14 Signs You'll Live Longer

[Orleander]

Does MD 20/20 count as red wine?

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

Hmmm. I'm gonna live longer than my husband. I wonder why 'being female' isn't on the list.

Indeed. If the list is going to include things over which we have absolutely no control, such as our mother's age, then it should include gender. That was my first reason to be skeptical of the list.

Your mom had you young - If she was under age 25, you're twice as likely to live to 100 as someone born to an older mom, according to University of Chicago scientists.

My mother turned 33 the day she brought me home from the hospital. I guess I'm lucky to have reached 65

You skip soda (even diet) - Scientists in Boston found that drinking one or more regular or diet colas every day doubles your risk of metabolic syndrome - a cluster of conditions, including high blood pressure, elevated insulin levels, and excess fat around the waist, that increase your chance of heart disease and diabetes.

Who are these "scientists" and how strong is their research? As I'll note in a moment, at least one of these cute little reasons to worry more is based on a ridiculously small and ethnically biased study! These are merely hypotheses and should not be shared with the public.

You were a healthy-weight teen - A study in the Journal of Pediatrics that followed 137 African Americans from birth to age 28 found that being overweight at age 14 increases your risk of developing type 2 diabetes in adulthood.

Yeah, this is the one! A sample of 137 people from the same gene pool? This is an interesting experiment, not something worthy of establishing a new theory. Come back when they've got about ten thousand people from several different countries!

You don't like burgers - A few palm-size servings (about 2 1/2 ounces) of beef, pork, or lamb now and then is no big deal, but eating more than 18 ounces of red meat per week ups your risk of colorectal cancer - the third most common type, according to a major report by the American Institute for Cancer Research.

Well, a big "duh" to that. We all get colonoscopies regularly so that won't happen! Colonoscopies are one of the most effective cancer preventives that's ever been developed, because that particular form of cancer grows very slowly. You get a colonoscopy every five years and they'll zap the polyps long before they become cancerous.

You've been a college freshman - A recent Harvard Medical School study found that people with more than 12 years of formal education (even if it's only 1 year of college) live 18 months longer than those with fewer years of schooling. Why? The more education you have, the less likely you are to smoke.

Well that's just plain silly! Where did you find this, it reads like Parade magazine.

You really like your friends

Duh again. Isn't that why we call them "friends"? I think it would be much more noteworthy if you had what it takes to really like your enemies.

If your closest friends gain weight, your chance of doing the same could increase by 57%, according to a study in the New England of Journal of Medicine.

How much tax money did it take to figure that out? If your friends are fat then eating out is going to be one of your primary recreational activities. How many times can I say "duh" in a single post?

You don't have a housekeeper - Just by vacuuming, mopping floors, or washing windows for a little more than an hour, the average person can burn about 285 calories, lowering risk of death by 30%, according to a study of 302 adults in their 70s and 80s.

Huh? Most of us who are only in the middle class and not the celebrity class have housekeepers who come once a week. 285 calories an hour for half a day a week is going to make a difference in my longevity? That's the extra 1,140 calories in chocolate candy I'll reward myself with for having done the fucking housework!

#2 is stupid. Unless we understand the human body far more than I thought, our likes and dislikes don't affect our life spans.

You didn't read that carefully. It's not about the psychology of preferences. It's about the biochemistry of the molecules in the tea leaf. Vasodilators have a very beneficial effect on blood pressure. (Another "duh.") What they don't mention is that tea also contains caffeine, which is a vasoconstrictor. This can't be from Parade, they do better fact checking.

With all the medical advances coming, anyone under 25 right now will live well beyond 100 years old.

Not in the USA. They're saying that the Baby Boomers will be the last generation to experience a greater life expectancy than their parents. Since the government essentially nationalized the medical industry, medical insurance and care has become almost unaffordable. I'd estimate that at least half of what we spend on health care goes to pay lawyers, accountants and just plain scumbag value-subtracting bureaucrats, rather than doctors and nurses. I know a surprising number of people who simply can't afford to have all their prescriptions filled, much less get a colonoscopy every five years.

I'm three years too old to be a Boomer, but I pretty much got all of their health benefits once I survived my early childhood. Cheap insurance, a cornucopia of new vaccines and antibiotics, Star Trek surgery, the anti-smoking campaign, better understanding of nutrition, enough lesiure time to devote to exercise, a cleaner environment, safety technology, a sharp decrease in war in the luckiest countries...

Today's young people have some (but not all) of those, but they live in a world with a whole new assortment of problems. Murder, suicide and auto accidents are three of the leading causes of death for American teenagers!

 

[Dr Lou Natic]

It's pretty dumb, they're a bit too specific about what exercise you do. Like I would never sweep a floor, so apparently I'm going to die young, even though I run 5 kms every second day and weight train and hit the heavy bag every other day (when I'm not competing in real sport), but yeah, I don't walk to work and I don't do domestic chores so I'm going to die young.