How to live to 100






George Burns, not paleo.  More here

This community is obsessed with dietary purity.  All the toxic things even a smidgeon of some non-approved food will do to you.  Said approval being highly arbitrary in the first place.  George Burns lived a good life ... it was not one without discipline (see the exercise part).  But it was one seemingly without needless obsession.

Comments

eulerandothers said…
When I have two martinis, I'm under the table in a matter of minutes. A few a day at that age is fantastic.
carbsane said…
Some definitely have a higher tolerance than others.
rand18m said…
Orthorexia Nervosa is becoming more prevalent imo, and may soon actually be considered a diagnosis.
LWC said…
It's not paleo, but it seems pretty low calorie to me.
Myron Schwarzennecker said…
"Insight Pharmaceuticals Considers 'Bananacin' -- Banana-Flavored
Anacin Tablets -- After World's Oldest Man Credits Combo As Secret To
Long Life"
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/26/insight-anacinbananas-idUSnPNPH54078+1e0+PRN20130726

According to multiple news reports, 112-year-old Salustiano "Shorty" Sanchez-Blazquez of Grand Island, New York, credits the banana-Anacin combo for his extended life. Born in 1901, Guinness World Records now recognizes Shorty as the world's oldest man.






(Come to think of it, were there any tall longevity record holders? I don't think so.)
carbsane said…
I wish I had as much time on my hands as people think I do because I'd track down the direct quote. But LWC, you are correct. Burns once said something like pushing away from the table before you're full or putting less on your plate than your eyes dictate or something.
carbsane said…
No, height does not favor age (or cancer apparently, not to freak anyone out, but us shorties have an advantage with some cancer risks).


Bananas -- sugar, starch, potassium, magnesium
Anacin -- caffeine and aspirin (search here on aspirin, there is some evidence for insulin sensitizing properties)


Cool.
carbsane said…
http://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/orthorexia-nervosa

Those who have an “unhealthy obsession” with otherwise healthy eating may be suffering from “orthorexia nervosa,” a term which literally means “fixation on righteous eating.” Orthorexia starts out as an innocent attempt to eat more healthfully, but orthorexics become fixated on food quality and purity. They become consumed with what and how much to eat, and how to deal with “slip-ups.” An iron-clad will is needed to maintain this rigid eating style. Every day is a chance to eat right, be “good,” rise above others in dietary prowess, and self-punish if temptation wins (usually through stricter eating, fasts and exercise). Self-esteem becomes wrapped up in the purity of orthorexics’ diet and they sometimes feel superior to others, especially in regard to food intake.

Eventually food choices become so restrictive, in both variety and calories, that health suffers – an ironic twist for a person so completely dedicated to healthy eating. Eventually, the obsession with healthy eating can crowd out other activities and interests, impair relationships, and become physically dangerous.







Sounds familiar. Just one more 21 Day Sugar Detox (starting Monday) or Whole30 (started two days ago but it's never too late to restrict restrict restrict!) Please people, avoid these regimes.
Myron Schwarzennecker said…
The anti-inflammatory activity of aspirin would be the big advantage, if any. I'd include its anti-platelet function in with that.



But if people are willing to pay $30/pound for Sisson's whey concoction, then how much more if he makes it banana flavored? :) P.T. Barnum might come back as a ghost just to get at his mailing list.
Myron Schwarzennecker said…
I once saw a post on some Paleo site, that went like this: "I was on vacation and the homemade bread there was so good that I must have had a half loaf in two days. Have I permanently damaged my health?"


I think that hypochondria is determined to a large part by brain chemistry. But it can be made much worse when encouraged by fad-diet hucksters.


