12 ms·

The data on extreme human ageing is rotten from the inside out

222 points by enopod_ 2y ago

janandonly 2y ago
This article is golden: > Okinawa in Japan is one of these zones. There was a Japanese government review in 2010, which found that 82% of the people aged over 100 in Japan turned out to be dead. The secret to living to 110 was, don’t register your death. The Japanese government has run one of the largest nutritional surveys in the world, dating back to 1975. From then until now, Okinawa has had the worst health in Japan. They’ve eaten the least vegetables; they’ve been extremely heavy drinkers.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- HPsquared 2y ago
  Ah, statistics.
- syntheticnature 2y ago
  To be fair, once I die, I don't imagine I'll feel like registering my death.
  - ptsneves 2y ago
    Barbarian! People went to war for those rights.
  - tasty_freeze 2y ago
    That is one of the recurring news items in the US that drives me batty. When each of my parents died, removing their names from the voter rolls was about the 596th item down on my priority list. The government realizes this and regularly scrubs the voter rolls of dead people. Yet certain news organizations will report this as if it is a scandal. "Thousands of dead people were set to vote until their plan was foiled by the governors office". Tell me when dead people are voting in numbers, not that people die while still being on the rolls.
    - LorenPechtel 2y ago
      It didn't even occur to me as something to be done when I was dealing with my mother's estate. I would have thought it was automatic (SS# shows up in the death index) but even if it wasn't a registration with nobody voting it will eventually get scrubbed.
- bitwize 2y ago
  Some social media algorithm once recommended to me a video about a 550-year-old, still living Japanese monk. Turns out it was a sokushinbutsu, a self-mummifying monk who practiced extreme fasting, dietary restriction and dehydration until, emaciated and desiccated, their body died in a meditative state. Such monks were thought not to be dead but rather to have ascended to a higher plane of understanding. Their corpses would be dressed in fine clothes and venerated almost like gods. If you complete a shrine in Breath of the Wild and reach the mummified monk at the end, those monks were inspired by sokushinbutsu. It made me think about the claims of extreme longevity, especially from the Far East, and how many of those might just be due to flexibility about the definition of "death".
gizajob 2y ago
Great article but the oldest guy in the UK definitely isn’t from one of the roughest parts of Liverpool, he’s had a nice life living by the seaside in a place called Southport 25km away, and doesn’t seem like a liar.
- philk10 2y ago
  My hometown - a very quiet place, especially in the winter with no tourists - but it seems he did grow up and spend most of his life in Liverpool which was/is a rough place
- Vegenoid 2y ago
  Many honest people confidently assert the truth of statements (including memories) which are false. They’re not lying, they’re just incorrect.
- quuxplusone 2y ago
  The "oldest man in the UK" referred to is probably John Tinniswood, who now lives in an old-age home in Southport, but was born somewhere outside of that old-age home and lived out there in the world for most of his life. These sources are quite firm on "Liverpool," although I don't see anyone directly saying what part of Liverpool. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tinniswood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tinniswood https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-68741070 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-68741070 The hypothesis Newman is implicitly presenting in TFA is that Tinniswood is indeed very old, but — instead of being born in 1912, married at age 30, and now age 112 — perhaps he was really born in 1917, married at 25, and now 107. Or any other massaging of the numbers. Really the only way to distinguish among these hypotheses is to have some sort of documentary evidence — birth certificate, marriage certificate, employment records, etc. Newman's point is that "supercentenarian" populations are disproportionately correlated with bad recordkeeping (presumably even when you control for the observation that century-old records are likely worse-kept than newer records, although I don't think Newman directly says that). And also with pension fraud. He writes: ( https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/704080v3.full https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/704080v3.full ) > The state-specific introduction of birth certificates is associated with a 69-82% fall in the number of supercentenarian records. [...] In England and France, higher old-age poverty rates alone predict more than half of the regional variation in attaining a remarkable age [...] supercentenarian birthdates are concentrated on days divisible by five [...] relative poverty and short lifespan constitute unexpected predictors of centenarian and supercentenarian status and support a primary role of fraud and error in generating remarkable human age records. Now, maybe there's no evidence that John Tinniswood is lying about his age (consciously or unknowingly), and maybe "the rough parts of Liverpool" have great recordkeeping, and maybe Tinniswood isn't even from the roughest part of Liverpool — sure, I think Newman's argument is specifically weak on concrete evidence for any of those claims, which means Tinniswood might be a terrible individual example for him to have picked. But then you should object to those claims. Don't jump all the way to an obviously false response like "Tinniswood isn't even from Liverpool!"
bell-cot 2y ago
<sigh/> Once again, Big Science proves itself near-impotent against the Rule of Cool and the Want to Believe. It would be so cool and wonderful to believe that this researcher's current employer (University College London's Social Research Institute, Centre for Longitudinal Studies) was a bastion of truth and honesty in scientific research... Anybody know what the reality is?
