Did you think you should be cheerful and have a good sense of humor? It turns out not really. Cheerful children with a sense of humor lived less time on average than those who were less happy and demanding. The most careful and persistent people are the ones who stayed healthy and lived the longest
In 1921, more than 1,500 smart children were tested, all around the age of ten. Ninety years later, today we receive the results of one of the largest studies on the way in which a set of different factors affected the life span of those children. More than a hundred students and researchers dedicated their time to tracking those original children, which included interviews and analysis of tens of thousands of pages of information accumulated about all the subjects' data. All of these were compared to the age each child reached, in an attempt to understand how the character and living conditions affect the length of life.
The results, which were released recently, are extraordinary to say the least.
Did you think you should be cheerful and have a good sense of humor? It turns out not really. Cheerful children with a sense of humor lived less time on average than those who were less happy and demanding. The most careful and persistent people are the ones who stayed healthy and lived the longest.
Part of the explanation lies in the consequences of the behavior on health. The happy and playful children tended to take more risks regarding their health over the years. And while optimism can help in times of crisis, it seems that a general attitude of 'everything will be fine' can be harmful, as it can cause you to dismiss and ignore issues that are important to health and longevity. Persistence and caution have led to many health benefits over the years. The bottom line is that happiness does not cause good health. In fact, good health is what causes happiness.
Some of the other conclusions also conflict with conventional wisdom. for example:
Marriage is important for a man's health, but doesn't really change for a woman. Men who remained married for many years tended to live into their seventies and beyond. In contrast, less than a third of the divorced men managed to reach the age of seventy. Last but not least, men who never married tended to live longer than those who divorced, but they also failed to overtake the longevity of married men.
The women, on the other hand, don't have to worry too much about divorce. Women who divorced and did not remarry still managed to reach an age close to that of the women who remained married. In other words: if you divorced the treacherous dove, your revenge was recorded automatically, and almost without harming your chances of reaching old age.
It's not all. Everyone is telling you that you should stop working so hard and stressing about things? Don't believe them. The subjects who were most involved and committed to their jobs lived the longest and had the best health. Men and women who continued to be productive over time tended to live longer than their more relaxed peers.
Want to send your child to school before the recommended age? Think again. Starting formal studies too early is a risk factor for early mortality. The ability to connect with classmates, and to have enough time for games, is very important for children. Playing with pets, however, is not associated with longevity. Pets may make you feel good sometimes, but they are no substitute for friends.
And what if you feel loved and loved? Doesn't it contribute to general health? Not necessarily. Such people report a better general feeling, but it does not help them live longer lives. In fact, the most obvious social factor that affects health comes precisely from being involved in helping others.
To what extent can the research results be considered? The answer is not unequivocal. This is a study that has passed through many 'hands' during the ninety years in which it was conducted. Beyond that, the very fact that some of the conclusions obtained conflict with previous studies requires us to treat it with extra caution. There are many factors that could have complicated the results, such as the Second World War in which a large part of the happy and free-worried young people may have found their death. On the other hand, even in Israel we do not live comfortably.
In conclusion, it does not seem that the great riddle about the length of life will be solved in the near future. At most, she only got more involved. But if you want my advice: get married and start contributing to Israeli society. Even if you don't live many years, you might help others improve their lives.
to the notice of the researchers
20 תגובות
"Legali"
That's the nickname you chose for yourself, even though your procrastination is actually an illegal act
People who smoked for a hundred and twenty years lived a very long time!
Gali, you are really closed, aren't you?
Every woman is something completely different.
Men have many women waiting for them, but women have many men waiting for them (even the ugly ones).
A woman suffers when she lives with the same man and she will always be interested to know how it is with others.
It's just that after a long relationship, she realizes that she actually has a lot more fun when she's alone.
But the men didn't like it, so they did everything to deny the women basic rights (like accumulating property or education) so they would have no choice but to get married.
Most of the girls and women, even nowadays - are married under duress.
Elek "disgruntled bachelor". Where did you get this nonsense?
Married women are super resentful and also much fatter/uglier than single women.
Studies have also found that the Aikido of married women is lower than that of single women.
