The Longevity Project: Surprising Discoveries for Health and Long Life from the Landmark Eight-Decade Study

[Mal]

An Excerpt from The Longevity Project: Surprising Discoveries for Health and Long Life from the Landmark Eight-Decade Study by Howard Friedman and Leslie Martin, exploring factors contributing to a long and healthy life. Here is an excerpt on nurturing. (ripped from http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/books/excerpts.php?id=20895 )

 

 

"The 1,528 Terman participants were all quite intelligent, with a good start in life. By age ten they were doing well in school, were noticed by their teachers, and were being investigated by a Stanford professor — Lewis Terman. Many went on to be successful, but quite a large number of their fellow participants faced regular disappointments — in love, in careers, and in length of life. Some who succeeded were lucky, but many others made their own luck.

 

"Across the life span, many predictors emerged as to who would do better and who would do worse, who would live longer and who would die younger. It was not good cheer or being popular and outgoing that made the difference. It was also not those who took life easy, played it safe, or avoided stress who lived the longest. Rather, it was those who — through an often-complex pattern of persistence, prudence, hard work, and close involvement with friends and communities — headed down meaningful, interesting life paths and, as we have illustrated, found their way back to these healthy paths each time they were pushed off the road.

 

"The qualities and lifestyles cultivated by people on these long-life paths reflect an active pursuit of goals, a deep satisfaction with life, and a strong sense of accomplishment. That's not to say that these people possessed a giddy sense of happiness — we described how cheerfulness doesn't necessarily lead to a long life. But having a large social network, engaging in physical activities that naturally draw you in, giving back to your community, enjoying and thriving in your career, and nurturing a healthy marriage or close friendships can do more than add many years to your life. Together, they represent the living with purpose that comes from working hard, reaching out to others, and bouncing back from difficult times.

 

"How fascinating to understand that those individuals who became involved with others in a consequential life would be improving their health as an unanticipated bonus. Of course many consequential lives have been cut tragically short, and some long lives seem bereft of accomplishment. Still, because getting and staying on healthy life paths can be a lifelong challenge, it is heartening to know that embracing the lessons of the Terman participants and striving for a socially richer and more productive life will increase the odds of a long life as well."

 

Bolds mine While there is some debate as (noted) due to the Terman participants being white middle class vs other longevity studies. The conclusion from 80 years of research seems to basically be - help others and you will help yourself.

[zanshin]

Another spin on help others to help yourself, why do we always have to be told to help others to get something? People who are depressed, having pain or chronically ill probably are less likely to have energy for work, social and family relationships. Hard to really tell cause and effect in this study. Health could be more environmental and genetic and purpose and benevolence follows from robust health. Perhaps more the natural human condition, in the absence of physical and mental ailments and difficulties, people have more positive relationships and purposeful lives.

[Mal]

The Terman sample is the only lifelong, continuously detailed, large-scale study of initially healthy boys and girls. Because they had access to and understanding of medical care and education, but have a great range of personalities and social relations, it was a terrific sample for studying individual differences. Other studies document the health relevance of socioeconomic status, ethnicity and general intelligence, but The Longevity Project yields deep biopsychosocial insight into those macro-level associations. It's thrilling that our key findings are now indeed being confirmed by other researchers

[Large snip]

The beauty of The Longevity Project is that we don't have to speculate about explanations; we can go back into the lifelong data and see. This tracing of pathways also explains why we are not drawing causal conclusions from correlational data, as some people initially think.

 

from American Psychological Association

[zanshin]

Was this publically funded to learn healthy people have nicer and longer lives? If participants were young many of them should have outlived Dr. Terman, so who finished the study? How long did he live anyway? If he did not make it to at least 72, i'm not sure he could have been a good meaningful person. Who decided what is meaningful? Is a short tragic life of a rebel or artist not meaningful? Why? These are things i wonder about. Still less duh factor than the natural wetlands are better than man made wetlands study.

[Mal]

I'm thinking you didn't read the links :-(

[zanshin]

Just did, still think bad science. Correlation is not causation. Probably should not have said anything since it was meant to be nice and inspirational.

[Mal]

I thought he was saying correlation is not causation in the 2nd link

 

This tracing of pathways also explains why we are not drawing causal conclusions from correlational data, as some people initially think.

 

 

But all comments are cool (and bump the topic ) I wasn't really aiming for just nice and inspirational, I though

 

it was those who — through an often-complex pattern of persistence, prudence, hard work, and close involvement with friends and communities — headed down meaningful, interesting life paths

 

was quite a different perspective on longevity than other research I'm familuar with, which IMO usually seems to focus on nutrition eg Okinawa Centenarian Study

 

I'm also a bit of a fan of longitudinal studies (like case studies they seem much more common in anthropology) While they are not robust predictors like experiments you can gather enormous amounts of data about what actually happens to people over time. I’m looking forward to reading this book as we learnt about the Terman study for psychology and it will be interesting to see what changes occurred over the last … almost 25 years :/

[zanshin]

I like case studies too, have sort of decided statistics do not really apply to me because I am a case study. Not sure how you objectively measure persistence, hard work, meaningful and interesting, seems like a flying leap to judge lives as consequential or not. Nuclear weapons developer was rated highly successful instead of worse than every slacker ever for some reason. I think retiring early to garden and read philosophy is more meaningful and jumping a motorcycle off a cliff is more interesting than over seeing making weapons that can wipe out the planet. Like a sciency twist on the old religious work ethic line- work hard and be productive, be nice and upstanding in your community, conform to the ideals of society- and you will be blessed. Those who do not live long and prosper were probably not resilient, prudent and conscientious. Ah well, feeling love for the crazy old hippies who did die young, study is probably onto something, man those guys were cool though.