9 ms·

The Island Where People Forget to Die

150 points by ridgewell 12y ago

frik 12y ago
As the side note says: "The key to Ikarian longevity is not simply a healthful diet; daily socializing may be just as crucial." And taking a daily nap and drink vine. This is probably true and helps a lot. But who created the statistics? The pension system there is widely misused. People keep their death parents "alive" on paper to receive their pension for many years. It was so widespread and the loss so great in Creek (and some other EU countries) that the European Union intervened.
- sotirisk 12y ago
  And where have you read about this "widely misused pension system"? I am Greek and I can asure you that this is another one of the "rumors" floating around about Greece which, as all rumors, is a blatant lie. In fact, the pension system in Greece has been following the European standards since at least 10 years. I am so sick and tired of outsiders spewing nonsense all of the internet about Greece without knowing any real fact.
  - castell 12y ago
    No rumors, the source are the Greek Labour Ministry and the European Union. Search for "greek pension abuse" on Google: * Greece pulls the plug on pensions for the dead (Apr 25, 2012): http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/25/greece-benefits-idUSL6E8FP4R320120425 http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/25/greece-benefits-id... * 2% of Greek population abuse pension system (26 Apr, 2012): https://www.devere-group.com/news/Greek-population-abuse-pension-system.aspx https://www.devere-group.com/news/Greek-population-abuse-pen... * Greece Still Paying Dead Pensioners (Aug 17, 2013): http://greece.greekreporter.com/2013/08/17/greece-still-paying-dead-pensioners/ http://greece.greekreporter.com/2013/08/17/greece-still-payi... * New Greek finance sham: 120,000 families claiming 'ghost pensions' for relatives who died years ago (12 October 2011): http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2048385/Greek-finance-sham-120k-families-claiming-ghost-pensions.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2048385/Greek-financ...
    - coldtea 12y ago
      If you read the articles -- and if you follow the proceedings in Greece, this is linkbaity headlines. Title: "120,000 families claiming 'ghost pensions' for relatives who died years ago" Actual content: "Greece has halted welfare or pension payments to 200,000 people either because they are unentitled to the money - or because they are dead, a Labour Ministry official said on Wednesday." Not that the 200.000 number includes all pensions under examination -- and most of those were found to be absolutely OK in subsequent checks. So, first the "dead getting pensions" were far from "120,000" (more close to a few thousands -- and of those "dead cases" most were recent deaths of a few months were the reported death wasn't yet registered (the bureacracy is chaotic). The final tally was some 40.000 problematic pensions (which in a huge messy bureacracy like Greece includes pensions missing a few supporting documents, having 1% less "pension credits" than needed, etc), and around 2.500 cases of "dead pensioners". Moreover, of those "dead pensioners" most were cases of people who died with no relatives etc and weren't declared to stop the pension being deposited. Of the 35 million euros deposited to dead pensioners, the state found that the 21 million euros were such and reclaimed it immediately ( http://www.enet.gr/?i=news.el.article&id=380165 http://www.enet.gr/?i=news.el.article&id=380165 ). The rest could be actual fraud cases. Not as impressive as the BS baity headlines that preceded the investigation one year before. The government merely wanted to give an impression of wide corruption, in order to sweeten the passage of some anti-pension laws.
  - makeitsuckless 12y ago
    There are no European standards for pension systems. It's typically one of those things that hasn't been unified. Both the pension fraud and the early retirement age in Greece where hotly debated and well documented topics, not "rumors". I think the problem here lies in the different cultural perception of the phrase "widely misused". For Greek values, 1% is a bureaucratic rounding error. For North European values it's sign of massive corruption.
- visakanv 12y ago
  That sounds identical to the opening chapter of Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers! [1] 'What Wolf slowly realized was that the secret of Roseto wasn't diet or exercise or genes or the region where Roseto was situated. It had to be the Roseto itself. As Bruhn and Wolf walked around the town, they began to realize why. They looked at how the Rosetans visited each other, stopping to chat with each other in Italian on the street, or cooking for each other in their backyards. They learned about the extended family clans that underlay the town's social structure. They saw how many homes had three generations living under one roof, and how much respect grandparents commanded. They went to Mass at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church and saw the unifying and calming effect of the church. They counted twenty-two separate civic organizations in a town of just under 2000 people. They picked up on the particular egalitarian ethos of the town, that discouraged the wealthy from flaunting their success and helped the unsuccessful obscure their failures. In transplanting the paesani culture of southern Italy to the hills of eastern Pennsylvania the Rosetans had created a powerful, protective social structure capable of insulating them from the pressures of the modern world. The Rosetans were healthy because of where they were from, because of the world they had created for themselves in their tiny little town in the hills. "I remember going to Roseto for the first time, and you'd see three generational family meals, all the bakeries, the people walking up and down the street, sitting on their porches talking to each other, the blouse mills where the women worked during the day, while the men worked in the slate quarries," Bruhn said. "It was magical."' [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/books/chapters/chapter-outliers.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/books/chapters/chapter-out...