Is it the same with every woman? Well, from my experience every woman is completely different from the other. Maybe for men who only have a chance with a certain type, they all become alike.
And it has been known since time immemorial that marriage is a burden for a woman and a relief for a man...so why suggest everyone to get married? Just because it's good for men?
Agree with R.H.
In such a large database there is no problem to find correlations, even many.
What is alpha? What is the result of the statistical test?
Until you see these numbers it's really hard to draw conclusions.
Nice that everyone agrees
Gali Weinstein
Barak exploits others for his own benefit, this is his nature. Anyone who can benefit him.
How do you admire such egotism?
He found a new woman who is as selfish as he is.
According to all the stories there were such as a consulting firm that she opened.
Even if they live longer it does not necessarily mean that their market share in the gene pool is greater than that of divorced men
I really liked the article, even if I have my doubts like everyone else...
Even if I would accept the results of such a delusional survey the question still arises
A shorter but happy and happy life or a longer but careful and persistent one
The picture is out of place.
Lithuanian men live on average ten years less than Israeli men.
And what about the one who is married to Poland, is he also happy?
It is a bit difficult to accept a study that lasted 90 years. So much information gets lost along the way, so many changes occur. Since the cause of death is not detailed here in percentages, it is difficult to truly determine the impact of World War II, and it is not possible to tell from these data how many of the original participants died in this war. Some of the original participants have indeed been located and sufficient and reliable information has been gathered about them.
R.H.:
In the last two paragraphs it is made clear beyond any doubt that Roy does not give the research any leeway.
Menachem 31:
Where did you wink this crap?
Fantastic research, I really don't agree with it.
Lior talks nonsense.
It doesn't take much effort to find poor and weak people and see how quickly old age jumps on those whose living conditions are not optimal.
Lior is right.
This article belongs to a vast and vast family of erroneous and misleading statistical articles.
The correlation trap in statistics is one of the oldest problems on the subject. Check the distribution of factor X, in this case divorce, of factor Y, life expectancy, and find some sort of weak match between them.
From this, one immediately jumps to the conclusion that X influenced Y as stated in the title: "The secret to a long life for a man: get married".
Maybe Y influenced X? Maybe, the secret to a wedding is to live long"? Maybe there is even some Z that affects both of them and they are only correlated to each other? Maybe the secret to a long life and a wedding is to eat carrots? Have you checked it out? Or maybe not to eat carrots and buy a red car?
Moreover, after drawing the conclusion, they look for the "mechanism" behind it, which is even more far-fetched. Married people are happier. Has anyone checked this? And then at the end comes the operative conclusion emerging from the article. Get married and don't get divorced. It may be true, but it certainly doesn't appear from the results of the "scientific" article for one reason or another.
In short, in my opinion, all these far-fetched "statistical" studies that come out in the morning news are worth as much as the skin of garlic, and it's a shame that Roy Tsezana, whose writing I greatly appreciate, also falls into this populist trap and gives this kind of research a thumbs up.
You wrote: "Less than a third of the men who divorced managed to reach the age of seventy".
It sounds like a sentence written by a divorced researcher... 🙂
There is a very big illusion in divorce: a man who gets divorced thinks to himself that with the next wife the situation will be better than with the previous wife. When you are inside the marriage system, it seems to you that you just go outside and there are a thousand women waiting for you outside and here you will find the right one. Then they get divorced and many men find it difficult to meet a new woman and if they do meet they find that with the new woman there are exactly the same problems as with the previous woman. But now they are far from the children. And it seems to me that the distance from the children causes sorrow.
And so this discovery, in my opinion, is very difficult - moving away from the children and discovering that other women are exactly the same thing. Because life is not Snow White and the seven dwarfs.
The chance that what happened to Ehud Barak and Nili Friel (return to childhood love) will happen to someone is like the chance to reach the Knesset... 🙂 But in a case like theirs, a man should really unpack the package because he is getting something real and not an illusion.
Lior:
Where did you wink this crap?
All they managed to do with medicine was prolong the life of old age
More interesting was to see a survey that shows how many people would really like to extend their old age.
and live with dozens of diseases, a body that loses its abilities, and an appetizing mind that does not understand why it is alive.