Posted by bookofjoe 20 hours ago
The secret to living to 110? Bad record-keeping, says Ig Nobel Prize winner.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2024/12/25/lifestyle/lifes...
Meanwhile he has an older sister who, while bedridden, is very much alive at 100.
I suppose the necessary medical breakthroughs happened in the second half of the 20th century, as no one, including the people in question, anticipated they would live this long. Grandma even stated in her will that my second oldest cousin would inherit the apartment - supposedly to have "a better start in life when she grows up". That was 30 years ago and my cousin's oldest child should be in high school now right now.
Seems like something similar could still be a problem here, although it seems less likely since the number here is significantly less than article I've linked.
In Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal he mentions that research shows that long life is not particularly heritable.
While longer lives may not be directly inheritable, shorter lives absolutely can be, good genetics does play a role to living long .
That, but also various factors during one's life - most importantly, ample and healthy food (especially during fetal growth, childhood and youth), a lack of exposure to known damaging factors for physical and mental health (smog, noise, tobacco, alcohol and other drugs), and a lack of wars and other forms of violence.
The top killers in the Western world are cardiovascular diseases (strongly linked to food) and cancers (strongly linked, again, to food but also to drugs). A safe working culture (both in business and in private) is also a good thing to have - the typical lackluster attitude towards workplace safety is a top cause of workplace accidents both fatal and non-fatal but serious.
Ancel Keys and his work on diet and longevity is pertinent to this article. He discovered that the people that lived the longest had a low saturated fat plant-based diet. This was to be found in the 'blue zones' around the world. This does not mean exclusively vegan, but getting that way.
Keys had to make some recommendations to the U.S. government and he went for the Mediterranean Diet rather than what they were eating in Okinawa. This was because the Second World War was fresh in people's memories at the time and telling Americans to eat like Japanese people was not going to be well-received advice at the time.
The Japanese diet has changed since the post-war years with the processed foods, animal products and saturated fats rather than what you might call a peasant diet. It is also the same with the Mediterranean Diet, which is not 'pizza, pasta, red wine and meat from imprisoned animals'.
Also important is that most Japanese live in walkable neighbourhoods. Japan is a cycling nation so cycling happens too, not this lycra + polystyrene hat cycling from the parking lot and back to the parking lot that passes for cycling in the West, but everyday cycling on bicycles that are designed for comfort and getting about in regular clothes.
We all like our fat, sugar, salt and motor cars, however, those that were deprived from these joys due to war do well in the longevity stakes.
I can tell you very easily why Japanese live longer than Americans, since I have spent abundant time in Japan.
It is unreal how much a good diet and walking everyday will change your entire life.
This is apparently weird even to Chinese people; an image of ramen with rice and roast dumplings on sides amounts to a ragebait to them(as well as to experts in cardiovascular systems), while it's nothing more than a common lunch menu to students and young workers in Japan.
But I digress - my point is, the real traditional Japanese meal is more like half a football worth of rice with vegetable flavored salt, quite unlike idealized modern interpretations thereof.
It is true that rice was always the prestige food consumed by the upper classes, and the peasantry ate rice too, but it was only one of the five staples (gokoku) and was often extended with other grains (mugigohan etc).
In contrast, people in East Asia started cultivating rice 9,000 years ago, and modern Japanese are probably mostly descended from these early rice farmers (who started out in China, then spread to Korea and then Japan) with a substantial contribution from another population called Jomon, which were already in Japan when the heavily-rice-dependent people started to arrive in Japan about 2,300 years ago and who lived mostly by hunting and gathering.
This is relevant because some people here are advocating for everyone to adopt a Japanese-like diet, which might not turn out so well for you unless most your ancestors have 8,000 or 9,000 years of experience getting most of their calories from grains.
This parallels China, where the warm, wet south is rice country but the colder, drier north grows other grains. The five grains (gokoku) idea is itself originally Chinese:
Car culture makes Americans fat and lazy. 40% of US adults are obese. 80% are overweight.
