The Blue Zones Expert: 70% of Your Health Is Dictated By This ONE Thing

The Blue Zones Expert: 70% of Your Health Is Dictated By This ONE Thing



Today, I'm joined by best-selling author and explorer, Dan Buettner, as he shares his extensive research and knowledge on lengthening our lifespans. Serving as the creative force behind the acclaimed publication, “The Blue Zones Secrets for Living Longer: Lessons from the Healthiest Places on Earth” and the accompanying Netflix docu-series, Dan Buettner provides a wealth of knowledge on the pursuit of longevity.

This discussion delves into the shared characteristics among diverse populations as well as the secrets to a satisfying and enduring existence. From dietary practices and daily routines to the communities we foster, Dan Buettner offers profound insights into how these lessons from the Blue Zones can be applied to our own lives.

If you like this episode, you'll love my conversation with meditation expert and Calm CEO Michael Acton Smith: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHHTeycXcFg

What we Discuss:

00:00 Intro
03:03 How much of our genes determine how long we will live
08:06 The secret to a healthy America
14:07 The overconsumption of meat is hurting us
18:14 Time spent in cars
26:45 Using elders as a longevity strategy for community
30:32 Green tea can add to your longevity
35:14 The benefits of beans
42:00 The power of creating a social circle around health
46:26 What the last blue zone 1.0 will be
48:41 What most cities should consider in order to become a blue zone
53:10 Conclusion

Want to learn to coach like Jay Shetty? Discover how here: https://gtly.to/PMlHc6JZw

Episode Resources:

Dan's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danbuettner/
Dan's website: https://danbuettner.com/

we make about 220 food decisions a day only 10% of them are conscious if you're unhealthy and overweight it's probably not your fault and I'll tell you why New York Times best-selling author award-winning journalist Danner these five areas where people are living measurably longer not only is there plenty of evidence that these approaches work but also it offers a path to longevity that's enjoyable before we jump into this episode I'd like to invite you to join this community to hear more interviews that will help you become happier healthier and more healed all I want you to do is click on the Subscribe button I love your support it's incredible to see all your comments and we're just getting started I can't wait to go on this journey with you thank you so much for subscribing it means the world to me the bestselling author and host the number one Health and Wellness podcast on purpose with J shett hey everyone welcome back to onp purpose the number one Health podcast in the world thanks to each and every one of you that come back every week to become happier healthier and more healed now I love sitting down with people who have deeply studied obsessed and excavated insights and ideas for us people who have focused deeply on mining the world traveling the world and finding wisdom finding tenets of ideas and Concepts that can transform the way we live in the modern world and today's guest is someone I've had on the show before but I so excited to see him again after around four or five years it's been since we were lost together I'm speaking about Dan Butner an Explorer National Geographic fellow award-winning journalist and producer and New York Times bestselling author Dan discovered the five places in the world dubbed blue zones hotpots where people live the longest healthiest lives in Dan's new book that I have right now the Blue Zone secrets for living longer lessons from the healthiest places on Earth Dan talks about his travels and journeys of living and learning from people all over the world that we'll dive into today I want you to grab a copy of this book it beautifully synthesizes and summarizes really complex and difficult ideas and really really simple and beautiful ones in a way that you can practice them and bring them to life in yours and the people you love welcome to the show Dan Butner Dan thank you for being here oh you're such a master it's it's it's a complete joy to see you again and and to be here in your studio yeah and congratulations on your documentary too on Netflix I mean it's been received exceptionally well if anyone hasn't seen it yet make sure you go and see that and get the book at the same time it's it's so beautiful because when we met you'd been dedicated to this work for so long already and the fact that it's now having another Resurgence and you know it's becoming even more mainstream which which I love because I think these ideas need to be mainstream talk to us just about how long you've been fascinated and obsessed about this journey and how amazing it is you just said a moment ago outside to me you said you know I thought the work had had its course but here it is again just it's Timeless 1999 I I did a read a study in the World Health Organization finding that Okinawa Japan produces the longest live disability-free lives in the world I thought aha that's a great mystery and it did a very quick Expedition there and became personally on on fire about the topic and then in 2004 I got an assignment from National Geographic and a grant from the National Institutes on aging and uh wrote a cover story for National Geographic and the idea here Jay was you know so many it's very hot in Silicon Valley right now to search for longevity hacks or anti-aging nooms and so forth and instead of looking for secret to longevity in a test tube or some sort of genetic code uh we very methodically found these five areas where people are living measurably longer and then because only about 20% of how long we live is dictated by our genes 80% is something else then we took teams of scientists to find the common denominators and the the corelates and I think the reason this this the Netflix series is resonating so much right now is because in our fast Pace world where we're constantly looking for answers in technology we've overlooked this wonderful repository of time honor and wisdom that if we stop pay