Karate cuts 10 - 15 years of your lifespan

[danbong]

Karate Styles: Surprising Links to Shortened Lifespan

Jason Amstrong just published a book that karate does not make you live longer - it cuts years of your life - 10 to 15.

Our study, included numerous contributing clinicians, and a 2nd key author from the University of South Australia, and it used an evidenced based approach analyzing the data of the lives of 118 lifelong karate-ka who were 8th dan(s), style founders or successors.

A study of 118 lifelong karate-ka who were 8th dan(s), style founders or successors would not support any conclusions about the effects on lifespan of the typical karate-ka. Apart from the issue of a sample size of only 118 compared to millions of practitioners, there is the composition of the sample itself which is not reflective of the group of karate-ka as a whole. This is know as the fallacy of faulty generalization. http://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasty_generalization

A chart showing the relative lifespans of 5 notable shuri-te masters compared to other groups is shown in Figure 4-4 on page 101 of Shotokan's Secret by Bruce D. Clayton, Ph.D.

In a couple of hours I put together this list of senior martial artists of styles that contained a significant striking component (as compared to only karate) that were founders, inheritors or creators of offshoots with significant differences or innovations from their parents art. Either their lifespan or year of birth is given.

Gordon Doversola 77

Adriano Emperado 82.8

William Chow 73

James Mitose 64 (in prison - diabetes)

Choi Yong-Sool 82

Ji Han-Jae b1936

Myung Jae Nam 61 stomach cancer

Suh In-Hyuk b1942

Gichin Funakoshi 89

Mas Oyama 71 lung cancer - non-smoker

Fumio Demura b1938

Kenwa Mabuni 63

Ankō Itosu 84

Matsumura Sōkon ~91

Yip Man 79 throat cancer

Chuck Norris b1940

Ed Parker 59 heart attack

Jimmy Woo ~81

Hironori Ōtsuka 89

Tak Kubota b1934

Choi Hong Hi 83

Tatsuo Shimabuku 69 stroke

Chotoku Kyan 75 self-starved at end of WWII

Chōjun Miyagi 65

Higaonna Kanryō 62

Arakaki Seishō 78

Dan Inosanto b1936

Seiyu Oyata 84

[Hawkmoon]

hmmm...

A karate master died aged 70, so to loose 10-15 years would suggest he could have bene 80-85!

Another Karate master (still alive today) is 78.....so should he die now, he would have been of an age from 88 to 93!

Consider the expectancy of any human:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy

umm....we really sure we want to subscribe to such .... research?

p.s.

2009: Lu Zijian on the 2nd January became the oldest person in the world and was 116 years old.

So he could have lived until 126-131 years of age?

.... but he got a book published !

That must be worth a bit of loose change!

Agree, see the value or worth in this, want to consider another sport or less active life....?

...nah!

I could fall under a bus tomorrow!

[JasonA]

Many commenting in this thread need to understand how lifespan is measured, and how statistics are run. I suspect most comments here are obviously not by someone with a PhD involved with stats and the study used someone who is. The other athlete studies, such as Olympians and athletes in other sports which are compared, also came from Journal/peer reviewed University studies with similar sample sizes. To suggest that they are all wrong as well because they used sample sizes even smaller than this karate study is a bizarre conclusion (especially when such data published in highly regarded medical science journals). The significance in the data of the examples & analysis was tested very thoroughly - you really should read a study first, have a statistician guide you through the basics of the stats chapter and then start commenting. Just a thought, after all the point of the study/book is not to speculate with limited rigor but use best practice stat analysis across styles, modern karate-ka and also reflect on previous generation karate - all while considering many the other factors in their lives and the trends that may be coming in future years. For the most part, this forum seems to have people trying to sum things up in one paragraph, or put a single number on things - it simply is not that simple. The study/book provides 250+ pages of data, references, caveats, region & style issues and dojo sub-cultures i.e. too complex a topic to try and label things with a simple conclusion...

[mal103]

The problem here is that the original post was a one liner that stated practising Karate shortens your life.

Most people here seem to see that they are a lot fitter than others their own age and/or they train with older people who are still very active and fit.

