
Eating Spicy Food Linked to a Longer Life - gwintrob
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/08/04/spicy-food-linked-to-lower-risk-of-death/
======
netcan
OK health and nutrition people….. enough is enough.

For generations you have been giving us little correlations, tidbits of
mechanisms. Vitamin X, High Intensity Sleep, Antioxidants, Kale, CR… Hot off
the presses… new experiment reintroducing critically endangered carnivorous
gut fauna…

There is nothing useful that we can do with this "information." It's just
random letters from some book that you are throwing at us one at a time. "We
found some Hs! It's the first letter in this chapter about Kano Jigaro and
appears a dozen time a page. He had exceptional balance, grip strength and
organizational skills. It's important. Pay attention to your Hs."

I demand a _theory_ , preferably something simple and powerful like Darwinism
that we can demonstrate by drawing sailboats. An equation would be nice.

Just this week I burned my mouth on a chili pepper. I fainted getting out of
my ice bath after a 48 hour CR Fast and I went through the window doing HIIT
sprints on an omnidimensional walking desk.

I'm going back to the food pyramid. Gimme some spuds.

~~~
baseballmerpeak
Remember, risk of death still sits at 100%.

~~~
djcapelis
Strictly speaking, the human condition only has around a 94% fatality rate at
the moment.

(110 billion humans in the history of the planet. Over 7 billion currently
alive.)

~~~
jmnicolas
When I see the approximations needed to count the 7 billions humans actually
living on earth, I smile at the 110 billions number.

The honest answer would be : we have no actual clue on how many people ever
lived on earth, and we can only guesstimate how many are living on it right
now.

Census only register people that let themselves be registered. It's probably
mildly inaccurate in rich countries and terribly inaccurate in poor or chaotic
countries.

------
seizethecheese
Since some comments are trying to explain away the findings, here is a quote
from the article about what variables were controlled for and the results:

> After controlling for family medical history, age, education, diabetes,
> smoking and many other variables, the researchers found that compared with
> eating hot food, mainly chili peppers, less than once a week, having it once
> or twice a week resulted in a 10 percent reduced overall risk for death.
> Consuming spicy food six to seven times a week reduced the risk by 14
> percent.

~~~
themartorana
I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that you eat less food when
it's particularly spicy? Fasting/caloric intake reduction and better
health/longer life have been correlated for a while.

~~~
jandrewrogers
No, people that routinely eat extremely spicy food eat as much of it as
anything else. It might put off the occasional eater of spicy food, but
regular consumption depletes the neurotransmitters that generate the effect.
It is an acquired immunity that can quickly escalate the level of spiciness
required to perceive it. (You lose that immunity relatively quickly though.)
Being able to eat almost arbitrarily spicy food is a trivially acquired
ability.

Source: I eat quite a lot of habaneros and thai chilis, mostly because those
are the peppers that taste strongly "spicy" to me on a day to day basis. If I
eat too much on an ongoing basis, even the habaneros start to lose their
spiciness. Most people have a "spiciness" threshold so low that the pepper is
barely detectable to me. I was not born this way, peppers have been a regular
part of my diet because I like the flavor and that confers a natural immunity
to the effects.

------
codeshaman
Shhh... Don't show it to my mother ! If she sees this, my whole family is
going to be on a regimen of hot peppers until she reads something else :)

My mother is the kind who changes the whole family's diet when she reads some
sufficiently convincing diet book or study. At one point we ate dissociated
food. At another point it was blood type food. At another point it was raw
roots or something. I love my mother and she's an excelent cook, and she never
_forced_ us to eat according to the books, but she would be very insistent,
because there were studies that showed ...

Most of the time the results of those studies were disproved, either by
another experiment or by some technical issue with the way the study was
conducted.

Just like there were studies that smoking is actually good for you and studies
that showed that children who drink sugar soda from an early age are heathier.

The point I'm trying to make is that these studies are not just 'informative',
they have real consequences on real families. There are families out there who
will start eating hot food just because they've read this study.

I hope they don't torture themselves for nothing.

~~~
blackbeard
Yes 100% this. This sounds like my mother.