rougka 2y ago
For a really good book on most of these long life nutritional surveys and other food panics, check out: https://www.amazon.com/Fear-Food-History-Worry-about/dp/022605490X https://www.amazon.com/Fear-Food-History-Worry-about/dp/0226...
Xen9 2y ago
The most realistic and rational path to life extension is creation of behavioural replicants with purpose of only extending the lifespan of one's agency. To reach next 1000 years, you need to do: (1) Information theoretic presevation, IE body imaging, cryo, and proper archival / storage. (2) Behavioural emulation, IE a virtual replicant that roughly makes same decisions far enough for you to identify with it and trust it will carry on your pursuits, even though it will be at least for the beginning slower than the meat was. Behavioural emulation is much less difficult and much more computationally efficient than whole brain emulation. Many humans would say they want someone to be there taking care of their kids, if nothing else. But there is nothing really pioneering this. I hope the separate developments in neuroimaging, qualia research will eventually converge.
- Loughla 2y ago
  The problem is that without a massive internal shift toward some kind of altruistic behavior, this won't ever really be a focus, I bet. The simulant may be Me (as in another version of me) but it's not me (the consciousness I experience inside my body). Therefore, it's life extension for me, but for everyone's benefit but mine. That doesn't help the selfish ego inside me that wants to live forever. That just does not scratch the eternal life itch, I'm afraid.
  - whatshisface 2y ago
    If there was a shift to altruistic behavior, we could all increase the amount of other people's lives through charity and having children.
    - snapplebobapple 2y ago
      altruism has a massive freeloading problem, it's likely why it is unstable beyond a very limited set of very close relatives. If you want your statement above to be true you need to crush free loading or expand the very limited set of people the population doesn't mind freeloading. both those things have huge risks of enforcement/creation because they damage other aspects of human dignity we like and benefit from (i.e. the fundamental freedoms that give us a competitive productivity edge over time through allowing innovators to get fabulously wealthy off their innovation is heavily damaged by the authoritarianism that is the easiest path to crushing freeloading [up until the authoritarians become the freeloaders] or the nationalism that can lead to problematic outcomes interfacing with the inevitable outgroup but is the easiest way to expand the group that can freeload without causing instability.)
sammyo 2y ago
One actual researcher mentioned good habits will get anyone into their 80's but everyone tested over 105 has most of 100 certain genes. Really old age may be genetic.
- busterarm 2y ago
  No researcher will actually make this argument though because they'll immediately be called a eugenicist.
  - jraph 2y ago
    Why? It's not making an argument, it's describing. And describing is not taking action. [edit] about describing truth or evidences: we need that. Of course it all depends on how you present the truth, whether you are actually doing pseudoscience or not, whether you are manipulating concepts that are actually scientific or not, and whether you are conflating correlation with causation or not.
    - busterarm 2y ago
      [flagged]
    - david-gpu 2y ago
      Are you familiar with the controversy around a book titled "The Bell Curve"? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve
      - jraph 2y ago
        No, but there's a title "Lack of peer review" in your link. This doesn't look like science. There a lot of pseudoscience around IQ too, probably starting with the very concept of IQ for measuring "intelligence" (for which we would need a strong definition anyway)
        joenot443 2y ago
Tade0 2y ago
My maternal grandparents are in their mid 90s and we know that to be true, because aside from the church records, they both have decent memories of the time before WW2 and the event itself. Oddly specific things at that, like prices of goods and salaries from the time. Also grandpa has 7 siblings, with his older sister already being 100. Interestingly their own parents didn't live nearly that long. My paternal grandmother on the other hand died one week before turning 97 and only after that it was revealed that she actually lied about her age, claiming to be six years younger, so as to not cause a scandal when my grandparents announced their marriage. The common theme among them is that they are/were all active working manually and would neither drink nor smoke, but that's no revelation.
- pclmulqdq 2y ago
  As I watch people around me reach their senior years, it increasingly seems like life is "use it or lose it" with your body and brain function. If you really want to extend your "healthspan" it seems the correct solution is to do full-body work-outs a lot, eat a really clean diet, avoid drugs, and keep using your brain actively into your 80's and 90's.
  - jajko 2y ago
    Well yes, but you need to be smart about it, just like about everything else in life. People read full body workout and start some super intense training regimen which for some may be great, and for others it may be too much. Instead its more like some gardening efforts - every day a bit, not too much. My late grandparents are an example - obviously no smoking and absolute minimum alcohol and 0 other drugs ever, regular good sleep, and garden (plus a bit of nature which was just walks or foraging mushrooms). Understanding how body degenerates with age and injuries, especially joints and connective tissue. Workouts great for 20 years old are sometimes pretty bad for 40+. Don't stress heart too much, just enough, for long periods. Plenty of weightlifters who have messed up their shoulders, spines, knees etc. although at their peak they lifted impressive weights and looked accordingly. Guess what, this adds 0 in longevity, whatever effect was there is 100% gone in 5-10 years from all tissues and bones as cells fully renew, and messing up core of your movement can easily negatively impair lifespan.
