The same thing has happened to this thing as happened to UFOs, cryptids, and religious miracles. The arrival of documentary techniques of the things led to a massive decline. People often bemoan the effect of the smartphone on attention. But have they considered the deleterious effect of 5G on magic?
I'm sure that's the case that there's a lot of poor record keeping, but just as an anecdote here, a family member who lived mostly independently and lucidly until the age of 102 was a regular wine drinker. When we celebrated his birthday it was with shots and multiple glasses. And there was definitely no error. His elderly children can attest to that, and he was born in a modern area with good record keeping.
He was no athlete but was tanned, slim and healthy, walked regularly. I do wonder if excessive athleticism can be a problem, maybe increasing the number of total heartbeats through constant strain, wearing out the heart early and overwhelming the benefits of exercise to the heart. Perhaps moderation is the key (that and getting lucky with the genes ofc ;) ).
If you exercise your resting heart rate will be lower, so athletic people have fewer total heart beats. However I'm not sure number of heart beats is a relevant metric to cardiovascular wear and tear.
yeah, as the other comment noted, I wondered if it was related to that "meme" of total heartbeats. regular exercise reducing total resting heartrate, but excessive exercise overwhelming that gain with excessive stresses and high rates. dunno. just random speculation, I have no expertise in this...
Blue zones are bullshit.
Pension fraud in Italy, records destroyed in Okinawa, basically every place with abnormal longevity has some other explanation.
I can't find it, but I read an article somewhere that many "blue zones" also had grossly skewed metrics due to public benefits fraud - relatives weren't reporting the family member's death so that they could continue to collect benefits checks.
The author claimed that once you corrected for this, the blue zones pretty much all disappeared.
>For example, despite vegetables and sweet potatoes being promoted as key components of the Okinawan ‘Blue Zone’ diets, according to the Japanese government, Okinawans eat the least vegetables and sweet potatoes in Japan and have the highest body mass index.
>Specifically, the Okinawans circa 1950 ate sweet potatoes for 849 grams of the total 1262 grams of food that they consumed, which constituted 69% of their total daily calories.[2]
>The traditional Okinawan diet as described above was widely practiced on the islands until about the 1960s.[2] Since then, dietary practices shifted towards Western and mainland Japanese patterns, with fat intake rising from about 6% to 27% of total caloric intake and the sweet potato being supplanted with rice and bread.[8]
>Okinawans ate three grams total of meat – including pork and poultry – per day, substantially less than the 11-gram average of Japanese as a whole in 1950.[2] The pig's feet, ears, and stomach were considered as everyday foodstuffs.[1] In 1979 after many years of Westernization, the quantity of pork consumption per person a year in Okinawa was 7.9 kg (17 lb), exceeding by about 50% that of the Japanese national average.[9]
>Since the early 2000s, the difference in life expectancy between Okinawan and mainland Japanese decreased, possibly due to Westernization and erosion of the traditional diet.[3][4] The spread of primarily American fast-food chains was linked with an increase in cardiovascular diseases, much like the ones noted in Japanese migrants to the United States.[3][4]
I think the wikipedia page on Jeanne Calment actually does a good job of debunking "revisionist" doubting of the record.
After consulting several experts, The Washington Post wrote that "statistically improbable is not the same thing as statistically impossible", that Novoselov and Zak's claims have been dismissed by the overwhelming majority of experts, and that those claims are "lacking, if not outright deficient". (the entire section is worth reading) [1]
That's a very weird way to spin it. The Wikipedia article misrepresents the situation (e.g. reporting that she "had correctly answered questions about things that her daughter could not have known first-hand" (which is irrelevant) and omitting the fact that some of the stories she told were true of the daughter but not of her, such as being walked to school by the maid).
She was almost certainly a fraud, but the Wikipedia mob doesn't want her debunked.
The most interesting thing there I think is the point that a DNA test could easily tell Jeanne Calment from the daughter who supposedly assumed her identity.
I think there are problems with modern longevity science. The OP's "A fundamental challenge that longevity gurus face is that what’s true is often boring, and what’s interesting often isn’t true" is plausible.
But it also seems like there's a tendency for debunkers to be too categorical. It should be kept in mind that anyone aged around 110 would have gone through a variety of age and other record systems. Moreover, it's quite possible exercise and special diet as such really really aren't that useful.
The same thing has happened to this thing as happened to UFOs, cryptids, and religious miracles. The arrival of documentary techniques of the things led to a massive decline. People often bemoan the effect of the smartphone on attention. But have they considered the deleterious effect of 5G on magic?
That was true up until generative AI. Now, we have a new problem of high-definition fakes being easy to produce.
I'm sure that's the case that there's a lot of poor record keeping, but just as an anecdote here, a family member who lived mostly independently and lucidly until the age of 102 was a regular wine drinker. When we celebrated his birthday it was with shots and multiple glasses. And there was definitely no error. His elderly children can attest to that, and he was born in a modern area with good record keeping.
