All those really old Italians and Japanese? They're dead
5 simple tips that were claimed to add 10 years to your life
Living to over 100 has never been easier, ever since the discovery of the Blue Zones, almost 20 years ago. Thanks to the research of Dan Buettner and others, now we know that extending one’s longevity by an average of 10 years depends on adopting a relatively short list of practices which are quite attainable for the average person, and these are:
· Eating a plant-based diet, with a focus on beans. Eat meat very occasionally, in small amounts, for instance once a week. And don’t eat too much, with the emphasis on breakfast rather than supper.
· Drinking alcoholic beverages (including wine) in moderation.
· Incorporating movement into one’s daily life. No need for great exertions, or even for any exercise routine of any kind. Simply perform normal, tradition-honed tasks such as gardening, kneading dough, sweeping the floor and so forth.
· Being devoted to one’s family, prioritizing relationships, and respecting one’s elders.
· Finding meaning in life centered around religious traditions and rituals, and living in a community of like-minded people.
Buettner identified five parts of the world where people were living such natural and healthy lives, and ringed them on a map with a blue pen, hence the name “Blue Zones,” which stuck. The main blue zones are in Sardinia (Italy), Okinawa Prefecture (Japan), Nicoya (Costa Rica), Icaria (Greece), and Loma Linda (California). Some of the people he discovered in these zones were well over 100 years old, and some of the official records in these zones indicated that people were even living to 150 years of age.
If that sounds too hard to achieve, you can try being poor and unhealthy instead (?)
150? Well... it turns out that things weren’t as simple as Buettner thought. So much so that Dr. Saul Justin Newman of the Centre of Longitudinal Studies has just won the first-ever Ig Nobel prize in Demography for his work debunking Blue Zones.
Ig Nobel prizes have been awarded since 1991, to people who have conducted research that “makes people laugh, and then think.” Newman’s findings were certainly thought-provoking. Contrary to the conclusions drawn by Buettner, he found that residents of the Blue Zones were actually experiencing:
· Shorter life expectancy
· Worse health
· Higher poverty and low per-capita incomes
· Higher crime rates
They were also more likely to live in remote areas where there was an “absence of vital registration.”
The new Birther scandal
Newman compiled his findings in a study which catalogued “widespread fraud and error” in all parts of the world where, it was alleged, people were living to well beyond 100 years of age. In the United States, for instance, he found that not a single supercentenarian’s age could be proven with valid documentation.
Only 18% of ‘exhaustively’ validated supercentenarians have a birth certificate, falling to zero percent in the USA, and supercentenarian birthdates are concentrated on days divisible by five: a pattern indicative of widespread fraud and error.
He also noted that once birth certificates were introduced into a country, the number of people registered as supercentenarians dropped by between 69 and 82 percent.
All those old Italians? They're dead
If poverty, poor health, and low life expectancy seem curious factors to be correlated to longevity, that’s because they aren’t correlated with longevity — they’re correlated with age (and pension) fraud. Considering that pension fraud is no new phenomenon, it is curious that Buettner and all those who accepted his “findings” never thought to thoroughly check their data. Had they done so, they might have found articles such as one from Reuters, published in 1997, which described how,
The Italian Government has been paying disability pensions to 30,000 dead people, some of whom died years ago...
A disproportionate number of these “exceptionally old” pensioners were from Blue-Zone Sardinia.
Likewise, in Blue-Zone Nicoya, Costa Rica, more thorough research than that conducted by Buettner and others revealed that over 40 percent of Costa Ricans over the age of 100 had “mis-stated” their ages in a census conducted in 2000. Once this error was corrected, the blue of the zone faded right away.
Pension fraud based on inaccurate documentation was also shown to be responsible for Icaria’s Blue-Zone status.
When Daddy's a Mummy
In Japan, authorities were similarly taken aback to discover that their reputation for longevity, which they thought was well-deserved, was based largely on deception, sometimes of a quite gruesome form. In 2010 (again, long before the Blue Zone theory was discredited), the New York Times reported:
Japan has long boasted of having many of the world’s oldest people, testament, many here say, to a society with a superior diet and a commitment to its elderly that is unrivaled in the West.
That was before the police found the body of a man thought to be one of Japan’s oldest, at 111 years, mummified in his bed, dead for more than three decades. His daughter, now 81, hid his death to continue collecting his monthly pension payments, the police said.
Alarmed, local governments began sending teams to check on other elderly residents. What they found so far has been anything but encouraging...
Japan's oldest man 'hasn't been seen for 32 years'
Following a public outcry, Japanese officials announced that they would be attempting to meet with every single person whose records indicated that they were over the age of 110. It was not an easy task. Sometimes, they were rebuffed by family members who told them that the "elderly" person refused to meet with them. The 81-year-old daughter of Sogen Kato told officials that her father was elsewhere in Japan, "giving Buddhist sermons." Since the officials wanted to congratulate Kato for becoming Japan's oldest man (following the decease of the previous record-holder), they persisted, only to be told by his granddaughter that he "hadn't emerged from his bedroom since around 1978."
At the time of the NYT article, authorities had only succeeded in tracking down 281 Japanese over the age of 100, even though there were 234,354 people over the age of 100 listed in the records.
Newman’s research revealed that 77,118 of these supercentenarians were over the age of 120 and 884 were older than 150.
So much for Okinawa.
So, no need to eat your veggies after all?
But Okinawa turned out to be even more disappointing in the area of diet. Newman pointed out that in comparison with the rest of Japan, Okinawans actually ate less vegetables and sweet potatoes, which were supposedly part of the key to Blue-Zone longevity.
Did Californians, at least, eat lots of vegetables, almonds, and raisins, while soaking in the sun and getting lots of fresh air that made them live longer? Again it was a big disappointment. Loma Linda was just a place where birth records were unreliable. Once accurate documentation was introduced, it was no longer blue.
Still "Wanted: Elixir of Life"
Buettner may have meant well, and his findings (such as they were, given that he didn’t find too many actual people, but only records about people) did show something. However, he probably should have smelled a rat when considering evidence such as the following map (of Italy) which he published (and which was later republished by Newman):
It wasn’t ever particularly logical to conclude that one little part of an island, and not the other parts, should be significantly more blessed with longevity. Those who happily believed in Buettner’s findings may have gained if they chose to adopt his rules for a long life, as they are may be conducive to health and wellbeing. But as for an elixir, that is still wanting.