She followed every nutritional fad that appeared on the table. I can remember
nothing but horrors for dinner for the best part of 10 years of my life. She
was scared of eating things in case it affected mortality in some way. In fact
I ended up getting quite ill on occasion, now to what I know was simply
malnutrition. This affected my schooling, my physical condition and my mental
health at the time. The latter was quite devastating for a bit to be honest.

It wasn't until I got a shit job stacking shelves in a supermarket and moved
out that I started eating properly and literally after a month I felt like a
different person.

Now the cruel result; she had a heart attack and a stroke a couple of years
ago due to what they reckon is 60 years of poor dieting.

------
jlg23
In an editorial that was also published in thebmj they point out alternative
explanations for their results:
[http://www.bmj.com/content/351/bmj.h4141](http://www.bmj.com/content/351/bmj.h4141)

TL;DR: "As the authors acknowledge, a cause and effect relation cannot be
inferred from their work. In this prospective study, Lv and colleagues have
shown temporality of association, but we need to evaluate additional criteria
to judge the strength of evidence. Their findings should be considered
hypothesis generating, not definitive, and will undoubtedly encourage further
work."

------
healthenclave
This is why Indian people eat Curry!

Jokes apart on a more serious note the crux of the study is --

"Compared with those who ate spicy foods less than once a week, those who
consumed spicy foods 6 or 7 days a week showed a 14% relative risk reduction
in total mortality. "

Although this study is very vague, in Asian cultures health benefits of spices
and various plant products is well known.

Ginger : Has Cox2 inhibitory function. Acting in a similar way to Aspirin and
other NSAIDS. Helps prevent heart attacks

Curcumin : found in turmeric has anti-inflammatory similar to ginger but is
poorly absorbed. Hence mad more benefits for the Gut.

Arjuna Terminalis : Bark of the plant is known to have anti-hypertensive
benefits.

And the list goes on.

The problem is that in the traditional way these plants are consumed
(unprocessed in food and NOT in EXTRACT form) these have very poor
Bioavailability.

The only way these so called health benefits would be apparent is if they were
part of the diet (you eat them everyday - as noted in the study) or they are
consumed in the form of Extract.

Also many of these compounds can not be patented and this deters the
pharmaceutical industry to make large investments in the clinical trails and
bringing them to the market.

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/?term=curcumin](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/?term=curcumin)

[http://time.com/3984504/turmeric-supplements-
curcumin/](http://time.com/3984504/turmeric-supplements-curcumin/)

------
dpflan
A co-author mentions they need more data. This reminded me of the huge study
of diet and health outcomes in China by T. Colin Cambell of Cornell in the
late 1900's.

Link:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Study](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Study)

~~~
LaurensBER
Very interesting study unfortunately the conclusions from the book has been
debunked[0] a few times. It's a great example of how hard nutritional research
is, even with an incredible big dataset and a bunch of very intelligent PHDs
it's still very easy to come to the wrong conclusion.

I can highly recommend "Death by Food Pyramid" though, it's a very honest look
into food science and the author is very honest about what we know (not a
whole lot for sure but we have some strong indications that some diets seem to
produce better results) and what we don't know.

[0] [http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/07/07/the-china-study-fact-or-
fal...](http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/07/07/the-china-study-fact-or-fallac/)

------
6t6t6
That's always the same story. A group of researchers finds a funny correlation
in the data. They don't know the cause of the correlation, but they just write
an article explaining that. Of course, the article if full of conditionals and
sentences like: "this should be investigates further". Then, a journalist
finds this paper, eliminates all the conditionals and writes a click-bait
article, so his employer can earn money from the announcers. Profit. And I am
not talking only about this article in particular, but about all the
scientific journalism in general.

~~~
smtddr
There's a comic for this -^_^-
[http://i.imgur.com/833CgHX.png](http://i.imgur.com/833CgHX.png)

~~~
endgame
And here's the actual source:
[http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1174](http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1174)

------
haffi112
The more spicy food you eat the less crappy food you eat...? That could
actually be the explanation (not a variable I saw corrected for in the text at
least).