  - meric 12y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roseto_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roseto_effect Wow, that is patriarchal oppression and stifling familial roles.
    - b6 12y ago
      I see the part I think you're talking about, but actually, it does not say that there was any oppression or that anyone was stifled.
    - 12y ago
- coldtea 12y ago
  >This is probably true and helps a lot. But who created the statistics? The pension system there is widely misused. People keep their death parents "alive" on paper to receive their pension for many years. It was so widespread and the loss so great in Creek (and some other EU countries) that the European Union intervened. That's actually BS based on urban legends (and inflated by the Greek government at the time for political reasons). On actual life, this involved a small number, in the hundends, (literaly around 400-500 cases) of people using false certificates for stuff like disabillity pensions which happened in a specific prefecture. Most of those instances were about bending the law to cover some poor person with pension that didn't really qualify for, but couldn't get any other way (e.g. getting a "blind man disability pension" to some seeing old man who without that would have become homeless or be unable to pay for his healtcare). In cultures were such social help is valued above legality, this is something that happens, exploiting laws or holes in the law, etc. Of course this bending is counted as "corruption" (the same way that turning a blind eye in a poor families use of electricity when they don't pay their power company bill would), but its impact is negligible and is mostly a way to short-circuit ineffective social care policies in small societies. For actual corruption we have far better (and more impactful) examples in the higher echelons. It wasn't legal, but it wasn't a "get rich quick scheme" either -- and it was far from "widespread" nor was the loss "so great". If we're talking Amdahl's law this is insignificant as far as the debt is concerned - but being a nice example against Greek corruption in general, it was blown out of proportion and used as an representative example. Don't believe the hype. The same way the right wing blows some non-representative cases of people getting welfare in the US out of proportion. In any case, Ikaria, the island in TFA, is not one of those places.
  - sotiris-k 12y ago
    I'm glad that at least you didn't get downvoted to hell based on some BS articles like I did.
petercooper 12y ago
I don't know if his story checks out, but I was intrigued by the idea of cancers going away on their own, as if they were a typical illness. It turns out, sometimes they do: http://bigthink.com/videos/can-cancer-cure-itself-4 http://bigthink.com/videos/can-cancer-cure-itself-4 - and even weirder (to me), many cancers are self limited in nature and more harmful to treat than just leave in place: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/health/cancer-screening-may-be-more-popular-than-useful.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/health/cancer-screening-ma...
- eru 12y ago
  Isn't that what they call a benign tumour?
  - XorNot 12y ago
    Seriously, cancer is not 1 disease.
  - petercooper 12y ago
    However, benign tumors are not cancerous. While 'cancer' is often used interchangeably with 'tumor', I was referring to malignant tumors as it's common knowledge benign tumors can lay dormant. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/benigntumors.html http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/benigntumors.html
- thret 12y ago
  Doyle Brunson is one particularly famous person who had his cancer just vanish (this is mentioned in the intro to Super System 2). It does happen, either through initial mis-diagnoses or some other mechanism.
- refurb 12y ago
  This actually happened to my grandfather. He had skin cancer (likely basal cell carcinoma). He was quite old and decided not to treat the cancer. It grew quite large, then scabbed over and fell off. The skin healed up and he was cancer free. Apparently it happens relatively often with some cancers.
Stratoscope 12y ago
Olives, hummus, and sourdough bread. Herbal teas, coffee and wine. Goat's milk and honey. Wild greens, beans, and olive oil. Work in the fields, gathering it all. A nap in the afternoon, and plenty of sex. This is a recipe for a long life.
- thret 12y ago
  Also happiness!
  - skriticos2 12y ago
    I think that's also on the list of requirements (for living to an old age). And peace of mind.
- chongli 12y ago
  Don't forget lots of socializing and a tight-knit community. And a lack of access to commercial processed foods. Temptation is a powerful thing!
  - sotiris-k 12y ago
    socializing is not part of the recipe. There are plenty of monks who live a life of solidute but follow the recipe above and still live to tell the tale
EarthLaunch 12y ago