Walking and good food, yeah, that helps. But trains introduce short sprints into everyday life. It starts with "He's too late, he's never gonna catch it... well I'll be damned, he did it." and pretty soon, you're saying "We can catch it, just run!" Everyone on the train has a shopping bag, because trains don't have huge trunks like a car. You want groceries? Carry it. Good exercise. Trains also remove the road rage from your life, the daily stress of defensive driving in a fast moving freeway full of other angry drivers. Trains eliminate the premature death caused by road accidents which not only lower life expectancy directly, but indirectly as bread winners are taken from families. The car exhaust is gone too. Trains reshape how towns are built, with higher density and less parking. More walking! Everything mushrooms out from the decision to travel with trains. It's little wonder why Japan has the lowest obesity rate in the world.
The Japanese retirement attitude is "I've worked my ass off all my life. Contributing to the society all my life. Finally I have some time to spend on my hobbies! I should be active!" and they pick up quite active hobbies: if you go hiking mountains you'll see many old retired people with serious gears. Also still trains.
Contrast it to ime, western retirement which is more "finally I can relax" and people become sedentary. Hanging around in parks, cafe, or focus more on socializing and diet. And starts to rely more on cars and other senior services.
My father spends all day watching football or horses and has visibly started going senile.
If you'd like a more direct comparison to Japan, try Hong Kong, another place where I have spent a fair amount of time riding the trains. They also have world leading life expectancy.
Were you there when they were born, so that you can verify their true age?
On my mother's side, I was a little boy when I met my great-great grandmother who was already 90, and witnessed her living to, guess what, nearing that other age mentioned. And, again, there are records and photos going way back to when she was born.
At an old people's home nearby I got to know a gentleman for some years, he died this year at 99. Again there are records in numerous places documenting his age and where and when he was born (and he grew up nearby my grandfather's place). And at that same old people's home there's a vital lady who's 105, and, again, unless you believe all public documents and church records are fake, she's as real as it gets. She has a daughter who visits, she's in her seventies. That daughter has children of her own, and her children also have children.
It's when you get to all the 115-120 year olds in remote regions you start to see the fakes. And it's not difficult to spot when you look, the statistics are all skewed - unlike in places like most of Japan, just to get back to the original story.
My grandmother never knew her birthday, or her birth year. We just estimated, even though she was very much real.
Is this some kind of new math? 100 and 110 are within 10% of each other, which seems very much in the same ballpark to me.
Ie if you live to 100, you do not have 10% chance of living to 110.
Eg this study says:
"Three percent of females and 1% of males in the 2019 birth cohort, given age-specific mortality rates in that year, are projected to survive to 100 years old. Only 0.4% of females and 0.09% of males will survive to 105 years which is 10 times rarer than survival to 100. Survival to 110 years is 150 times rarer for females and 333 times rarer for males (0.02% for females, 0.003% for males) than living to 100. "
In the United States, supercentenarian status is predicted by the absence of vital registration. The state-specific introduction of birth certificates is associated with a 69-82% fall in the number of supercentenarian records. In Italy, England, and France, which have more uniform vital registration, remarkable longevity is instead predicted by poverty, low per capita incomes, shorter life expectancy, higher crime rates, worse health, higher deprivation, fewer 90+ year olds, and residence in remote, overseas, and colonial territories. In England and France, higher old-age poverty rates alone predict more than half of the regional variation in attaining a remarkable age. 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. Finally, the designated ‘blue zones’ of Sardinia, Okinawa, and Ikaria corresponded to regions with low incomes, low literacy, high crime rate and short life expectancy relative to their national average. As such, relative poverty and short lifespan constitute unexpected predictors of centenarian and supercentenarian status and support a primary role of fraud and error in generating remarkable human age records.
For example, Costa Rica, 42% of the centenarians in Costa Rica turned out to be lying about their age after the study was conducted. And once you corrected those errors, they went from world leading to, quote, near the bottom of the pack, in terms of late life expectancy. And so the question I have for those researchers is how do you explain that, for example, 82% of Japanese centenarians were missing or dead in your sample? And this wasn't discovered by demographers. This was discovered by the government of Japan.
[1] https://www.mprnews.org/episode/2024/09/25/the-secret-to-a-l...
After an hour in any town and I'd seen more 95+yos walking about than 10 years in Britain. And the number of times I saw 4 generations of men from one family in the bathhouse!
Hoping I live to something something something.
While there are a few people who seemed to be nearly immortal, as in "being around since forever", like the Queen Of England or recently deceased https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_Iliescu ... they didn't actually push past 100.
