(Copied from the Platte Weekly Herald and Observer)
A key to living a longer, healthier life may be as simple as choosing the right sleepwear, according to Dr. Josephina Ferraro from the Smithsonian Institute’s Department of Ethnology, whose team just returned with a remarkable discovery from the northwest of China.
Dr. Ferraro was drawn to the area several years ago. She had heard reports of villages in the Xinjiang Uyghur region of China where people live unusually long and healthy lives. Several researchers had tried to discover the cause, but had been baffled. “It was a perfect mystery. None of the usual explanations seemed to fit: genetics, diet, environment, culture,” Dr. Ferraro told us. “In every obvious way, the villages of Shuimogou are nearly identical, but there is a cluster of villages whose inhabitants live substantially longer than the local average. We had to take a look.”
After four months in China, Dr. Ferraro’s team had made little progress. They confirmed an earlier finding about happily married couples. “We already expected, from prior research, that happy couples live longer and healthier lives, but the effect we were seeing here was much stronger than anywhere else. We suspected there had to be something more.”
The breakthrough came in January, when one of Dr. Ferraro’s team was interviewing a young woman who had been raised in a remote village but had moved to the local village only a year ago, after marrying a local man. “We asked her to describe everything that was different between her home village and where she lived now, and the first thing she mentioned was that she had a hard time buying the kind of pajamas she was accustomed to.”
It didn’t take long for the team to confirm that the sleepwear in the local cluster of villages is unique. Instead of the ordinary loose, full-length pajamas favored elsewhere, the local pajamas are sleeveless and form-fitting. The women wear rinou (pronounced “rhino”) of cotton or silk that resemble a leotard that would be a familiar sight in any dance or fitness studio in the USA. The men wear rinou that are generally baggier and resemble boxer shorts on the bottom and a sleeveless “muscle shirt” on the top, resembling a circa-1980s basketball outfit.
But how can the choice of sleepwear influence health and longevity? “We don’t know everything yet, but our most promising hypothesis is very simple: it’s cold there at night! People wearing rinous need to cuddle and share body heat. Rinous leave a lot of skin exposed, and skin contact makes people happy, and happier people lead longer, healthier lives,” Dr. Ferraro told us. “That could explain why the same effect does not seem to appear in unmarried or estranged adults.”
The team will be returning shortly to China for more research, but Dr. Ferraro’s discovery has already had a local impact. “My husband and I wear rinous every night, and we find them very comfortable,” she told us. “We feel happier already.”
