Amish Men Live Longer
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Amish Lifestyle
Longevity
Healthcare
The article discusses a study showing Amish men live longer than non-Amish men, with commenters debating the relevance of the findings to modern lifestyles and the factors contributing to their longevity.
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From their mother. Human breast milk is very bitter and I'm sure protein wise very different than cow milk. I doubt scientists have really studied this. Humans are not supposed to be drinking bovine milk. As a visitor to this planet I find it strange. Milk has a lot of lactose and will have interesting affects on adults including but not limited to insulin resistance whereas babies are developing very fast and need simple quick energy.
Humans are not "supposed" to eat and drink most of what we do (maybe fruits are an exception). However, we have evolved to consume a lot of things - including, if we have the right genes, milk.
As many people do and get a fatty liver and ultimately Cirrhosis.
That said, we've coevolved with technology of one sort or another (the broadest definition, to include cooking, plant breeding, hunting with weapons, domestication and animal husbandry) ever since we began to master fire, a million years ago give or take.
Humans aren't "supposed" to eat anything. You think we're supposed to eat flour or sausage or arugula or lentils?
But because we like to survive, we eat anything and everything that gives us nutrition and helps us live. Also, there are pastoral tribes like the Maasai in East Africa that historically have lived on bovine milk as a staple food. Is that authentic and traditional enough for you that you might no longer consider it "strange", but rather as traditional as it gets?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maasai_people#Cuisine
We are not. The dumb grazing animals are supposed to eat the various forms of grass. Their guts and stomachs are designed to convert those to energy correctly. Humans since time immemorial have eaten mostly vegetables and meats when they can catch them. Only recently did we start poisoning ourselves for the profits.
This is just not true. Since time immemorial, humans have eaten meat and fish constantly as a main part of their diet. Catching fish and animals isn't that much different from digging up roots. We've eaten everything we can, not just vegetables.
And humanity has been drinking bovine milk for many millennia. Long before even the concept of capitalist "profits" existed. Again, see the Maasai for example.
And it's still the wrong thing to do. Humans got that wrong and stuck with it. They will argue till they are blue in the face and so will I.
Aggressively incorrect.
So the industry had a choice: go back to keeping cows on pasture, which would mean the expense of transporting the milk further into the city from distant farms, or use the new technology of pasteurization to kill all life in the milk, good or bad. As always, industry went with the cheaper option. Which is fine; I wouldn't drink raw milk off the grocery shelf if I thought it came from a large factory dairy. Milk produced that way should be pasteurized.
But it wasn't necessary to criminalize doing it the other way. That's just an industry trying to protect itself from competition. If your raw milk comes from cows on pasture, milked by people who make an effort to keep the cows healthy and the milk clean, there's nothing to worry about.
Drinking it on the farm or close to when it’s very fresh isn’t super high risk. My family was in dairy and did it all of the time. Once it’s off the farm, all bets are off.
It is highly unlikely to be dangerous enough to have a significant, or even measurable, effect on life expectancies.
Assuming you are a normal healthy adult who gets plenty of nutrition - like someone in the modern world. If you are eating near starvation your immune system won't be as strong. If you are otherwise unhealthy the potential bacteria can overwhelm you...
Online arguments about anything like this since COVID boil down to “if you don’t die, it’s ok”. An old or sick person can easily die from food poisoning. If you are hearty and hale, you’re going to feel like crap and get stuff like violent diarrhea.
It’s a risk. There’s a long history of sick and dead people associated with raw milk.
26 deaths, 356 hospitalised, and less than 1% of food borne disease outbreaks over a 26 year period in England and Wales: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6805749/
ANY food would be safer cooked, but most people eat quite a lot raw.
The risk lies in certain diseases (TB is the highest risk) which can kill. However, there is a TB vaccine.
https://www.cdc.gov/tb/vaccines/index.html
The BCG vaccine is not commonly used in USA.
I'm wondering if it is the freshness that partially makes the non-pasteurized milk taste good, since it is illegal to sell over state lines and possibly to sell at all, it is probably much fresher.
Homogenisation is a separate process and it is possible (at least in the UK) to buy not homogenised pasteurised milk which should have the same far content.
To me filtered milk (which is filtered to remove bacteria and other things before pasteurisation to keep it fresh for longer tastes very good, which favours the argument it is the freshness that matters.
Do you think that profit mongers are going to waste energy and time overcooking it?
I think pasteurising it yourself would be worse as its harder to control temperatures precisely without the right equipment.