attention you can see not only is there plenty of evidence that these approaches work but also it offers a path to longevity that's enjoyable absolutely and I I'm so happy that you're shining a light on that because I think it's so interesting how obsessed we can get and even how stressed we can get about our health and almost when you go back to these very Grassroots ways and methods and approaches it's so much more natural and organic but W us through that you said 20% is genes what's the other 80% maybe 10% is Health Care you know how good your insurance is how much access you have to hospitals and doctors but the other 70% or so I argue it is largely your environment we spent over150 billion a year on diets and exercise programs but if you look at the the duration of how long those last it's measured in months or maybe a year and a half or so and when it comes to longevity there's no short-term fix there's no pill there's no supplement it is the sum of lots of small improvements to your lives aggregated over decades that's what works and I've been shown nothing else that can work in the in in the in the short run so uh so that 70% is how you set up your environment so that you are unconsciously nudged to do things that favor longevity and nudged away from the things that we know take away from health and vitality that's kind of the general idea and I love that idea about environment I think the challenge is today that a lot of us would find that environments we grow up in or environments we live and work in are almost set up against longevity yes would you agree with that and what are some of the ways in which we almost have to not fight but we have to almost defend protect and create environments to grow and be abundant in so we're in Los Angeles right now I happen to know that the average Angelino spends 47 hours a year not just in traffic stopped in traffic in places that are walkable where there are bike Lanes where there are nice wide sidewalks with trees so they're aesthetically pleasing cleaned up playground the physical activity level of the entire Community is 20% higher uh so we live in a nature Nation where few than 24% of people get the minimum amount of physical activity which is only about 20 minutes so just by living in a walkable neighborhood you're probably going to get more physical activity over the long term than you are signing up for a gym the other problems our food environment you know we evolved with u uh genetic hard wirring to favor salt favor sugar yearn for fat and take rest whenever we can that served us very well in in an environment of scarcity and difficulty like we evolved in but now we live in this environment where we're never more than five steps away from a salty snack or soda or hamburger or pizza and you know our jeans lust for that um and we can try to deploy discipline or presence of mind to overcome it three or four times but the sixth time you're confronted by it in a day you know that discipline muscle wears out and next thing you're you know eating that Snickers or digging into that bag of chips and and uh it's hard to WG your finger at Americans and say it's your responsibility to eat health healthy when 97 out of 100 choices out there for most people aren't healthy well I want to dive into all the lessons and the insides that we can make shifts how have you found people being able to apply the blue zones work in their modern lives in these big cities in places where 97 out of a 100 options are unhealthy or toxic or whatever they may be what examples have you seen what have you learned about people actually making changes in transformations in life so I have two answers and first I'll take it at the community level so my daytime job for most the last 13 years has been working with cities uh were were publicly endorsed but privately funded so we don't get involved with you know people worrying about spending uh tax dollars we've gone into cities like Fort Worth Texas Naples Florida Jacksonville the whole state of Hawaii and instead of trying to get people to try to convince people to eat mostly a plant-based diet and get physical activity we work with city council to help them uh identify policies that favor healthy food over junk food that favor The Pedestrian over the motorist that favor the non-smoker over the smoker and we don't come in telling cities what to do nobody wants to be told what to do we bring them menus and then we go through every item on that policy menu and assess it for number one effective do people in this room from the public and private sector think it' be effective in this city and two Is it feasible is there enough sort of political Equity to get these things done and in every city we're able to find a half a dozen to a dozen policies that float to the top and my team could get implement it and that's the biggest according to the CDC the most powerful lever we have to create a healthier America is policy it's the most coste effective but then we also have a blue zones certification program for restaurants grocery stores workplaces and schools and over 5 years we can usually get 30 to 40% of those places to agree to optimize their designs and their policies so people mindlessly move more uh eat better you know cafeterias are healthier with healthier choices socialize more we all know um loneliness kills and then no one Liv their purpose and it only works when you're comprehensive and from the time people wake up till the time they go to bed they are nudged uh unconsciously nudged into slightly better behaviors over the period of decades and in every city we worked in and galop measures this uh we've seen the obesity rate go down life satisfaction go up and Health Care go down a lot and in a country where we're spending $4.4 trillion do on healthc care uh that's an important consideration yeah absolutely I mean it's incredible to have these very I love how you're approaching it almost from a very macro level like in the sense of it's not just about micro habit changes it's about redesigning entire cities or reformatting entire cities which which I was fascinated when we first met and you walked me through the models and