Reddit reviews The Blue Zones, Second Edition: 9 Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who've Lived the Longest
We found 3 Reddit comments about The Blue Zones, Second Edition: 9 Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who've Lived the Longest. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
National Geographic
For those who didn't see the previous post and discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/longevity/comments/4r3418/the_first_step_towards_escape_velocity_and_why_de/
While I am still skeptical, I'm interested in hearing about your mouse studies and your own self-experimentation. I hope you keep us updated in the future. By the way, what are you limiting your calcium intake to?
As I read your post, one thing that came to my mind was the book [The Blue Zones] (https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Zones-Second-Lessons-Longest/dp/1426209487/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1467840484&sr=8-1&keywords=Blue+Zones). If you don't know, Blue Zones are areas of the world where people are much more likely to live to 100. One Blue Zone is Nicoya, Costa Rica where the locals drink very hard water that contains high levels of calcium and magnesium. Perhaps these centenarians are just better at handling high amounts of calcium, but the book also referenced a 2004 World Health Organization paper that found that populations with hard water had 25% fewer deaths from heart disease, since calcium is essential for muscle contraction (The Blue Zones; pg. 202). I suppose the results could be due to other minerals in the water that outweigh the ill effects of calcium, but nevertheless I thought you should be aware of this. I know you mentioned that the Japanese consume much less calcium than Westerners, perhaps you should research the average calcium intake of other long lived populations. Maybe that would show that Nicoyans are an outlier in their calcium intake.
Also if you're into reading, you might enjoy this book to get a clearer picture of how your stomach works:
Another interesting one on longevity is this one:
The author of Blue Zones has a really good TED Talk here:
Learning how your body works, as well as what we really actually truly know about managing our bodies, is a really great little hobby to get into. For example, this TED Talk explains how your body actually "burns" fat:
I think the microbiome is a really exciting field. It took us years to figure out (publicly, at least) that smoking was bad for us. Who knows what the future holds? Maybe GMO's are bad, maybe they're good! Maybe we're all gonna turn into zombies from the Walking Dead from glyphosate, lol. Maybe kale gives you cancer long-term...who knows? My friend's cancer doctor (at one of the top hospitals in the country) swears that chocolate causes cancer & sees recurrences based on the re-inclusion of it in the diet.
Science vs. data vs. hard facts is difficult, because like I linked to in the other post, that lady who's 116 years old eats bacon every day. Common knowledge says that should kill you, but that's not really how our bodies work, once you understand the whole stomach/small intestine/large intestine deal.
Who decided that every single fruit & vegetable were perfectly fine, and that Snickers bars were somehow magically bad? I bought into the "clean eating" myth for a long time, but I've gotten far better results eating against my macros - obviously, not eating a non-stop diet of junk food, but you don't have to feel guilty about a cheat meal or cheat day because you can eat whatever you want - if it fits your macros.
Everyone has a different gut, and there are certain universal rules that affect everyone. If you eat nothing but fried food & salty, preservative-laced fast food & junk food all the time, that's not going to make you feel good or be very healthy for your body long-term, obviously. But, you're going to diet anyway at some point, so the question is: how do you want to experience the ride? What does your personal body tell you & what does science know for sure?
Those are things you have to find out for yourself - for example, pomegranate juice gives me severe acid reflux. I don't know why, but it does, so it's just not something I include in my diet, even though it's pretty tasty! And I eat Whoppers like twice a week sometimes & still hit my macros & still know that I'm feeding my body the correct macro-nutrient balance I need to feel good & have high energy. Now, if fried grease hurts your stomach, or gluten hurts your stomach, then obviously you should not include those things in your diet.
Learning about how food works & how your gut really works & how your own particular body actually works are really big stepping stones for taking control of your health. No one knows your body but you know, and you have a responsibility to care for it & to enable yourself to open up the gates to high energy & being at an ideal weight for health reason through how you choose to eat.
I've tried just about every diet & way of eating you can imagine...juicing, vegan, raw vegan, fruitarian, vegetarian, keto, paleo, you name it (and can give you great recipes from all of them!). Macros has worked the best for me. I do a majority of homemade food from mostly real food sources (I use sugar & flour all the time though), but still enjoy a McFlurry & other stuff as party of my regular diet.
It was really hard to get over the conversational programming we all have about what is good & bad for us. Macros has worked amazing for me, with a majority of it being real, actual food - meat, veggies, grains, fruits, nuts, seeds, and so on. I don't eat ridiculously healthy, I eat primarily for taste, against my macros. I feel great all the time, I look so much better than I did when I was 50 pounds overweight, I have way more energy, all of my blood numbers are awesome, I don't have energy dips mid-morning & mid-afternoon, I don't take 20 minutes to become awake in the morning, etc. Raw diet aside, Chris Califano really nails the energy thing here:
If you don't feel like what he says - and if you want to feel like that - then a diet change is a a great starting point! I'd suggest looking into IIFYM (read through my posts here) & if things are severe, doing an elimination diet. Or seeing your GP & a GI doc & a food allergist. Lots of routes to go to begin your journey to better health, energy, and happiness! That's not fluff talk, that's all real stuff - having great bloodwork, being at your ideal weight, feeling good & energetic, feeling driven because of that energy, feeling happy because your stomach system is operating properly!
>Although I disagree with /u/_-AL, although he listed some great vegan sources, you will only get a vegan perspective. You won't get an unbiased viewpoint. Whenever you read a book, be aware that the author cherry picks studies to convince you of whatever they are selling. You'll get more lies, than truth.
>With that said, I highly recommend this study. It's actual science, rather than an author lying and twisting results to sell books/ideas.
>https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4191896/
What? Hahahahaha, dude, you have not consulted any of the sources, because the Adventist studies are literally everywhere on the books I've listed and authors like Greger and Fuhrman have spoken publicly about them. You'd like to consult The Framingham Study, too.
>who eats fish [...] for health
You might want to change that habit, buddy.
Edit: basing your diet on one epidemiological study definitely isn't ideal, if you're talking about being biased, your complete lack of knowledge definitely won't help in that regard, the adventists are only one of the multiple bluezones that exist, consult this and this.