is probably aware of Longo but he is probably unaware that his statements as quoted in the article, contradict Longo's own first hand research and other additional research on centenarian studies. In fact, the unhealthy habits that Farragher says are common among most old people are in fact not common lifelong habits of centenarians, according to Longo. If Faragher is aware of the contradiction then he should state on what evidence and research he is disputing Longo's findings. Based on his research, Longo's recommendation is basically: Eat vegetables, complex carbs and whole grains most of the time, fish ocassionally, meat very rarely unless over 65, and fast some of the time. Longo in fact claims that these are supported--along with epistmilogical and clinical studies-- by centarian studies which are literally first-hand detailed interviews with 100+ year-old people. Farragher's incomplete explanation of survivorship bias also seems to have confused other commentators in this thread.
  - jraph 2y ago
    I don't understand how your comment answers mine, and what is your actual concern. Assuming Longo conducts good scientific research, the whole article might as well mean "Don't listen to any single old people, read studies from people like Longo". > In fact, the unhealthy habits that Farragher says are common among most old people are in fact not common lifelong habits of centenarians, according to Longo. I don't know, but this is certainly not the main point of the article. I suppose you are taking issues with the two following quotes: > What you see with most centenarians most of the time – and these are generalisations – is that they don’t take much exercise. That's where he says "most". Do you have a source to contradict this? > Quite often, their diets are rather unhealthy Do you have a source to contradict this? Note that "quite often" is not quite precise, and doesn't mean "most". Anyway, it takes only some centenarians to have unhealthy habits for the point to still stand. When receiving advice from a centenarian, you don't really know that you are not speaking to one of those. I would even argue that it's not even necessary, because as I developed in another reply to you, nobody actually knows what allowed them to live long. They might as well have some specific genes allowing them to do all sorts of things that would be unhealthy for many people but that have no serious consequences for them.

dukeofdoom 2y ago

Never take health tips from pill pushers. The medical business is a business is a business! Doctors being the most notorious pill pushers on this planet. Diet, exercise and good sleep, keys to longevity. Popping pills key to early death. Authority figure mad about someone ignoring their authority, is so old, it's stuff for fairy tales.

nope1000 2y ago
> Doctors being the most notorious pill pushers on this planet How about science podcasters advertising supplements?
- ravenstine 2y ago
  You mean neuroscientists hawking powder made from desiccated leaves and stems aren't actually experts in nutrition? ;)
- dukeofdoom 2y ago
  They generally don't give ouy things that can kill you...though might be useless. Doctors on the other hand ... let's just say cemeteries are filled with people that listened to their doctor
efilife 2y ago
> Diet, exercise and good sleep, keys to longevity. So simple. Why didn't I think of this earlier

up2isomorphism 2y ago

What if the scientist himself is very old?