I remember you showing us how you were thinking parks and spaces could be redesigned and how schools and homes and how they all need to be close to each other and I was thinking wow this is it's such a practical but macro level I want to dive into some of these areas because I want to give people a small tour of this beautiful book that you've created and of course highly recommend that everyone grabs the book for all the full details but the blue zones are Sardinia NOOA lomalinda Iaria Okana and Singapore and so they're not necessarily the most they're not predictable and they're not places that you'd go oh yeah I know that place like of course those people live a long time they they they're and I've only been to I've been to Sardinia before and I remember going and meeting with some of the people then I was totally Blown Away I've been to Singapore before and I met some local individuals but I wanted to dive into a couple of is that I highlighted so I want to talk a little bit about a few things that may sound counterintuitive to people uh one of the one of these ones was the plant-based diet because I think a lot of people right now there's a lot of debate over plant-based versus meat-based Diet but this was something that you saw across the board as quite a strong indicator of longevity I think people should eat what makes them feel the best and I'm not here to tell people what to eat but I'm also right for National Geographic and I'm my feet are held to the fire um so if I want to talk about a diet of longevity the our process was to aggregate dietary surveys in all five blue zones universities go out and find what the what the population is eating and we did that o for over the past 80 years so 155 dietary surveys over 80 years so we know what a centenarian was eating when they were 20 and what they what they're eating when they were newly retired and recently I had oversight from Harvard to do what's called a metaanalysis and if you really want to know what a centenarian has eaten most of his or her life uh it is about 90 to 95% whole plant-based food uh contrary to sort of the popular keto diets and so forth it's very high in carbohydrates but complex carbohydrates carbohydrates both jelly beans and and lentil beans are carbohydrates and obviously you know in a way carbohydrates is the worst word in the nutrition dictionary because I would argue simple carbohydrates like jelly beans are the most toxic components of our diet whereas beans is the most healthy the the five pillars of every longevity diet in the world are whole grains greens and other garden vegetables it's all seasonal tubers like sweet potatoes uh in Okinawa until 1970 about 65 to 70% of all the calories consumed were from purple sweet potatoes a nuts as a snack and then the Cornerstone of every longevity diet in the world is beans and if you're eating a cup of beans a day it's probably worth about four years of extra life expectancy they do eat meat and I readily acknowledge that the Adventists don't all eat meat but in all blue zones on average they were eating meat about five times per month the average American eats about 220 pounds of meat A year which is just too much I think there's plenty of evidence to show that that level of meat consumption is highly associated with about a doubling or tripling of your chances of cardiovascular disease and even type 2 diabetes in blue zones they might be consuming uh 20 pounds of meat a year and it's a celebratory food it's usually uh from an animal that's had a pretty decent life not to say that that justifies killing it but um it's just a whole different way of of consuming meat and and much lower quantities so is there room for meat in people's diet probably but a lot less I think we're consuming yeah and I love how you've connected and I mean the amount of analysis that's been done is is truly remarkable and obviously the amount of years the fact that you know what someone was eating at 20 years old and and what they've eaten for their whole life is is pretty phenomenal one of these ones that you had here was laughing with friends and you know I think laughter is laughter and crying both are such underestimated emotions and expressions and I almost feel like I wonder if everyone of us who's listening and watching right now did a personal audit on how much we laughed per week oh yeah I would be intrigued to see how how many of us and I would love that everyone who's listening and watching just for the next seven days it sounds like a stupid activity and maybe this makes you laugh and that's great uh write down how many times you you truly laugh not just like ha haa but like truly laughed every day what did you discover about the importance of laughter because that sounds like such a subtle soft small thing but you you put it in the book well it's hard to quantify quite honestly but where that comes from the word sardonic which is a type of kind of slightly biting but good-natured uh humor comes from Sardinia and it very much pervades the culture there there's a lot of sort of ribbing good-natured ribbing of each other and um that's sort of a a social currency so when they get together at the end of the day for their glass of wine or two it's usually they're not sitting around griping about politics or what the left is doing or what the right is doing they're poking fun of each other the shepherd over the hill and um so that was that's an anecdotal observation but it just seemed to be one of the propellants of of a a very hearty and healthy uh social life I wrote that cover story for National Geographic in 2005 I don't think anybody was connecting social the quality of your Social relations with health or longevity until my first articles and books were and um I I think there's a a general realization that transcends blue zones that you know if you could put the healthful properties of a good social life in a tablet it would be a billion- dollar Blockbuster drug being having at least three friends who you can laugh with who care about you on a on a a bad day is worth about eight years of life expectancy over being alone and I don't know of any other supplement or pill that