Hacker News Reader

Comment by aantix | Hacker News Reader

Am I the only one that felt like he was holding the Afghanistan people up as a model of health because they lack fat? Their life expectancy is a mere ~44 years (http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=sp_dyn_le...). Neighboring Pakistan is 66 years (http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=sp_dyn_le...).

View on HN

It was a doctor's observation. While operating on Afghan soldiers who have limited access to processed foods and a western lifestyle the fat deposits were not found as abundantly internally.

It serves as a launching point to describe the point of the article and book.

Your premise and statistics are a bit on the hand-waving side, of course no one is calling Afghanistan and Pakistan models of health.

And life expectancy is not a proper measure of health either, as per capita (~2006) Afghan people had $29 as the total expenditure on health per capita. The United States? $6,714. We may live longer but we have a lot more help in getting there.

http://www.who.int/countries/afg/en/

http://www.who.int/countries/usa/en/

You cannot take life expectancy at birth as a model for how healthy adults are. That statistic is massively distorted by infant mortality (which is an astounding 13.3% for Afghanistan).

Actually yes you can and yes you should. Infants die in third-world countries because of lack of healthcare, but often because of weak immune system and other effects of poor health that children survive from in western countries.

If you compare dogs bought from reputable breeders and puppy mills, you can't exclude all the puppies that die in the first year from a puppy mill and get a fair comparison. You can't exclude puppies died from both suppliers and get a fair comparison. The only fair way to compare is between total numbers.

Life expectancy is a product of health and health care. The unhealthy live longer in places like the UK and US than the healthy in many places of the world. When the west has people with AIDS outliving people in the middle-east and africa with no recognizable condition, then those places cannot and should not ever be used in reference to a healthy place.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercentenarian#Verified_super...

Do you see an Afghan? No you see people from the allegedly 'unhealthy' western countries.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centenarian#Numbers_of_centenar...

Again do you see any Afghans? Do you even see any middle-east or African countries with accountable estimates? No.

I think you're missing the point. No one is arguing that a high rate of child mortality is not an issue in and of itself. But if you're going to claim that life expectancy in Afghanistan is very low vs. the West, therefore the Western diet is healthier than Afghanistan's, and in the process ignore child mortality as a factor then you're entirely disingenuous.

As an example: if you take 2 groups of 10 people, 9 of which die at 70 of natural causes in group A while 1 dies at age 1 and 5 of which die at 90 of natural causes in group B while 5 die at age 1, the "life expectancy" of group A is 63.1 and group B is 45.5. But the average lifespan of adults is 70 in group A and 90 in group B. The health of adults is significantly higher in group B. The health of children is significantly higher in group A.

When many children die, the often touted "life expectancy" number plummets. And subsequently gets used in comparisons of health/activity/environment/etc of adults when in fact that "life expectancy" number is completely misleading when applied to adults.

Additionally, if one adult in group A lives to be 105, that outlier doesn't indicate a trending statistic.

Thank you for a lesson in basic averages. You're still completely clueless.

You're attempting to measure health based on diet between two groups. One group regularly receives medical and dental care. One group does not.

I don't care what bat-shit psycho crap you want, because if you find some hillfolk in the US who haven't seen a doctor in their lives, they're going to have a life expectancy in their mid 50's because most of them are likely to die from abscessed teeth or broken legs or a frigging cold.

You're literally comparing dogs to wolves for health. Dogs live in houses and go to vets, and yes get fed shitty food. Wolves live in the wild and face hardships with no access to care and die young.

You can't pick and choose who to factor in and out for health and get a useful result, it's idiotic. Total mortality figures is a better statistic than selected mortality statistic, because infant mortality is a golden example of the total capability of a countries health care. Basically, if you can't afford to wash your hands in alcohol before delivering a baby to make it hygienic, then you're fucked.

I don't care if my diet isn't causing me longevity, I have a doctor. He's called a Cardiac Surgeon and he performs heart surgeries. This is why I live in the west and did not die as a 7 year old of sepsis from a broken leg.

You're literally comparing dogs to wolves for health. Dogs live in houses and go to vets, and yes get fed shitty food. Wolves live in the wild and face hardships with no access to care and die young.

No, I'm not. Mainly because I'd have needed to use the words "dog" and "wolf" to literally be talking about them. Literally, Joe Biden. But also because I'm not even figuratively speaking of them.

But since you created the analogy:

The "wolves" that don't die young live far longer than the "dogs" that don't die young due to the "wolves" better diet and in spite of the "dogs" having access to vets and living in houses.

When you're comparing the health of adults you can't use information pertaining to the health of children. The factor is itself defined in the equation.

Reminds me of a cartoon with a caveman thinking, "Something's just not right - our air is clean, our water is pure, we all get plenty of exercise, everything we eat is organic and free-range, and yet nobody lives past 30." :)

http://imgur.com/RcMCl

Life expectancy decreased in early grain-cultivating civilizations—foraging provided better diet, fewer cavities.

It would be more interesting to limit the comparison to those who die of causes other than, say, gunshot wounds. It would also be interesting to see a comparison of health, rather than just length of life.

According to the WHO information it appears that deaths due to intentional injuries are relatively low in comparison to most other forms of disease and illness in Afghanistan:

http://www.who.int/healthinfo/global_burden_disease/estimate...

Even when looking at Males 15-59. Though it should be noted these numbers are from 2004. Additionally, I really have no sense of how accurate these numbers are.

War, especially when it lasts for a generation, causes a lot more than gun shot wounds.

I agree. It's horrible and it directly affects health and disease. I don't know how to quantify that, at least with respect to this discussion. I was replying specifically to the parent comment and whether intentional injuries were skewing the mortality numbers.

The real issue is child morbidity. There are plenty of old people in most poor countries but if 10+% of the population dies before age 5 the average life expectancy get's far shorter.

I think you mean mortality, not morbidity.

Sorry, I meant morbidity, but I should have been more clear. Childhood disease(morbidity) leads to a high infant/child mortality rate in poor countries due to poor nutrition, sanitation, and heath care. IMO, it's better to think of these deaths as a symptom than a cause.

For comparison US death rate in the 0 - 5 range is really low. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Causes_of_death_by_age_gro...

PS: Nutrition is huge: According to Jean Ziegler (the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food for 2000 to March 2008), mortality due to malnutrition accounted for 58% of the total mortality in 2006: "In the world, approximately 62 millions people, all causes of death combined, die each year. In 2006, more than 36 millions died of hunger or diseases due to deficiencies in micronutrients"[4].

I'd have guessed that people from US and Canada are mainly of North European descent, and so much more likely to have adapted to a colder climate. To be honest you'd probably have to compare Afghan people to Southern Italians, and unsurprising enough, the difference would be much smaller.

He actually mentions that in the audio clip, not mentioned in the article.

The perpetual use of military hardware might have something to do with life expectancy in these countries however. I think your counter point to the argument is valid, but you support it with a stat that is completely without context in this discussion.

Poor public emergency care and unsanitary conditions would contribute to this very strongly. I bet they're mostly healthy until they get ill, or have an accident.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com