[HN Gopher] "Blue Mind Theory" ___________________________________________________________________ "Blue Mind Theory" Author : RickJWagner Score : 71 points Date : 2023-06-11 15:53 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.insidehook.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.insidehook.com) | karaterobot wrote: | > That's according to Dr. Wallace J. Nichols, a marine biologist | who coined the term "blue mind theory." (Ted Talk here, book | here.) | | This breathless nonsense was popularized by a TED Talk? Who could | possibly have guessed that. | MollyRealized wrote: | Yes, it's not as if people like Stephen Hawking, Jane Goodall, | Jill Tarter, Richard Dawkins, and Svante Paabo have given TED | talks. Oh, wait. | CrampusDestrus wrote: | You know, by this metric since every historical journal has | hosted papers from the greatest scientists we should just | believe their word forever | USB5 wrote: | [dead] | karaterobot wrote: | I'm not sure what this is supposed to prove, but did you know | there have been around 4000 TED Talks, and one of them was by | a guy who thinks smelling the ocean makes you live longer? | scottLobster wrote: | Is this an ad? | | Article Summary: Living near water is good for you, because | there's a completely correlative 17% reduction in all-cause | mortality if you live near the ocean. One study in particular | used the the incredibly scientific metric of "wonderful tonic" | for how ocean smells and sounds impact our health. | | Also some marine biologist, who spent most of his career studying | sea turtles, did some "research" on humans, and did a TED talk | and wrote a book about how living near water is better for your | health (link to buy said book). | | Now go visit some fucking water, any water will do, even whatever | you can find in your backyard! It's good for you! | | Thanks for reading "InsideHook", because InsideScoop and | InsideLane were taken. | asimovfan wrote: | They come so close to the mind. Just practice meditation every | day. You will find the real blue, endless and deep | ftxbro wrote: | > "the areas with the highest concentration of centenarians -- | every one of them is situated along a coastline." | | geographic profile maps which are basically just population maps | | https://xkcd.com/1138/ | AnonCoward42 wrote: | Beside the really bad article here, water indeed seems to have a | weird effect on me. It's kind of resetting my head for a bit. I | really do not know what it is, but submerging, or shower over, | the head brings a sense of clarity in my mind, removing clouds. | Hard to put into words, but it just happens. | | I have my doubts that I'd live longer if I'd do it more often or | for longer tho. | paulpauper wrote: | _If you take a look at a map of the world's Blue Zones -- the | areas with the highest concentration of centenarians -- every one | of them is situated along a coastline. Little wonder: settling | down by the sea, in a so-called "blue space," has been linked to | a 17% reduction in mortality rate. One study suggested that | living within 250 meters of a seaside environment helps reduce | stress levels, with the smell and sounds offering a "wonderful | tonic." | | _ | | sigh typical confusion of correlation and causation so common in | the health industry and media. people who live near water | probably have more money. they can afford better healthcare. | cassepipe wrote: | Before that even, coast people have historically have had | access to better food supplies and some essential nutrients | from the sea I don't the name of in english, seems more | important than the "smell and sounds" | hungryforcodes wrote: | Says an American. But in pretty much every other Western | nation, health care is more or less the same... | maelito wrote: | In France, there is a global population move towards the west | coast-line, particularly the Atlantic coastline. | | As a consequence, the price of housing has become high enough to | trigger riots. In the Basque Country, in Brittany. Lots of locals | cannot buy any space anymore. Lots of (mostly not high salary) | seasonal workers have to go live further in the countryside, | triggering longer commuting by car in these regions where trains | are underdeveloped. | n8cpdx wrote: | Loma Linda is in a desert valley situated between parched hills | and the I-10 freeway, nestled under a blanket of perpetual smog. | | This is a criminal abuse of zoomed-out maps and a negligently | written article. A more accurate representation of LL's "seaside" | location: | https://www.google.com/maps/place/Loma+Linda,+CA/@34.0389499... | | It might have more to do with the strict lifestyle choices than | the sights and sounds of the sea an hour drive away. | | https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/i-breathe-loma-linda-how-... | kaycebasques wrote: | It took me a while to figure out how your comment connects to | the submitted article, but I think I've got it now. The article | is advocating for blue zones, and Loma Linda is a designated | blue zone. Is that right? | Ireallyapart wrote: | Loma Linda is a bluezone because of diet and community. They | are very far away from the ocean. The environment their is | more desert rather then Mediterranean climate. | | How do I know? I live in LA county about a couple miles due | west of loma linda. That city is really inland and not | considered to be near the ocean at all. | [deleted] | smusamashah wrote: | > "When you see water..... it triggers a response in your brain | that you're in the right place" | | I was once on a public coach in a mountain area and was feeling | extremely motion sick/nauseating because of all ups and downs and | circles of the way. I was just trying to hold off the vomit as | long as I could. Suddenly after a turn I saw the river flowing | through the glass window of the coach and right there that | feeling stopped. It was a sudden calm just by looking at that | river water. | | It was weird so I did experiment with it. If I looked away nausea | came back after a few moments. Did it a few times. Finally I held | on to keep looking at the river to keep feeling better. | | It may be unrelated to this theory but I don't have any other | explanation. | DenisM wrote: | If you get sea sick on a boat look at the horizon. It brings | your vestibular system in sync with your visual input. If you | look inside the boat your visual and vestibular systems are out | of sync. | | The same could have happened to you on the coach - the river | gave you something distant to fix your eyes on because of the | visual appeal, while other objects did not offer the same point | of stability because they were not attractive enough for you to | fixate of them or not distant enough to provide stability. | User23 wrote: | By far the strongest predictor of centenarians is the rate of | social security fraud. | | I will say though that watching the sun set over the Pacific