will give you anywhere near that we inherently know that like when someone hears that they sound yeah I have three friends but I think like you said it's the topic of conversation it's the energetic exchange it's the vulnerability and the depth of that relationship that seems to be stifled like you're saying like we're all searching for the magic pill but you're saying actually just having three friends that you can call on a bad day is actually going to increase your life expectancy greater than any pill you could take which just to think about that for a second like you make it sound so easy but that's a really powerful point but we maybe don't engage as effectively with three people in our life where have we gone wrong in that social space what did you kind of come across there's this great Harvard researcher named Robert putam he wrote a book called bowling alone and when he first ra wrote it in the late 80s he he calculated that the average American has three friends uh now he now calculates we're down to under two so we may think that we're socially connected but as a nation we're getting less and less uh socially connected and I think you know part of it is this thing right here it's we're using this as a proxy for the face-to-face conversations like we're having right now which isn't nearly as good part of it is our environment we spend about twice as much time in our cars than we did in 1980 if we're in our cars we're not out walking interacting with people and having those serendipitous social interactions that can lead to friendships we spend four and a half hours a day at least uh interacting with our screens yet again another time taken away from social interaction and we are humans the reason why we're successful over other simeons is that we have this capacity to feel empathy for each other to cooperate with each other and at the end of the day most things that feel good uh favor our health and our longevity that's why we get hungry and it feels good to eat you know we get that little urge and it feels good to have sex these are all things that sort of favor the thriving of our of our species yeah I want to pick a few things that really resonated with me there first is you spoke about serendipitous moments and I think that that's such a again it's become so Random or rare now to bump into someone at a grocery store and start a conversation we're in a line at anywhere whether it's the doctors whether it's a store whatever it may be and everyone's on their phone and it would be rare or actually we'd see it as weird if someone said hello to us we'd kind of look around going are you okay like what do you need it would be uncomfortable and I actually think that when those synchronous or serendipitous moments happen where you kind of have a moment of surprise or Delight or you bump into someone that feels familiar I had this happen to me through a work thing last week we were going on a work project one person on the team hadn't come to an event yet we hit it off immediately and it felt like Serendipity and it was through work and I was just like I want to build a relationship with this person and I often feel that way and because I moved country and I moved City so I moved from London to New York to now La I've had the positive pressure of having to rebuild community and I remember when I moved to New York and then moved to LA I said to my wife I was like we're not just I'm not just trying to build my career I want to build community at the same time because you can't really have one without the other I could have an amazing career here but if I don't have Community how meaningful is my career going to feel and so they were both Pursuits and efforts and I remember having this really and I still do it today and I'm 36 years old and I'm not shy about it if I connect with someone or if I enjoy someone's company I'll just say hey do you want to come over for dinner let's hang out and I try and avoid going out for dinner and I try and avoid going to bars and restaurants because I find them to be loud I find them to be impersonal and I find them also to be short like you go out for dinner for an hour and a half and then everyone look at their phone and leave and I almost think that if there's someone that I deeply want to connect with I'd rather meet them oneon-one and if they can come over to my apartment or my home or whatever it may be that intimate time and ordering food in kind of creates more time you're now going to spend three hours with someone it's likely that you're going to extend that period of time and another thing that's been massive in helping me is I think often we hide in groups so we go out with big groups we go out with 20 people we go out with 30 people and you then end up having or you got with six people and you end up having five shallow conversations as opposed to one or two deeper ones now I'm not saying I don't hang out in groups I do and I enjoy it and my wife and I throw regular game nights and we love that kind of stuff but I also crave deep intimate valuable conversation as well and I know my friends do and so to me I've I've tried really really hard and sometimes you know you wear your heart on your sleeve and you say to someone hey do you want to hang out and they're like no and and it's okay because I feel like if if I do feel that with someone and someone feels it back with me that's the beginning of a beautiful friendship as an adult and I feel like we make less friends as adults than obviously we did as kids and especially for men especially oh yeah interesting go ahead sorry no I'd actually like to explore this idea of the positive pressure to socialize I think there are a lot of Americans who would love more social interaction it's just hard and I'm wondering what you like if you're a middle-aged American living in Iowa in a small town how would you use this positive pressure and actually start to build Network or build meaningful relationships I find places of equal value and that could be a bar a restaurant a pool bar a a dots place I don't know I'm thinking places that people in England definitely go to connect like you know I think Sports to me