It usually tastes great and is often ultra pasteurized, as it’s a low volume product.
Of course, that level of care wasn't economically practical for milk back when the laws were written.
Which it frequently doesn't? Nothing more fun than grabbing a pint of ice cream and then discovering it's full of ice crystals at home, because it thawed and refroze somewhere in the shipping chain or at the supermarket.
Of course it's more of an issue with Haagen-Dazs since it doesn't use the stabilizers like guar gum. And more of an issue with smaller supermarkets and shops with less staff where they're more likely to leave the ice cream sitting around for hours between delivery and loading into the freezer.
This is mostly a consumer problem.
You (or, the HN demographics being what they are, more likely your SO) toss it in a cart and then proceed to shop recreationally for some time, toss it in the back of your potentially hot car, stop to get Starbucks and then eventually sometime later it gets into a freezer. It might've been out of the freezer for over an hour. Almost certainly 15-20min
The next longest time it spends out of the freezer is the pallet jack ride from the walk in in the back of the store to the frozen food isle, typically single digit minutes, tops.
>Of course it's more of an issue with Haagen-Dazs since it doesn't use the stabilizers like guar gum.
Package size and resultant thermal mass has a big effect on it. Higher end ice creams suffer this more than cheaper ones bought in bigger sizes.
>smaller supermarkets and shops with less staff where they're more likely to leave the ice cream sitting around for hours between delivery and loading into the freezer.
This is just not how it works. The delivery person will put refrigerated goods specifically into the fridge specifically to avoid "well you left it on the dock and didn't tell us" accusations.
I'm sure somewhere there's a foodservice supplier that doesn't do this but that's a them problem and it's the exception rather than rule, their suppliers are likely wheeling the stuff right from reefer to walk in when they deliver to the supplier.
I'm a 10 minute walk from them, tops. I put it straight in my freezer. It's frozen solid when I buy it and frozen solid when I put it in my freezer.
And yet, 5-10% of the time, when I go to eat it, it's icy crystals throughout.
The frozen supply chain is not as reliable as you seem to think it is, and it seems like it's mostly a retailer problem. I'm glad it seems to be better where you are though.
My family on both sides were dairy farmers for generations, I have pasteurized, non-homogenized milk delivered to my house. I’m a huge advocate for dairy. But commercial raw milk is dumb.
I think a lot of the noise about this is from folks who would like to bypass the dairy industry and their abuse of farmers. I’d love to see regulatory changes where small scale dairy processing would enable farmers to operate direct to consumer models more safely. The folks I get my milk from do that, which was only possible because their mom in the previous generation was an attorney who could navigate the regulatory nonsense.
Its not a huge effort to at least try to add some source with such a claim, besides the comment does not even bring anything of value to the discussion.
Please note I am not advocating for raw milk, I think it is not a wise decision but I also don’t believe it to be poison.
It's also quite common to hear of Amish coming to work on an Englishman's property, and they are very happy to take beer as payment, to be consumed on site...
Many people make the mistake of thinking of Amish as a single uniform blob, whereas in fact there are many very distinct subgroupings that don't have much to do with each other. In the state where I live, for example, there are at least 3 different distinct Amish groups (each with multiple communities, expanding at a very rapid rate), each of which does not necessarily consider the others to be true Amish, with the dividing lines primarily being this difference on or not tradition is prioritized over religious experience.
As I said, it varies from community to community.
Diet obviously needs to be limited in throughput. I wouldn't recommend surviving on 10 pounds of nutraloaf, either.
I looked into the Hutterites in Canada as a group that lives a somewhat similar lifestyle, but don't entirely eschew modern technology and have free access to healthcare (where-as the Amish largely self-fund as a community, and I'm not sure how much pressure that would put on _not_ using healthcare services).
In that case, the only real causes of death that showed a substantial difference from the surrounding population were the rates of cancer, and mostly the lung cancer for men and cervical cancer for women. The study didn't directly attribute it, but that would be pretty directly explained by lower rates of smoking and a lower rate of STDs (since we now know that a huge driver of cervical cancer is HPV).
Might also avoid direct sun exposure, for good measure.
Some also work outdoors.
Yet, many nuns look at least 10 years younger than their age.
"Castration had a huge effect on the lifespans of Korean men, according to an analysis of hundreds of years of eunuch "family" records.
They lived up to 19 years longer than uncastrated men from the same social class and even outlived members of the royal family."