vergessenmir 2y ago
My grandfather died over a hundred, he had 16 children and two wives. We estimated his age to be at 103 going by the youngest possible age he could have become a father. My grandmother is well into her 90s. They both were active throughout their lives, always in the fields.y grandmother goes to bed when the soon after the sun goes down. She insists on not having any electricity.
- bufferoverflow 2y ago
  > by the youngest possible age he could have become a father That's what, 9 years old?
  - WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
    I've researched a lot of people in my lines and I can't recall a father younger than 15 - tho I recently found one married at 14.
rwmj 2y ago
Contrary to what the article says, the Gerontology Research Group[1] claims to have verified John Tinniswood's age: https://www.grg-supercentenarians.org/john-tinniswood/ https://www.grg-supercentenarians.org/john-tinniswood/ Although I wish they'd be a lot more specific about how that was done. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerontology_Research_Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerontology_Research_Group
sebtron 2y ago
If you don't get to the end of the article you'll miss this gem: > If they don’t acknowledge their errors in my lifetime, I guess I’ll just get someone to pretend I’m still alive until that changes.
encoderer 2y ago
The last time I read about this there were a ton of comments along the lines of “author needs to come to <my tiny African nation> both my grandmas are over 100 years old and it’s normal here” - proves the point!
stonethrowaway 2y ago
> The ceremony was wonderful. It’s a bit of fun in a big fancy hall. It’s like you take the most serious ceremony possible and make fun of every aspect of it. A glorified shitpost. I love it. There was an article/blog post on HN not too long ago of a chap who realized Blue Zones are a farce and it’s underreported deaths instead. To folks linking pop-sci books, you may want to think twice.
tristramb 2y ago
From Wikipedia: "The Cornerstone of Peace at the Peace Memorial Park in Itoman lists 149,193 persons from Okinawa – approximately one quarter of the civilian population – were either killed or committed suicide during the Battle of Okinawa and the Pacific War." How can anyone stupid enough to think that the people of Okinawa have had a healthy lifestyle over the past century? The subtle statistical effects of any dietary or lifestyle prefererences would be completely swamped by the effects of the above.
LiamPa 2y ago
My step great grandmother is currently the oldest in the UK, the family had to take her car keys off her when she turned 100, she wasn’t best pleased about it. https://oldestinbritain.nfshost.com/ https://oldestinbritain.nfshost.com/
- CRConrad 2y ago
  Is Caterham a common name in Britain, or are you related to the sports cars?
Terretta 2y ago
It seems not all these contra-indicators apply to Loma Linda, CA as well. From articles linked, most other area candidates are long dead, pension fraud, in low income areas, also affecting some areas in the U.S., but mostly relating to records keeping. Meanwhile: “In the United States, supercentenarian status is predicted by the absence of vital registration. ... Only 18% of ‘exhaustively’ validated supercentenarians have a birth certificate, falling to zero percent in the USA ... 82% of supercentenarian records from the USA predate state-wide birth certification.” However, in the research graphics, Loma Linda is not on the map depicting concentrations in midwest. There are these mentions, however: “Centres for Disease Control generated an independent estimate of average longevity across the USA: they found that Loma Linda, a Blue Zone supposedly characterised by a ‘remarkable’ average lifespan 10 years above the national average, instead has an unremarkable average lifespan (27th-75th percentile; Fig S6)”, “The two remaining blue zones, Loma Linda and the Nicoya Peninsula, are considered exceptional due to their high average longevity rather than the presence of the oldest-old.”, and “However, when assessed independently by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) the five small-area survey tracts covering Loma Linda instead have an average life expectancy of 76 to 81 years: the 27th to 75th percentiles of US life expectancy (Fig S6). This means, at best, the independent CDC estimates rank Loma Linda as the 16,101st most long-lived neighborhood in the USA (Fig. S6; S1 code). As such, it is again unclear why the lifespan of this community has been considered remarkable.” Till now, this area stood out as an odd duck among the blue zones, being an otherwise regular U.S. suburb, just high prevalence of longevity among the vegetarian health conscious non-smoker non-drinker types. Most of the other zones attribute health to hills and seafood, while now seeming poverty and pension fraud related. Long before the study and term became popularized, it was noted that among one community in and around this CA area (including great grandmothers or aunts that had moved to mountain communities in other parts of CA), seemingly unusual numbers of women among extended family and friends' extended family lived over 100. Though less so since 2010s, as though most were of generations from 1860s - 1900s. Incidentally, the directly known individuals who passed on in '80s or '90s did have birth certificates and carefully documented genealogies dating back to 1400s - 1600s or so. Putting two and two together, while Loma Linda is not mentioned other than these quotes, it seems the suggestion here is that these western-most U.S. clusters could be late 1800s births in areas not yet organized for birth certificates and records keeping, still around to be noticed in the 1970s to 2010s. TL;DR: This makes it seem as though someone trying to make a case for the longevity of a small set of people misunderstood or overlooked the error rates at play and didn't dig further, allowing them to make a case for a zone-wide phenomenon.