> It’s easy to get enough rest if no one else wakes up early and the village goes dead during afternoon naptime. It helps that the cheapest, most accessible foods are also the most healthful — and that your ancestors have spent centuries developing ways to make them taste good. It’s hard to get through the day in Ikaria without walking up 20 hills. You’re not likely to ever feel the existential pain of not belonging or even the simple stress of arriving late. Your community makes sure you’ll always have something to eat, but peer pressure will get you to contribute something too. You’re going to grow a garden, because that’s what your parents did, and that’s what your neighbors are doing. Great article. This importance of pervasive cultural factors was the key insight for me. I follow an unusual diet that happens to consist of 100% unprocessed foods. I allow myself to sleep when I'm tired. I live somewhere I can enjoy long walks and other fun exercise. I'm never late because I don't set schedules. > In the United States, you can’t go to a movie, walk through the airport or buy cough medicine without being routed through a gantlet of candy bars, salty snacks and sugar-sweetened beverages. The processed-food industry spends more than $4 billion a year tempting us to eat. How do you combat that? Discipline is a good thing, but discipline is a muscle that fatigues. Sooner or later, most people cave in to relentless temptation. This is the trouble with following a different lifestyle; almost every aspect of it conflicts with modern culture. Buying vegetables at a store, there's tasty frozen pizza across the isle. Going out with friends, for variety and a normal social atmosphere, modern-influenced food is the only option. Walk into a gas station and there's the chips. Look at cat pics on the internet and there's pictures of beer and bacon. Everyone wants to set a schedule, out of habit if not the belief that stress increases productivity. People call to talk late at night. Even after forming good habits, every instance of conflict with the culture requires some willpower, and socially, each requires an explanation. The only way I've succeeded is when living a more isolated lifestyle, somewhere remote. That leaves out cultural enjoyment and reinforcement.
- rwmj 12y ago
  Not sure how you can describe frozen pizza as "tasty". I would never want to eat a frozen pizza through choice.
  - 12y ago
calcsam 12y ago
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4692598 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4692598
chroma 12y ago
Let's assume every claim in this article is true. Let's say that if you follow a certain diet, move to a certain island, make certain friends, and have certain genes, you will live to the age of 100. So what? Best case, you get an extra decade or two of life. This may seem amazing, but to be honest, it's ineffectual life. This extra time will be spent being old. Whether you're 70 or 100, you will be frail, dim-witted[1], and unattractive. If you doubt this, consider that practically any old person would be willing to give up all of their material possessions to inhabit the body of a 20 year-old. The real solution is not to extend natural human life by a fraction. The real solution is to make frailty and death voluntary. If this achievement seems ridiculous, remember how many technologies were once placed in the same category of improbability. To someone from a couple centuries ago, antibiotics would be witchcraft. While I recognize that such disruptions would cause chaos and unrest, I also recognize that the current "solution" is far worse. In fact, it is reprehensible. On average, over 100,000 people die of aging every day. Whatever benefits aging may create, the costs are far worse. To put it concretely: imagine a Boxing Day tsunami happening every two days. That is what aging does to humanity right now. Imagine the sun flickering once a second. A human being dies more often than that. To accept this is obscene. It is is immoral. It is insane. And yet, most people do. Shame on us. 1. If you doubt that cognition declines as one ages, please read When does age-related cognitive decline begin? (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2683339/pdf/nihms104392.pdf http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2683339/pdf/nihm...). If you aren't willing to read the paper, at least view the figures on pages 11 & 12. Edit: I am amused by the replies speculating about my age. Even if I was young, how does that refute my arguments? At the risk of revealing my identity: I'm halfway through a typical human life. My values have shifted since I was young, but my disapproval of aging hasn't changed. Ever since I realized that people died through no fault of their own, I've been against it.
- jbb555 12y ago
  See if still think that you don't want an extra 20 years to live when you get to 70?
- kayoone 12y ago
  People accept it because it is how nature works. How many animals are slaughtered every second to support our lifestyles ? How many resources are extracted from the last corners of the earth to enable the lifes we have? Why isn't that immoral or insane ? You sound like a 25 year old who thinks he is too important to die and that we should fix nature to enable endless life. Isn't that immoral or insane ? It will eventually happen and i would probably take the chance as well, but i am also aware that it is a very narcissistic thing to wish for.
cLeEOGPw 12y ago
Who knew that being on vacation your whole life can increase longevity.
nspattak 12y ago
This story has come up around here in the past (and I also left a comment at the time :P ). To begin with, this is not a magic Lost/Avatar-kind of island! I am Greek from another island and I can confirm that Icaria is a very interesting place. However I think there are two aspects that are mistaken (even by me until recently). People are living a relaxed life but not a work free or "easy" life. They work hard and they live with less modern world amenities than most of us reading this article. The second (less important) is about the diet but this is a long discussion. IMO what they do lack is everyday stress and pressure from people around them. I also expect that there are other similar places around the world that I would like to meet.
- ff_ 12y ago
  As a Sardinian I totally agree with you: IMO too the magic ingredient is the lack of stress due to the strong community feeling. Surely the diet plays an important role, but for me that is not so important as the reason above. That said, it's a really good article, and now Icaria is in my places-to-visit-absolutely list.