~~~
leni536
It makes sense, also fast food chains don't tend to make spicy food.

~~~
chestervonwinch
Not just fast food, but most restaurants in general. For someone who prefers a
little kick, it's like the majority of bars serving only virgin cocktails. I
made the mistake of asking for my meal to made a little on the spicier side(1)
at one of these americanized mexican comfort food places. The waitress looked
at me like I was asking her to calculate a double integral.

(1) This is common at Thai restaurants, so I figured I'd give it a shot.

------
wslh
Previous with TLDR:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10008028](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10008028)

~~~
mirimir
It still makes no sense to me. There are numerous spices. But given that this
is a Chinese study, maybe "spicy" means five-spice powder, or maybe just
Sichuan pepper. And of course, health claims have also been asserted for
several Indian spices. Personally, I'd go for a Goan/Sichuan hybrid :)

Edit: OK, I see "mainly chili peppers". So are chili peppers more commonly
used in China than Sichuan pepper?

~~~
thebooktocome
I don't understand; Sichuan pepper (花椒, huajiao) isn't spicy. Wikipedia
confirms:

"Sichuan pepper's unique aroma and flavour is not hot or pungent like black,
white, or chili peppers. Instead, it has slight lemony overtones and creates a
tingly numbness in the mouth (caused by its 3% of hydroxy alpha sanshool) that
sets the stage for hot spices."

Chinese cooking uses many different kinds of spicy peppers, however. For
instance, heaven-facing peppers (朝天椒, chaotianjiao) are pretty common in
Sichuan cooking. Maybe that's what you mean?

~~~
mirimir
Thanks. It's heaven-facing peppers that I was thinking of.

------
tinco
China has eight main cuisines related to different areas in China. Some of
these cuisines are spicy and some are not.

Obviously a whole lot other things also differ together with the spices in
these cuisines. It would be nice if they'd asked if the subjects identified
with a specific cuisine/area.

There could also be a wealth relation. The poorer Guandong (Cantonese) kitchen
has little less chili than the famously spicy Szechuan kitchen which is from a
richer area.

~~~
jpatokal
That may be true historically, but today's Guangdong, wrapping around Hong
Kong, home to Shenzhen and a vast number of exporters, is twice as rich as
landlocked Sichuan:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_administrative...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_administrative_divisions_by_GDP_per_capita)

------
derekp7
One thing that I don't quite understand -- what is it about spicy food that
makes it desirable? Esp. the super hot peppers? I know that I love them, but I
can't really say why (after all, I normally try to avoid pain). The only thing
I can think of is that part of the brain knows that the pain isn't "real"
(that is, it isn't being caused by something that is damaging you), yet
another part is releasing endorphins to counteract the pain, causing a mild
euphoria. But I haven't really found much information to back up this theory.

I do know that at times when I get a spell of mild depression, munching on
some hot peppers seems to pull me out of it.

~~~
adriand
I think the endorphin theory is a pretty common explanation, but I think for
me and for many others it's largely about flavour. I enjoy the flavour of
chili peppers, and I also enjoy how spiciness brings out other flavours in
food and makes it richer and more interesting.

~~~
provemewrong
>I also enjoy how spiciness brings out other flavours in food and makes it
richer and more interesting

What? I do like spicy food occasionally, but my main gripe with "very" spicy
food is not how painful it is, but how the spiciness overwhelms all other
flavors and it's the only thing you can taste. Like you might as well be
eating chili paste because you can't taste anything else anyway.

~~~
saiya-jin
well, you are simply having too much chilli in the food. good curry for
example isn't one that burns your mouth (if you eat it regularly), but rather
enrich all flavors present, including many other herbs and spices. if you
don't feel anything else but burn, your cook ain't that good :)

~~~
provemewrong
Maybe, I had just observed that others seem really to enjoy the overwhelming
burning sensation and drew conclusions that something must wrong with me if I
want to taste something more than chili in my food.

------
hammock
The spicier the food, the slower/less you eat?

~~~
fezz
The spicier the food, the more water you drink (maybe).

