DailyDirt: Correlations With Living Longer

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Lots of people say they'd like to live longer. So longevity has been studied extensively, and a vast number of correlations have been found. The list literally goes on and on and on. This doesn't mean anyone has discovered the cure for death, and these correlations often have no causation logic behind them whatsoever. Drink a glass of wine every day, eat no meat, restrict your calories drastically, and read some of these other correlations. If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.
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Filed Under: aging, causation, coffee, correlation, health, height, longevity


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  • icon
    Mason Wheeler (profile), 22 Jul 2014 @ 5:26pm

    The wine thing's been debunked. The line of reasoning originally went something like this:

    People in France tend to live longer.
    France is famous for its wine.
    Therefore, drinking wine helps you live longer.

    Then, armed with this certainty, people started searching for reasons to explain it, and eventually found a chemical in the skin of red grapes that serves as a natural antioxidant. Therefore, drinking red wine must be good for you.

    Then recently a few actual scientists went back and looked at the original premise, and they found something interesting: people in France don't actually drink very much wine at all; they export most of it. (Parallels to the Big Tobacco lawsuits of the 1990s immediately come to mind. Remember when it was revealed that not a single tobacco company CEO smoked?)

    It turns out that wine (or alcoholic beverages of any variety) have zero beneficial impact on your health, and plenty of negative impacts... which anyone with a shred of common sense could have told you before a bunch of nonsense masquerading as science got involved.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      John, 22 Jul 2014 @ 6:03pm

      Re:

      Mr. Wheeler: uh, what?

      For starters, France has one of the HIGHEST, if not THE highest, per capita rates of wine consumption in the world.

      Speaking as a healthcare practitioner, it is also false that alcohol consumption has no beneficial impact. Moderate consumption of alcohol has been correlated with lower risk of stroke, development and death from heart disease, and possibly prevent diabetes.

      You should think before you speak. You should do your homework as well.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • icon
        Mason Wheeler (profile), 23 Jul 2014 @ 11:00am

        Re: Re:

        I have done my homework. For example: the American Journal of Public Health reports that even moderate consumption of alcohol will take 17-19 years off your life and leads to much higher incidences of various mouth and throat cancers, as well as breast cancer. And the benefits you cite come from other things found in wine, because they're found in ordinary grape juice.

        link to this | view in chronology ]

        • icon
          John Fenderson (profile), 23 Jul 2014 @ 11:26am

          Re: Re: Re:

          "American Journal of Public Health reports that even moderate consumption of alcohol will take 17-19 years off your life"

          This is a mischaracterization of what the study says. The reduction in life expectancy you cite only applies to those who have developed an alcohol-related cancer, not to all people who consume alcohol. I didn't see if the study claimed percentage cancer increased by as a result of alcohol consumption, but it does claim that about 3.5% of all cancer deaths were from alcohol-related cancers.

          So all in all, the study is saying that a rather tiny percentage of people who drink will see the 17-19 year life expectancy reduction.

          link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 22 Jul 2014 @ 7:26pm

    Join Scientology , because, many people have certainty that they have lived lives prior to their current one. These are referred to as past lives, not as reincarnation. Past lives is not a dogma in Scientology, but generally Scientologists, during their auditing, experience a past life and then know for themselves that they have lived before. To believe one had a physical or other existence prior to the identity of the current body is not a new concept Live long and prosper ,again , and again, and again , oh and again ..see ya next lifetime tata for now .

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Anonymous Coward, 22 Jul 2014 @ 7:37pm

      Re:

      The fallacy that I see in the past lives concept is the growing population. Are there a bunch of extra lives out there waiting to be reborn or is it a lottery? Some lives get relived and the others wait there turn?

      Oh, any data on how many lives are in the reborning category vs the wait for the lottery category? Is there an endpoint to extra lives?

      Inquiring minds want to know.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        Anonymous Coward, 22 Jul 2014 @ 8:40pm

        Re: Re:

        I'm sorry but you you'll need to pop in more quarters for that answer, or if you go to the change machine you can get limited offer Scientology coins , but we'll be needing those back we do have a billion year contract that needs to signed , but the details are boring so just Sign here ___________, Here__________ and Here ___________ , we'll work out the details at a later date after all you'll be living for quite sometime.

        link to this | view in chronology ]

        • identicon
          Anonymous Anonymous Coward, 22 Jul 2014 @ 9:07pm

          Re: Re: Re:

          No problem.

          I am a cat, owned by a gentleman that goes by the name of Schrödinger. See ya soon...or not maybe...coins exist...coins not exist...just how does one tell...

          link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 22 Jul 2014 @ 8:15pm

      Re:

      PS
      I hope you guys didn't take the scientology thing serious.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Anonymous Coward, 22 Jul 2014 @ 8:05pm

    Cultural Mind Control

    "Several studies show that short people live longer than tall people, and there are some reasons for this correlation"

    Now wait a minute. Throughout my childhood my parents, my schools, and everything presented on 50's and 60's TV told me to grow up tall and strong.

    Talk about creating delusions. I could have not eaten those tortured brussel sprouts, or that broccoli cooked till gray, or the spinach that lacked even the basics of salt pepper and garlic, and flourished?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Anonymous Coward, 22 Jul 2014 @ 8:11pm

      Re: Cultural Mind Control

      Please, please, please, move the submit button to a really inconvenient, but noticeable place on the preview page, or move the preview button to a significantly different place on the preview page.

      Bone-headedness is not necessarily a curable disease.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Obero (profile), 23 Jul 2014 @ 2:05am

    May be womens can live but in this century is the increasing likelihood of a sick child birth. and you have to remember that.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    JoeCool (profile), 23 Jul 2014 @ 3:12pm

    Height and longevity

    FTFA: "Even if a couple of extra inches of height will increase your standing in the community, your IQ, and even your lifetime income, does that justify trading in years of your life?"

    When those extra years are spent in constant pain and misery, wearing diapers and taking twenty pills a day while living in a nursing home, I'd have to say yes, it DOES justify trading those years for living better during the period you can best appreciate the benefits.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    bobby b, 24 Jul 2014 @ 2:04am

    " . . . the women who are capable of having children in their 30s (and beyond) just seem to live longer as well."

    Well, yeah, but by the time you're able to note this, all of the dead 17, 18, 19, and twenty-something girls are . . . uh . . . well, dead, and so they can't keep having babies.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    bobby b, 24 Jul 2014 @ 2:08am

    "Serious coffee drinkers who ingest 4-5 cups of joe per day seem to live longer than people who drink just a cup or less."

    They don't really, but it seems that way to the rest of us.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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