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Japanese people may have gained longevity by balancing their diets

economist.com

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Re: Japanese people may have gained longevity by balancing their diets

#141

Post by ynfnehf »

marcyb5st wrote: post #129
chaosite wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an Israeli, are blood tests not a normal thing done everywhere? I did not realize that... My family doctor asks for a battery of lab tests about once a year (or whenever I get around to scheduling a check-up), including glucose and cholesterol and liver functions and so on. This has been going on since I was twenty something.

Not in my experience. I also lived in Sweden and UK. Blood tests are usually only a reactivate thing. You're sick you get blood tests. As prevention not as common I'm afraid.

The reason Sweden doesn't do regular health checks of the population is because there is no good scientific evidence that it has any effect. And that if a person feels healthy, they most likely are.

I think the similar reasoning is used in other countries.

If you can read swedish/use Google translate, this page explains it very clearly: https://www.1177.se/fragor--svar/nationellt/behandling--hjal...

Re: Japanese people may have gained longevity by balancing their diets

#142

Post by toshk »

ip26 wrote: post #29
thick wrote: post #14

I would sincerely like to get a breakdown of all the factors that contribute to the Japanese living to such an old age, rather than the usual "this one weird trick" bullshit that Economist and others try to swindle on the Western readership. It's quite frankly annoying, although I've lost the last ounce of respect I've had for the Economist years ago so I'm the idiot for expecting them to be any better. I've gone thr…

I think the short answer is quite simply nobody really knows . Your best bet IMO is to ignore genetics (can't change it), pick a "Blue Zone", and emulate what you can- within reason. This is something we still haven't solved, so the next best thing is to try to follow a proven playbook. You could call it cargo cult'ing, but until we crack the code it's the best we've got. Then you can sprinkle in rock-solid conventio…

Blue zones are pretty cherry picked to fit the narrative of the authors.

Re: Japanese people may have gained longevity by balancing their diets

#143

Post by esperent »

chaosite wrote: post #121
marcyb5st wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an Italian person (also our life expectancy is really good on average) this hits home. An anecdotal example: I now live in Switzerland and my current doctor was shocked when I ask to get some blood analysis without being sick. He believed that I lied to my insurance company and hid some pre-existing condition. In Italy, instead, it is pretty common that every couple of years you get a complete blood analysis just…

As an Israeli, are blood tests not a normal thing done everywhere? I did not realize that... My family doctor asks for a battery of lab tests about once a year (or whenever I get around to scheduling a check-up), including glucose and cholesterol and liver functions and so on. This has been going on since I was twenty something.

I'm Irish and never heard of someone getting one unless they were checking for something specific. However, I do know that regular health checks are recommended once you hit 45 or so. Not sure if that includes blood tests.

We're currently ranked 16th in the world for longevity, so I doubt regular blood checks is that important - at least, I remember reading previously that there's no evidence regular blood checks are actually useful unless you have an ongoing condition.

Re: Japanese people may have gained longevity by balancing their diets

#144

Post by dschuler »

marcyb5st wrote: post #105
euske wrote: post #47

What's not mentioned in the OP: - INSANE peer pressure. If you're skinny as a twig in the US, you're probably considered normal in Japan. If you're actually an obese person (again, in the US standard), people here wouldn't even look at you straight. This kind of environment put a huge pressure for one to stay in shape. - INSANE obsession for health. I hear that Americans are obsessed with health, but oh boy, have the…

As an Italian person (also our life expectancy is really good on average) this hits home. An anecdotal example: I now live in Switzerland and my current doctor was shocked when I ask to get some blood analysis without being sick. He believed that I lied to my insurance company and hid some pre-existing condition. In Italy, instead, it is pretty common that every couple of years you get a complete blood analysis just…

Does the cost of health insurance change in Switzerland with a pre-existing condition?

Re: Japanese people may have gained longevity by balancing their diets

#145

Post by astrange »

M5x7wI3CmbEem10 wrote: post #74
astrange wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eating “chemicals” designed to defend against nonhuman species isn’t going to be bad for you. That includes capsaicin and caffeine which are if anything healthy. There’s also the xenohormesis effect, if you believe in that, where small amounts of poison are good for your defenses.

I think they're talking about goitrogens.

Could be, but it sounded more like a naturalistic fallacy. Though lately people opposed to plants are upset about phytoestrogens turning them into women, which they don’t do, as far as I know.

Seed oils being bad may be correct, but I haven’t looked up specifically what’s supposedly bad about them.