He was no athlete but was tanned, slim and healthy, walked regularly. I do wonder if excessive athleticism can be a problem, maybe increasing the number of total heartbeats through constant strain, wearing out the heart early and overwhelming the benefits of exercise to the heart. Perhaps moderation is the key (that and getting lucky with the genes ofc ;) ).
> increasing the number of total heartbeats ... wearing out the heart early
this is a common meme [1]
[1] https://www.discovery.com/nature/almost-every-mammal-gets-ab...
If you exercise your resting heart rate will be lower, so athletic people have fewer total heart beats. However I'm not sure number of heart beats is a relevant metric to cardiovascular wear and tear.
yeah, as the other comment noted, I wondered if it was related to that "meme" of total heartbeats. regular exercise reducing total resting heartrate, but excessive exercise overwhelming that gain with excessive stresses and high rates. dunno. just random speculation, I have no expertise in this...
Blue zones are bullshit. Pension fraud in Italy, records destroyed in Okinawa, basically every place with abnormal longevity has some other explanation.
https://allthatsinteresting.com/blue-zones-supercentenarians
There was documentary about this in the 80's: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088933/
That was 2024 hot take read the rebuttal 2025 https://academic.oup.com/gerontologist/article/65/12/gnaf246...
I can't find it, but I read an article somewhere that many "blue zones" also had grossly skewed metrics due to public benefits fraud - relatives weren't reporting the family member's death so that they could continue to collect benefits checks.
The author claimed that once you corrected for this, the blue zones pretty much all disappeared.
Edit: found it [1]
[1] https://fortune.com/europe/2024/12/14/are-blue-zones-myth-ex...
“UCL demographer’s work debunking ‘Blue Zone’ regions of exceptional lifespans wins Ig Nobel prize”
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/news/2024/sep/ucl-demographers-wor...
“Supercentenarian and remarkable age records exhibit patterns indicative of clerical errors and pension fraud”
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/704080v3
>https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/news/2024/sep/ucl-demographers-wor...
>For example, despite vegetables and sweet potatoes being promoted as key components of the Okinawan ‘Blue Zone’ diets, according to the Japanese government, Okinawans eat the least vegetables and sweet potatoes in Japan and have the highest body mass index.
What a dishonest argument:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okinawa_diet
>Specifically, the Okinawans circa 1950 ate sweet potatoes for 849 grams of the total 1262 grams of food that they consumed, which constituted 69% of their total daily calories.[2]
>The traditional Okinawan diet as described above was widely practiced on the islands until about the 1960s.[2] Since then, dietary practices shifted towards Western and mainland Japanese patterns, with fat intake rising from about 6% to 27% of total caloric intake and the sweet potato being supplanted with rice and bread.[8]
>Okinawans ate three grams total of meat – including pork and poultry – per day, substantially less than the 11-gram average of Japanese as a whole in 1950.[2] The pig's feet, ears, and stomach were considered as everyday foodstuffs.[1] In 1979 after many years of Westernization, the quantity of pork consumption per person a year in Okinawa was 7.9 kg (17 lb), exceeding by about 50% that of the Japanese national average.[9]
>Since the early 2000s, the difference in life expectancy between Okinawan and mainland Japanese decreased, possibly due to Westernization and erosion of the traditional diet.[3][4] The spread of primarily American fast-food chains was linked with an increase in cardiovascular diseases, much like the ones noted in Japanese migrants to the United States.[3][4]
Yes, I read that too.
Frustratingly recent blue zone fans haven’t mentioned this deep critique.
People want to believe in blue zones so their confirmation bias is hiding the evidence to the contrary.
Ah, "the secret to longevity is pension fraud and poor record keeping".
I think the wikipedia page on Jeanne Calment actually does a good job of debunking "revisionist" doubting of the record.
After consulting several experts, The Washington Post wrote that "statistically improbable is not the same thing as statistically impossible", that Novoselov and Zak's claims have been dismissed by the overwhelming majority of experts, and that those claims are "lacking, if not outright deficient". (the entire section is worth reading) [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment#Controversy_reg...
That's a very weird way to spin it. The Wikipedia article misrepresents the situation (e.g. reporting that she "had correctly answered questions about things that her daughter could not have known first-hand" (which is irrelevant) and omitting the fact that some of the stories she told were true of the daughter but not of her, such as being walked to school by the maid).
She was almost certainly a fraud, but the Wikipedia mob doesn't want her debunked.
Citations? Wikipedia is full of them
The most interesting thing there I think is the point that a DNA test could easily tell Jeanne Calment from the daughter who supposedly assumed her identity.
> does a good job of debunking "revisionist" doubting of the record.
De-debunking? Bunking?
I think there are problems with modern longevity science. The OP's "A fundamental challenge that longevity gurus face is that what’s true is often boring, and what’s interesting often isn’t true" is plausible.
But it also seems like there's a tendency for debunkers to be too categorical. It should be kept in mind that anyone aged around 110 would have gone through a variety of age and other record systems. Moreover, it's quite possible exercise and special diet as such really really aren't that useful.
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