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The Roseto Effect
9 Jul 2021
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What is Roseto Effect? Roseto is the name of a town in Pennsylvania. During 1955-1965 time frame, Italian family members below 65 years of age in Roseto had virtually no heart disease! Families of similar ethnic background in nearby towns had much higher rates of heart disease. Why? The difference was not dietary or exercise level or genetic. It was the family structure and community structure at Roseto which provided strong social support! This was a surprising finding for the medical community. By 1960s and 1970s, Roseto families had become more "Americanized" — younger members of Roseto families were educated and set up nuclear families.
Roseto Effect — Videos
(7 mins, 2021) What Is the Roseto Effect? — Dr Peter Rogers

This lovely 7-min video by Dr Peter Rogers is about stress and its impact on our health. I picked up 2-3 new ideas that I wasn't familiar with. Even though the title of the video is "What is the Roseto Effect?", the video has 3-4 additional ideas like Harvard Grant Study, the Yerkes-Dodson Effect, and impact of stress, caffeine and sleep on cognitive functioning. Worth watching!

(12 mins) The Rose Garden: A History of the Roseto Effect

A lovely video with interviews of Roseto family members who lived in Roseto in 1950s. They explain how conditions changed in 1960s and 1970s as the next generation(s) got educated, moved to other parts of USA and set up nuclear families.

Roseto Effect in Lifestyle Medicine

ACLM (American College of Lifestyle Medicine) has 6 pillars: Nutrition, Sleep, Exercise, Tobacco, Relationships and Stress Management. See this infographic, for example.

Prominent doctors like Drs Esselstyn, Greger, McDougall, Fuhrman and Goldhamer emphasize nutrition. And they mention exercise every now and then. Only Drs Ornish and Klaper emphasize the role of love and community support as an important pillar for disease prevention.

Dr Ornish's initial studies for heart disease from late 70s and early 80s had multiple interventions: diet, movement & meditation! Later, Dr Esselstyn showed that we need just two: diet & movement. Since movement can be explained in 1 sentence (do some moderate exercise everyday :-) ), the entire emphasis in WFPB circles is on diet, a complex subject with thousands of questions. For a history of Dean Ornish's work, see Heart Disease & Dr Dean Ornish.

How may we create Roseto Effect in our lives? Let's say I'm an individual from a weak family (in the sense that there is not much love or social support). How may I create a Roseto-like system for myself today? Seems like a hard problem.

… and that makes me wonder: let's say there is a set of individuals who would like to reduce their risk of chronic diseases but don't know each other. How may they set up a Roseto-like system for themselves? It seems difficult. Maybe that's why Lifestyle Medicine research in heart disease gravitated towards what individuals can do by themselves: change diet and engage in movement. And luckily, just those two seem to work well for heart disease and several other conditions.

© Copyright 2008—2024, Gurmeet Manku.