Long Life, Part 3

It’s more than just healthy foods and exercise

This is the third of a series of articles on Malcolm Caldwell’s book “Outliers” The Story of Success. As we continue, I start to picture Dr. Wolf, who was taken aback by his co-doctor’s declaration that he, as a medical practitioner, rarely saw Rosetans, under the age of 65 with heart disease. I continue to quote:

“Wolf was taken aback. This was in the 1950s, years before the advent of cholesterol-lowering drugs and aggressive measures to prevent heart disease. Heart attacks were an epidemic in the United States. They were the leading cause of death in men under the age of sixty-five. It was impossible to be a doctor, common sense said, and not see heart disease.”

Dr. Stewart Wolf might have been fascinated with what his fellow physician related to him about the Rosetans in Roseto, Pennsylvania. Dr. Wolf made his own study by reviewing medical records in retrospect. He also did interviews of local residents in Roseto and even hired medical students, including a sociologist friend, to make a thorough study about the Rosetans in that part of the United States. Although it took him quite a while to study volumes of medical records and a no-joke period of time to slice up on the lives of common Rosetans, he never stopped up to the time when he was convinced about his findings. He repeated procedures in his research work in order to validate his findings. He found out that what his colleague told him about was true. In the era when heart attacks were prevalent in the U.S., heart disease was very rare among Rosetans in Roseto, Pennsylvania.

What was baffling and mysterious was the fact that the lifestyles of ordinary Rosetan adults in Roseto, Penn were far from the textbook ideals, requirements, or advice for the avoidance of heart disease, as suggested by heart doctors during the time. Rosetans in Penn seldom engaged in exercise, or maybe not at all. They ate a lot and did not mind their diet. They enjoy drinking with fellow Rosetans and most of the time they engaged in drinking wine on a daily basis. They are not weight conscious or said in another way, they did not watch their weight. They never visited doctors for health maintenance check-ups. The Rosetans in Pennsylvania were the closest definition or description of Omar Khayyam’s “Drink and be merry for tomorrow we die.” They were hedonistic and to them it was eat, drink, and be merry; and yet, death from heart disease and heart attack became a very remote possibility. They were still healthy despite everything they do.

Were they just lucky? Did they have good genes? Dr. Stephen Wolf discovered something that was beyond what the then current editions of textbooks in medicine have discussed and advocated. It was something else and not just pure luck and good genes.