finding this has happened recently to me here it's like and I know this isn't Iowa but the idea of I have made I I haven't made I have made so many new friends simply playing pickle ball so pickle ball is taken over the nation I go to a local park like literally 10 minutes down the road I go there and I play and if we've lost a Double's partner or whatever we'll go up to someone random or someone will come up to us and say hey are you guys looking for another pair and we're like yeah sure and all of a sudden you're on a text thread and you're all friends and you're playing pickleball together twice a week and so I found that Sports places of equal value I think Charities and give back opportunities are amazing places I think there are so many social networks inside a city that we're not even aware of obviously people's schools and your children's schools and communities I think there are just so many opportunities to meet like-minded people and I think if we go there wanting to connect and find people of equal value I think it's possible and so I don't know I've never been to Iowa so I can't speak specifically for there but I definitely feel like yeah getting getting into places of yeah finding tangents to connect on I don't think you're going to bump into someone at a grocery store I don't think you're going to bump into someone on the street anymore it doesn't work like that but you will bump into someone if you went to a class A Course a program an event I went on a world tour this year we went to nearly 40 cities across the world and I had people who turned up to my show Single alone came by themselves and left with a group of friends I love right like and that's that I think that's possible but because you're going to a place where you feel safe and they share interests obviously exploring what you're and probably sharing values exactly yeah it's just that you know we're sort of relentlessly marketed that the path to health is through this diet program or this exercise program or these supplements or a longevity hack and the realization that quality social interaction is probably better for your health than any of those things there people marketers can't make money off of it so you so you don't hear about it to your point about pickleball I think it is the most important social Innovation that America has seen in the last three decades I'm also a pickleball fale oh I love it yeah and we have this place where I'll just show up at 9 o'clock in the morning alone and within 10 minutes I'm playing a game and often because there's so much kind of talking back and forth uh by the end of it I have the seeds of three new friendships and after three months it's a it's a community I I I think it's a wonderful thing a few other things that have worked for me this past summer I I visited Minnesota some I want to expand my Social Circle so I started I just went through my own context just one by one and thought yeah that's a person who's a healthy and I'm interested in and I'd like to get to know and I just made Tuesday and Thursday afternoons lunch days because it was a low bar you know for me to ask somebody to come to lunch with me I'll pay you and instead of investing in a diet program or something or you know some supplements I you know had ate lunches and out of that eight lunches three of those people are you know more of a I would say in my media Social Circle now so there's ways to do that is yeah that's brilliant super practical another one that stuck out and I want to go into so many more but this one kind of on that Community element and again potentially more anecdotal but but really powerful and a big part of how we lived in the monastery and and how I was raised celebrating elders and I I love that idea because my wife's one of my wife's favorite people in the world well her favorite person in the world is her grandmother who's thankfully still with us and she loves celebrating her she loves spending time with her she loves learning from her she a few years ago she sat down and interviewed her just for herself so she'd have those memories to hold on to her Grandma's experiences she went and asked her grandmother to share with her like old photos and all of this kind of stuff uh when I think about my monk teachers who are twice my age and celebrating them and being present with them and learning from them I think celebrating Elders is such a part of society that's completely been lost but especially in Sardinia that stood out uh walk us through what you saw there it's very easy to map respect of of Elders as as a longevity strategy for community so you go into these sort of old men uh bars up in the mountains and instead of seeing the Sports Illustrated uh swimsuit of the month you know you would see the centenarian of the month and um they actually have that yeah yes in the in U bonai it's called in in the cluster of the Blue Zone I mean that's just a outward manifestation but in um in Sardinia it would shame the family to put your aging parent in a retirement home so they all stay nearby or usually living in the home and they're not just recipients of care I think a lot of people are afraid of that they're expected to participate so the women are helping with child care they they are the keepers of the food tradition uh the men you know they're still advising when to plant when to sew they know how to make that wonderful blue zones wine which has very high levels of antioxidants um so it's this beautiful virtuous circle where older people are told they matter they're they're given a reason to get up in the morning to take their meds to stay physically fit to eat right uh so they're living long longer and then there's something called the grandmother effect that shows that a household with a grandmother living in it or at least nearby grandfather or grandmother those children have lower rates of mortality and lower rates of disease so this circle is what sort of think of it an upward ratcheting of uh the life expectancy of the whole community and and that becomes harder like even for us like we've moved away we're not close to our our own parents and of course our grandparents getting