There's also the link to certain spices (like chili peppers) that are highly
anti-inflammatory.

Personally, the more spicy food I eat, the more I have dessert.

~~~
tunap
"The spicier the food, the more water you drink (maybe)."

Negative. Water actually amplifies the sensation. The sugar in the desert
counters the sensation, as does milk. If I go awhile without eating "11" hot,
when I return I have to follow it with milk or sugar(or both=Thai Tea or Cafe
Sua Da). Otherwise, the subsequent burning sensation can be quite unpleasant.
I always go to "11" when I feel a cold or flu coming on to combat the
contagion, it works 9 times out of 10. YMMV.

~~~
fezz
If I go too hot or if I'm making a really hot hot sauce, I'll go for citrus.
The acid counters down the oils and help faster. In the sauce, it balances
things. Same for pineapple.

------
bsder
"Spicy" things tend to have anti-microbial properties. That could certainly
trigger a beneficial intestinal flora change--especially in places without a
good refrigerated handling chain.

Spicy food also has a tendency to clear sinuses. I believe a couple of studies
have shown that clearing sinuses occasionally (but not too often) is
beneficial.

~~~
pyre
I've heard that the pain response that the spices trigger somehow activates
your immune system or something like that, though as you eat more spicy food
you build up a tolerance so I'm not sure how that factors in.

------
thedogeye
Did they control for being Asian?

~~~
gamesbrainiac
Good point. Loads of people die early over here in Bangladesh, and we eat some
of the spiciest foods in the world.

~~~
ekianjo
That's not the point. The point would be that be that people who eat more
spicy food live a little bit longer. It does not mean you don't die from other
causes - obviously level of life is a large predictor for life expectancy.

------
codingdave
...maybe. I saw another article about this yesterday, in which they stated
that there were other variables in play that could have impacted the results,
including a greater of variety of spices in spicier food. Capsaicin is a
possible cause of the results, but not definitive

------
akyu
I love spicy food so this is great news. But lately I've been wondering about
the potential effect of spicy food on gut bacteria. Anyone who's had a painful
bowl movement after eating some high Scoville level hot sauce knows what I'm
talking about.

~~~
curtis
I don't know about the impact on gut bacteria, but I can tell you that I very
rarely suffer "spicy" bowl movements now that I take fiber supplements.

------
simplyluke
Correlation vs causation. Is it possible that people who eat the peppers also
eat lots of vegetables as opposed to starchy carbs? Definitely. Is it possible
people who, say, exercise more are for some reason more inclined to eat spicy
foods.

They can control for any number of things, but this isn't science, it's a
correlation and anyone who has taken an intro to statistics class shouldn't be
fooled by a pseudoscience blog post. Really surprised to see this on the front
page of a community which prides itself on its scientific knowledge.

~~~
matthewmacleod
No, you are not correct, and you're engaging in a classic middlebrow
dismissal.

This is a scientific research paper published in the BMJ, and a well-
documented, controlled cohort study. It's pretty much the opposite of
pseudoscience. The blog post is perfectly restrained and does not claim that
eating spicy food will increase lifespan, instead reporting (accurately) that
the two factors appear to be linked.

Did you even bother reading either?

------
hncomment
I'd love to have spicy food more often – but 2-4 days after a spicy dish, I
can usually smell the pepper/byproducts coming out of my skin as a particular,
somewhat unpleasant body odor. The odor can remain detectable even immediately
after a shower. Red curry/chili-peppers seem the worst trigger. Only time (and
_maybe_ a good sweat) eventually clear it.

Does anyone know the chemical mechanisms causing this, and whether any other
foods, combined with or after the spicy meal, could help more-quickly
neutralize this lagged skin odor?

