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Comment by contingencies | Hacker News Reader

Makes sense. Also, while overfed idle wealthy people faceplant in CPAP machines, older people in traditional cultures with healthy physical activity and consumption levels continue to live long regardless. For example, the Hunza. Experimental results suggest this is because of both their activity levels and a reduced caloric intake of a low protein, plant based diet high in complex carbohydrates. But what would a continuous culture of longevity know?

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I've never heard of the Hunza and kind of suspected that these "older people in traditional cultures" sounds too good to be true, and sure enough:

> A widely repeated claim of remarkable longevity of the Hunza people has been refuted as a longevity myth, citing a life expectancy of 53 years for men and 52 for women, although with a high standard deviation.

Like all modern claims, there's probably a kernel of truth. The "standard deviation" probably masks it. As with the whole world, one doesn't doubt the current population has succumbed to modernity. Similar health can be observed in physically active people with conservative consumption levels globally.

I'm not really sure what "succumbed to modernity" means in this context. World life expectancy went from 46 years in 1950 to 72.63 in 2020 to 73.16 in 2023. Is that the right metric to look at? If it is, succumbing to modernity doesn't sound too terrible.

Isn't that figure from 1950 also impacted by the fact they just had a major war killing millions of young people prematurely? After all this calculation is done over a longer term than 1 year as far as I know.

Worth noting that the only source for that excerpt from Wikipedia, for the life expectancy, is some NYT article written by a journalist in 1996 which is now paywalled.

That statistic could be skewed by a high childhood mortality rate.

> older people in traditional cultures with healthy physical activity and consumption levels continue to live long regardless

I agree with the point on physical activity, but the implication that traditional cultures have as long or longer lifespans is easily dismissed as inaccurate.

Can it, if we exclude child mortality (and effects of war, resource stealing, etc)?

All so-called "blue zones" are in traditional cultures (food and general lifestyle wise).

Why would we exclude child mortality? It isn't clear to me that isn't an indirect product of culture any more that any other longevity indicator.

Blue zones seems somewhat ambiguous but if I'm understanding correctly, they are small areas of people who live more traditionally surrounded by mostly modern people? Seems like by definition those zones are made up of cherry picked people and it's unclear to me that those aren't just outliers.

Sleep apnea is not exclusively a lifestyle disorder. I have it with a BMI of under 21.

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