7 ms·

Paper: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/704080v1 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/704080v1 Abstract: > The observation of individuals attaining

by cs702 2y ago

Paper: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/704080v1 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/704080v1 Abstract: > The observation of individuals attaining remarkable ages, and their concentration into geographic sub-regions or ‘blue zones’, has generated considerable scientific interest. Proposed drivers of remarkable longevity include high vegetable intake, strong social connections, and genetic markers. Here, we reveal new predictors of remarkable longevity and ‘supercentenarian’ status. In the United States, supercentenarian status is predicted by the absence of vital registration. The state-specific introduction of birth certificates is associated with a 69-82% fall in the number of supercentenarian records. In Italy, which has more uniform vital registration, remarkable longevity is instead predicted by low per capita incomes and a short life expectancy. Finally, the designated ‘blue zones’ of Sardinia, Okinawa, and Ikaria corresponded to regions with low incomes, low literacy, high crime rate and short life expectancy relative to their national average. As such, 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. Nice work. It just won a 2024 Ig Nobel Prize. Well-deserved, I'd say: https://improbable.com/ig/winners/#ig2024 https://improbable.com/ig/winners/#ig2024

comboy 2y ago
So there's this short little book "Food rules" by Michael Pollan. Not much content but seems like the author went through a lot of research. He comes to conclusion based on this tons of data that all we really know for sure is that people living in these blue regions are living much longer and it seems to be related to what they eat. That it is basically the only solid and stable data point we have. Welp. (I'm overstating it a bit, but not by that much)
- mannykannot 2y ago
  The one thing that this paper does is demolish the claim that people living in these blue regions are living much longer than average.
  - lolinder 2y ago
    I think a lot of commenters either didn't read the abstract or assumed from its tone that it was supportive of the idea of blue zones.
    - jimmydddd 2y ago
      Yes, I happen to be interested in this topic and had previously read this paper. So it's interesting to see how many of the commentors (even on HN) didn't even read the first few paragraphs of the paper or the article. I guess I must do that with articles I'm not previously familiar with. :-)
  - mfer 2y ago
    Except, it misses the point and doesn't really do that while being persuasive. According to the Blue Zone researchers, some of the Blue Zones are disappearing because the generations that came after the oldest live differently and much shorter. By differently, their eating, body movement, and other characteristics are different. Looking at the whole population doesn't segment for differences between generation. So, nuance is lost. In some areas, like the Blue Zone in the US other research is finding the people who live there are healthier than the surrounding populations. Then you have to ask, what area do you average over for your measurement and statistics?
    - giantg2 2y ago
      "Then you have to ask, what area do you average over for your measurement and statistics?" This is a big thing that I didn't seen in the paper this article is based on. It seemed like the author was comparing adjusted numbers from the blue zone with unadjusted numbers from non-blue zones. Without comprehensive investigation of error rates and even different error mechanisms by locale, it seems like a poor comparison to make. Comparing life expectancies is better than comparing outlier centarian numbers, but you are right that it depends on what other areas we are using as the baseline or average (and I take it a step farther by saying it depends on what error adjustments need to be made to both data sets). The whole blue zone idea is a bit misapplied though. These population studies find new variables to look at. Then you have targeted studies to investigate thos variables. Discrediting the centarian numbers doesn't discredit the findings on stuff like a mederteranian diet having better health outcomes than the standard western diet, etc.
- twobitshifter 2y ago
