Comment by fnands
1 year ago
The real Blue Zones are the friends we made along the way.
The problem will always be that you need to find places that keep good records, and have done so for the last century.
What they set out to do was to find correlations between lifestyle and longevity, and what they ended up finding was a great tool for spotting pension fraud.
The levels of fraud aren't that rampant. Focusing on life expectancy in those regions still seems to have some valid correlation. It was a mistake from the beginning to try to focus on outliers (people living over 100).
Part of the research shows that when you drop the outliers these regions have a lower than average life expectancy.
Yeah, it does show that for some of the areas, but not others. The problem with these population studies is they do not give you answers, only new variables. In my view, the whole blue zone study is moot, at least in the way it is typically applied. What it does give us are new variables to study. Those smaller studied can control for variables that the population level cannot. They can also apply those studies to populations of different decent (genetics).
The glass of wine recommendation has had many studies done and the results are conflicting.
The eating guidelines like heavy in plants, mederteranian, eating to 80% full all have multiple studies showing benefits over the typical western diet and especially the typical American diet. It's a no brainer that if you want to live a long life you have a better chance of doing that if you have a reduced risk of heart attack, stroke, diabetes, etc.
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so no correlations between lifestyle and longevity? doubt
There are it's just the outlier blue zones where people are supposed to be reaching very hugh maximum ages at a surprising rate that are probably not real. There are still plenty of correlations between healthier lifestyles generally you just shouldn't attempt to live past 100 by emulating what people in an alleged blue zone do.
That is no way shape or form invalidates any actual link between lifestyle and longevity. It just means you can't simply assume that any given example of longevity, or data indicating longevity, must be due to lifestyle.
There is correlation (and maybe even causal relation) between lifestyle and longevity. It's just the lifestyle in those "Blue Zones" is not different from the lifestyle of surrounding areas (or as in Okinawa - gradient points in the wrong direction), so cannot serve as the sure way to longevity.
> what they ended up finding was a great tool for spotting pension fraud
I mean, that’s not nothing, y’know?
i mean there are studies that show good socialization leads to longer life expectancy so you're not wrong