World's Oldest Person

Tarmander

Member
Joined
Apr 30, 2015
Messages
3,763
India and Indonesia have very little in common. India is very social class-based aka castra, Indonesia is not. Just because they have "Ind" on their countries name doesn't mean they're similar. Instead, Indonesia is very similar to Thailand and Philippine despite their differences in religions (Islam vs Buddhism vs Christianity). If you've traveled to Thailand, expect Indonesians to have similar attitudes compared to Thais.

Judging from his body posture, skin and bone-structures (especially his eye colors), I'm pretty sure the gentleman is a legit centenarian. My grandparents are all centenarians and know several centenarian relatives so I know how they look like and act. Centenarians are kinda common in East and Southeast Asia, actually.

Nice tropical, sunny day all year with constant 6am to 6:30pm sunrise to sunset can do wonders to their body. Not to mention they consume much less calories than we do. Whenever I travel to SE Asia, I always eat 2-3x portions per meal because they're so small in comparison to US food servings.

The biggest downfall is that the people are relatively short and small. 5'-5" or shorter.

That is pretty interesting. Thank you for the additional info. Yeah I know they are different places, I brought up India because the thread had gotten onto the topic of India, even though the guy was from Indonesia. I have heard differing opinions of SE Asia. Some say like you that it is a very nice place metabolically, but I have heard others say that people are sickly there, constant cough, run down, too skinny, that kind of thing. What do you think?
 

raypeatclips

Member
Joined
Jul 8, 2016
Messages
2,555
@Strongbad I've wondered about the height thing before, after seeing one of these oldest men who had the nickname shorty because of his height. I wondered if there was a lack of growth hormone in these people, which Peat thinks is a negative hormone, so their height is one of many factors allowing them to live longer. Not sure if this is how growth hormone works and I am sure I will be corrected but it was a thought I had.
 

tara

Member
Joined
Mar 29, 2014
Messages
10,368
The biggest downfall is that the people are relatively short and small. 5'-5" or shorter.
This might be a genuine advantage when it comes to longevity, too.

@Strongbad I've wondered about the height thing before, after seeing one of these oldest men who had the nickname shorty because of his height. I wondered if there was a lack of growth hormone in these people, which Peat thinks is a negative hormone, so their height is one of many factors allowing them to live longer. Not sure if this is how growth hormone works and I am sure I will be corrected but it was a thought I had.

Apart from direct effects of growth hormone, there have also been speculations about innervation to height ratios being possibly relevant.

Jeanne Calment was no giant either.
 

Strongbad

Member
Joined
Feb 12, 2015
Messages
291
That is pretty interesting. Thank you for the additional info. Yeah I know they are different places, I brought up India because the thread had gotten onto the topic of India, even though the guy was from Indonesia. I have heard differing opinions of SE Asia. Some say like you that it is a very nice place metabolically, but I have heard others say that people are sickly there, constant cough, run down, too skinny, that kind of thing. What do you think?

There're always pros and cons wherever we live in and SE Asia is no exception. It's nice, it's always hot and sunny all year, but it's also very humid and moist-y. With the exception of Singapore, most SE Asia countries are poor and ridden with sanitation issues. Tap water is undrinkable so people always buy water bottle or the huge gallon container of filtered water (for household food consumption). Since it's humid and warm, it's also a very friendly environment for bacteria/pathogens to grow and spread. So if you have preexisting infections, whenever you visit SE Asia they're gonna get worse real quick: seborrheic dermatitis, IBS, gut bacterial issues, flakey skins, dandruff, oily scalp etc. Same thing with flu, cold, cough. It someone is sick it spreads a lot quicker because of the humidity and warm temperature. Bacteria loves that environment.

Another sickness that's very common in SE Asia is called "trapped wind". It's not an infection, it's not metabolic sickness or anything. It's just what it says: a person accumulates too much "wind" in their body. It's caused by humidity, warm temperature but high exposure with the breezing wind. So if you like walking around on the beach shirtless for too long, there's high chances you are going to get "trapped wind". At the beginning, a person starts farting a lot and very frequently (it's getting rid of excess "trapped wind"), then followed up by feeling weakness, drop in body temperature, feeling nausea, loss of appetite then aggressive diarrhea. It usually goes away within a week or so.

"Trapped Wind" is relatively a new sickness to western medicine, but TCM and eastern medicine already know treat it. The locals also know how to recognize the symptoms very quickly and apply preventative measures. There is this oil (I forgot what it's called) that they use topically on the skin to open up the pores and let the "trapped wind" out of the body. They deal with this sickness very frequently so they don't sweat about it as much as foreign visitors. No doctor visits are needed. The knowledge is passed via families and relatives.

@Strongbad I've wondered about the height thing before, after seeing one of these oldest men who had the nickname shorty because of his height. I wondered if there was a lack of growth hormone in these people, which Peat thinks is a negative hormone, so their height is one of many factors allowing them to live longer. Not sure if this is how growth hormone works and I am sure I will be corrected but it was a thought I had.

This might be a genuine advantage when it comes to longevity, too.
Apart from direct effects of growth hormone, there have also been speculations about innervation to height ratios being possibly relevant.

Jeanne Calment was no giant either.

I don't know anything about being short "hormone" and longer livespan, but SE Asians are very skinny and short because they don't eat much compared to Westerners. Their Burger King are smaller, their french fries servings are smaller etc. Whenever I'm there I always eat at least two times the portions of the locals. I assume it has something to do with their economic situation since the richer crowds (especially the young kids of rich families) are occasionally 6 footers and bigger in size. But for the most part they don't eat that much for whatever reasons.

Being skinny is partially the result of living in high humidity and warm temperature. Being sweaty a lot everyday :)
 

Similar threads

Back
Top Bottom