  Ozempic is showing that life expectancy is mostly avoiding obesity, heart disease, and diabetes, but not a specific magic food. It is just calories, vitamins and minerals.
  - uxhacker 2y ago
    No as Ozempic mimics the reaction of the body to certain classes of food such as fibre and probiotics. For most people if they eat more fibre and probiotics we would not need Ozempic.
    - twobitshifter 2y ago
      Sure, but all the health benefits stress not because it’s a better metamucil. It’s because when you’re not obese, you don’t end up sick and dying.
    - vfvthunter 2y ago
      Have a link that explains how Ozempic is fiber-mimetic or pro-biotic-mimetic? If that were the case I would expect to see fiber and probiotics to be associated with gastroparesis. They aren't. Ozempic exists because Americans are addicted to hypercaloric hyper delicious "food" that was engineered by the big tobacco companies that used their excess cash to buy food companies in the 80's. They then applied their research on making tobacco addictive to make food addictive. Modern American food is literally the new tobacco. Ozempic disrupts hunger signals. Fiber does that to a certain extent ("increases feelings of satiety"). I haven't seen anything about probiotics doing that, but I think probiotics are bunk and tend not to read about them.
mfer 2y ago
A while back I dug into the research of this author and I was not impressed. Some examples of things that caught me poor and leading... * The Blue Zones claim that most places that list many centurions are false due to bad record keeping. Only a few places have good enough records that are trustworthy. In this authors research he called out places that were not blue zones as examples of bad data against Blue Zones. * In Okinawa the Blue Zones claim that only the oldest generation fits the Blue Zone model. That more recent generations eat poorly and have bad health. That this Blue Zone is going away. This researcher has focused on the more recent food and health of younger generations to discount it being a Blue Zone for that oldest generation. * In the US he fails to find fault in record keeping (last I dug into it) with the only location that is considered a Blue Zone. Instead he focuses on generalities. There are more examples like this. This all seems disingenuous. It's not to agree with Blue Zones but rather to look at his arguments against those put forward for Blue Zones. I keep thinking of the phrase "Lies, Damn Lines, and Statistics"
- minifridge 2y ago
  It is definitely a bit fishy. I am sure there are other places with bad record keeping which were not included in the study to deflate the pvalues of book keeping.
- gpderetta 2y ago
  Yes, I did a bit of investigation and I commented on it the few times this article made the rounds on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20633769 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20633769 I don't think it is just bad statistics, it is very poor data extractions. Just an example: "Like the ‘blue zone’ islands of Sardinia and Ikaria, Okinawa also represents the shortest-lived and second-poorest region of a rich high-welfare state" Sardinia[1], at 83.8, had in 2018 one of the EU highest life expectancies, certainly higher than the rest of Italy (83.4). Like the rest of Italy it was badly hit by COVID in 2020. Life expectancy at 55 is 30.6 vs 30.1 for the rest of Italy. I don't know how to match it with their Figure 2 that shows the all Sardinian provinces being extreme outliers in negative other than they completely misinterpreted the data. Also the same graph shows 7 blue dots for Sardinian provinces, historically Sardinia had only 4 provinces and has had 8 only for a short period in the mid 2000s. [edit: The newer version of the paper[2] is different and doesn't have figure 2] [1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/demo_r_mlifexp/default/table?lang=en&category=demo.demomreg https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/demo_r_mlifex... (Sardegna In the table). [2] https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/704080v3 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/704080v3
srid 2y ago
Title says "New research" but this paper was posted 5 years ago, on July 16, 2019. Here's a tweet from the same year referencing it: https://x.com/Mangan150/status/1159074479194066944 https://x.com/Mangan150/status/1159074479194066944

