EPIDEMIOLOGICAL EVIDENCE ON LONGEVITY, HOLISTIC HEALTH AND A PLANT BASED DIET

EPIDEMIOLOGICAL EVIDENCE ON THE CORRELATON BETWEEN LONGEVITY-CANCER FREE HUMAN GROUPINGS AND THEIR DIET AND ENVIRONMENT 1. EVIDENCE A: The Seven Day Adventists plant-based lifestyle
THE SEVEN DAY APPROACH TO HEALTH Many academic studies on the members of the Seventh Day Adventist Church have found that Seventh Day Adventists have more than 50% less chance of getting cancer and most other chronic diseases. They also live 12 years longer than the average modern American today. Yet, SDA's have the same sex, age, socio-economic, educational, occupational, ethnic and cultural profile as the rest of American Society's inhabitants. Simple conclusion: the Bible Health Principles on a vegetarian diet and living a happy wholesome & spiritual lifestyle may be a key health factor. For epidemiological evidence on SDA diet and lifestyle and health, please click here.  However, the reason why SDA's are not 100% cancer free like the Hunza and other human groups is because of the following reasons: 1) Many members who have joined the SDA Church had a mainstream lifestyle and some, even after they become SDA's choose to continue eating the standard American diet. 2) The vegetables and fruits eaten are not specifically chosen for vitamin B17 content and are not always organic. 3) Not all SDA's adhere to a vegetarian diet	AT BATTLE CREEK SEVEN DAY ADVENTIST SANATORIUM (BEFORE THE SECOND WORLD WAR), SUN AND LIGHT AND HEAT THERAPIES WERE PRACTICED.
2. THE Abkhazians  FROM THE  CAUCASUS MOUNTAINS The Abkhazians are found deep in the Caucasus Mountains on the Northwest side of the Black Sea. They are a people with similar health indicators and longevity as the Hunzakuts. Their food and lifestyle having to live in a harsh rugged terrain are  analogous.  They follow a diet, which is low in carbohydrates, high in vegetable proteins and rich in minerals and vitamins, (including vitamin B17), pure water, fresh air, little stress.
3. Vilcabamba Ecuador What is it about the food and water of this place that makes it special? Fifteen kilometers above Vilcabamba is the continental divide and the highest local peaks. Up there it is almost constantly precipitating in one way or another. All water, including rain water, has some mineralization. Only water distilled in a lab is pure. So, when our rain, drizzle or sleet fall on these mountains it is already carrying some dissolved solids. The ground on the very high ridges of the Andes is covered with thick grass-like plants that grow and die; but since they can't really rot at the temperature up there, they just continue to grow one on top of the other. What this creates is a deep vegetable sponge that filters and mineralizes the water as it passes through. The Andes in this area were covered by glaciers during the last ice-age. These glaciers carved out shallow basins in the rock at about 3,000 meters of elevation. Now, they are lakes and their water have virtually the same mineralization as the river water in the valley below. The kinds of rocks that make up the lower terrains of the Andes are not particularly reactive to H20. So, all the minerals in Vilcabamba water, and the most important ones in the irrigated food chain are coming from a vegetable source. These grasses of the Andean tundra and the forests that grow in wind-protected clefts are feeding on glacier-ground rock particles of an ancient age. Fortunately for Vilcabamba, far below, there are no dikes of precious metals lacing the upper watershed. Otherwise gold miners would have long ago contaminated the high creeks with mercury and other toxic by-products found all over the Andes. In fact, gold is found almost every place else around, besides the Vilcabamba watershed. Also, these highlands are too rough and rocky for agricultural purposes. Therefore nobody's been fertilizing or fumigating up there. No one even lives up that high, since pasture animals cannot survive on this rough grass. Its minerals are balanced, but it has almost no protein. This tundra, cloud-forest area is useless, besides producing the most therapeutic water on the earth's surface.	4. HOPI & NAVAJO INDIANS The Indians of North America are another people who are remarkably free from cancer. The AMA went as far as conducting a special study in an effort to discover why there was little to no cancer amongst the Hopi and Navajo Indians . The February 5, 1949 issue of the journal of the American Medical Association declared that they found 36 cases of malignant cancer from a population of 30,000. In the same population of white persons there would have been about 1800.   Dr Krebs research later found that the typical diet for the Navajo and Hopi Indian consisted of nitriloside-rich foods such as Cassava. He calculated that some of the tribes would ingest the equivalent of 8000mg of Vitamin B17 per day from their diet chamisa is rich in rubidium and potassium
5. The Hunzas of the Himalayas.	The  Hunza People From the Himalaya have been closely studied and physicians have confirmed for a long time  that  “The Hunza has no known incidence of cancer” (Dr Robert McCarrison, AMA Journal, Jan 7, 1922).  In addition,  “ They live well beyond 100 years old and have commonly been known to still father children at the age of 110”,  provided they do not adopt the “sad” model  (standard American diet”)  and stay  in their paradisiacal eco-villages close to Nature: Some of their lifestyle conditions -  no pollution, pure and alcalinic water and foods (like for the Hopi  whose chamisa is rich in rubidium and potassium), clean ozonated air, rich humus-topsoil, medium mountain altitude, exercises, sun, vegetarianism with lots of apricots (eating  the  nitriloside-amygdalin rich kernel as well),  as seen in the picture above.

