Men’s Health: The Tarahumara Indians, Men Who Live Forever

Again from longform.org, this 2008 article in Men’s Health magazine that seems too good to be true: the Tarahumara Indians, a remote tribe in Mexico’s Copper Canyons, live cancer and disease-free lives on a diet seemingly of corn and beer. Outsiders have adopted their lifestyle and writing technique: Scott Jurek was able to to win two ultra-marathons (100+ miles) within two weeks, all on a vegan diet.

The piece, by Christopher McDougall, is beautifully written, though devolves at the end into a technical dissertation on running technique. Not that it isn’t useful, and something I’m going to try (basically, the Tarahumara advocate a barefoot-running style that looks like riding an “invisible unicycle”, but I would’ve liked to read more about the Indians themselves. McDougall wrote a book, “Born to Run,” reviewed favorably by the Washington Post.

I'm a programmer journalist, currently teaching computational journalism at Stanford University. I'm trying to do my new blogging at blog.danwin.com.