thomasfl 12y ago
I want to become like Oscar Niemeyer when I get old. Niemeyer continued to create architecture even after he had passed the age of 100 years. Having his own office made it possible for him to work as much as he wanted. That's how I see myself as an old man, still designing software in an office where I can work as much as I want to. Tending vineyard on a greek Island is not for me.
JohnLen 12y ago
Interesting story. Worth reading though
staz 12y ago
Missing a (2012) . I knew I recognized the title. Very interesting article though.
agounaris 12y ago
If you haven't been to Icaria you cannot understand the article. It's the calmness, the lack of anxiety, the clean air and a stressless way of life...
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
JoeAltmaier 12y ago
Usually, in cases where people claim great age, its because they're using their parent's or grandparent's birth certificate.
sixQuarks 12y ago
The proliferation of co-working/co-living spaces is a positive trend I'm seeing that could lead to longer, happier lives. I'm hoping to see communities like this pop up all over the world - instead of everyone growing their gardens and vineyards, we'll be growing our startups or lifestyle businesses while being surrounded by a community of friends.
imgabe 12y ago
I wonder about these longevity clusters and whether they aren't just random. If you've read The Drunkard's Walk, (which I highly recommend by the way) there's a similar phenomenon with cancer clusters and the distribution of shells when the Germans were bombing London. In both cases people rushed to find some explanation for why the events happened in clusters like they did. What were the Germans trying to target? What's in the water/air that's causing cancer? But if you distribute things completely at random, you end up with the same sort of clusters purely by chance. So if everyone has a given percent chance of living to a certain age, and it's randomly distributed throughout the world, you'd expect that there would be some clusters where groups of people living a long time show up by chance. It's not quite that simple of course, because longevity isn't independent from one person to the next. e.g. if everyone in your family lives a really long time, there's a good chance you'll live a really long time too. But I'd be curious to see if these clusters happen at a greater incidence than one would expect them to randomly occur or if there's even some way to measure that.
- patal 12y ago
  I really enjoyed your argument. But why did you weaken it by reintroducing systematic cause: >> if everyone in your family lives a really long time, there's a good chance you'll live a really long time too This implies assumption of some sort of cause, which one would then expect to hold in other parts outside that cluster, too. Which I understood as: the island's longevity could be random -- but not really.
ha292 12y ago
The article glosses over the contribution of genetics by providing just one vague counterexample. However, see this http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0029848 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.... Very clear evidence in a wide study about the contribution of genetics.
- tokenadult 12y ago
  I spend a lot of time in a journal club discussing human behavior genetics with researchers who include researchers on extreme old age. That's a data-mining study, and would not impress other researchers in the field (or even get published in a better journal) without being replicated in an independent dataset. Spurious gene-correlation studies of this kind are a dime a dozen. Food for thought is that the heritability of longevity as discovered in twin studies is actually not particularly high.
arturmakly 12y ago
for me - the environment has a huge affect. utopia for me would be a distributed global community based in various exotic locations that are +50% self sufficient.. where everyone contributes to building social or eco progressive products, services, and biz models. with possibilities for virtual schooling ( for those w/kids )
codexjourneys 12y ago
So this formula seems to boil down to: - The lack of typical Western stress - The physical activity of walking on the island - The diet Stress is the demon. If Ikarians don't face the typical Western job/money/schedule-associated stress (and I'm not saying they don't face other stress like family or social pressure), that's a huge advantage for them. Physical activity also has been shown as a major differentiator. People who walk more than 7,000 steps daily have lower cardiovascular mortality (http://www.athleteinme.com/ArticleView.aspx?id=296 http://www.athleteinme.com/ArticleView.aspx?id=296). As a bonus, they are all getting enough Vitamin D from walking around in the sun. I'm sure the diet helps, but it's probably a supporting factor.
kazinator 12y ago
Is it the island which causes longevity? Or is it that the island is only suitable for hardy, independent old people who are prone to achieving longevity? You'd have to see the data beneath the surface: have all those old people lived on that island all their lives, or did they come from elsewhere to retire there? How about islanders who move away and retire elsewhere, and who don't live that long? Is it because they moved away from the island of longevity? Or did they move away because it wasn't suitable for them to live (like that, for instance, they couldn't sustain the agricultural work due to health problems?) Suppose someone moves away from the island at 75, because he or she requires care and there is nobody there (the kids and grandkids live elsewhere). Suppose that this person then dies half a year later, now a resident of another city or region. Will that death still be counted against the island so that it drags down its longevity average?