We've also got the large scale hysteria of the anti-gluten trend going on. Carbsane, that would make a good topic as an obvious example. I'm pretty sure that Wolf et al have pushed the lie that *everybody* suffers gut damage from gluten. I think the real figures are very roughly that ~4% might be celiac, and maybe another 6% have some sensitivity. Even the popular press is now debunking the anti-gluten mania.
Myron Schwarzennecker said…
Then there is the Blue Zone of Sardinia. Lots of home made bread (and several glasses of home made wine, starting with breakfast, per day). So wheat is not a killer.
Nigel Kinbrum said…
According to http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1739395/pdf/v076p01601.pdf , 10% of healthy blood donors have anti-gliadin antibodies in their blood, suggesting that ~10% of the population have excessive gut permeability. Which coincidentally, is ~4% + ~6%.

There are a lot of illnesses that may be of autoimmune origin due to excessive gut permeability e.g. Eczema, Dermatitis Herpetiformis (skin), Sjögrens Syndrome
(mucous membranes), Cerebellar Ataxia (Purkinje cells in the brain),
Multiple Sclerosis (myelin sheaths of nerves), Type 1 Diabetes, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Asthma.


I know people who have some of the illnesses in the above list and who have gone into remission by eliminating gluten. Gluten is like the little girl who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead. When she was good she was very very good, and when she was bad she was horrid!
Myron Schwarzennecker said…
As I recall from looking a few years ago, Sisson's whey + "healthy fat" Primal Fuel concoction was selling for something like 2.8 lbs for $80. Let's call that roughly as being $28/lb for whey, and simplify by ignoring the coconut fat (10$/lb?) and sugar ($.40/lb?). Meanwhile, much more famous Jillian Michaels was getting around $15/lb. The stupidness of grass fed whey, from people like Ori Hoffmeckler, was getting maybe only $12, partnered with Swanson. The purportedly high quality (but non-celebrity) whey such as Optimum Nutrition was maybe $10. Generic whey was down at $6.

The other alternative for sheer coolness or orthorexiness is the low temp whey, in which the supposedly bioactive peptides were supposedly undenatured during processing. That was also at around $12-15/lb.

The moral? You get a much higher profit margin selling to Paleos. I haven't seen Sisson claim that his actual whey is anything special, either.

Everybody's prices have gone up across the board, more than a little, since then. But I see just now that Sisson is selling his in a cool bag, not a jug anymore, and no longer lists the overall weight. So let's compare costs per gram of protein:

The Optimum "Gold Standard" whey:
http://www.amazon.com/Optimum-Nutrition-Standard-Vanilla-Cream/dp/B000GISTZ4/ref=sr_1_4?s=hpc&ie=UTF8&qid=1375556991&sr=1-4&keywords=100%25+Whey+Gold+Standard

$28 / 2 lbs, 30 servings x 24g = 3.9 cents/g

Sisson:

$69 for 30 x 20g = 11.5 cents/g

That's almost triple, but you do get some coconut fat and some added sugar (sucrose) as a bonus. The moral? You get a much higher profit margin selling to Paleos. Looks like his profit margin has gone up recently, too.
Myron Schwarzennecker said…
With 10% incidence of antibodies, then my celiac figures might be too high, NIgel, since as you know people can and do develop antibodies to almost any protein that gets into the bloodstream because of leaky gut. The number who actually get microvilli damage from actual sensitivity or allergy to gluten would be presumably lower (as opposed to gluten sensitivity cases that are just an artifact of leaky gut per se).

Oh, I found an article that I'd read a while back:

Dr. Alessio Fasano's presentation on Celiac Disease
http://www.enabling.org/ia/celiac/cdf-fas.html

Have your friends ever asked you what the prevalence of CD is? If you didn't
know, you're not to blame. U.S. research is so sparse that there are
no statistics here. In Europe, where screening for CD is more common,
epidemiologists report incidence rates as high as 1 in 300.

Anyone diagnosed as an adult might recall having an assortment of health
complaints before ever experiencing the classic gastrointestinal or
dermatological symptoms. Dr. Fasano's main emphasis seemed to be that there
must be a change in the perception of how celiac disease presents itself.
In one of his slides, a pyramid illustrated a new way of perceiving celiac
disease clinical presentation. (The data is based on European immunological
studies.)