222 points by enopod_ 2y ago

This article is golden: > Okinawa in Japan is one of these zones. There was a Japanese government review in 2010, which found that 82% of the people aged over 100 in Japan turned out to be dead. The secret to living to 110 was, don’t register your death. The Japanese government has run one of the largest nutritional surveys in the world, dating back to 1975. From then until now, Okinawa has had the worst health in Japan. They’ve eaten the least vegetables; they’ve been extremely heavy drinkers.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
HPsquared 2y ago
Ah, statistics.
syntheticnature 2y ago
To be fair, once I die, I don't imagine I'll feel like registering my death.
- ptsneves 2y ago
  Barbarian! People went to war for those rights.
- tasty_freeze 2y ago
  That is one of the recurring news items in the US that drives me batty. When each of my parents died, removing their names from the voter rolls was about the 596th item down on my priority list. The government realizes this and regularly scrubs the voter rolls of dead people. Yet certain news organizations will report this as if it is a scandal. "Thousands of dead people were set to vote until their plan was foiled by the governors office". Tell me when dead people are voting in numbers, not that people die while still being on the rolls.
  - LorenPechtel 2y ago
    It didn't even occur to me as something to be done when I was dealing with my mother's estate. I would have thought it was automatic (SS# shows up in the death index) but even if it wasn't a registration with nobody voting it will eventually get scrubbed.
bitwize 2y ago
Some social media algorithm once recommended to me a video about a 550-year-old, still living Japanese monk. Turns out it was a sokushinbutsu, a self-mummifying monk who practiced extreme fasting, dietary restriction and dehydration until, emaciated and desiccated, their body died in a meditative state. Such monks were thought not to be dead but rather to have ascended to a higher plane of understanding. Their corpses would be dressed in fine clothes and venerated almost like gods. If you complete a shrine in Breath of the Wild and reach the mummified monk at the end, those monks were inspired by sokushinbutsu. It made me think about the claims of extreme longevity, especially from the Far East, and how many of those might just be due to flexibility about the definition of "death".