does | fill me with a deep joy. | mberning wrote: | Blue Zones, where people miraculously live longer due to fraud | and poor record keeping. | rawoke083600 wrote: | source ? | blakesterz wrote: | https://www.livescience.com/oldest-people-may-not-be-so- | old.... | | The World's Oldest People Might Not Be As Old As We Think | | Poor record-keeping and fraud may be inflating the numbers. | paulpauper wrote: | yeah the concept of blue zones seems really dubious . even if | they do live longer the underlying variable is probably wealth | genocidicbunny wrote: | Or diet and exercise, which need not be uncorrelated with | wealth, but something tells me that places like Sardinia, | Okinawa and Nicaragua haven't historically been that wealthy. | Especially when you consider that to have the most | centenarians now, those centenarians must have been born in | the first quarter of the 20th century, 100+ years ago. | Whatever effect blue zones have, it's not likely to be an | entirely recent one; People don't tend to suddenly gain huge | amounts of life expectancy in their middle age. | | (Of course, this is all presupposing that the number of | centenarians in those areas is not greatly exaggerated, and | that there hasn't been a massive migration of centenarians | from other areas to the blue zones.) | alanvillalobos wrote: | Nicoya (Costa Rica) is not Nicaragua | genocidicbunny wrote: | Whoops, you're right. The picture I saw was relatively | low res and it kind looked like it was Nicaragua. | mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: | On your parenthetical, here's a hypothesis. It's kinda hard | to be old in rural areas(no way to get around, limited care | available, etc), which tend to be inland, whereas cities | tend to be coastal or situated on a river. | | So I could definitely see it as plausible that the older | people get, the more people move into cities, which | coincidentally involves moving closer to water. | 0xcde4c3db wrote: | Or genetic mutations (which also may interact with specific | lifestyle factors). At least one such mutation was | identified in an Italian family that is seemingly immune to | atherosclerosis [1], and the "blue zone" populations tend | to be relatively small and isolated (at least before the | industrial revolution). | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ApoA-1_Milano | [deleted] | mkl95 wrote: | > Why you should be in, around, under or on top of water | | Easier said than done. I grew up close to a pretty cool | coastline, and I've wanted to live there all my life. Regular | people like me used to be common there decades ago, but it has | been parasitized by millionaires and it's unaffordable these | days. If you have a million or so in the bank sure, go enjoy the | psychological benefits of such a place. | kaycebasques wrote: | The article acknowledges this and proposes alternatives: | | > Obviously, we can't all live a walk from the beach (or on the | isle of Icaria, for that matter). But any engagement with | water, even a creek, can offer a salve for our embattled | brains. | TeMPOraL wrote: | Does the dishwasher count? | | As I sit by my desk now, everyone else in the household | already asleep, I listen to the water flowing and splashing | and rumbling in the machine under the kitchen counter, and | think to myself - except for occasional mechanical clunk, it | really _does_ sound like a river, or a sea (depending on what | part of the program is running). | troad wrote: | Same story here. I could not afford today to buy a house in the | seaside neighbourhood I grew up in. | | Wealthy non-locals "discovered" it, snatched up all the | housing, and promptly formed "Stop overdevelopment now!" | lobbies, leeching off the locals' discomfort with the newcomers | to protect their own new-found property values by preventing | any further increase in housing supply. It's honestly just | depressing. | | Nothing will change until we drastically ramp up house | construction. You don't "protect" a community by keeping the | buildings the same while replacing all the existing inhabitants | with different, richer ones. | genocidicbunny wrote: | May I ask why you should have more right to buy a house in | that town than someone else? You say 'grew up in' which | implies you've moved away. At that point, you're also a non- | local aren't you? | troad wrote: | I don't think I should have more of a right to buy a house | there than anyone else, and I'm genuinely puzzled how you | got that idea from my comment. I think housing should be | sufficiently plentiful that everyone has the opportunity to | make a home in a community of their choosing. | sojournerc wrote: | So, anybody and everybody should be able to live in | Monaco? | | It's just unrealistic for a finite resource such as a | location to accommodate anybody who could possibly want | to live there. That's why desirable places are expensive. | genocidicbunny wrote: | I got a sense from your comment, and the one you replied | to that the problem was that the wealthy were buying the | housing, rather that only the wealthy could buy the | housing. I admit I may have read into your comment a bit | much. | TeMPOraL wrote: | > _the problem was that the wealthy were buying the | housing, rather that only the wealthy could buy the | housing_ | | Those are actually the same problem. The wealthy can buy | housing faster, more decisively than the less wealthy. | They may also push out the less wealthy, simply by | offering them an above market price. And as the wealthy | start to buy up housing in an area, the prices start to | go up, and soon become high enough that only the wealthy | can buy. | vkou wrote: | > May I ask why you should have more right to buy a house | in that town than someone else? | | You should ask that question to the NIMBYs that have pulled | the ladder up from under them. | | "Nobody is allowed to move to this area after I did" is | insane, toxic, and selfish. | genocidicbunny wrote: | It's not insane, it's quite rational as long as real | estate is an investment. | TeMPOraL wrote: | > _as long as real estate is an investment_ | | And therein lies the problem. | bentcorner wrote: | Maybe that's part of the explanation? It's just a correlation - | being able to live near the coastline requires wealth which | means you can take better care of your health. | mkl95 wrote: | Pretty much. This so called blue mind theory is just saying | that rich people tend to be happy. | falcor84 wrote: | Maybe with the rising global water levels, living "in, around, | under or on top of water" will become a more attainable | possibility for a whole new range of people /s | rektide wrote: | It's definitely a dream of mine to live next to or on the water | for some part of my life. It's amazing to have lakes & ocean & | rivers nearby. It's also exceedingly competitive property. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-06-11 23:00 UTC)