Obviously we shouldn't have a say on an open forum because we are not all PhD's and don't all study statistics.... Excuse us for stating the blinking obvious based on our own real world experiences when we should have studied statistics to find out all our answers instead. We would probably deducted that most things are bad for us and gone off to live a boring life eating fruit and exercising gently.

The only way you can make this a truthful statement is to study ALL Karate-ka, but how can you tell if they would have lived longer if they didn't train in Karate?

[Lupin1]

Another problem is the wording of the topic itself "Karate cuts 10-15 years of your lifespan". Even if the research could prove conclusively that people who practice karate live 10-15 years less than those who don't, it would have to show there are no mitigating factors and that studying karate itself is what's causing that.

[JasonA]

mal103, to answer your question on why 118 karate-ka? As the book clearly outlines, we are looking at 8th dans, style founders and style successors i.e. true experts who spent their lifetime training and who were recognized by traditional lineages as the "who's who" of karate. We were not interested in everyone who studies karate, and may or may not have trained daily, may or may not have been truly the best in their style, may or may not have embraced the cultural habits of their style etc.. So info was pulled from historical perspectives such as "Unante" etc. and polling a number of still living 7th & 8th dans. While we may not have got every single style founder we certainly have most of them (there simply are not thousands in this elite category - both those dying in recent years back to those dying early after WWII (deaths prior to WWII were not included due to the effects of WWII on lifespan and other issues described in the book in detail) The pools for judo, comparison to other martial arts and other sports were all of course different in their own right as described in the book. Hope that helps.

[sensei8]

I doubt that training in the MA shortens ones life, and in that, I believe that no day is guaranteed to anyone. Therefore, we'll die when we die and not before than; MA training or not.

Imho!!

[lowereastside]

sensei8 says - "I believe that no day is guaranteed to anyone"

So True So True - My Wife told me that the other day a women 6 months pregnant was struck by a falling tree branch while walking in the park - both mother and child died. I guess I'm just venting - but when Sensei8 posted the above quote - all I could think about was that poor women and child. Sorry for going a little off course on this. Oh! Sensei8 -well said.

[mal103]

mal103, to answer your question on why 118 karate-ka? As the book clearly outlines, we are looking at 8th dans, style founders and style successors i.e. true experts who spent their lifetime training and who were recognized by traditional lineages as the "who's who" of karate. We were not interested in everyone who studies karate, and may or may not have trained daily, may or may not have been truly the best in their style, may or may not have embraced the cultural habits of their style etc.. So info was pulled from historical perspectives such as "Unante" etc. and polling a number of still living 7th & 8th dans. While we may not have got every single style founder we certainly have most of them (there simply are not thousands in this elite category - both those dying in recent years back to those dying early after WWII (deaths prior to WWII were not included due to the effects of WWII on lifespan and other issues described in the book in detail) The pools for judo, comparison to other martial arts and other sports were all of course different in their own right as described in the book. Hope that helps.

So the original poster should have entitled this topic as long term practicing of Karate by a selected few potential masters/founders may have shortened their life a bit, instead it was a shock title of Karate reduces your life.

Gichin Funakoshi - according to his book - lived many years in poverty and did odd jobs to pay for his rent and food. However he lived to his 90's?

[llbark]

I work in the healthcare industry and in answer to those that question lifespan statistcs, the study discussed in this thread used the same industry and research standards that are used by life insurane agencies, national health bodies, medical university studies etc. So I don't really understad why they are being questioned as an approach backed up by the appropriate statistics. In fact, 118 people is not a small number compared to many patient group studies when being compared to the larger population lifespan data via wat is called life expectacy at birth prediction tables and life at death prediction tables etc.

Karate of course is not the only sport that appears to reduce lifespan and the book talks about some others - other studies like this one also tease out the variables around diet, region, occupation, training types, psychology and the list goes on. As the book states in one part, peolpe have to be aware of the difference in exercise in regards to whther we are training for health, fitness or enjoyment as they are all different things (and the government health bodies recognize this).

mal: you really should look at the book, as the questions you keep asking are addressed in it. For example, your last comment re Funakoshi is a good question and it is dissected in the study/book in multiple places (covering the different variables) very thoroughly as why he, and a number of others, likely bucked the trend.