With all the care and life standard, seems to be a hard limit in our genes, so until something is done about that, better get realistic expectations.
He smoked only during WW2, was an army corp of engineers colonel when he retired from the military, came from a dirt farm in Michigan, engineered all kinds of civil and military projects. In the end, he still managed to engineer a smile. He absolutely loved maps/atlases/GIS.
I knew a woman that had 101 years when she died. She was vital until 99 or so, not even wearing glasses. She had a very hard life, including the fact that both her husband, only son died. So, I guess, luck is out of question for this case.
Its anybodies guess why she was living that long. Genetics for sure do not exist in vacuum and environment may activate or do nothing to your genes. You can also brute force specific genetic dissorders by taking copious amounts of vitamins.
People do live past 100.
Look at a chart of how old people are when they die and you’ll see a consistent distribution with a downward curve. There really are people in the tail of that curve.
There is no hard cutoff in the body that can precisely track time passed over 36,500 days and then shut it all down.
Many others lived past 100.
Last Civil War veteran: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Woolson another example.
As others have mentioned, social pressure plays a role in fitness, but there definitely is an abundance of unhealthy food. A previous generation may have had less unhealthy food options, so I'd be interested to see if this trend continues. All the greasy fast food chains exist here too and they are always packed.
What's less often discussed is that it's also Japan's poorest prefecture to this day, with spotty record keeping since it was effectively a Japanese colony (it was previously the Ryukyu Kingdom, which was annexed by Japan in 1879). Vast slabs of the main island were razed to the ground during the WW2 Battle of Okinawa and much of the civilian population simply starved to death.
(Greece commits a lot of pension fraud too)
Remember, the goal of marketing a diet is selling books. Books telling you to find, prepare and eat seaweed are a harder sell than books telling you to eat ingredients you're probably already cooking with (but maybe in different quantities) and use tools and techniques you're already familiar with.
Japan in particular is not food self sufficient and has a declining agricultural production so is not spending as much money on convincing people to export food. Plus technically a lot of Japanese food is not grown or caught in Japan and so can be made elsewhere using the same recipes.
Personally I obsessed about diet for a decade before I finally got religion about running for 30+ mins every day coming up on 2 years ago(I now typically run for more like an hour). It has made far more of an impact on my well being than any diet or fasting regimen… which, mind you,I was extremely strict about, like eating disorder levels of obsession. It has also made catching quality sleep a complete non-issue. I won’t lie, it took many months of consistency to feel these benefits, and I personally didn’t really see them when I was doing cardio only 3 times/120mins total per week on a bike and resistance training. My understanding is that this is probably a result of metabolic adaptation. Much the way I learned that the bacteria in your gut is a culture you grow and maintain, happy gut = happy me, I now think of my muscle mass as a crucial metabolic organ that needs to be properly conditioned for my bodies energy systems to function properly. Strong metabolism = little metabolic waste accumulating in your tissues and more of the machinery your body needs to work.
Unfortunately we live in a society where you have to make this a lifestyle, I personally find I have to keep my run very high on my list of personal priorities to stay consistent, as it is rather disruptive to my day. I have reflected that a lot of that is around cultural norms, so if this sort of routine was much more normalized it would be easier to integrate socially while still maintaining it. Sweaty people are only really annoying if you aren’t sweating with them. With how much sharper, more energetic, and emotionally regulated I feel, it amazes me that more employers don’t incentivize it-maybe someday.
That said, I’m in my mid 30s and I’ve never felt better in my life, so I’d say it’s worth while. I feel strong, faster, and much more durable, with virtually no pain and less illness/infection/inflammation than I had even in HS. Meanwhile my contemporaries are complaining of back and knee pain, frequent illness, poor sleep, dietary intolerance and out of control and appetite. They say, “I’m getting old” and I just shake my head.
I know it’s cliche as hell to say we were born to run, but seriously, our species almost certainly has an evolutionary legacy of running a lot, and I think many of us can tap into that legacy if we so desire.
In other words, it’s way easier to out diet a bad lifestyle than out lifestyle a bad diet, if your goal is to not be overweight. Obviously that doesn’t apply to all health metrics.
Depends on the person. If someone is eating such a large caloric excess and consuming highly processed calorie dense foods, changing diet is the only way out. You’re not going to out-exercise a 1000 calorie excess every day.