by cs702 2y ago

comboy 2y ago

So there's this short little book "Food rules" by Michael Pollan. Not much content but seems like the author went through a lot of research. He comes to conclusion based on this tons of data that all we really know for sure is that people living in these blue regions are living much longer and it seems to be related to what they eat. That it is basically the only solid and stable data point we have. Welp. (I'm overstating it a bit, but not by that much)

mannykannot 2y ago
The one thing that this paper does is demolish the claim that people living in these blue regions are living much longer than average.
- lolinder 2y ago
  I think a lot of commenters either didn't read the abstract or assumed from its tone that it was supportive of the idea of blue zones.
  - jimmydddd 2y ago
    Yes, I happen to be interested in this topic and had previously read this paper. So it's interesting to see how many of the commentors (even on HN) didn't even read the first few paragraphs of the paper or the article. I guess I must do that with articles I'm not previously familiar with. :-)
- mfer 2y ago
  Except, it misses the point and doesn't really do that while being persuasive. According to the Blue Zone researchers, some of the Blue Zones are disappearing because the generations that came after the oldest live differently and much shorter. By differently, their eating, body movement, and other characteristics are different. Looking at the whole population doesn't segment for differences between generation. So, nuance is lost. In some areas, like the Blue Zone in the US other research is finding the people who live there are healthier than the surrounding populations. Then you have to ask, what area do you average over for your measurement and statistics?
  - giantg2 2y ago
    "Then you have to ask, what area do you average over for your measurement and statistics?" This is a big thing that I didn't seen in the paper this article is based on. It seemed like the author was comparing adjusted numbers from the blue zone with unadjusted numbers from non-blue zones. Without comprehensive investigation of error rates and even different error mechanisms by locale, it seems like a poor comparison to make. Comparing life expectancies is better than comparing outlier centarian numbers, but you are right that it depends on what other areas we are using as the baseline or average (and I take it a step farther by saying it depends on what error adjustments need to be made to both data sets). The whole blue zone idea is a bit misapplied though. These population studies find new variables to look at. Then you have targeted studies to investigate thos variables. Discrediting the centarian numbers doesn't discredit the findings on stuff like a mederteranian diet having better health outcomes than the standard western diet, etc.
twobitshifter 2y ago
Ozempic is showing that life expectancy is mostly avoiding obesity, heart disease, and diabetes, but not a specific magic food. It is just calories, vitamins and minerals.
- uxhacker 2y ago
  No as Ozempic mimics the reaction of the body to certain classes of food such as fibre and probiotics. For most people if they eat more fibre and probiotics we would not need Ozempic.
  - twobitshifter 2y ago
    Sure, but all the health benefits stress not because it’s a better metamucil. It’s because when you’re not obese, you don’t end up sick and dying.
  - vfvthunter 2y ago
    Have a link that explains how Ozempic is fiber-mimetic or pro-biotic-mimetic? If that were the case I would expect to see fiber and probiotics to be associated with gastroparesis. They aren't. Ozempic exists because Americans are addicted to hypercaloric hyper delicious "food" that was engineered by the big tobacco companies that used their excess cash to buy food companies in the 80's. They then applied their research on making tobacco addictive to make food addictive. Modern American food is literally the new tobacco. Ozempic disrupts hunger signals. Fiber does that to a certain extent ("increases feelings of satiety"). I haven't seen anything about probiotics doing that, but I think probiotics are bunk and tend not to read about them.

mfer 2y ago

A while back I dug into the research of this author and I was not impressed. Some examples of things that caught me poor and leading... * The Blue Zones claim that most places that list many centurions are false due to bad record keeping. Only a few places have good enough records that are trustworthy. In this authors research he called out places that were not blue zones as examples of bad data against Blue Zones. * In Okinawa the Blue Zones claim that only the oldest generation fits the Blue Zone model. That more recent generations eat poorly and have bad health. That this Blue Zone is going away. This researcher has focused on the more recent food and health of younger generations to discount it being a Blue Zone for that oldest generation. * In the US he fails to find fault in record keeping (last I dug into it) with the only location that is considered a Blue Zone. Instead he focuses on generalities. There are more examples like this. This all seems disingenuous. It's not to agree with Blue Zones but rather to look at his arguments against those put forward for Blue Zones. I keep thinking of the phrase "Lies, Damn Lines, and Statistics"

minifridge 2y ago
It is definitely a bit fishy. I am sure there are other places with bad record keeping which were not included in the study to deflate the pvalues of book keeping.
gpderetta 2y ago
Yes, I did a bit of investigation and I commented on it the few times this article made the rounds on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20633769 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20633769 I don't think it is just bad statistics, it is very poor data extractions. Just an example: "Like the ‘blue zone’ islands of Sardinia and Ikaria, Okinawa also represents the shortest-lived and second-poorest region of a rich high-welfare state" Sardinia[1], at 83.8, had in 2018 one of the EU highest life expectancies, certainly higher than the rest of Italy (83.4). Like the rest of Italy it was badly hit by COVID in 2020. Life expectancy at 55 is 30.6 vs 30.1 for the rest of Italy. I don't know how to match it with their Figure 2 that shows the all Sardinian provinces being extreme outliers in negative other than they completely misinterpreted the data. Also the same graph shows 7 blue dots for Sardinian provinces, historically Sardinia had only 4 provinces and has had 8 only for a short period in the mid 2000s. [edit: The newer version of the paper[2] is different and doesn't have figure 2] [1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/demo_r_mlifexp/default/table?lang=en&category=demo.demomreg https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/demo_r_mlifex... (Sardegna In the table). [2] https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/704080v3 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/704080v3

srid 2y ago

Title says "New research" but this paper was posted 5 years ago, on July 16, 2019. Here's a tweet from the same year referencing it: https://x.com/Mangan150/status/1159074479194066944 https://x.com/Mangan150/status/1159074479194066944