older as well and it's harder when you've the world is growing and the world is getting bigger and you're you're moving and traveling more is there a way of keeping that connection through phones through facetimes through visits like does it can it still have a similar impact or yeah or or even more immediate have a surrogate grandparent uh there's a Yale researcher named Becca Levy who found that just having a positive attitude towards aging lowers your mortality by about 40% and and part of that is having older people in your life and learning from their wisdom and honoring it not you know forcing them to retire but finding a way for their wisdom to put work even though they might not have as much fluid intelligence as they had when they were 30 yeah absolutely yeah no I I have a lot of that that makes me feel really good I'm really happy you brought that up as such a research point I definitely have people in La that I I see as those Elders in my in my life and in my world that can replace those people that I don't always have access to that's really powerful a couple of things that I want to surprise people with this because this was huge a couple of fun ones this ideal to drink seven cups of green tea a day I think this was on your Tik Tok I seven cups of green tea to walk me through that that sounds like a lot hard to do I was just in kyota last week with a researcher who actually very clearly mapped it to Frailty seven is ideal but as little as three cups of green tea a day uh is associated with about four extra years of healthy life expected see and we don't know why I mean you can you can guess it's probably the antioxid oxidants or the Catans they call but it or there's there's probably 1,500 compounds in green tea we don't know for sure but green tea has been around for a long time and it's consumed daily in volume by at least two of these blue zones and um you know it's one of these things that you know ra rather than turn to the superfood or the super beverage why not drink what we uh learn from our our ancestors who've achieved the outcomes we want which is a long healthy life yeah absolutely my wife and I created this uh sparkling adaptogenic tea called juny and we put one cup of green tea in there and so that's one of the seven at least I'm doing this for my longevity uh it's got zero grams of sugar in it delicious thank you it's got zero grams of sugar in it only five calories it's all natural uh products it's you know it was it was part of that like how do you create something that's fun and healthy at the same time and I'm glad you're that's right yes and that competes with the sugar sweeten beverages much much better off grabbing a juny than a you know a Pepsi yeah ex you said no but no but that was the goal it was like I think it's about what what what you're doing here as well it's about how do we make Alternatives accessible and how do we make healthy options on the head and easy and you remove the friction of price correct you know I was uh I named Singapore a Blue Zone 2.0 and the reason is in in one lifetime life expectancy has jumped 20 years they now have the highest uh Health adjusted life expectancy in the world so they live the longest healthiest life it's not some coincidence from some ancient culture they very deliberately went went about making uh unhealthy food more expensive and harder to get uh so for example they tax sugar we all know Sugar's not good for us uh a Coke in Singapore has 20% less sugar than the same Coke in America so they've they've mandated it has to be less sugar meanwhile they they subsidize things we know are good for us like brown rice they know that driving especially in traffic is bad for the air it's bad for you know kids get killed in accidents you don't get much physical activity when you're sitting in the car so they've made car driving incredibly expensive $100,000 just to have the right to drive a car 300% tax on top of that therefore 89% of people in Singapore walk but they take 89% 89% yeah there's only 11% people own cars in Singapore but what that means is that there's all this tax revenue that they're able to sink into a fast efficient clean and air conditioned wonderful uh public transport system and nobody's more than about 300 meters away uh from Fast much faster than driving public transportation you know what the side of benefit of that is everybody takes about 7,500 steps a day without even thinking about it so they're already ahead of 75% of Americans just getting to work in the morning or going out to see their friends or going out to eat because they're walking to the subway wow that's the way American policy uh makers need to start thinking if we really want a healthier America are you are you working on the policy shifts too is that a big part of your focus or is that to work on local policy I'm working with the one of my favorite Congressman Dean Phillips about a uh design for healthier America bill that would provide block grants for cities to do this kind of work so designing for setting Americans up for health right now we're set up for ill health in in this country I hate to say it so it's just instead of the $4.4 trillion doll a year uh we spend cleaning up America's Health mess uh getting getting ahead of it which is a much better investment and it it also avoids lots of suffering and lots of premature death absolutely I mean speaking on the you know one of the things I wanted to ask you is what are things that Americans do currently that are seen as healthy that are actually causing us to gain weight and live a shorter life are there certain things that you think are marketed promoted or focused on for us to become healthier that are having the opposite impact anytime anybody markets you a superfood you can be pretty sure it's not um many if not most of them have add at sugars or processed ingredients which aren't all that good for you basically any packaged food that that trumpets some health benefit it's probably all not that all not all that good for you in blue zones that the foods they eat have one ingredient you know the high as it comes out of the ground for the most part it's combined in wonderfully