The average person might only be eating 200-300 calories more than their grandparents did, though. That’s actually within the range where you could overcome it with daily activity.
Really though, this isn’t a situation where you should pick or choose. Most people should be improving their diets and getting a little more activity.
I spend 4 hours on my phone every day per recent record. If I spend 2 of those outdoor then I'll have that 1000 calories.
It's realistically a choice.
I know this because I used to average 1500 active calories and around 2 hour of zone 2 training before my baby was born. Now I'm more time squeezed but looking at what I'm doing every day it's still a discipline issue. Getting back there though, goal is cracking 150 miles of running this month.
What is unrealistic is caloric deficit, that is unsustainable, not sure why people have such a hard time understanding that. It is never about deficit on the long run.
I'm on double serving most days for breakfast and dinner since I eat 2 meals a day - and insulin wise I think I'm just normal medically speaking.
But honestly these sentiments reflect my experience. When I bulk for muscle I will still get 5 miles of walking in daily on top of a cardio/strength workout and manage to still grow.
I've yet to hit a hiking season and gain weight tho, and those are the more interesting data points. Imagine eating 4k calories daily and still losing weight. 8 hours of trotting through mountain passes is a vibe
Most exercise in Japan takes the form of constant walking. You can walk from most homes to stores and restaurants, from many homes to train stations, from many workplaces to train stations, etc. For many Americans, the most walking they do is the walk from the door to the car.
It's substantially easier to build up a lot of time exercising by just walking as part of the things you do in daily life; a dedicated workout is generally only about 45-90 minutes. And the people going to the gym in Japan are also participating in all that walking, generally.
Nowadays, I’m in a medium-sized agricultural town in Canada, not far outside the larger metropolitan area where half the province lives. Realistically, at a walking distance, I have a convenience store, a drugstore, and a small co-op hardware store. The closest grocery store is at least a 30 minute walk. Both my sons’ school and daycare, the closest market or shops I’d go at, they are all 4+ away.
is radio taiso still a thing? Employee mandated exercise would go over like a lead balloon here.
I wonder what anyone in Japan can say of the state of vanity over there. Is it relegated to an age ranges or genders, or is it beginning to pollute the culture entirely like in America?
My opinion is that Japan’s primary sin is pride and not necessarily vanity.
It's almost as if both are important, but people tend to over simply and focus and be reductive and think if they just eat enough goji berries, they'll live forever.
It’s not like you can just blanket label it “Japanese diet”.
So in short food itself from Japan is not generically healthy… it’s the choices that Japanese people make within this environment that are healthy.
Also, portion sizes in America are huge.
As to the health exam, you may get some consultation and recommendations if your measurements show you are overweight, but it doesn't turn into some draconian process shaming you into losing the weight. I'm Japanese and never heard about such thing.
I live in Japan and maybe my company is different, because we don't get that pressure and shame. My health check reports show a warning sign in the weight/BMI area, and that's it. Plenty of chubby and overweight people in my office too, and nobody shames them.
This is a difficult truth for a lot of people to accept because it’s so much easier to blame invisible factors that are poorly understood: Microplastics, xenoesteogens, microbiome, trace lithium in the water supply, or the other trendy excuses.
In some cultures moderating your eating and controlling your weight comes with very high societal pressure. Everyone sees this from a young age and internalizes it. It’s hard to communicate how strong this pressure is and it gets lost when you only look at studies about the food supply.
Meanwhile in Japan and so many other regions in Europe that are pointed to as healthier people have the option to simply walk to do so many of their daily tasks.
No real surprise that the regions where people have to actively work harder to be active are in poorer health than others where being active is the default easiest choice.
The built environment is a critical thing here we can fix to make a healthier society.
Also, most people have a lot of walking/biking built into their daily schedule, especially in larger cities where having a car is impractical.
This all means that while there is a huge amount of sweets and fatty food, it's usually eaten in moderation, and people get exercise in their daily lives to work it off.
But so is healthy food. Imagine saying "I ate nothing but 7/11 food for two days and I feel the best I have in years" in America.
Where I'd be having a hot dog or pizza I was having onigiri. Small things like that add up.
And yes, they do walk a lot -- I spent a whole evening just walking around Shinjuku in awe of the place.
