Notably, still less than in any country in the European Union: given the lifestyle, is this a matter of the health care system, I guess?
Anyway given that random EU folks live longer without switching to 1800 lifestyle, looks like there are better options.
supermatt · 33m ago
I’m not convinced that’s the case for the studied birth cohorts (1890-1930) given the loss of male life in Europe through the world wars.
Brendinooo · 36m ago
>still less than in any country in the European Union
In the birth cohorts that the study was looking at? Do you have data to support this?
boomskats · 50m ago
I don't disagree, but could you provide some references/links to the datasets you're basing this on?
Mistletoe · 30m ago
> looks like there are better options.
I wouldn’t say that, imagine an Amish lifestyle of lots of exercise and no screens mixed with EU better healthcare.
bluGill · 24m ago
No screens is a good assumption for everyone at the time the study covered - TVs were just coming out towards the end, and were expensive enough that not everyone owned one yet.
jansan · 42m ago
Without any scientific evidence just by observing the lifestyle I am almost certain that the "secret" lies in nutrition.
chiffre01 · 31m ago
They also have a cohesive family and social circles. Probably can't hurt?
washadjeffmad · 25m ago
That seems to be the commonality with Seventh Day Adventists, as well.
apwell23 · 49m ago
> , is this a matter of the health care system
EUs have lower chronic diseases like diabetes and hypertension than USA. Those are not diseases that have any answers in medical system so it wouldn't matter how advanced and available the system is.
For example, 40% of ppl in usa are obese vs 12% Switzerland. 50% of ppl in usa have hypertension vs 20% Swiss.
So what exactly is a medical system supposed to do if half your population is sickly and obese ?
I see this 'medical system' stuff even from very educated ppl but I feel like i am missing something. Do ppl think having access to a doctor is going prevent one from being obese ? whats the logic.
n4r9 · 15m ago
> Do ppl think having access to a doctor is going prevent one from being obese ? whats the logic.
Doctors can vary in whether or not (and for how long) they advocate trying a healthy diet and exercise before prescribing drugs. In the UK the system is incentivised to avoid drug prescriptions unless necessary, as it reduces the financial burden on the NHS - both for buying the drugs and for managing complications linked to obesity. In the US, pharma companies can offer money and perks to doctors who promote their products.
apwell23 · 11m ago
I have hard time accepting that ppl stop being obese only if their doctor tells them 'eat healthy and move more' .
Why do ppl believe this kind of stuff. It is so bizarre and defies any commonsense.
johannes1234321 · 4m ago
If just the doctor tells it, it won't have much impact. If health education/advertisement from public funds frames it, it has impact.
Of course there is the role of availability of options, but they come from demand, which comes from the above.
alistairSH · 29m ago
I suppose if you extend the definition of "medical system" to include education and intervention, it makes sense.
There's also medications in there - hypertension can be controlled with drugs, no?
But, yes, I agree with your main point - obesity in the US is widespread and a massive influence on both longevity and health care costs.
deanmen · 23m ago
Nowadays maybe they could get Ozempic?
saintfire · 10m ago
Not sure that will make you live longer.
thrance · 13m ago
Having a socialized healthcare system incentivizes the government to ban the worst public heath offenders. High fructose corn syrup would have been long gone from most foods in a sane society, for example. Generally, making the government have a vested interest in its citizenry's good health is a good thing.
apwell23 · 9m ago
no country with socialized medicine has banned hfcs. EU has lower hfcs due to trade reasons not from health advocacy.
thelastgallon · 33m ago
Amish men have very limited to no screen time at work and at home. The modern lifestyle is very rough on men, sedentary work, rest of the time on app/game/content screens.
mothballed · 28m ago
They also don't get their income garnished by social security, so that basically frees up 12% (employee + employer) that can be used by the community directly for health rather than a scamfest by the government.
bluGill · 23m ago
The study was of time periods mostly before screens though.
smt88 · 7m ago
Amish life expectancy is now 71 compared to 84ish. OP's data is 100+ years old and wqs analyzed in the 60s during a notable peak for medical quackery (cigarettes recommended for pregnant women, etc.)
Lio · 1h ago
I'm glad they mention diet. I would imagine the 5 year difference could be explained simply by not smoking and not eating so much processed food.
nucleardog · 43m ago
A while back I got curious and tried to do a bit of digging on this.
I looked into the Hutterites in Canada as a group that lives a somewhat similar lifestyle, but don't entirely eschew modern technology and have free access to healthcare (where-as the Amish largely self-fund as a community, and I'm not sure how much pressure that would put on _not_ using healthcare services).