Re: Japanese people may have gained longevity by balancing their diets

#146

Post by quietbritishjim »

hntrader wrote: post #133

As a non-expert, the thing that bugs me about the notion that varied diets are ideal is that hunter gatherers often didn't have varied diets. Quite the opposite. Also, having a diet that isn't varied is a way to naturally regulate hunger/ghrelin. I know we don't want to commit the naturalistic fallacy or anything like it, but it does give me pause given how little we know about the microbiome. Presumably, in human ev…

> hunter gatherers often didn't have varied diets

I am by no means an expert (not a great start to a comment I realise), but from what I've read about it (e.g. in Sapiens by Harari) hunter gathers typically did have a diverse diet. In fact it's hard to imagine they wouldn't. For a start, different foods obviously have different availibility with the seasons. And, as the name suggests, there was typically a hunter/gatherer split (along gender lines) and hunting has this very bimodal distribution of getting a big kill that lasts for days or getting nothing at all, so the balance between the two is very variable. As for the content of both what is gathered and what is hunted, that varies a lot due to both natural variation (a natural forest isn't just filled with a single type of tree) and desire for variation. The desire for variation presumably evolved from both the nutritional benefit of having a varied diet and the fragility of relying on a single food source - if you don't learn how to hunt more than one type of animal then you'll end up starving if their numbers dwindle (e.g. because you hunted them too much).

> coevolved with a microbiome that relied on a very homogeneous diet

... so this unlikely to start with.

Re: Japanese people may have gained longevity by balancing their diets

#147

Post by lhjn »

gillesjacobs wrote: post #137
lhjn wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotal data - as a Sardinia native, we do eat seafood, but to be honest around me at least that's at most a once a week practice. My grandpas, which lived to 96, 98 and 101, didn't eat much fish either. Lots of veggies though. One of my grandfathers died young due to a heart condition. All of them were regularly checking their health and doing regular blood tests. I can confirm we don't see getting tested as being…

Goes to show how important culture and religion can be in diet. Eating seafood instead of meat once a week, usually on Friday, is a widespread Christian practice called the Friday Fast. [1] In Europe, I know a lot of people that still stick to this practice even without practicing Christianity. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friday_Fast

Oh, there was some people following the Friday thing, but I've only heard about it during lent and not everyone is following it - it's quite going out of fashion esp with younger generations.

Re: Japanese people may have gained longevity by balancing their diets

#148

Post by hntrader »

quietbritishjim wrote: post #146
hntrader wrote: post #133

As a non-expert, the thing that bugs me about the notion that varied diets are ideal is that hunter gatherers often didn't have varied diets. Quite the opposite. Also, having a diet that isn't varied is a way to naturally regulate hunger/ghrelin. I know we don't want to commit the naturalistic fallacy or anything like it, but it does give me pause given how little we know about the microbiome. Presumably, in human ev…

> hunter gatherers often didn't have varied diets I am by no means an expert (not a great start to a comment I realise), but from what I've read about it (e.g. in Sapiens by Harari) hunter gathers typically did have a diverse diet. In fact it's hard to imagine they wouldn't. For a start, different foods obviously have different availibility with the seasons. And, as the name suggests, there was typically a hunter/gat…

Did he go through specific examples? The Hadza only eat five foods and have a diet that's significantly less varied that modern society. I'll see if I can find counter-examples.

However I will say, even though the Hadza only eat five foods, they eat everything in the animal including the organs, which definitely adds variation.

Re: Japanese people may have gained longevity by balancing their diets

#149

Post by glandium »

bobthepanda wrote: post #90
Torkel wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not correct. Before covid only people who felt like thay might have a cold or similar wore face masks, to reduce risk of infecting others. (This is my understanding after living there for one year and then travelling for a month every other year for ~20 years. I’m not native though so there may be some nuance to mask wearing I’m missing)

IIRC, I've also read that they consider it helpful for allergy season. Japan supposedly has one of the worst allergy seasons in the world due to misguided industrial policy around timber. TL,DR; After WWII Japan heavily incentivized reforestation to provide cheap domestic timber for industrial and defense purposes, but only with two types of trees, Japanese cedar and Japanese cypress. It turns out that even with this…

There's also Japanese Alder allergy. And various flowers. It's hell for people with multiple allergies because it can be all year round for them.

Re: Japanese people may have gained longevity by balancing their diets

#150

Post by lhjn »

marcyb5st wrote: post #132
lhjn wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotal data - as a Sardinia native, we do eat seafood, but to be honest around me at least that's at most a once a week practice. My grandpas, which lived to 96, 98 and 101, didn't eat much fish either. Lots of veggies though. One of my grandfathers died young due to a heart condition. All of them were regularly checking their health and doing regular blood tests. I can confirm we don't see getting tested as being…

Interesting! Some Friends from Sardinia told me that seafood is predominant in their diet! And of course, veggies.

I wouldn't say predominant, but certainly present! But we each represent a different set of connections, as I said, this kind of data is anecdotal ^^ I'd say i eat way more fish here in Japan than back in Sardinia.
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