Long Life in Loma Linda, Okinawa, and Ovodda

On Wednesday morning (2/20/08), I discovered a most interesting article at the BBC News International webpage. According to this article, there are "three towns" in the world where people live longer than they do elsewhere. It took a second reading for me to realize they had named two "towns" and an "island" in the article, but what the hell, we're talking about living longer and this is no time to split hairs over semantics. The article also notes considerable discontinuity in life styles from any one of these places to the others, suggesting a variety of different causes. As is my wont when confronted with potentially useful information, I immediately embarked on a process of reducing the specifics of this article into something that would be easily remembered and meaningful later on.

The following is an almost entirely true depiction of my analysis of each of these three locales where people supposedly enjoy longer lives, how they do it, and what could be gleaned from the article that might be of use.

First, there's the island of Okinawa where, according to the article, the folks eat lots of soya products, and only eat until eighty percent full at each meal. While I could certainly understand leaving the table early when all there was to be had was soy-ish stuff, it wasn't until I got to the hormone part that I found something a burger and fries guy could (ahem) sink his teeth into. Supposedly, by walking away still hungry the Okinawans trick their bodies into thinking they are starving and this causes some kind of hormone thing to happen that slows down aging, and increases the number of people who live for one hundred years or more. Now, I had something I could use. I made a note of the useful portion of the Okinawa experience.

The next place is the town of Ovodda, Sardinia where the article tells us in a roundabout way that Ovoddans ignore the taboo against consanguinous reproduction (boffing your cousin). Quoting one Professor Luca Deiana, the article states, "From a genetic point of view when this [inbreeding] happens there's a higher probability of having genetic diseases, but also of having positive results like centenarians." The article cites isolation and a limited number of early settlers as the reasons for this behavior. I didn't see much help in this for those of us already in the game, but I made an addition to my note and moved on to the last place noted in the story.

The last place is a town called Loma Linda in the state of California, U.S.A. Now, the article does not attribute an extraordinary number of people reaching 100 years old as with the two examples above, but it does offer that people live 5 to 10 years beyond the U.S. average. This statistic didn't excite me much (since the U.S. ranks forty-fifth in the world for life expectancy, in spite of the highest per capita cost of medical care in the world). The BBC article then goes on to cite widespread membership in the Seventh Day Adventists and the resultant comfort from this association as the likely contributing factor to longevity in Loma Linda. Sort of like: "get Jesus and take five-or ten!" Reading further, I discovered that these folks don't smoke or drink, and are prone to vegetarianism. Pardon me if this sounds like walking around already dead for whatever time I naturally have, plus five or ten years more. I made another addition to the note, and came up with the following:

Trust trickle down economics to induce starvation, boff your cousin, and get Jesus to join the living dead.