At least that is what I'd expect, but I'm trying to extrapolate what I know of European history (acoup) to Korea. Anyone have better expertise able to talk about the experience of the different groups?
From documentaries I've seen of Christian monks, there is no talk of personal benefits and emotions like a self-help book, instead it's spiritual motivations about being compelled to follow a path of devotion in service to their faith.
I get the impression that it's a hard life as such orders are dwindling and they report the deprivation of things they did since joining that we might find mundane like "going to buy music" (you can tell they joined pre '80s).
I recall reading the rules of a Buddhist monastery and it was basically a compendium of all the bad things monks have done, written down to make it ambiguous it's off-limits. It did not give the suggestion of fulfilled people. It had a lengthy chapter of all the things you can't put your penis in: people, children, animals, dead things, clay vessels, fabric dolls, trees, holes in the wall, holes in the ground etc. Feels like some desperate rules-lawyering had happened over the years.
Anyway given that random EU folks live longer without switching to 1800 lifestyle, looks like there are better options.
EUs have lower chronic diseases like diabetes and hypertension than USA. Those are not diseases that have any answers in medical system so it wouldn't matter how advanced and available the system is.
For example, 40% of ppl in usa are obese vs 12% Switzerland. 50% of ppl in usa have hypertension vs 20% Swiss.
So what exactly is a medical system supposed to do if half your population is sickly and obese ?
I see this 'medical system' stuff even from very educated ppl but I feel like i am missing something. Do ppl think having access to a doctor is going prevent one from being obese ? whats the logic.
Doctors can vary in whether or not (and for how long) they advocate trying a healthy diet and exercise before prescribing drugs. In the UK the system is incentivised to avoid drug prescriptions unless necessary, as it reduces the financial burden on the NHS - both for buying the drugs and for managing complications linked to obesity. In the US, pharma companies can offer money and perks to doctors who promote their products.
Why do ppl believe this kind of stuff. It is so bizarre and defies any commonsense.
Of course there is the role of availability of options, but they come from demand, which comes from the above.
Also this would often be in the context of the patient coming to the doctor with a complaint. If the doctor says "trying eating healthily and exercising, then come back in a month for a follow-up", some might just do nothing but many people will actually try it.
> , is this a matter of the health care system
And you say:
> I see this 'medical system' stuff
To me there is a big difference between a "health care system" and a "medical system".
One is only here to try and fix issues, while the other will invest in prevention campains and help direct the overall politics around having an healthy population.
To me the recent EPA decision around PFAs is a signal of a deficient "health care system".
There's also medications in there - hypertension can be controlled with drugs, no?
But, yes, I agree with your main point - obesity in the US is widespread and a massive influence on both longevity and health care costs.
Comments that try to reduce population-scale differences to a single factor, like access to healthcare, are overly reductive. When it comes to obesity (not using being overweight, but truly past the obese threshold) you don’t need a doctor to inform you that it’s unhealthy.
The reductive claims about access to healthcare are also ignoring the fact that people in the US do actually use a lot of healthcare. The rate of GLP-1 use in America for weight loss is around 1 in 8 people, which is significantly higher than anywhere in Europe last time I checked. Obviously the higher obesity rate contributes to higher usage, but it demonstrates that many obese people in the United States are not lacking access to health care.
So, we got to know some people in the community and learned some things that would be relevant to this. One big one is the Amish view on technology. With 1965 data, especially looking at farmers, you’ll see variations in pest control tech. Amish people are not against all technology but they evaluate it differently.
For the Amish, they look at a technology and ask whether it will pull them together or push them apart. Farm chemicals would increase yields, but dramatically reduce the number of people they could have working on fields. So many colonies avoided highly toxic chemicals like DDT that were released during or after WW2. And because there was some resistance to Amish people, they tend to congregate together and so you’ll have colonies bunched up in areas - some colonies avoided water table contamination through a freak of geology and cousins who shared a belief on technology.
So nutrition does play a role - food in Amish communities is very whole and very close to natural. As an example, my stepfather was quite affable and so we’d take doughnuts to the factory where we picked up RVs. Certain companies have so much sugar in their doughnuts that it felt like giving people drugs. Physical activity is a constant. And their community plays a massive role in life and life expectancy but this data is from 1965 and looks at farmers so chemical use is definitely part of these findings as well.
I wouldn’t say that, imagine an Amish lifestyle of lots of exercise and no screens mixed with EU better healthcare.
2) There are a lot of things wrong with the American health care system, but a lack of care for white males is not actually one of them.