In that case, the only real causes of death that showed a substantial difference from the surrounding population were the rates of cancer, and mostly the lung cancer for men and cervical cancer for women. The study didn't directly attribute it, but that would be pretty directly explained by lower rates of smoking and a lower rate of STDs (since we now know that a huge driver of cervical cancer is HPV).
steviedotboston · 6m ago
the amish diet is pretty unhealthy. lots of carbs, fats, pies, bacon, etc. if you had an amish diet with an "english" lifestyle you would definitely have health issues.
Brendinooo · 33m ago
Given the date ranges, air pollution could have factored in as well, though I'm not sure "processed food" would have been as prevalent, especially for the earliest cohort (which had the most disparate outcome)
TimorousBestie · 48m ago
I don’t think any Amish group has a prohibition on smoking, though of course some communities probably frown on it.
infecto · 43m ago
I had the opposite impression. Lots of orders will ban tobacco outright. Those that don’t, it’s usually kept only in social settings or breaks and it’s never commercial cigarettes. Usually pipes but I guess they could roll their own cigarettes.
9cb14c1ec0 · 43m ago
It varies from community to community. There are some communities that don't care, and others that do definitely prohibit it.
mothballed · 22m ago
I bet that's about as effective as banning vaping in school.
It's also quite common to hear of Amish coming to work on an Englishman's property, and they are very happy to take beer as payment, to be consumed on site...
9cb14c1ec0 · 6m ago
Again, that varies from community to community. There are some communities where there is less religious fervor, and more just following tradition, and there are other communities that see their religious experience as the most important part of their identity. The stories you are referencing tend to come more from the communities that emphasize tradition over religious experience.
Many people make the mistake of thinking of Amish as a single uniform blob, whereas in fact there are many very distinct subgroupings that don't have much to do with each other. In the state where I live, for example, there are at least 3 different distinct Amish groups (each with multiple communities, expanding at a very rapid rate), each of which does not necessarily consider the others to be true Amish, with the dividing lines primarily being this difference on or not tradition is prioritized over religious experience.
paulnpace · 52m ago
I'm surprised. Amish are known for drinking raw milk and making raw dairy, which is all basically pure poison.
Spooky23 · 40m ago
The issue with raw milk is that over time it’s much more likely to grow bacteria if there is any interruption in the cold chain.
Drinking it on the farm or close to when it’s very fresh isn’t super high risk. My family was in dairy and did it all of the time. Once it’s off the farm, all bets are off.
graemep · 28m ago
Its very tasty. I used to be able to buy raw milk from a local farm but its largely been killed off by regulation (in the UK).
It is highly unlikely to be dangerous enough to have a significant, or even measurable, effect on life expectancies.
bluGill · 20m ago
> It is highly unlikely to be dangerous enough to have a significant, or even measurable, effect on life expectancies.
Assuming you are a normal healthy adult who gets plenty of nutrition - like someone in the modern world. If you are eating near starvation your immune system won't be as strong. If you are otherwise unhealthy the potential bacteria can overwhelm you...
potato3732842 · 17m ago
If they can get ice cream to just about anywhere and still have it be the right texture there's no reason they can't do milk.
Of course, that level of care wasn't economically practical for milk back when the laws were written.
christophilus · 43m ago
It’s the way humans consumed milk forever, though? Every infant consumes raw milk. Every milk-consuming culture on the planet did it until Pasteur. So… I’m not advocating raw milk consumption, but to call it poison is pure ignorance.
Bender · 33m ago
Every infant consumes raw milk
From their mother. Human breast milk is very bitter and I'm sure protein wise very different than cow milk. I doubt scientists have really studied this. Humans are not supposed to be drinking bovine milk. As a visitor to this planet I find it strange. Milk has a lot of lactose and will have interesting affects on adults including but not limited to insulin resistance whereas babies are developing very fast and need simple quick energy.
graemep · 28m ago
> Humans are not supposed to be drinking bovine milk.
Humans are not "supposed" to eat and drink most of what we do (maybe fruits are an exception). However, we have evolved to consume a lot of things - including, if we have the right genes, milk.
Earw0rm · 8m ago
Most fruits are highly bred, nutrition wise they're very different from their wild-type predecessors. Many of which are outright inedible, or close to it.
That said, we've coevolved with technology of one sort or another (the broadest definition, to include cooking, plant breeding, hunting with weapons, domestication and animal husbandry) ever since we began to master fire, a million years ago give or take.