150 points by ridgewell 12y ago

frik 12y ago

As the side note says: "The key to Ikarian longevity is not simply a healthful diet; daily socializing may be just as crucial." And taking a daily nap and drink vine. This is probably true and helps a lot. But who created the statistics? The pension system there is widely misused. People keep their death parents "alive" on paper to receive their pension for many years. It was so widespread and the loss so great in Creek (and some other EU countries) that the European Union intervened.

sotirisk 12y ago
And where have you read about this "widely misused pension system"? I am Greek and I can asure you that this is another one of the "rumors" floating around about Greece which, as all rumors, is a blatant lie. In fact, the pension system in Greece has been following the European standards since at least 10 years. I am so sick and tired of outsiders spewing nonsense all of the internet about Greece without knowing any real fact.
- castell 12y ago
  No rumors, the source are the Greek Labour Ministry and the European Union. Search for "greek pension abuse" on Google: * Greece pulls the plug on pensions for the dead (Apr 25, 2012): http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/25/greece-benefits-idUSL6E8FP4R320120425 http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/25/greece-benefits-id... * 2% of Greek population abuse pension system (26 Apr, 2012): https://www.devere-group.com/news/Greek-population-abuse-pension-system.aspx https://www.devere-group.com/news/Greek-population-abuse-pen... * Greece Still Paying Dead Pensioners (Aug 17, 2013): http://greece.greekreporter.com/2013/08/17/greece-still-paying-dead-pensioners/ http://greece.greekreporter.com/2013/08/17/greece-still-payi... * New Greek finance sham: 120,000 families claiming 'ghost pensions' for relatives who died years ago (12 October 2011): http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2048385/Greek-finance-sham-120k-families-claiming-ghost-pensions.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2048385/Greek-financ...
  - coldtea 12y ago
    If you read the articles -- and if you follow the proceedings in Greece, this is linkbaity headlines. Title: "120,000 families claiming 'ghost pensions' for relatives who died years ago" Actual content: "Greece has halted welfare or pension payments to 200,000 people either because they are unentitled to the money - or because they are dead, a Labour Ministry official said on Wednesday." Not that the 200.000 number includes all pensions under examination -- and most of those were found to be absolutely OK in subsequent checks. So, first the "dead getting pensions" were far from "120,000" (more close to a few thousands -- and of those "dead cases" most were recent deaths of a few months were the reported death wasn't yet registered (the bureacracy is chaotic). The final tally was some 40.000 problematic pensions (which in a huge messy bureacracy like Greece includes pensions missing a few supporting documents, having 1% less "pension credits" than needed, etc), and around 2.500 cases of "dead pensioners". Moreover, of those "dead pensioners" most were cases of people who died with no relatives etc and weren't declared to stop the pension being deposited. Of the 35 million euros deposited to dead pensioners, the state found that the 21 million euros were such and reclaimed it immediately ( http://www.enet.gr/?i=news.el.article&id=380165 http://www.enet.gr/?i=news.el.article&id=380165 ). The rest could be actual fraud cases. Not as impressive as the BS baity headlines that preceded the investigation one year before. The government merely wanted to give an impression of wide corruption, in order to sweeten the passage of some anti-pension laws.
- makeitsuckless 12y ago
  There are no European standards for pension systems. It's typically one of those things that hasn't been unified. Both the pension fraud and the early retirement age in Greece where hotly debated and well documented topics, not "rumors". I think the problem here lies in the different cultural perception of the phrase "widely misused". For Greek values, 1% is a bureaucratic rounding error. For North European values it's sign of massive corruption.
visakanv 12y ago
That sounds identical to the opening chapter of Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers! [1] 'What Wolf slowly realized was that the secret of Roseto wasn't diet or exercise or genes or the region where Roseto was situated. It had to be the Roseto itself. As Bruhn and Wolf walked around the town, they began to realize why. They looked at how the Rosetans visited each other, stopping to chat with each other in Italian on the street, or cooking for each other in their backyards. They learned about the extended family clans that underlay the town's social structure. They saw how many homes had three generations living under one roof, and how much respect grandparents commanded. They went to Mass at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church and saw the unifying and calming effect of the church. They counted twenty-two separate civic organizations in a town of just under 2000 people. They picked up on the particular egalitarian ethos of the town, that discouraged the wealthy from flaunting their success and helped the unsuccessful obscure their failures. In transplanting the paesani culture of southern Italy to the hills of eastern Pennsylvania the Rosetans had created a powerful, protective social structure capable of insulating them from the pressures of the modern world. The Rosetans were healthy because of where they were from, because of the world they had created for themselves in their tiny little town in the hills. "I remember going to Roseto for the first time, and you'd see three generational family meals, all the bakeries, the people walking up and down the street, sitting on their porches talking to each other, the blouse mills where the women worked during the day, while the men worked in the slate quarries," Bruhn said. "It was magical."' [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/books/chapters/chapter-outliers.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/books/chapters/chapter-out...
- meric 12y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roseto_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roseto_effect Wow, that is patriarchal oppression and stifling familial roles.
  - b6 12y ago
    I see the part I think you're talking about, but actually, it does not say that there was any oppression or that anyone was stifled.
  - 12y ago
coldtea 12y ago
>This is probably true and helps a lot. But who created the statistics? The pension system there is widely misused. People keep their death parents "alive" on paper to receive their pension for many years. It was so widespread and the loss so great in Creek (and some other EU countries) that the European Union intervened. That's actually BS based on urban legends (and inflated by the Greek government at the time for political reasons). On actual life, this involved a small number, in the hundends, (literaly around 400-500 cases) of people using false certificates for stuff like disabillity pensions which happened in a specific prefecture. Most of those instances were about bending the law to cover some poor person with pension that didn't really qualify for, but couldn't get any other way (e.g. getting a "blind man disability pension" to some seeing old man who without that would have become homeless or be unable to pay for his healtcare). In cultures were such social help is valued above legality, this is something that happens, exploiting laws or holes in the law, etc. Of course this bending is counted as "corruption" (the same way that turning a blind eye in a poor families use of electricity when they don't pay their power company bill would), but its impact is negligible and is mostly a way to short-circuit ineffective social care policies in small societies. For actual corruption we have far better (and more impactful) examples in the higher echelons. It wasn't legal, but it wasn't a "get rich quick scheme" either -- and it was far from "widespread" nor was the loss "so great". If we're talking Amdahl's law this is insignificant as far as the debt is concerned - but being a nice example against Greek corruption in general, it was blown out of proportion and used as an representative example. Don't believe the hype. The same way the right wing blows some non-representative cases of people getting welfare in the US out of proportion. In any case, Ikaria, the island in TFA, is not one of those places.
- sotiris-k 12y ago
  I'm glad that at least you didn't get downvoted to hell based on some BS articles like I did.