gizajob 2y ago

Great article but the oldest guy in the UK definitely isn’t from one of the roughest parts of Liverpool, he’s had a nice life living by the seaside in a place called Southport 25km away, and doesn’t seem like a liar.

philk10 2y ago
My hometown - a very quiet place, especially in the winter with no tourists - but it seems he did grow up and spend most of his life in Liverpool which was/is a rough place
Vegenoid 2y ago
Many honest people confidently assert the truth of statements (including memories) which are false. They’re not lying, they’re just incorrect.
quuxplusone 2y ago
The "oldest man in the UK" referred to is probably John Tinniswood, who now lives in an old-age home in Southport, but was born somewhere outside of that old-age home and lived out there in the world for most of his life. These sources are quite firm on "Liverpool," although I don't see anyone directly saying what part of Liverpool. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tinniswood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tinniswood https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-68741070 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-68741070 The hypothesis Newman is implicitly presenting in TFA is that Tinniswood is indeed very old, but — instead of being born in 1912, married at age 30, and now age 112 — perhaps he was really born in 1917, married at 25, and now 107. Or any other massaging of the numbers. Really the only way to distinguish among these hypotheses is to have some sort of documentary evidence — birth certificate, marriage certificate, employment records, etc. Newman's point is that "supercentenarian" populations are disproportionately correlated with bad recordkeeping (presumably even when you control for the observation that century-old records are likely worse-kept than newer records, although I don't think Newman directly says that). And also with pension fraud. He writes: ( https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/704080v3.full https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/704080v3.full ) > The state-specific introduction of birth certificates is associated with a 69-82% fall in the number of supercentenarian records. [...] In England and France, higher old-age poverty rates alone predict more than half of the regional variation in attaining a remarkable age [...] supercentenarian birthdates are concentrated on days divisible by five [...] relative poverty and short lifespan constitute unexpected predictors of centenarian and supercentenarian status and support a primary role of fraud and error in generating remarkable human age records. Now, maybe there's no evidence that John Tinniswood is lying about his age (consciously or unknowingly), and maybe "the rough parts of Liverpool" have great recordkeeping, and maybe Tinniswood isn't even from the roughest part of Liverpool — sure, I think Newman's argument is specifically weak on concrete evidence for any of those claims, which means Tinniswood might be a terrible individual example for him to have picked. But then you should object to those claims. Don't jump all the way to an obviously false response like "Tinniswood isn't even from Liverpool!"

bell-cot 2y ago

<sigh/> Once again, Big Science proves itself near-impotent against the Rule of Cool and the Want to Believe. It would be so cool and wonderful to believe that this researcher's current employer (University College London's Social Research Institute, Centre for Longitudinal Studies) was a bastion of truth and honesty in scientific research... Anybody know what the reality is?

rougka 2y ago

For a really good book on most of these long life nutritional surveys and other food panics, check out: https://www.amazon.com/Fear-Food-History-Worry-about/dp/022605490X https://www.amazon.com/Fear-Food-History-Worry-about/dp/0226...

Xen9 2y ago

The most realistic and rational path to life extension is creation of behavioural replicants with purpose of only extending the lifespan of one's agency. To reach next 1000 years, you need to do: (1) Information theoretic presevation, IE body imaging, cryo, and proper archival / storage. (2) Behavioural emulation, IE a virtual replicant that roughly makes same decisions far enough for you to identify with it and trust it will carry on your pursuits, even though it will be at least for the beginning slower than the meat was. Behavioural emulation is much less difficult and much more computationally efficient than whole brain emulation. Many humans would say they want someone to be there taking care of their kids, if nothing else. But there is nothing really pioneering this. I hope the separate developments in neuroimaging, qualia research will eventually converge.