Bender · 24m ago
Yeah, no. It's not normal just because people have been doing this for a long time. It has sugar which makes people addicted to it and will argue until they are blue in the face to defend it just like drug addicts will defend their behavior until their last breath. Milk can cause just as much a fatter liver as beer. People can get all their calcium from green leafy vegetables. Raw milk will also contain IGG, IGB, IGA that humans can create on their own. Adding animal immunoglobulins is not well studied. Humans can create their own.
Earw0rm · 11m ago
If you're drinking milk in the quantities many guys drink beer, it's going to fatten a lot more than just your liver.
Bender · 8m ago
If you're drinking milk in the quantities many guys drink beer, it's going to fatten a lot more than just your liver.
As many people do and get a fatty liver and ultimately Cirrhosis.
infecto · 45m ago
Definitely not poison. Risk of bacterial infection? Yes. I don’t know the stats on what that risk is though and for all I know perhaps it starts getting closer to zero when it’s your own farm and you are the one handling the whole process.
Please note I am not advocating for raw milk, I think it is not a wise decision but I also don’t believe it to be poison.
bruffen · 46m ago
Citation very much needed
No comments yet
xkbarkar · 30m ago
One of the few times I have used the downvote button in Hn for a comment.
Its not a huge effort to at least try to add some source with such a claim, besides the comment does not even bring anything of value to the discussion.
pclmulqdq · 26m ago
Balanced diet of fresh and unprocessed foods, extremely active lifestyle, no drugs/drinking. Of course they live a long time.
Projectiboga · 22m ago
More sunlight too.
Rendello · 12m ago
I wonder if the opposite is a factor: like most traditional clothing, Amish clothing blocks most sunlight.
tjwebbnorfolk · 5m ago
You'd have to be outside to get that "benefit". Sedentary people have sunlight blocked by their roof.
Sunlight kills bacteria and viruses, stimulates vitamin D production, and has a number of emotional/cognitive benefits. Being inside 24/7 is not good for you. For most of our history we spent every daylight hour outside hunting or farming, we're adapted to this situation.
Brendinooo · 27m ago
If you didn't read the article -
> These calculations were completed for cohorts of men born during 1895–1904, 1905–1914, 1915–1924, and 1925–1934
and the gap gradually closed with time. There was an 10-year difference in the first cohort which closed by about two years per cohort.
So, a four-year gap in the most recent cohort is notable, but the narrative's probably a little different than you might guess when looking at the headline alone.
moralestapia · 8m ago
>the narrative's probably a little different than you might guess when looking at the headline alone
Stop talking mysteries. What's A and what's B?
cynicalsecurity · 53m ago
Monks also probably live a longer live. I'm not sure it's worth it.
k__ · 45m ago
No alcohol or nicotine and sleeping for the same period every day can go a long way.
Might also avoid direct sun exposure, for good measure.
graemep · 31m ago
Are we talking about the same monks? Christian monks? The people developed champagne, chartreuse and many other alcoholic drinks?
Some also work outdoors.
Bender · 29m ago
Also disciplined breathing techniques, Om chanting strengthens the lungs and regulates O2 flows. FWIW they do get sunlight. People need some sunlight. More specifically Mitochondria need sunlight or artificial sunlight from 600nm -> 1200nm.
Projectiboga · 16m ago
Actually religious communities with single genders have shorter lifespans.
graemep · 34m ago
Monks seem to find fulfilment and happiness in their lives.
"Castration had a huge effect on the lifespans of Korean men, according to an analysis of hundreds of years of eunuch "family" records.
They lived up to 19 years longer than uncastrated men from the same social class and even outlived members of the royal family."
bluGill · 14m ago
Same family is likely not a useful comparison because lifestyle would be different. Eunuchs would be expected to serve the royal family, which implies plenty of food - not as good as the royals, but still plenty of it unlike their families back on the farm who lived closer to starvation at best and a bad year would cause a lot of deaths.
At least that is what I'd expect, but I'm trying to extrapolate what I know of European history (acoup) to Korea. Anyone have better expertise able to talk about the experience of the different groups?
gadders · 7m ago
The report is linked. I guess it is a tricky study as they would have a job getting an RCT signed off.
Anyway given that random EU folks live longer without switching to 1800 lifestyle, looks like there are better options.
In the birth cohorts that the study was looking at? Do you have data to support this?
I wouldn’t say that, imagine an Amish lifestyle of lots of exercise and no screens mixed with EU better healthcare.
EUs have lower chronic diseases like diabetes and hypertension than USA. Those are not diseases that have any answers in medical system so it wouldn't matter how advanced and available the system is.
For example, 40% of ppl in usa are obese vs 12% Switzerland. 50% of ppl in usa have hypertension vs 20% Swiss.
