Survival data indicate that long-term vegetarians do experience a significant 3

“Survival data indicate that long-term vegetarians do experience a significant 3.6-year survival advantage over short-term vegetarians,” says a report based on the research. What we have in the Adventists is a group of people who follow the recommendations of their church and who wind up being vegetarian for a long time. That is enough people with which to make mortality comparisons.”Not only were the researchers able to follow the lives of the Adventist vegetarians; they were also able to distinguish between those who had been vegetarian for more than 20 years, those who had lapsed, and those who were eating little or no meat for a shorter period of time.When the researchers analysed the data, they found considerable differences in the lifespans of the different groups. “When you study populations and try to look at the effects of zero or low meat consumption, you get situations where some people follow it and other don’t.

One of the two UK studies showed a 20 per cent drop in mortality among vegetarians, while the German study suggested an even greater reduction.Although the British and German data supported the principle of reduced mortality in non-meat-eaters, it was the 7,100 people in the Adventist study who were the key to obtaining long-term accurate information from men and women who had been vegetarians for a considerable length of time.”The Adventists gave us a unique opportunity,” says Dr Singh, of Loma Linda University in California. They also reviewed data from six other studies, including two in the United Kingdom and one in Germany. Dr Pramil Singh, who led the research, says: “We are the first to come up with a life-expectancy figure showing a very important increase in life expectancy for those who follow a vegetarian diet for a long period of time.”In the research, he and other epidemiologists analysed long-term data from a group of Adventists who have been monitored for more than 40 years. New research shows that being a vegetarian for 20 years or more adds almost four years to the average lifespan. It is now known that the loss of meat led to a drop in the mortality rate, and that when diets returned to normal after the war, so too did the death rate.In spite of these observations, there has never been any definitive proof of just how much extra time on earth a vegetarian can expect to get Not, that is, until now. Every now and then remarkably old people such as her emerge, although usually they are found among geographically isolated agrarian peoples whose diets are primarily vegetarian, such as the Hunzakuts of Pakistan and the mountain-dwellers of Turkey.The notion that vegetarian diets lead to a healthier and longer life has been given further support from research based on the Second World War experiences of people in Scandinavia, where dietary restrictions virtually wiped meat off the menu. Was it hard work, religion, having a lot of friends, a good man, a life of abstinence, being a non-smoker?
For the French-Canadian woman who took up fencing at 85, smoked till she was 95, still rode a bicycle at 100 and made a rap CD at 121, the reason for living so long was put down to a vegetarian diet, supplemented by modest amounts of olive oil, port wine and chocolate.Mme Meilleur, who died six years ago, was the latest in a long line of holders of the title as the world’s oldest person whose diets have been exclusively or largely vegetarian.

The common cold, which most of us will suffer in the coming months, only manages 677,000.CATHERINE NIXEY. When a vegetarian, Marie-Louise Meilleur, was named as the world’s oldest person at 122, the usual hunt for the secret of her longevity ensued. Dr Cundy thinks that those who have “taken on board a whole load of information which they are not trained to handle now need their GP even more than before”.* It is estimated that health concerns are the second most popular topic of the net, second only to pornography.* 10 to 15 per cent of patients are thought to have looked for their conditions on the web before visiting a doctor.* It is estimated that up to 25 per cent of the content of medical web sites is inaccurate or misleading.* The frequency with which diseases occur on the web is almost in inverse proportion to the frequency with which they occur in life Google “cancer” and you get 25,400,000 hits MS gets you 2,110,000. I was just scaring the crap out of myself, looking on the internet at pictures of bloodclots in the legs and things…”Dr Paul Cundy, who chairs the British Medical Association’s GP information technology sub-committee, says, “Hypochondriacs can be made worse by access to the internet, where there is so much more material available than ever before – and a lot of it is seriously wrong”.Far from making medical experts redundant, as was once mooted, all the information present on the web has simply altered their traditional role.

A typical comment from an internet health chatroom runs: “I am sitting here at work behind my computer trying not to break down from fear. I have a doctor’s appointment on Thursday to look at my leg and I am so afraid I feel like I’ll be dead by then. Sufferers look up medical information on the internet, and then self-diagnose using the information they find.Many people will do this on an occasional basis, but those severely affected can spend up to five hours a day on the web, researching potential illnesses and fuelling their actual one.Interactive sites are involved as well as information sites. Over the past few years cyberchondria, also called “internet print-out syndrome”, has become endemic This is hypochondria made worse by use of the internet. That’s not to say that I’m free from anxiety: there’s always a nagging feeling that maybe this symptom is the one I should see my GP about. What if I develop a brain tumour but ignore the symptoms, telling myself, “it’s just a headache”? I can’t help having this vision of people standing round my grave saying, “If only he hadn’t been cured of his hypochondria quite so thoroughly, he might be alive today.” But then again, I’d rather live one year free from anxiety than 10 as a gibbering wreck.LOG ON TO CYBERCHONDRIAHypochondria is as old as the hills, but the advent of unregulated health information on the Internet is blamed for recruiting more sufferers.