Similar to the People of  Abkhazia in central Euro-asia  or the Vilcabambans from the “Sacred Valley” of centenarians in  Ecuador, or the Tarahumara of Mexico or even the Cretians and certain French Mediterranean groupings and  the Seven Day Adventist (whose cancer incidence is more than 50 percent less than in mainstream society),  these people eat a  plant-based diet, remain active within a happy rural village structure and  live without competitive stress, toxicity overload,  inappropriate diet,   nor  chronic « civilization » dis-ease.

One of the first medical teams to study the Hunza was headed by world-renown British surgeon Dr Robert McCarrison. Writing in the AMA Journal Jan 7, 1922 he suspected that the Hunza diet had something to do with their health. “They have an abundant crop of apricots.These they dry in the sun and use largely in their food".  It is interesting to note that the traditional Hunza Diet contains over 200 times more nitriloside (B17 Rich food) than the average American or Australian Diet. There is no such thing as money in Hunza. A mans wealth is measured by the number of apricot trees he owns. And the most prized of all foods was considered to be the apricot seed. It is very common for the Hunza to eat between 30 - 50 (ie. about 30mg of B17) apricot seeds as an after lunch snack. The thousands of seeds they do not eat they store or grind them very finely and then squeezed under pressure to produce a very rich oil used in cooking and to apply to the skin. The apricot is staple food in Hunza. They use the apricot, its seed and the oil for practically everything. In addition to the ever-present apricot, the hunzahuts eat mainly grain and fresh vegetables. These include buckwheat, millet, alfalfa, peas, broad beans, turnips, lettuce, sprouting pulse and berries of various sorts.

All of these with the exception of lettuce and turnips contain vitamin B17.
It is also established that when the Hunza leave their secluded land and adopt the menus of other countries, they soon succumb to the same diseases and infirmities including cancer as the rest of man kind.

 

BELOW, TESTIMONIES ON LIVING PAST ONE HUNDRED YEARS

 