A lack of care for those who can't afford it is, though.
My dad is poor and neglectful of himself. He had a stroke. He got ambulanced to the emergency room and spent a good deal of time there.
The hospital discussed billing which was several hundreds of thousands of dollars. Well he can’t afford that. The hospital had us talk to some advisers and they got him on a state Medicaid (?) plan. The plan retroactively paid for it all.
He then got checked out for a variety of other issues including a severe spinal issue and a hip replacement for 0 out of pocket.
It’s great. He’s a changed man who is active and takes care of himself now.
I also had a major medical event and I have since paid tens of thousands out of pocket after insurance. At one point we were investigating if I could essentially quit work for a bit, go on the Medicaid plan, get better, and then go back to my job. That is madness!
States that opted into the ACA Medicaid Expansion and generally fund hospitals have great emergency care for poor people. There's a kind of missing middle where once you're above the income threshold for Medicaid but aren't working for a job that's willing to fund an extremely good health plan you have to deal with all sorts of deductibles and prior authorizations and stuff. Plus, non-emergency care, especially from specialists, has gotten longer and longer wait times unless you're lucky enough to live in a region with mostly healthy people that also aren't the "worried well."
Tl;dr, it's incredibly patchwork, and everyone's experience is going to vary depending on their state's individual social safety net, the overall health of their local population, the particular insurance network and hospital network they have access to, and their individual income.
Also, the US has a federal law that no hospital that accepts Medicare patients is allowed to deny care in the case of an emergency based on someone's ability to pay. That means that a lot of very poor people will get incredibly expensive emergency care for free, while not being able to afford the basic preventative care that would keep them out of a state of medical emergency. That isn't really the hallmark of a particularly functional system.
https://www.cms.gov/priorities/your-patient-rights/emergency...
You have rights in an emergency room under EMTALA Doctor talking to a patient
You have these protections:
1. An appropriate medical screening exam to check for an emergency medical condition, and if you have one,
2. Treatment until your emergency medical condition is stabilized, or
3. An appropriate transfer to another hospital if you need it The law that gives everyone in the U.S. these protections is the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, also known as "EMTALA." This law helps prevent any hospital emergency department that receives Medicare funds (which includes most U.S. hospitals) from refusing to treat patients.
However, approx. 9% of US population is uninsured, in Europe (including Eastern Europe) health care systems are universal.
Edit: Even for those insured, insurance claim rejection rate is 19%
All it takes is a single, major non-routine event to learn that lesson.
The system is really broken for everyone and the incentives are really skewed away from healthcare.
It was the first time I realized that people are existentially truly on their own and despite its claims, “the system” truly isn’t there for them.
The Amish are very deliberate about what changes they incorporate into their communities. Each community also sets their own rules, so it's poor practice to generalize.
(For example, their attitudes towards electricity are quite complicated and I don't think I could do it justice in a quick post.)
racist, or just naive?
In the birth cohorts that the study was looking at? Do you have data to support this?
> These calculations were completed for cohorts of men born during 1895–1904, 1905–1914, 1915–1924, and 1925–1934
and the gap gradually closed with time. There was an 10-year difference in the first cohort which closed by about two years per cohort.
So, a four-year gap in the most recent cohort is notable, but the narrative's probably a little different than you might guess when looking at the headline alone.
Stop talking mysteries. What's A and what's B?
Please forget this interaction ever happened.
(fwiw I didn't appreciate your demand that I comment in a particular way - if you'd asked nicely I would have answered differently, or at least not at all!)
Sorry, but this is really marginal science. There are much stronger demographic and statistical studies of aging and mortality in humans. Here are some alternative examples of stronger studies to explore from PubMed. I keyed my search using the surnames of two well respected longevity demographers (Vaupel and Christensen):
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=%20vaupel%20christense...
Sunlight kills bacteria and viruses, stimulates vitamin D production, and has a number of emotional/cognitive benefits. Being inside 24/7 is not good for you. For most of our history we spent every daylight hour outside hunting or farming, we're adapted to this situation.
It's like the raw milk people but for everything. If you ever tried milking a cow, with the udders machine that close to its' rear, then you'd never drink the stuff raw when you have another option. Cross contamination? Wy I hardly know her!
Years ago when I used to live near them, I'd go to the markets and get their deserts. Best cheesecake I've ever had. Totally unpasteurized stuff, tastes amazing. I'd never let my kids go near it now though. E. Coli is very nasty on the littles.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1695733/