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.- Women who have kids later in life (33+yo) have a higher likelihood of living longer. The researchers note there is no causality here, but that women who are capable of having children in their 30s (and beyond) just seem to live longer as well. [url]
- Being short is not generally a desirable trait, but how about when height inversely correlates with longevity? Several studies show that short people live longer than tall people, and there are some reasons for this correlation -- but don't amputate your feet just yet.... [url]
- 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. However, drinking more than 5 cups of coffee has diminishing returns, and the notable catch to this correlation is that non-coffee drinkers actually live longer than coffee lovers. [url]
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Filed Under: aging, causation, coffee, correlation, health, height, longevity
Reader Comments
The First Word
“They don't really, but it seems that way to the rest of us.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Cultural Mind Control
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?
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Re: Cultural Mind Control
Bone-headedness is not necessarily a curable disease.
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I hope you guys didn't take the scientology thing serious.
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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...
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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.
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Height and longevity
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.
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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.
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They don't really, but it seems that way to the rest of us.
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