Reaching 100 Easier Than Suspected By LINDSEY TANNER, AP Posted: 2008-02-12 10:23:09 CHICAGO (Feb. 11) - Living to 100 is easier than you might think. Surprising new research suggests that even people who develop heart disease or diabetes late in life have a decent shot at reaching the century mark. "It has been generally assumed that living to 100 years of age was limited to those who had not developed chronic illness," said Dr. William Hall of the University of Rochester. Hall has a theory for how these people could live to that age. In an editorial in Monday's Archives of Internal Medicine, where the study was published, he writes that it might be thanks to doctors who aggressively treat these older folks' health problems, rather than taking an "ageist" approach that assumes they wouldn't benefit. For the study, Boston University researchers did phone interviews and health assessments of more than 500 women and 200 men who had reached 100. They found that roughly two-thirds of them had avoided significant age-related ailments. But the rest, dubbed "survivors," had developed an age-related disease before reaching 85, including high blood pressure, heart disease or diabetes. Yet many functioned remarkably well - nearly as well as their disease-free peers. Overall, the men were functioning better than the women. Nearly three-fourths of the male survivors could bathe and dress themselves, while only about one-third of the women could. The researchers think that may be because the men had to be in exceptional condition to reach 100. "Women, on the other hand, may be better physically and socially adept at living with chronic and often disabling conditions," wrote lead author Dr. Dellara Terry and her colleagues. Rosa McGee is one of the healthy women in the study who managed to avoid chronic disease. Now 104, the retired cook and seamstress is also strikingly lucid. "My living habits are beautiful," McGee said in an interview at her daughter's Chicago apartment. "I don't take any medicines. I don't smoke and I don't drink. Never did anything like that." Until late 2006, when she fell in her St. Louis home, McGee lived alone and took care of herself. Now in Chicago, she is less mobile but still takes walks a few times weekly down the apartment building hallways, with her daughter's help. McGee credits her faith in God for her good health. She also gets lots of medical attention - a doctor and nurse make home visits regularly. Genes surely contributed - McGee's maternal grandparents lived to age 100 and 107. But while genes are important, scientists don't think they tell the whole story about longevity. A second, larger study of men in their 70s found that those who avoided smoking, obesity, inactivity, diabetes and high blood pressure greatly improved their chances of living into their 90s. In fact, they had a 54 percent chance of living that long. Their survival decreased with each risk factor, and those with all five had only a 4 percent chance of living into their 90s, according to Harvard University researchers. Those who managed to avoid lifestyle-related ailments also increased their chances of functioning well physically and mentally two decades later. The study followed 2,357 men for about 25 years or until death, starting in their early 70s. About 40 percent survived to at least age 90. Among survivors, 24 percent had none of the five risk factors. "It's not just luck, it's not just genetics. ... It's lifestyle" that seems to make a big difference, said lead author Dr. Laurel Yates of Harvard's Brigham and Women's Hospital. "It's get your shoes on, get out there, and do some exercise," she said. "These are some things you can do" to increase the chances of a long life. Yates said it's never too late to adopt a healthier lifestyle, though the findings don't address whether waiting until age 70 to stop smoking, lose weight and exercise will increase longevity. Hall noted that the United States has more than 55,000 centenarians, and that Americans 85 and older are the country's fastest-growing group of older adults. He said the new research underscores how important it is for doctors to become adept at treating the oldest of the old, who are "becoming the bread and butter of the clinical practice of internal medicine." Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL. 2008-02-11 16:40:46

CNN) -- Still vigorous at 100 years of age, Edward Rondthaler writes a weekly column for his local newspaper, walks a half-mile every morning and drives himself on errands around his hometown of Croton-on-Hudson, New York. Rondthaler credits his long and healthy life to clean living, good genes, and regular cold showers. "When my brother in 1918 came home from the army, he said, 'Ed, whenever you take a hot shower, end it with an ice cold one and count to 100.' When your older brother tells you to do something, you do it," Rondthaler said. Ever since, Rondthaler has finished his morning shower with a long blast of cold water, which he thinks plays at least a small role in keeping him going. "I've learned to count pretty fast. It gets you out of the tub quickly," he said. Rondthaler is a member of what demographers say is the fastest-growing segment of society -- centenarians, or people 100 years old and above. He and his cohort are increasing in number because more Americans are living longer than previous generations. Reduced mortality Over the past century, life expectancy in the United States has increased about 30 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This has brought the average life expectancy from 47.3 years for someone born in 1900 to 77.3 years for someone born in 2002. "It comes to largely drops in infant mortality that took place over decades. Also improvements in public health, vaccines, ways to prevent killer diseases, keeping the water supply clean," said Winifred K. Rossi, deputy associate director of the Geriatrics and Clinical Gerontology Program at the National Institute on Aging. The increase in longevity has been larger for women than men. Two years separated their average life spans at the turn of the last century. Now, more than 100 years later, five years separate the sexes, with the average man living 74.5 years and the average woman living 79.9 years, according to the CDC. "Women are not as prone to having acute events such as fatal cardiovascular problems or other quicker killers. Males are at more risk. A lot of it is driven by lifestyle and environment. Men tend to engage in riskier behaviors, such as smoking," Rossi said. Centenarian secrets Demographers and public health experts are split over whether the next century will see longevity increases like the last one. Some experts believe life span growth will slow because infant mortality, the major cause of shorter life spans in the past, largely has been wiped-out. Other experts counter that advances in genetic technology will enable people to live significantly longer lives. Regardless, there are some concrete steps people can take to maximize their own life span. Thomas Perls, director of the New England Centenarian Study, examines people age 100 and above in order to help everyone else learn how to age well. He says the key to a long and healthy life is rather simple: Don't smoke, gets lots of exercise and sleep, and eat a balanced diet. "One of the important messages here is that it doesn't have to be unusual. It is what your mother told you to do, with the exception of clearing your plate," Perls said. Centenarians are a diverse group, according to Perls. Some are teetotalers. Others manage to reach extreme old age despite heavy drinking and smoking, deadly behaviors for most people. One feature common to most centenarians is that stress doesn't bother them. "They seem to be able to shed stress. It doesn't get to them and cause them to age more quickly. They don't internalize stuff," Perls said. Rethinking retirement As more and more people live longer, many of them are rethinking what it means to be old. Dan Kadlec, co-author of "The Power Years: A User's Guide to the Rest of Your Life," says baby boomers will revolutionize retirement, which the first wave of them will enter in just a few years. "I'm a boomer myself. I've watched, and many of us have watched, our parents retire way too early thinking they weren't going to live much longer. They wanted to get their wills in order and play golf and pinochle," Kadlec said. As a result, Kadlec thinks his generation will be more interested in exploring second and third careers, traveling widely and perhaps even having more sex. "The obvious example is Viagra. It has changed a lot of men's lives, even in their 70s and 80s. There are medical breakthroughs all the time that are extending life and the quality of life. That is what is behind the longevity revolution. It's not just that we are living longer. It is that we are living longer and better," Kadlec said. Rondthaler, the 100-year-old from Croton-on-Hudson, says community involvement has helped him live a long and full life. Rondthaler likes to sing, and is writing a song for the 100-year anniversary of the Croton Dam, which holds drinking water for New York City. "As you can imagine, a 100-year-old is always invited to things," Rondthaler said. "I'm always working up ballads for any event, like the 100-year anniversary of the dam." Rondthaler is even healthy enough to give blood, which he plans to do soon. "The doctor gave me permission to give blood. They want to make a point of it. They want to say, 'Here's a 100-year-old man giving blood. Why don't you young people try it too."