Can you elaborate what you meant?
If we do use meat, we use it in dishes with lots of vegetables, e.g. stuffed zucchini with rice and mincemeat (though the mincemeat is optional).
Precisely that they don't need to make choices due to their environment is what makes the difference. In the US and EU people love their individualism, spend a gazillion on fitness interventions and most people are overweight, it's probably the most visible sign of the importance of culture. As Russ Ackoff said, the correct way to address problems is not to solve them, but to dissolve them. Not to fix individual issues but to create conditions under which they do not occur.
The best way to lose weight is actually to move to a place that's full of thin people, not "do" anything. It's funny that the reverse is common wisdom, everyone who moves to an unhealthy place will always proclaim how they gained 20 pounds immediately
I assume you're from a western society, so I can't possibly imagine how you could have possibly reached such a conclusion. The contrast should be obvious at first glance.
The default Japanese diet is greatly more healthy than the default western diet, especially the American diet.
As a person living in the west and willing to put in some of my limited effort into eating healthy, I'm screwed. There's barely any healthy options available, I'm flooded by an ocean of awful food and it takes significant effort and cost not to drown in it.
I can't emphasize this enough, it absolutely does not matter what you can technically do or not. Defaults are what matters. By default in Japan you eat a reasonably healthy diet and walk/bike regularly. By default in America you eat fast food and drive everywhere.
I find a lot of sophistication in Italian cooking, especially accompanied by a good wine. The problem is that in the US Italian food is mostly some fastfood abomination that is not really what is eaten in Italy.
You can find sophistication in ramen too. But Italian cuisine revolves mostly around very simple dishes with little preparations (including the most famous pasta or pizza) and in our every day life we eat lots of vegetables, often raw.
Other cuisines in Europe are generally require way more steps/preparations/ingredients.
Japanese food is probably also an unacquired taste to many.
We eat plenty of rice in Spain, but not white like East Asians do...
In his recommendations to the government (after the President had a heart attack), he could have gone with what folks were eating in Okinawa, but this was just after the war when Americans didn't have a lot of love for Japan. Hence the Mediterranean Diet was the recommendation.
Chris MacAskill is the source of my understanding of this and his Viva Longevity YT channel.
I'm partly exaggerating on Japanese meals, but not by much.
I actually miss the dirty oil fried food from Singapore , it’s much nicer when it’s greasy. Japan cooking oil is very clean , food quality is much higher too, less processed.
Traveling somewhere where you walk more and then losing weight is such a common story that it has become a meme.
People also don’t accurately judge how much they eat. The portion sizes were likely smaller and the food composition was different than what you ate in Singapore, even if you thought you were eating the same. A lot has been written arguing about hidden factors in food, but in actual studies it always comes down to eating fewer calories. Eating less calorie dense foods and smaller portion sizes will do it. Even the GLP-1 studies revealed that the magic of their weight loss is directly proportional to reduction of calories eaten, even if patients eat exactly the same foods (but in smaller quantities or less frequently)
> Japan cooking oil is very clean
* You can use cheaper types that are nothing but omega 6
* You can heat them too high for their smoke point
* They can oxidize and go rancid
* You can use an enormous amount of it
Likely one of the main reasons a lot of restaurant food may not settle as well as home cooking. But in principle a restaurant could do the reverse of these four points.
You can use rancid oil, seed oil, high and long temperatures on polyunsaturaded oils etc. All very unhealthy. Not sure what Japs use though.
Polyfats are unstable by definition, so when you cook with them, they go rancid pretty fast. That is all very well known.
Besides, seed oils usually produce imbalance of w-3 vs w-6 fatty acids which is also deemed to lead to pro-inflamation effects.
This is all very well known and not a hype. Here is a review from 20 years ago:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09523...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20250530-are-seed-oils-...
It's like how every asylum seeker in the uk is born 1st of january. It's not because they're born 1st of january, it's because they burned their documents in order to illegally migrate. But if you took that at face value, you'd assume that afghanistan only ever births people on the 1st of january.
Kind of blows my mind that there are people out there that have lived longer in retirement, than they have worked.
However, when officials went to congratulate him on his 111th birthday, they found his 30-year-old remains, raising concerns that the welfare system is being exploited by dishonest relatives.
That's a pretty stark difference.