~~~
fractallyte
As with garlic sulfur compounds, the odor is due to substances your body can't
metabolize, so it excretes them - most noticeably through your skin.

~~~
hncomment
I figured roughly that. But is there anything I can do to enable any
metabolism of these compounds, or otherwise neutralize them? (Can some people
metabolize them better? Would the right skin microbiome help? Etc...)

------
itbeho
Take this with the same perspective as how the article treats
correlation/causation, but I'll share an interesting anecdote. I have several
family members in their 90's that love to put cayenne pepper in/on almost
anything. One even puts it in orange juice if you can believe that. I tried it
_once_... That fellow started smoking when he was in WWII and hasn't stopped.
The less-eccentric/vegan/non-smoker members of the family seem to make it to
late 70's.

------
_ak
Well, if that is true, then why is German statistically the country with the
highest average age in the world (on par with Japan), even though their food
is quite bland?

~~~
dmichulke
Germany is nowhere near the top (#19 with 9 other countries) although there's
also not much lacking either

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy)

~~~
_ak
I don't think you understand what average resp. median age means.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_median_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_median_age)

Japan and Germany are the ones with highest median age.

~~~
dmichulke
I must have misunderstood your original comment because "the highest average
age" has clearly nothing to do with life expectancy.

Then again, why do you cite the average or median age if the original article
is about life expectancy?

My corrected response to your original comment would be: Because the birth
rates are so low that the lack of children "raises" the median age.

------
abledon
Spicy food is healthy only for certain people, whose genes/environment
predispose them to certain dis-eases. Ancient medical systems such as Ayurveda
(translated from sanskrit: The truth of life) and Traditional Chinese Medicine
(sharing knowledge with ayurveda over past 5000 years as they are in same east
asian region) say a food can either be medicine or poison depending on who is
ingesting it.

------
fasteo
My n=1 case for spicy foods.

I have a secondary systemic inflammation to due a genetic condition that make
my mitochondria to malfunction. Usual symptoms include a profound fatigue
after working-out and muscle weakness, specially in the extra-ocular muscles.

I have been always centered around supplements to improve the energy output
(ATP) of my mitochondria (Coq10, ALCAR, idebedone ... you name it). While this
made a big difference in my everyday energy levels, I always felt that this
systemic fatigue couldn't come only from a energy deficit, as I was able to
workout with pretty good intensity and decent weights (I can squat 1.5 my body
weight).

The first hint came a couple of months ago when a friend of mine went to the
doctor because he was also profoundly fatigued and the doctor told him that he
had some kind of auto-immune disease that was causing a systemic inflammation
and this systemic inflammation was likely the main cause for the fatigue.

The second hint came right here from HN [1]. So, I just added turmeric extract
to my daily regimen 10 days ago and the results have been really impressive so
far. I can recover much easier from my workouts and my general energy level
has also improved a lot, specially during the mornings. It is too soon to
tell, but after so many years trying so many supplements I have developed a
anti-placebo and anti-bullshit sense for all these things, and this one is
working for real.

Now, I am not meaning that spicy food will make you live longer, but it seems
clear that they have some potent active substances that "do" something in our
bodies.

I am now trying to add some spicy foods to my meals. The first one has been a
very simple curry rice with black pepper (to improve absorption) to eat it
post-workout.

Some relevant references:

Curcumin database [2]

Good general info about turmeric [3]

Mitochondria as a target in the therapeutic properties of curcumin [4]

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9960441](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9960441)

[2] [http://www.crdb.in/](http://www.crdb.in/)

[3]
[http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=78](http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=78)

[4]
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25243820](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25243820)

~~~
randanom
I'll add, if anyone would like to try something similar, but has trouble
tolerating spicy foods, there's more than one way get your pepper fix. One is
to make your own cayenne pepper (or equivalent) gel caps (capsule supplies can
be ordered online and are +/\- cheap, or do a cayenne pepper shot that doesn't
burn your mouth. Just load up a spoonful, flip it to the back of your throat,
then chug some water. Just be sure to not inhale between those steps :)

------
gruez
> As the study, published in the BMJ on Tuesday, was observational,
> conclusions could not be drawn about cause and effect but the team of
> international authors, led by researchers at the Chinese Academy of Medical
> Sciences, suggested that more research could lead to dietary advice being
> updated. Experts warned that the study did not provide evidence to “prompt a
> change in diet”.

------
fractalb
I don't think there's any truth to this. Because here in Andhra (India) people
only eat spicy food and I see most people don't live longer than 70-80yrs. To
quantify the spiciness: Most Indians from other states just run away from
Andhra cuisine