 

ON AGING MECHANISMS

Scientists Shed New Light on Aging Process
By Tan Ee Lyn, Reuters

HONG KONG (June 30) - Scientists in Hong Kong have shed new light on why cell repair is less efficient in older people after a breakthrough discovery on premature aging, a rare genetic disease that affects one in four million babies.

 

Premature aging, or Hutchison-Gilford Progeria Syndrome (progeria), is obvious in the appearance of a child before it is a year old. Although their mental faculties are normal, they stop growing, lose body fat and suffer from wrinkled skin and hair loss. Like old people, they suffer stiff joints and a buildup of plaque in arteries which can lead to heart disease and stroke. Most die of cardiovascular diseases before they are 20.

In 2003, a team of scientists in the United States found that progeria was caused by mutation in a protein called Lamin A, which lines the nucleus in human cells.

A team at the University of Hong Kong, led by Zhou Zhongjun, took the research a step further in 2004 and found that mutated Lamin A actually disrupted the repair process in cells, thus resulting in accelerated aging.
The study was published in the July issue of the Nature Medicine journal.
Zhou said the team came by their findings after comparing skin cells taken from two progeria sufferers, normal humans, progeria mice and normal mice.
While damaged DNA was quickly repaired in the healthy human and mice cell samples, the samples taken from the progeria humans and mice had difficulty repairing damaged DNA.
"Mutation in this protein (Lamin A) can cause defects in repair and thus lead to progeria," Zhou, a research assistant professor with the biochemistry department at the University of Hong Kong, said in an interview.
"DNA damage is not effectively repaired in cells with defective Lamin A but very efficiently repaired in normal cells."

The study highlights the importance of Lamin A to the repair process, and any mutation to Lamin A that disrupts repair will bring about aging, Zhou said. Having established the link between Lamin A and repair, Zhou is using major findings from other research he did in 2002 to work on his next project, a product which he hopes could kill cancer cells.

Zhou, Professor Karl Tryggvason in Sweden's Karolinska Institute and a Spanish research group found in 2002 that the enzyme Zmpste 24 was responsible in converting prelamin A to functional Lamin A.
Zhou's laboratory is now developing inhibitors to Zmpste 24, which he hopes to apply to tumors. These inhibitors should theoretically disrupt Lamin A production, thwart the repair function in cancer cells, and bring on their premature aging and death.
"We're now trying to develop inhibitors to Zmpste 24 and apply it to tumor cells," he said.
06-30-05 17:45 EDT

 