petercooper 12y ago

I don't know if his story checks out, but I was intrigued by the idea of cancers going away on their own, as if they were a typical illness. It turns out, sometimes they do: http://bigthink.com/videos/can-cancer-cure-itself-4 http://bigthink.com/videos/can-cancer-cure-itself-4 - and even weirder (to me), many cancers are self limited in nature and more harmful to treat than just leave in place: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/health/cancer-screening-may-be-more-popular-than-useful.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/health/cancer-screening-ma...

eru 12y ago
Isn't that what they call a benign tumour?
- XorNot 12y ago
  Seriously, cancer is not 1 disease.
- petercooper 12y ago
  However, benign tumors are not cancerous. While 'cancer' is often used interchangeably with 'tumor', I was referring to malignant tumors as it's common knowledge benign tumors can lay dormant. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/benigntumors.html http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/benigntumors.html
thret 12y ago
Doyle Brunson is one particularly famous person who had his cancer just vanish (this is mentioned in the intro to Super System 2). It does happen, either through initial mis-diagnoses or some other mechanism.
refurb 12y ago
This actually happened to my grandfather. He had skin cancer (likely basal cell carcinoma). He was quite old and decided not to treat the cancer. It grew quite large, then scabbed over and fell off. The skin healed up and he was cancer free. Apparently it happens relatively often with some cancers.

Stratoscope 12y ago

Olives, hummus, and sourdough bread. Herbal teas, coffee and wine. Goat's milk and honey. Wild greens, beans, and olive oil. Work in the fields, gathering it all. A nap in the afternoon, and plenty of sex. This is a recipe for a long life.

thret 12y ago
Also happiness!
- skriticos2 12y ago
  I think that's also on the list of requirements (for living to an old age). And peace of mind.
chongli 12y ago
Don't forget lots of socializing and a tight-knit community. And a lack of access to commercial processed foods. Temptation is a powerful thing!
- sotiris-k 12y ago
  socializing is not part of the recipe. There are plenty of monks who live a life of solidute but follow the recipe above and still live to tell the tale

