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Comment by saosebastiao | Hacker News Reader

I know it is hard to control for culture, but seeing as how mormon men are still American but have a 10 year gap in life expectancy over other American men [1], any analysis on the effects of health care across nations should at least try to control for cultural differences. That singular cultural difference is twice the magnitude of the difference between the OECD and the US. And when you realize that culture could be a far stronger predictor than health care quality/availability, you start wondering how much of that gap is due to us being fatasses.

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/she-the-people/post/morm...

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> I know it is hard to control for culture, but seeing as how mormon men are still American but have a 10 year gap in life expectancy over other American men

The study [1] did not find that Mormon men have a 10 year advantage of other American men, it found that the "optimum" subgroup of white Mormon men ("optimum" defined as never smoked, married, 12+ years education, and at least weekly church attendance) had a 9.8 year life expectancy advantage over white males in general in the US -- and that similar figures were seen for the same "optimum" characteristics among all religions.

[1] Original source: http://www.belnapfamily.org/brentjbelnap/institute/Preventiv...

The typical american lifestyle seems designed to kill you: drink a lot, work all the time, take drugs (legal or otherwise) to medicate or recreate yourself into submission, refuse to use your 10 days a year off so you continue to look like a "team player."

The mormon lifestyle is: no drinking, everything is based around family/community, and travel the world to convert others. Plus, something about a musical.

Fun fact: A few tech companies refuse to recruit at BYU because mormons can't work all weekend.

True, but the Mormon uptime is hard to beat, right? Don't they have disaster recovery and failover built-in?

Mormons typically fast one day a week, no? What other concrete examples of culture do Mormons manifest?

CORRECTION: It's actually one day a month.

No alcohol, tobacco, coffee or tea are the big ones that I can think of.

No smoking, no drinking alcohol, coffee or tea (I think it may be caffeine). They also tend to have a stronger focus on homemade food (rather than pre-cooked/boxed/canned) and habits/hobbies that aren't dangerous.

In other words, all of the fun, yummy, or convenient, but terrible for you things that tend to be in our lives, they're not allowed to do.

A few others that come to mind not related to food/drinks:

* Absolutely no work on Sundays (not even checking work email)

* A strong social safety net. Mormons are expected to tithe (pay 10% of their income to the church), and this is used in part to provide for members in need. Extensive volunteering is also expected, and used for some of the same purposes (e.g. caring for elderly or disabled).

> no drinking alcohol, coffee or tea (I think it may be caffeine)

I can't speak for Mormonism, but this was the most informative summary I've seen on the subject:

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/whats-not-on-the-mormo...

Mormons are expected to have lower or no consumption of alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drugs (and it's fairly more difficult to obtain at least the former two in Utah). Though, I can't find any actual study data showing they do in fact have lower consumption of those, it would be interesting to see if anyone has some data showing they are in fact lower.

It's once a month, and is a two-meal fast of both food and drink. Another concrete cultural practice that could make a difference is that Mormons abstain from alcohol, coffee, tea, and tobacco.

Is abstaining from coffee and tea necessarily a health benefit? Not meaning to imply that that is necessarily the intent.

Well, I wouldn't say drinking coffee or tea is a health benefit. Especially coffee.

I'd say it boils down to how often you drink, serving size, and how much sugar.

> Well, I wouldn't say drinking coffee or tea is a health benefit. Especially coffee.

OK. But that doesn't tell me much. :)

I brought this up because it has been conventional wisdom up until recently that you'd do better health-wise without coffee, while recently the topic has seemed to become more nuanced. Wikipedia lists both health risks and health benefits. It's not clear, to me, that it is straightforward to balance all the purported benefits and downsides and land on one or another conclusion.

As for tea, I have never seen that that is something that is unhealthy (assuming no extra ingredients like sugar). Conventional wisdom says that green tea is in fact very healthy. I haven't read much about the effects of black tea.

Personally I drink both coffee and tea without adding anything to them.

Life expectancy per cup of coffee consumed each days peaks at 2 cups a day. Which doesn't actually prove anything, but is at least suggestive. There are a whole bunch of health effects related to coffee, but in general you can get all the benefits with moderate consumption, but the negatives are in proportion to dose.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_coffee#Health...

If you look at the original study, the biggest single-factor difference (and its not Mormon men that have the 10 years advantage, but Mormon men that have never smoked, have 12+ years of education, are married, and attend church at least once a week) is "never smoked", and the next strongest is "attend church at least once a week" (though whether that's causal or covariant is at least debatable).

And unique features of Mormon practice presumably aren't involved, since the study found the same improvement for members of other religions with the same identified "optimum" features.

The big ones have already been mentioned, but there's also daily prayer (you could call it meditation) and strong family ties. Also, a ton of volunteer work.

Source: I am a mormon.

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