Len Goodman, PhD
Dynamic Chiropractic
November 20, 1995, Volume 13, Issue 24
The Way to Live -- Secrets for High Quality Octogenarianism
In my last column (June 5, 1995 issue of "DC") I speculated that the boom in fitness in America was a myth, that in reality only a small segment of the population really took hold of fitness and permanently changed their lifestyles. Fortuitously, this bold assertion on my part was bolstered by a study which was just published last month.1
The study surveyed over 34,800 U.S. citizens in most of the states. The authors found that though the incidence of inactivity has gradually decreased in many age/race/sex groups, still only one in 10 people are active in strenuous leisure-time activities -- activities intense enough (performed at 70-85 percent of peak oxygen uptake) to elicit all the favorable changes which are health-enhancing.
Another trend one often hears championed is that the current rate of mortality from coronary disease (CAD) has dropped over the past 30 years. But this, many argue, is simply due to improved symptom-based health delivery systems found in all industrialized countries. Stop-gaps like coronary bypass surgery, balloon angioplasty, vasoactive and cholesterol lowering drugs, etc., do not cure CAD. For example, bypass surgery temporarily improves/restores blood flow to the myocardium. Metabolically, the patient still has heart disease. Morbidity from CAD and atherosclerotic diseases is disturbingly high in North America. It still outranks cancer.
This leads to another related question: why do certain cultures still seem to avoid degenerative/occulusive diseases of the circulation, and attain high-quality longevity right into their eighties and nineties? Earlier studies indicated that during the Second World War in Europe, the incidence of CAD decreased. Most site the drastic reduction in food quantity and quality during the war when populations were on rationed diets. Animal studies have also shown conclusively that if you deliberately withhold food (i.e., fat, protein, and carbohydrate) from mice, they live longer than their well-fed control group colleagues. When the Japanese immigrated to the U.S., they did two things: they ate less seafood and vegetables, and they ate more processed high-fat food. They then started to develop CAD at the same rate as North Americans.

Has the incidence of coronary disease decreased in Bosnia? If one were to intrude into this awful world conflict and actually do the epidemiology, I think we'd find the rate had drastically decreased over the last few years.
Several years back, when I was completing my graduate work in Vancouver, I was privileged to be invited to a lecture by Dr. Kenneth Pelletier. Pelletier studied under the famed Hans Selye, who we all know as the individual who gave us our understanding of the stress response and general adaptation syndrome. Many of you now use these theories as adjunct treatment modalities in chiropractic care.
Dr. Pelletier's lecture was captivating and in the theme of cardiovascular disease prevention (it could be arthritis or cancer too), and the concept of facilitating long, healthy lifespans, I will summarize his key points that were put forth that day. They are still highly relevant and provocative today.
He first presented an optimal health continuum, which from memory I will attempt to reproduce here. The scale starts with the standard Western medical approach to treatment of disease disability, symptoms, signs, which were conceived around 1900 and persist today. Pelletier proposes that we must evolve past this to a point where issues (that medicine even now bypasses) become paramount, such as consciousness of stress management. He believes stress is responsible for between 50 and 80 percent of all diseases. Diet and nutrition are next (which has started to make inroads in our health care paradigm), followed by environmental, pyschosocial and physical effects (here he mentions electromagnetic pollution). Next along the continuum are the effects of political and economic factors which affect population health, and finally the last step along the continuum, longevity.

Pelletier then asks what do groups scattered about the world who are known for their outstanding longevity have in common? What set of life situations/conditions do they exhibit which provide the setting where ages above 85, 90 and even 100 years is obtainable?
Five groups were identified who have remarkably similar attributes in common. They are the Georgians and the Arkhazians in the former USSR; the Vilcabunba in Ecuador; the Huza in Pakistan; and the Tarahumara in Mexico. These groups will be expected to live (barring unforeseen natural disasters) well into their nineties and 100s. Tooth particle analysis determination (accurate to +-2 years) was done).
Pelletier outlines the following common parameters and environmental/social conditions imposed upon these people:

Clearly, an examination of these common elements explains why we have so far to go in our society in understanding how to go into old age with self-respect, vigor and vitality. Perhaps a greater understanding and appreciation of these concepts practiced for thousands of years, will be recognized in time -- before our health care systems collapse entirely.

Reference

1. Caspersen C.J. et al. Physical activity trends among 26 states, 1986-1990. Medicine Science in Sports and Exercise. 27(5):713-720, 1995.
Len Goodman, PhD
Ontario, Canada

 

TIDBITS INFO

 

In actual fact, the oldest recorded living human was a French lady Jeanne Louise Calment who died at age 126. The country that has the largest number of persons over the age of 100 is actually Sweden, and the country with the longest average life expectancy is Japan. But since most of the mountain under-developed world has no dependable recording system, it can not be verified who outlives who. However, there have many anecdotal reports, many of which are based on empirical facts, which would indicate that a good number of people have lived over 120 years old.

 

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