Loughla 2y ago
The problem is that without a massive internal shift toward some kind of altruistic behavior, this won't ever really be a focus, I bet. The simulant may be Me (as in another version of me) but it's not me (the consciousness I experience inside my body). Therefore, it's life extension for me, but for everyone's benefit but mine. That doesn't help the selfish ego inside me that wants to live forever. That just does not scratch the eternal life itch, I'm afraid.
- whatshisface 2y ago
  If there was a shift to altruistic behavior, we could all increase the amount of other people's lives through charity and having children.
  - snapplebobapple 2y ago
    altruism has a massive freeloading problem, it's likely why it is unstable beyond a very limited set of very close relatives. If you want your statement above to be true you need to crush free loading or expand the very limited set of people the population doesn't mind freeloading. both those things have huge risks of enforcement/creation because they damage other aspects of human dignity we like and benefit from (i.e. the fundamental freedoms that give us a competitive productivity edge over time through allowing innovators to get fabulously wealthy off their innovation is heavily damaged by the authoritarianism that is the easiest path to crushing freeloading [up until the authoritarians become the freeloaders] or the nationalism that can lead to problematic outcomes interfacing with the inevitable outgroup but is the easiest way to expand the group that can freeload without causing instability.)

sammyo 2y ago

One actual researcher mentioned good habits will get anyone into their 80's but everyone tested over 105 has most of 100 certain genes. Really old age may be genetic.

busterarm 2y ago
No researcher will actually make this argument though because they'll immediately be called a eugenicist.
- jraph 2y ago
  Why? It's not making an argument, it's describing. And describing is not taking action. [edit] about describing truth or evidences: we need that. Of course it all depends on how you present the truth, whether you are actually doing pseudoscience or not, whether you are manipulating concepts that are actually scientific or not, and whether you are conflating correlation with causation or not.
  - busterarm 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - david-gpu 2y ago
    Are you familiar with the controversy around a book titled "The Bell Curve"? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve
    - jraph 2y ago
      No, but there's a title "Lack of peer review" in your link. This doesn't look like science. There a lot of pseudoscience around IQ too, probably starting with the very concept of IQ for measuring "intelligence" (for which we would need a strong definition anyway)
      - joenot443 2y ago

Tade0 2y ago

My maternal grandparents are in their mid 90s and we know that to be true, because aside from the church records, they both have decent memories of the time before WW2 and the event itself. Oddly specific things at that, like prices of goods and salaries from the time. Also grandpa has 7 siblings, with his older sister already being 100. Interestingly their own parents didn't live nearly that long. My paternal grandmother on the other hand died one week before turning 97 and only after that it was revealed that she actually lied about her age, claiming to be six years younger, so as to not cause a scandal when my grandparents announced their marriage. The common theme among them is that they are/were all active working manually and would neither drink nor smoke, but that's no revelation.

pclmulqdq 2y ago
As I watch people around me reach their senior years, it increasingly seems like life is "use it or lose it" with your body and brain function. If you really want to extend your "healthspan" it seems the correct solution is to do full-body work-outs a lot, eat a really clean diet, avoid drugs, and keep using your brain actively into your 80's and 90's.
- jajko 2y ago
  Well yes, but you need to be smart about it, just like about everything else in life. People read full body workout and start some super intense training regimen which for some may be great, and for others it may be too much. Instead its more like some gardening efforts - every day a bit, not too much. My late grandparents are an example - obviously no smoking and absolute minimum alcohol and 0 other drugs ever, regular good sleep, and garden (plus a bit of nature which was just walks or foraging mushrooms). Understanding how body degenerates with age and injuries, especially joints and connective tissue. Workouts great for 20 years old are sometimes pretty bad for 40+. Don't stress heart too much, just enough, for long periods. Plenty of weightlifters who have messed up their shoulders, spines, knees etc. although at their peak they lifted impressive weights and looked accordingly. Guess what, this adds 0 in longevity, whatever effect was there is 100% gone in 5-10 years from all tissues and bones as cells fully renew, and messing up core of your movement can easily negatively impair lifespan.

vergessenmir 2y ago

My grandfather died over a hundred, he had 16 children and two wives. We estimated his age to be at 103 going by the youngest possible age he could have become a father. My grandmother is well into her 90s. They both were active throughout their lives, always in the fields.y grandmother goes to bed when the soon after the sun goes down. She insists on not having any electricity.

bufferoverflow 2y ago
> by the youngest possible age he could have become a father That's what, 9 years old?
- WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
  I've researched a lot of people in my lines and I can't recall a father younger than 15 - tho I recently found one married at 14.