The celiac disease that physicians in this country are trained to
recognized is the typical form which in Europe occurs in approximately 1 in
2500. Dr. Fasano defined the atypical form as that found in those who have
latent onset of the disease (typical + atypical = 1 in 1500). Asymptomatic
celiacs are discovered when relatives of celiacs are tested. Latent celiacs
are defined as those who have one of the companion diseases (other
autoimmune disorders such as diabetes, arthritis, Sjogren's syndrome,
thyroid disease, collagen vascular disease, and liver disease). When
combined, these various presentations of CD reach as high as 1 in 300.
Nigel Kinbrum said…
When I read your post, I first thought that the text below the link was written by you. Then I noticed the odd formatting. Then I clicked on the link, lol!
Nigel Kinbrum said…
Yeah, but Eczema, Dermatitis Herpetiformis, Sjögrens Syndrome, Cerebellar Ataxia, Multiple
Sclerosis, Type 1 Diabetes, Rheumatoid
Arthritis & Asthma don't kill a significant percentage of the population, but aren't exactly a bundle of fun to suffer from. I left out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lupus_erythematosus
Sanjeev Sharma said…
please clarify - all these are higher in Sardinia or correlate with wheat eating?
Delphi Morgan said…
There was an interesting comment re: Pasta and inflammation by a TdF chef.

Not sure I can post a link but the relevant youtube video is v=OpImRgIThjo


The remarks are just after 3:00 mins
Nigel Kinbrum said…
I don't know. Who doesn't eat any gluten, apart from hard-core paleo types, and people diagnosed with Coeliac disease?
eulerandothers said…
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22850429

1% of the population may have celiac disease - that's the number I see. Rare in Asia.
lucyricardanon said…
It also sounds like "real food," as some people like to call it. But TBH I'm not sure how much of his longevity can be attributed to lifestyle factors. I suspect that Mr. Birnbaum may have had the so-called "Methuselah gene."
LWC said…
He may have had the gene, but he definitely had the luck of good health. I don't have the link at hand, but there was an author who set out to interview as many centenarians as possible. What they ate and how they lived varied considerably, but to a one, they'd escaped serious illness throughout their long lives. And I don't just mean cancers, some of these people lived through several deadly flu epidemics.
LWC said…
Sounds almost Japanese in philosophy.


I read an interview with an 84 year old researcher in Parade Magazine (I know, I know, not exactly a stellar source...) in which she was asked how she remained fit and vibrant as she aged. She noted a number of things, but the one that stuck with me all these years was her statement that as we age, we need to eat less.


Hall and Chow's simulator shows the same effect. I've used it to model how much I should eat (or should have eaten) at various ages, while holding activity level constant. And there's no way around it, except to increase activity levels. To avoid weight gain as we age, humans must eat less as the years add up.
lucyricardanon said…
I'm not really sure what your point is? I mean of course, if you live to be 100 you're going to live through a lot of things. I'm not sure what you mean by "luck of good health" - the "luck" is most likely a combination of genetic and lifestyle factors, and in the case of certain Ashkenazi Jews (and I'm sure in some other centenarians as well), a lot of it is likely to be genetic. It almost certainly had to be in my maternal grandmother's case, as her diet and her attitude were terrible, but she lived to 101.
LWC said…
All I meant is that people that live that long don't get seriously ill. And that does take a bit of luck. Good genes help, and maybe are the dominant factor, but it's also good to be lucky.
carbsane said…
As we discussed on FB, and I see Myron mentions below, the presence of antibodies is evidence of an immune response. That is a good and proper and healthy thing. Auto-immunity is when that response turns on one's own healthy cells.
Nigel Kinbrum said…
With high-proline proteins like gluten & casein, some peptide chains that slip through loose junctions into the blood have the same triplet of AAs as proteins in the body. See http://coolinginflammation.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=triplet