EarthLaunch 12y ago

> It’s easy to get enough rest if no one else wakes up early and the village goes dead during afternoon naptime. It helps that the cheapest, most accessible foods are also the most healthful — and that your ancestors have spent centuries developing ways to make them taste good. It’s hard to get through the day in Ikaria without walking up 20 hills. You’re not likely to ever feel the existential pain of not belonging or even the simple stress of arriving late. Your community makes sure you’ll always have something to eat, but peer pressure will get you to contribute something too. You’re going to grow a garden, because that’s what your parents did, and that’s what your neighbors are doing. Great article. This importance of pervasive cultural factors was the key insight for me. I follow an unusual diet that happens to consist of 100% unprocessed foods. I allow myself to sleep when I'm tired. I live somewhere I can enjoy long walks and other fun exercise. I'm never late because I don't set schedules. > In the United States, you can’t go to a movie, walk through the airport or buy cough medicine without being routed through a gantlet of candy bars, salty snacks and sugar-sweetened beverages. The processed-food industry spends more than $4 billion a year tempting us to eat. How do you combat that? Discipline is a good thing, but discipline is a muscle that fatigues. Sooner or later, most people cave in to relentless temptation. This is the trouble with following a different lifestyle; almost every aspect of it conflicts with modern culture. Buying vegetables at a store, there's tasty frozen pizza across the isle. Going out with friends, for variety and a normal social atmosphere, modern-influenced food is the only option. Walk into a gas station and there's the chips. Look at cat pics on the internet and there's pictures of beer and bacon. Everyone wants to set a schedule, out of habit if not the belief that stress increases productivity. People call to talk late at night. Even after forming good habits, every instance of conflict with the culture requires some willpower, and socially, each requires an explanation. The only way I've succeeded is when living a more isolated lifestyle, somewhere remote. That leaves out cultural enjoyment and reinforcement.

rwmj 12y ago
Not sure how you can describe frozen pizza as "tasty". I would never want to eat a frozen pizza through choice.
- 12y ago

calcsam 12y ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4692598 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4692598

chroma 12y ago

Let's assume every claim in this article is true. Let's say that if you follow a certain diet, move to a certain island, make certain friends, and have certain genes, you will live to the age of 100. So what? Best case, you get an extra decade or two of life. This may seem amazing, but to be honest, it's ineffectual life. This extra time will be spent being old. Whether you're 70 or 100, you will be frail, dim-witted[1], and unattractive. If you doubt this, consider that practically any old person would be willing to give up all of their material possessions to inhabit the body of a 20 year-old. The real solution is not to extend natural human life by a fraction. The real solution is to make frailty and death voluntary. If this achievement seems ridiculous, remember how many technologies were once placed in the same category of improbability. To someone from a couple centuries ago, antibiotics would be witchcraft. While I recognize that such disruptions would cause chaos and unrest, I also recognize that the current "solution" is far worse. In fact, it is reprehensible. On average, over 100,000 people die of aging every day. Whatever benefits aging may create, the costs are far worse. To put it concretely: imagine a Boxing Day tsunami happening every two days. That is what aging does to humanity right now. Imagine the sun flickering once a second. A human being dies more often than that. To accept this is obscene. It is is immoral. It is insane. And yet, most people do. Shame on us. 1. If you doubt that cognition declines as one ages, please read When does age-related cognitive decline begin? (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2683339/pdf/nihms104392.pdf http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2683339/pdf/nihm...). If you aren't willing to read the paper, at least view the figures on pages 11 & 12. Edit: I am amused by the replies speculating about my age. Even if I was young, how does that refute my arguments? At the risk of revealing my identity: I'm halfway through a typical human life. My values have shifted since I was young, but my disapproval of aging hasn't changed. Ever since I realized that people died through no fault of their own, I've been against it.

jbb555 12y ago
See if still think that you don't want an extra 20 years to live when you get to 70?
kayoone 12y ago
People accept it because it is how nature works. How many animals are slaughtered every second to support our lifestyles ? How many resources are extracted from the last corners of the earth to enable the lifes we have? Why isn't that immoral or insane ? You sound like a 25 year old who thinks he is too important to die and that we should fix nature to enable endless life. Isn't that immoral or insane ? It will eventually happen and i would probably take the chance as well, but i am also aware that it is a very narcissistic thing to wish for.

cLeEOGPw 12y ago

Who knew that being on vacation your whole life can increase longevity.

nspattak 12y ago

This story has come up around here in the past (and I also left a comment at the time :P ). To begin with, this is not a magic Lost/Avatar-kind of island! I am Greek from another island and I can confirm that Icaria is a very interesting place. However I think there are two aspects that are mistaken (even by me until recently). People are living a relaxed life but not a work free or "easy" life. They work hard and they live with less modern world amenities than most of us reading this article. The second (less important) is about the diet but this is a long discussion. IMO what they do lack is everyday stress and pressure from people around them. I also expect that there are other similar places around the world that I would like to meet.

ff_ 12y ago
As a Sardinian I totally agree with you: IMO too the magic ingredient is the lack of stress due to the strong community feeling. Surely the diet plays an important role, but for me that is not so important as the reason above. That said, it's a really good article, and now Icaria is in my places-to-visit-absolutely list.

thomasfl 12y ago

I want to become like Oscar Niemeyer when I get old. Niemeyer continued to create architecture even after he had passed the age of 100 years. Having his own office made it possible for him to work as much as he wanted. That's how I see myself as an old man, still designing software in an office where I can work as much as I want to. Tending vineyard on a greek Island is not for me.