~~~
smallarmsdealer
With 65 being the average life expectancy in India (vs. 76 in the USA), maybe
80 isn't all that bad? Drop those same Andrha folks in a cleaner, less
stressful spot on the globe and maybe they'd live 90-100s?

~~~
fractalb
I don't have any stats to support my 70-80yrs lifetime claim. It's just my
observation. And, I didn't think about how it compares with our national
average. Looks like a bit better

~~~
anjanb
I have andhra blood. My outer family eats medium spicy stuff. we eat lot of
vegetables(we're vegetarians). Average life span about 75 years. There are
parts of Andhra Pradesh where they eat too much spicy food. The life span in
such areas is less than 65 years. I'm assuming that the article is not
referring to this spice level. They're probably suggesting to the average
Indian spice levels (which is higher compared to the rest of the world --
especially European and American).

------
clevep
I think it's pretty common to eat milder foods when you are ill. I know I do.
If that is universally true, and all else being equal, you could probably
simplify this headline down to "getting sick less linked to a longer life."

~~~
geomark
Reminds me of the Dilbert cartoon (wish I could find it now) where the
discussion was on how a survey showed that heathy people exercise more. Wally
commented that's because sick people are too sick to exercise.

------
detrino
I don't understand why these studies never seem to control for height.

~~~
sitkack
Are you saying short people who ate spicy food lived longer than everyone
else?

~~~
detrino
There is a common link in all these longevity studies, whether it be women,
mexican americans, people who eat spicy food, etc, and that is height, which
has been shown to correlate negatively with longevity (not withstanding
malnutrition).

------
PythonicAlpha
As much I read about this particular study, in the group of the more spicy
eaters, there where plenty of rural people and in the other group more urban
people. So, this sounds to me, that there are different factors inside the
study which are interconnected and the "evidence" could also be linked to some
different factors, for example more healthy lifestyle of rural people
(particular in China: I assume healthier air). In the article, I read, they
even suspected, that more tea consume of the spicy group could also cause the
positive effect.

So, every study should be taken with a grain of salt, particularly when the
exact circumstances are not told.

~~~
ekianjo
> So, every study should be taken with a grain of salt, particularly when the
> exact circumstances are not told.

For once this article makes it very clear there is no clear rationale for
correlation at this point. It's certainly not your usual clickbait article.

~~~
PythonicAlpha
> After controlling for family medical history, age, education, diabetes,
> smoking and many other variables

Did not convince me.

And as I stated, I read a different (German) source, where definitively other
possible correlations where named -- when one group contains clearly more
rural people as the other, the whole statement that "no clear rationale" can
be found, is questionable in my opinion, even when it is not political correct
in some countries, that urban people are living less healthy lives.

This has nothing to do with click-bait or not. It is just very questionable to
me, that the study is methodical clean.

~~~
ekianjo
> that urban people are living less healthy lives

Actually people in urban centers live clearly longer than in the country side.
So I'm not sure what you are talking about.

~~~
PythonicAlpha
In my country, it is quite different. And I will not speculate further about a
country, I don't know. I just wanted to say, that even when the authors of the
study do not know the other variables and interconnections, there might be
some.

------
Everhusk
First thing that came to my mind when I read this was how the ancient
Egyptians used spices in their mummification process [1]. I guess history
repeats itself once again.

[http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/10/1030_digmumm...](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/10/1030_digmummies_2.html)

------
yugoja
If this is true, Indians are gonna kick ass.

------
EugeneOZ
Without explanation of reasons it looks more like coincidence.

------
maerF0x0
except if you have GERD.

~~~
spacemanmatt
True. That makes everything hard.

------
limaoscarjuliet
In related news, ice cream consumption causes drownings.

Spurious Correlation is a good source of these:
[http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-
correlations](http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations)

------
noobplusplus
"rapid adoption of new drugs has substantial benefits in the form of increased
life expectancy, higher productivity and lower non-drug health care
expenditures" \- Do more drugs!