delicious ways uh but it's not processed and it's seasonal too right it's often seasonal but several of the blue zones only have two growing seasons so they still have to get through winter right the Cornerstone of all these longevity diets are beans and Grains which store beautifully for years at a time and those sort of get people through uh the times where their Gardens aren't producing by the way you know we put enormous burden on ourselves trying to tell uh Americans that they need to eat fresh fruits and vegetables um you go in the inner city a lot of people don't know what to do with fresh fruits and vegetables they don't have a taste for them a much greater easier solution is beans and rice beans and corn tortilla uh beans and Pasta Pasta foli whenever you have a bean and a grain and you put them together you have a whole protein they're cheap almost every ethnicity knows how to cook them and make them taste delicious uh they're usually fast to combine and cook we would serve Americans much better if we sent the message to eat healthy uh to start your journey to perhaps living to 100 eat beans and rice what's really hard is I'm listening to you and and and and I see this as the challenge too it's like it almost seems like all of our bad decisions whether it's what we eat whether we walk whether we work out are primarily based on high levels of stress so when we're stressed you're going to reach for unhealthy food because it makes you feel better when you're stressed you're more likely to reach for sugar when you're stressed you're more likely to sleep in or try to sleep in or have bad sleep and then you don't have energy to work out you're more likely to skip a work out or skip walking because you feel stressed you want to rush home in your car and just get in front of the TV and so so much of our choices are all based on a lot of stress and obviously in the blue zones they don't have a stressful life I imagine you're right fundamentally that stress drives poor decisions and also if we're eating a meal and we're stressed you're mixing you're interrupting the digestion uh process with cortisol which is not good for not good for you but people in blue zones suffer stress just like we do they worry about their kids they worry about their finances they worry about their health if you're unhealthy and overweight in America it's probably not your fault and I'll tell you why in 1980 about 15% of Americans were uh obese now it's 42 going to 43% of them so almost tripling of the obesity rate um there's seven times as many people are suffering from type 2 diabetes or pre-diabetes that's not because uh 35 years ago people had more discipline or better diet programs or or they were better people or they were exposed to less stresses what has changed is our environment I mentioned before we're driving more but also the number of fast food restaurants has gone up exponentially over 50% of all retail outlets including the place you get your tires changed and the place you pick up your diabetes medicine Force you through a gauntlet of sugar sweeten beverages chips and sodas we make about 220 food decisions a day only 10% of them are conscious the other 200 or so have been orchestrated by marketing and by proximity and convenience and and really mindless decisions and to your point some of those bad mindless decisions are because of stress but most of it is because of our unhealthy environment yeah I've always said that being prump based has saved me from those gauntlets because I can't eat any of it because all of it yeah all of it has some sort of dairy or some sort of animal in it and it's like that's the only reason me and my wife talk about that all the time whenever we walk past Donuts we past donuts and pastries and we're just like gosh if I wasn't plant-based I would be because I I I have a massive Sweet Tooth I grew up eating a ton of sugar I was it was I was exposed to it since I was a kid and so it's taken me years to curb that but the thing that saves me the most from exactly what you're talking about right now the dut shop the the pizza shop the whatever is on plant-based and that's the only thing that saves me I hate to tell you there are plant-based donuts oh no there are yeah I know luckily I live so AED meal no so I'm going to point I'm going to point it out there is an amazing if you live in LA there is an amazing plant-based donnut place called donut friend it is unbelievable and I am so lucky that I live like over 30 minutes away from and so thinking about driving for 30 minutes there and 30 minutes back to get a donut they don't deliver to where I live is like that saves me again uh van luin is too close though that's V ice cream just imagine if there were you you w went came out your driveway every time you came out your driveway there was a there was a special little doughnut vendor right there totally and that's what most Americans are confronted with that the convenience stores the um it's hard no matter where you shop you're tempted by this stuff and yeah we're set up for really a tough time time yeah one of the things you mentioned again on your Tik Tok was you've said that you believe the best weight loss tool is the scale um I wanted to ask you about that because I think for a lot of people getting on a scale is stressful it's like anxiety inducing they they look at it and it and it makes them more aware of a number and now they get focused on a number and if they don't make that number they judge themselves and criticize themselves or they call themselves fat or ugly or name you know whatever it may be so how what were you trying to get at when you were sharing right there is a minority of people who obsess about it and it's anxiety inducing but for a the aggregate people who step on a scale every day and confront their weight and by the way you know if your weight goes up yeah you're going to feel a little kick in the pants but if your weight goes down there's a little endorphin surge it's a little reward and and setting up that system putting a bathroom scale in your way people who self we every day after 2 years weigh about 8 pounds less than people who never self weigh