Blue Zones, fact or fiction

[woods89]

I was going to say, that looks like a map of US poverty to my uneducated eye.

If I had to pick a category besides genetics that I'd imagine would determine someone's longevity, I'd bet it would be stress. The stress of poverty, and all its resultant behaviors (drug and alcohol abuse, poor sleep, fractured homes and dangerous communities, eating shitty, cheap, processed food) has to be monumental.

This is purely anecdotal, but my parents do housecleaning, and have a nice assortment of wealthy clients. All those resultant behaviors, with the exception of dangerous communities, perhaps, occur in the wealthy as well.
Poverty has many ills, but I don't think stress is a unique problem of the poor.

 

[MtnElk]

Looks like he did a Gen surg residency, does he cover how those 5 years for him were basically everything he’s saying not to do .

funny enough he does; I think its why I like his book so much - he talks about all the ways he has either not followed his own advice or how he changed his life based on his research

 

[MtnElk]

yo @MtnElk wanna hit up golden corral after North Fork 50k?

that said... there is a crazy good pizza place up there that also makes a mean old fashioned... neither of which we should normally eat, but post race would be perfect

 

[Hem]

How long do you REALLY want to live?
I eat peanuts every day but likely won't make it to Jimmy Carters age.
Ok with that

 

[rtraverdavis]

This is purely anecdotal, but my parents do housecleaning, and have a nice assortment of wealthy clients. All those resultant behaviors, with the exception of dangerous communities, perhaps, occur in the wealthy as well.
Poverty has many ills, but I don't think stress is a unique problem of the poor.

Totally fair point.

 

[fmnjr]

When equating healthy habits to longevity what do we do with Keith Richards and Willie Nelson?

Outliers

 

[fmnjr]

McDonald's would be healthier than the gas station food most of the guys I work around eat.

Methinks Gas, as in what your coworkers are producing, would be a concern for you

 

[nrpate05]

I watched some of the Blue Zone doc on Netflix. I think the host just chose what he wanted to and said "this is why people live so long." He went to Italy and talked to some ladies deep frying potatoes and cheese and then went to sheepherder and milked goats with them. His conclusion was that they lived so long because they ate minestrone soup. It bugs me that the guy now just talks about how important beans are and how meat is bad. There are so many other factors, weight, stress, drugs/alcohol, stress, access to healthcare.

I've got a family member who is a vegetarian. She is very overweight and eats lots of fast food and oreos.

I've also never seen anything about what people in blue zones do for work. Many seem to be farmers, sheepherders, etc. Would be interesting to hear more about this.

 

[Fire_9]

100% and that's generally where I fall.

But does that actually amount to anything tangible? And what are the tradeoffs? How many revolutionary ideas, or technologies, or art come from these places? Solving problems, big complex problems, doesn't generally happen without stress, or a shunning of many of these principles. Many of the greatest thinkers and problem solvers where obsessive to the detriment of many other aspects of life. Yet we all benefit from their achievements.

Or is all of that irrelevant. Who cares if we cure cancer if we're happier?

There's just so many tangents I can spin off on wondering, "...but!"


But so is much of the rest of the world, and honestly, as well as portions of America but many of those groups live a fraction as long (think rural Africa and the middle east, the artic).

So what's your definition of tangible? If a person has food, shelter, water, family and/or a strong community, what else do we truly need?

Do you think cancer would still be a thing if we lived a more natural lifestyle?

 

[noharleyyet]

Season 3, Episode 24

 

[Nick87]

Red Zone Habits

1. Become a certified forklift operator
2. Mc'dees fo life
3. Red meat is the only food group you need
4. Argue with people on the internet, there is no such thing as caring too much about crossbow hunting
5. Every man is in fact an island, if they step one inch on your property let the lead fly
6. Nicotine
7. The rat race is what makes this country great, stop that liberal talk

I feel like your looking directly at me.

Also I'd rather be dead next week than not eat red meat.

 

[SAJ-99]

View attachment 308983

As has been pointed out, that chart looks a lot like it's related to incomes (high overlay with reservations and rural south, so $$$), which leads to the consumption of cheaper processed foods, which are probably the real enemy. I have always suspected that the benefits of more or less red meat may be a matter of genetics, so I patiently wait for someone else to do the work on that.

BTW, you will pry the bacon from my cold dead hands.

 

[Irrelevant]

So what's your definition of tangible?

I don't know.

If a person has food, shelter, water, family and/or a strong community, what else do we truly need?

Great point, but what about a fishing pole? Elk Tag? WY elk tag?

Do you think cancer would still be a thing if we lived a more natural lifestyle?

Again, I don't know but I would suspect yes.

 

[Nameless Range]

Saw this shared and thought of this thread:

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2306.03009.pdf

Quoting Bjorn Lomborg, who shared it on social media:


New paper takes data on job, income, social benefits, education and health from 3m Danes over 2008-15 — and uses AI to predict their deaths before 2021 with 78% accuracy

Figure shows 2D projection of 280 dimensions of person-information space, with each individual a dot

The horseshoe at top left is the people the algorithm is very sure won't die (light hue)

Towards the bottom, it becomes less sure (smaller dots, hence the visual break), and towards the top right it gets very sure that people will die (dark hue)

The red dots are the actual dead people from 2016-20

Algorithm is right about most deaths

The few wrong red dots on the left are all hard-to-predict deaths like accidents and brain cancer