“Blue Mind Theory” | Hacker News Reader

“Blue Mind Theory”

insidehook.com

77 pointsRickJWagner50 comments

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-...

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?

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.

The Seventh Day Adventists are strict vegans. I assume that has more to do with it than anything.

> 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.

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.

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).

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

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.

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?

> 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.

It's not insane, it's quite rational as long as real estate is an investment.

> as long as real estate is an investment

And therein lies the problem.

Houses can't both be affordable, and a good investment.

And if I have to choose between people having a roof over their heads, and investors being happy, the latter can go pound sand any day of the week.

I think you misunderstood me as advocating for the system that exists; We very much agree. But as long as housing is an investment, the rational thing will remain to try to pull up the ladder behind you.

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

Pretty much. This so called blue mind theory is just saying that rich people tend to be happy.

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.

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.

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"

Says an American. But in pretty much every other Western nation, health care is more or less the same...

> "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.

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.

This makes more sense. I didn't know it. This could be the real reason.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I used to work out at this place that had an indoor pool where you could do laps. The room was pretty basic, but people used to sit around the pool and read the newspaper. I always wondered why but then I figured there must be something about being near water.

"I was born by the sea, and I have noticed that all the great events of my life have taken place by the sea. My first idea of movement, of the dance, certainly came from the rhythm of the waves." -Isadora Duncan

> "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/

Or maybe, just maybe, people who can afford being close to water are usually better off, with better healthcare and food.

They come so close to the mind. Just practice meditation every day. You will find the real blue, endless and deep

Blue Zones, where people miraculously live longer due to fraud and poor record keeping.

source ?

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.

yeah the concept of blue zones seems really dubious . even if they do live longer the underlying variable is probably wealth

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.)

Nicoya (Costa Rica) is not Nicaragua

Whoops, you're right. The picture I saw was relatively low res and it kind looked like it was Nicaragua.

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

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.

> 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.

Yes, it's not as if people like Stephen Hawking, Jane Goodall, Jill Tarter, Richard Dawkins, and Svante Pääbo have given TED talks. Oh, wait.

You know, by this metric since every historical journal has hosted papers from the greatest scientists we should just believe their word forever

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?

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