"I'm a Dancer!"
One of the only things that the US Armed Forces did for me during my stellar 6 year “career” was to get me in the best shape of my life.When I graduated from BCT (50+ years ago) I was 165 pounds,could do 40 pushups and could run 1.5 miles with 30 pounds of gear on my back.
"...The State of Israel requires every citizen over age 18 to serve in the Israel Defense Forces, although Arab citizens are exempted if they so wish. Men are expected to serve a minimum of 32 months, and women 24 months (until quite recently, women didn’t serve in the same combat roles, so their training was not as physically demanding).When Weinreb, an expert in demography, put together a dataset involving 130 countries, he found that, even after controlling for all sorts of variables, military service added more than three years to male life expectancy.
How to explain that? It may come down to a phenomenon known as the “healthy soldier effect.” At an age when, in most wealthy countries, people stop doing intensive physical stuff, in Israel, you have a large share of people in their 20s carrying 30-kilogram packs uphill for five days, first during their mandatory service, and then during annual reserve duty.
Army training potentially sets a precedent for maintaining physical fitness throughout one’s life, Weinreb said.
“No one in public health wants to say there’s anything good about the military. It may be a necessary evil, but to have mandatory conscription is counter to the Anglo-Saxon political ideology of this era.” It runs counter to the norms of liberalism, he said, and people are loathe to admit that there could be a positive health benefit...."
The article's accounting leaves out the most important factor. Living well (which implies long) is the best revenge.
And yarmulkes. You can't overstate how much habitually wearing a yarmulke promotes longevity.
I always wondered about all those preservatives in Military Field Rations. Preserving the troops too?
Maybe… but CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSATION.
That or the lunar calendars vs solar calendars and how Methuselah lived to 969.
Maybe it’s the Gefilte Fish.
“People live with, or close to, family. Israel has low levels of loneliness,”
I suspect that a sustained sense of purpose goes a long way to living a long time.
Maybe because Israel is God’s chosen, or perhaps it is because God gives them EVERY opportunity to embrace the Messiah that they missed.
Either way, it is a stupid article.
Moses made it to 120 without a pacemaker. At least the Bible doesn’t say he had one.
"I'm a Dancer!"
30-kilogram packs uphill for five days
LOL - without rest for 5 days, all uphill (its a big hill) 65 lbs of weight.
My guess is diet and a lifetime of family/friends are the bigger factors.
Hi.
Reminds me of Okinawa.
5.56mm
They may not believe in Jesus but they believe in God. That probably has more to do with it than mandatory military service.
Cause everyone there is a Doctor. Ha,ha.
We’re in good shape, in general. Both because of military service, Mediterranean diet, and there is a serious social stigma to being fat.
I travel all over. The world is fat, excepting Japan and certain Asian cities.
It’s been a huge change the last 10 years. almost Everyone everywhere is fat.