So what exactly is a medical system supposed to do if half your population is sickly and obese ?
I see this 'medical system' stuff even from very educated ppl but I feel like i am missing something. Do ppl think having access to a doctor is going prevent one from being obese ? whats the logic.
Doctors can vary in whether or not (and for how long) they advocate trying a healthy diet and exercise before prescribing drugs. In the UK the system is incentivised to avoid drug prescriptions unless necessary, as it reduces the financial burden on the NHS - both for buying the drugs and for managing complications linked to obesity. In the US, pharma companies can offer money and perks to doctors who promote their products.
Why do ppl believe this kind of stuff. It is so bizarre and defies any commonsense.
Of course there is the role of availability of options, but they come from demand, which comes from the above.
There's also medications in there - hypertension can be controlled with drugs, no?
But, yes, I agree with your main point - obesity in the US is widespread and a massive influence on both longevity and health care costs.
I looked into the Hutterites in Canada as a group that lives a somewhat similar lifestyle, but don't entirely eschew modern technology and have free access to healthcare (where-as the Amish largely self-fund as a community, and I'm not sure how much pressure that would put on _not_ using healthcare services).
In that case, the only real causes of death that showed a substantial difference from the surrounding population were the rates of cancer, and mostly the lung cancer for men and cervical cancer for women. The study didn't directly attribute it, but that would be pretty directly explained by lower rates of smoking and a lower rate of STDs (since we now know that a huge driver of cervical cancer is HPV).
It's also quite common to hear of Amish coming to work on an Englishman's property, and they are very happy to take beer as payment, to be consumed on site...
Many people make the mistake of thinking of Amish as a single uniform blob, whereas in fact there are many very distinct subgroupings that don't have much to do with each other. In the state where I live, for example, there are at least 3 different distinct Amish groups (each with multiple communities, expanding at a very rapid rate), each of which does not necessarily consider the others to be true Amish, with the dividing lines primarily being this difference on or not tradition is prioritized over religious experience.
Drinking it on the farm or close to when it’s very fresh isn’t super high risk. My family was in dairy and did it all of the time. Once it’s off the farm, all bets are off.
It is highly unlikely to be dangerous enough to have a significant, or even measurable, effect on life expectancies.
Assuming you are a normal healthy adult who gets plenty of nutrition - like someone in the modern world. If you are eating near starvation your immune system won't be as strong. If you are otherwise unhealthy the potential bacteria can overwhelm you...
Of course, that level of care wasn't economically practical for milk back when the laws were written.
From their mother. Human breast milk is very bitter and I'm sure protein wise very different than cow milk. I doubt scientists have really studied this. Humans are not supposed to be drinking bovine milk. As a visitor to this planet I find it strange. Milk has a lot of lactose and will have interesting affects on adults including but not limited to insulin resistance whereas babies are developing very fast and need simple quick energy.
Humans are not "supposed" to eat and drink most of what we do (maybe fruits are an exception). However, we have evolved to consume a lot of things - including, if we have the right genes, milk.
That said, we've coevolved with technology of one sort or another (the broadest definition, to include cooking, plant breeding, hunting with weapons, domestication and animal husbandry) ever since we began to master fire, a million years ago give or take.
As many people do and get a fatty liver and ultimately Cirrhosis.
Please note I am not advocating for raw milk, I think it is not a wise decision but I also don’t believe it to be poison.
No comments yet
Its not a huge effort to at least try to add some source with such a claim, besides the comment does not even bring anything of value to the discussion.
Sunlight kills bacteria and viruses, stimulates vitamin D production, and has a number of emotional/cognitive benefits. Being inside 24/7 is not good for you. For most of our history we spent every daylight hour outside hunting or farming, we're adapted to this situation.
> These calculations were completed for cohorts of men born during 1895–1904, 1905–1914, 1915–1924, and 1925–1934
and the gap gradually closed with time. There was an 10-year difference in the first cohort which closed by about two years per cohort.
So, a four-year gap in the most recent cohort is notable, but the narrative's probably a little different than you might guess when looking at the headline alone.
Stop talking mysteries. What's A and what's B?
Might also avoid direct sun exposure, for good measure.
Some also work outdoors.
"Castration had a huge effect on the lifespans of Korean men, according to an analysis of hundreds of years of eunuch "family" records.
They lived up to 19 years longer than uncastrated men from the same social class and even outlived members of the royal family."
At least that is what I'd expect, but I'm trying to extrapolate what I know of European history (acoup) to Korea. Anyone have better expertise able to talk about the experience of the different groups?