rwmj 2y ago

Contrary to what the article says, the Gerontology Research Group[1] claims to have verified John Tinniswood's age: https://www.grg-supercentenarians.org/john-tinniswood/ https://www.grg-supercentenarians.org/john-tinniswood/ Although I wish they'd be a lot more specific about how that was done. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerontology_Research_Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerontology_Research_Group

sebtron 2y ago

If you don't get to the end of the article you'll miss this gem: > If they don’t acknowledge their errors in my lifetime, I guess I’ll just get someone to pretend I’m still alive until that changes.

encoderer 2y ago

The last time I read about this there were a ton of comments along the lines of “author needs to come to <my tiny African nation> both my grandmas are over 100 years old and it’s normal here” - proves the point!

stonethrowaway 2y ago

> The ceremony was wonderful. It’s a bit of fun in a big fancy hall. It’s like you take the most serious ceremony possible and make fun of every aspect of it. A glorified shitpost. I love it. There was an article/blog post on HN not too long ago of a chap who realized Blue Zones are a farce and it’s underreported deaths instead. To folks linking pop-sci books, you may want to think twice.

tristramb 2y ago

From Wikipedia: "The Cornerstone of Peace at the Peace Memorial Park in Itoman lists 149,193 persons from Okinawa – approximately one quarter of the civilian population – were either killed or committed suicide during the Battle of Okinawa and the Pacific War." How can anyone stupid enough to think that the people of Okinawa have had a healthy lifestyle over the past century? The subtle statistical effects of any dietary or lifestyle prefererences would be completely swamped by the effects of the above.

LiamPa 2y ago

My step great grandmother is currently the oldest in the UK, the family had to take her car keys off her when she turned 100, she wasn’t best pleased about it. https://oldestinbritain.nfshost.com/ https://oldestinbritain.nfshost.com/

CRConrad 2y ago
Is Caterham a common name in Britain, or are you related to the sports cars?

Terretta 2y ago

It seems not all these contra-indicators apply to Loma Linda, CA as well. From articles linked, most other area candidates are long dead, pension fraud, in low income areas, also affecting some areas in the U.S., but mostly relating to records keeping. Meanwhile: “In the United States, supercentenarian status is predicted by the absence of vital registration. ... Only 18% of ‘exhaustively’ validated supercentenarians have a birth certificate, falling to zero percent in the USA ... 82% of supercentenarian records from the USA predate state-wide birth certification.” However, in the research graphics, Loma Linda is not on the map depicting concentrations in midwest. There are these mentions, however: “Centres for Disease Control generated an independent estimate of average longevity across the USA: they found that Loma Linda, a Blue Zone supposedly characterised by a ‘remarkable’ average lifespan 10 years above the national average, instead has an unremarkable average lifespan (27th-75th percentile; Fig S6)”, “The two remaining blue zones, Loma Linda and the Nicoya Peninsula, are considered exceptional due to their high average longevity rather than the presence of the oldest-old.”, and “However, when assessed independently by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) the five small-area survey tracts covering Loma Linda instead have an average life expectancy of 76 to 81 years: the 27th to 75th percentiles of US life expectancy (Fig S6). This means, at best, the independent CDC estimates rank Loma Linda as the 16,101st most long-lived neighborhood in the USA (Fig. S6; S1 code). As such, it is again unclear why the lifespan of this community has been considered remarkable.” Till now, this area stood out as an odd duck among the blue zones, being an otherwise regular U.S. suburb, just high prevalence of longevity among the vegetarian health conscious non-smoker non-drinker types. Most of the other zones attribute health to hills and seafood, while now seeming poverty and pension fraud related. Long before the study and term became popularized, it was noted that among one community in and around this CA area (including great grandmothers or aunts that had moved to mountain communities in other parts of CA), seemingly unusual numbers of women among extended family and friends' extended family lived over 100. Though less so since 2010s, as though most were of generations from 1860s - 1900s. Incidentally, the directly known individuals who passed on in '80s or '90s did have birth certificates and carefully documented genealogies dating back to 1400s - 1600s or so. Putting two and two together, while Loma Linda is not mentioned other than these quotes, it seems the suggestion here is that these western-most U.S. clusters could be late 1800s births in areas not yet organized for birth certificates and records keeping, still around to be noticed in the 1970s to 2010s. TL;DR: This makes it seem as though someone trying to make a case for the longevity of a small set of people misunderstood or overlooked the error rates at play and didn't dig further, allowing them to make a case for a zone-wide phenomenon.