JohnLen 12y ago

Interesting story. Worth reading though

staz 12y ago

Missing a (2012) . I knew I recognized the title. Very interesting article though.

agounaris 12y ago

If you haven't been to Icaria you cannot understand the article. It's the calmness, the lack of anxiety, the clean air and a stressless way of life...

deleted 12y ago

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JoeAltmaier 12y ago

Usually, in cases where people claim great age, its because they're using their parent's or grandparent's birth certificate.

sixQuarks 12y ago

The proliferation of co-working/co-living spaces is a positive trend I'm seeing that could lead to longer, happier lives. I'm hoping to see communities like this pop up all over the world - instead of everyone growing their gardens and vineyards, we'll be growing our startups or lifestyle businesses while being surrounded by a community of friends.

imgabe 12y ago

I wonder about these longevity clusters and whether they aren't just random. If you've read The Drunkard's Walk, (which I highly recommend by the way) there's a similar phenomenon with cancer clusters and the distribution of shells when the Germans were bombing London. In both cases people rushed to find some explanation for why the events happened in clusters like they did. What were the Germans trying to target? What's in the water/air that's causing cancer? But if you distribute things completely at random, you end up with the same sort of clusters purely by chance. So if everyone has a given percent chance of living to a certain age, and it's randomly distributed throughout the world, you'd expect that there would be some clusters where groups of people living a long time show up by chance. It's not quite that simple of course, because longevity isn't independent from one person to the next. e.g. if everyone in your family lives a really long time, there's a good chance you'll live a really long time too. But I'd be curious to see if these clusters happen at a greater incidence than one would expect them to randomly occur or if there's even some way to measure that.

patal 12y ago
I really enjoyed your argument. But why did you weaken it by reintroducing systematic cause: >> if everyone in your family lives a really long time, there's a good chance you'll live a really long time too This implies assumption of some sort of cause, which one would then expect to hold in other parts outside that cluster, too. Which I understood as: the island's longevity could be random -- but not really.

ha292 12y ago

The article glosses over the contribution of genetics by providing just one vague counterexample. However, see this http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0029848 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.... Very clear evidence in a wide study about the contribution of genetics.

tokenadult 12y ago
I spend a lot of time in a journal club discussing human behavior genetics with researchers who include researchers on extreme old age. That's a data-mining study, and would not impress other researchers in the field (or even get published in a better journal) without being replicated in an independent dataset. Spurious gene-correlation studies of this kind are a dime a dozen. Food for thought is that the heritability of longevity as discovered in twin studies is actually not particularly high.

arturmakly 12y ago

for me - the environment has a huge affect. utopia for me would be a distributed global community based in various exotic locations that are +50% self sufficient.. where everyone contributes to building social or eco progressive products, services, and biz models. with possibilities for virtual schooling ( for those w/kids )

codexjourneys 12y ago

So this formula seems to boil down to: - The lack of typical Western stress - The physical activity of walking on the island - The diet Stress is the demon. If Ikarians don't face the typical Western job/money/schedule-associated stress (and I'm not saying they don't face other stress like family or social pressure), that's a huge advantage for them. Physical activity also has been shown as a major differentiator. People who walk more than 7,000 steps daily have lower cardiovascular mortality (http://www.athleteinme.com/ArticleView.aspx?id=296 http://www.athleteinme.com/ArticleView.aspx?id=296). As a bonus, they are all getting enough Vitamin D from walking around in the sun. I'm sure the diet helps, but it's probably a supporting factor.

kazinator 12y ago

Is it the island which causes longevity? Or is it that the island is only suitable for hardy, independent old people who are prone to achieving longevity? You'd have to see the data beneath the surface: have all those old people lived on that island all their lives, or did they come from elsewhere to retire there? How about islanders who move away and retire elsewhere, and who don't live that long? Is it because they moved away from the island of longevity? Or did they move away because it wasn't suitable for them to live (like that, for instance, they couldn't sustain the agricultural work due to health problems?) Suppose someone moves away from the island at 75, because he or she requires care and there is nobody there (the kids and grandkids live elsewhere). Suppose that this person then dies half a year later, now a resident of another city or region. Will that death still be counted against the island so that it drags down its longevity average?