Remember the informative Netflix series Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones, that explored the physical and mental health benefits of life in select global geographic zones, and how those benefits contributed to the joyful longevity of their populations? Turns out there’s some new research, and questions, about the veracity of the demographic data used to support the Blue Zone findings and resultant health implications.
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines a modern-day rabbit hole, as opposed to those inhabited by furry little creatures living along your local hiking trail, as “a complexly bizarre or difficult situation conceived as a hole into which one falls or descends in the pursuit of something (such as an answer or solution) that leads to other questions, problems, or pursuits.”
We may be about to enter one now.
The British Medical Journal – Yale, a pre-print journal which reports new medical research that has yet to be peer reviewed, released a study led by Saul Justin Newman on September 6 titled “The global pattern of centenarians highlights deep problems in demography.” Mr. Newman is associated with the Centre for Longitudinal Studies at University College London and the Oxford (University) Institute of Population Ageing, and believes that without accurate age data future choices affecting medicine, many social sciences, epidemiology and good government will be hobbled.
Chronological age is a basic metric used by healthcare professionals to determine our relative state of health, our risk of disease and morbidity, and course of action when making medicinal and lifestyle recommendations. This is especially true in demographic data relating to older age groups, which many researchers contend is extremely inaccurate. How can we, and our governments, make decisions on healthcare and related infrastructure spending if our data is wrong?
One might expect sketchy data in poor and corrupt countries or war-torn dictatorships, but not in rich western countries like United States. Newman discovered that back in 1960 between 34 percent of non-white females and 73 percent of white males in American reported a different age in the national census than what was in their official records. Twenty-five percent of non-whites had reporting discrepancies that varied by more than ten years, and even today, United States government officials are instructed not to use birth certificates as evidence of age.
In his current study, Newman catalogued late-life survival patterns from 236 countries between 1970 and 2021 based on data curated by the United Nations. He examined life expectancy at age 100, and late-life survival from age 80 to 100, generally referred to as centenarian attainment rate.
As he expected, the study discovered data anomalies to be the rule rather than the exception. Kenya has consistently been ranked in the top 10 “Blue Zones”. In 2021 it was the fourth best country in the world for centenarian attainment rates, yet it ranked 213th for life expectancy at birth. Thailand, Guam, Panama and Uruguay all rank in the top ten for centenarian attainment rates, yet rate 54th, 72nd, 79th and 83rd for life expectancy. This doesn’t make sense, and throws suspicion on data collection and reliability.
Newman provides a long list of reasons for these contradictions.
Firstly, paper-processed documents are subject to few meaningful regulatory checks and are self-sustaining. Once you have been assigned a document with an incorrect age it will likely go undetected and stick with you forever. The primary reason such documents are seldom challenged is that there is no document-independent, universally accepted standard with which to compare them.
This doesn’t make sense, and throws suspicion on data collection and reliability
Another is the assumption that age data errors are rare and statistically unimportant. Newman allows that this might be true for young people, but then does the math to show how inserting just 100 40-year-olds into a statistical sample of 1,000,000 50-year-olds can distort the data by more than 90 percent once the sample reaches 100 years old. Simply put, the “errors” are 10 years younger biologically and will survive longer as an exponentially increasing proportion of the total sample.
Corruption, the ability to adjust your age to what social benefits you might be seeking, such as old-age pensions, free personal medical care, military service exemption, etc., cause significantly higher reported late-life survival rates in states with non-centralized governments, and those at war or enduring genocide. In 2012 Newman found that, “72 percent of supposedly valid Greek centenarians were discovered to be the product of pension fraud.” Wasn’t Ikaria, Greece, one of the Netflix Blue Zones?
Colonial and post-colonial countries are hugely contradictory in their data because of migration. Many have poor record keeping and health funding, yet attract high numbers of rich and healthy late-life migrant retirees which then become part of their reported centenarian attainment rate.
Curiously, Scandinavian countries, with their history of comprehensive long-term national record keeping, all rank in the top 15 countries for life expectancy, yet rank between 76th and 106th for centenarian attainment. Makes one suspicious of other data, doesn’t it?
Newman suggests that new, paperwork-independent technology is now available to eliminate these problems. By combining artificial intelligence-enhanced facial recognition learned on vast data pools with epigenetic age estimation, a person’s real age can be determined quite accurately. As it relates to identifying age, epigenetic science involves the study of our genomes to find cellular and tissue changes that occur naturally at certain times as we age. Combining this information with facial recognition allows an accurate estimate of a person’s age.
When this new age-estimating technology was performed on centenarians and 80-plus year olds, including those in Blue Zones, it was almost universally discovered that their stated, paperwork-derived ages were overestimates. Those tested were simply not as old as they claimed.
The choice is now yours. Is their paperwork-indicated age correct, and do blue zone centenarians enjoy some sort of extraordinary genetic, social or dietary advantage that really does enhance their chances of long life and reduced morbidity? Should we imitate those conditions and lifestyles in an effort to extend our own productive and enjoyable lives?
Or, do we accept as reality that we are largely epigenetically pre-wired to live to a certain age?
I believe it is a combination of both, but can’t be 100 percent sure. Welcome to my Blue Zone rabbit hole.
The original “Living to 100” Balanced Life column that explored the physical and mental health benefits of a Blue Zone lifestyle may be found here.