so I actually have one of my little social groups from Los Angeles here I used to live here um I still have four people and I hardly know I've seen them once in my life but every day we email each other our weight and it kind of keeps us uh doing it we we we're accountable to somebody and every one of us our weight has gone down a little bit over the last decade or so and for the average American male in 10 years you can expect to gain an extra 10 years so even among my little focus group we've been it's worked really quite well competition and collaboration together are really fascinating really yeah powerful yeah it's why pickle ball works for me it's it's also why I think I have so many people I know do 10,000 step challenges within their family and most of those people are walking way over 10,000 steps simply because they're trying to beat someone in their family and then everyone's average is growing up and so I think that making something competitive and collaborative is is the genius of the social social network the fitness the fun in life like so much of it comes from that and I think we've lost that one of the strategies we deploying our cities it it's an idea we took from Okinawa uh the notion of a moai a committed Social Circle and we'll get 4 500 people to show up to a gym uh we'll have them Circle up according to what neighborhood they live in we asked them a bunch of questions about um you know are they religious what their favorite food is what they listen for music and have them look at each other as these questions are being answered and then we have them self- select in groups of five people and a lot of these people are completely lonely and once they self- select in these clusters we call them mois we have them give themselves a name and then we organize them around walking together this everybody can walk together and then we offer a little prize at the end of 10 weeks what happens during that 10 weeks is not only are these people walking a lot more than they normally would they're creating a social network or a Social Circle around walking that that uh in many cases we know about 60% are still around four years later so as you were starting to to latch on to it's the power of uh collaboration but creating a social circle around a healthy Behavior that's what's going to last and that's what's going to matter over time absolutely I wanted to quickly jump back to diet and food because there's this great technique that you have and you me mentioned and this was popular in parts of India that were teaching it from this perspective as well that the method you spoke about was being eight out of 10 full when you're eating and when we were trained about that when we'd hear about it from a from an Eastern oric perspective the idea of how breath is part of feeling full and so food is not the only thing that your stomach is full on was how I was introduced to that idea of being 710 full or 8/10 full and the rest would be covered by breath of course there's water as well walk us through that idea of how we can all stop eating at 810 full because I think most of us wait till 10 10 or 121 yeah 108 yeah exactly yeah so so it it has its roots in a confucious the okinawans have this saying har haibu which is a reminder to stop eating when their stomachs are 80% full and they'll say that like a prayer before a meal so instead of saying grace or whatever that it's a reminder I believe though much of it is actually done uh at the table they they tend to pre-plate their foods and put the leftovers away at the uh beginning of the meal instead of the end when you you might be mindlessly eating they don't have a TV so they're not mindlessly eating to their favorite television show they're they're sitting around with friends slowing the meal down it takes about 20 minutes from the full feeling to travel from your belly to your brain and if you're wolfing your food down if you're not breathing like you say not drinking water uh there's a pretty good chance you're going to overeat before you know it it's so fascinating how how have they been able to in these places hold on to these Traditions like even you were saying they I I won't say it like you said it so the the repetition even the reminder of hey let's stay 8/10 full at this meal how have they managed to hold on to these very old traditions and ideas and Concepts in places that I'm sure are being you know commercialized gentrified and all the rest of it like how have they managed to hold on to it well worked until about the year 2000 or 2005 because there hadn't been outside influences but in all these blue zones the American food culture and the onslaught of ubiquitous media is starting to hit it's lagged by 10 or 20 years because these are remote areas but you know as soon as the American food culture walks in the front door longevity walks out the back and uh all of these blue zones sadly are disappearing uh they'll be gone I I I figure in about a half a generation okanawa is already no longer a Blue Zone um so yeah sadly they're making the same mistakes that we're making you think In Our Lifetime that blue zones will probably be gone in in about a decade and a half the the NOOA Blue Zone has shrunk to about 1if its size the okan Blue zone is gone except for people 90 and over you still have a Blue Zone in that demographic uh Sardinia you're starting to see fast food restaurant s uh show up Greece Ikat is doing a good job and I'll tell you why because the recognition they're they're getting as a Blue Zone has created an awareness of the incredible Treasures that the older people are and younger people in their 20s and 30s are bringing back these traditions and they're celebrating this diet uh that is producing longevity and I have real hope for the Ian Blue Zone do you think that may be the last step ending one I think it'll be the last of the of the Blue Zone 1.0 yeah of the singapores I think there are more and my current project is to track down more of these areas where um governments have been successful at manufacturing blue zones and so I think those are the going to be the most relevant lessons because hey let's face it we live you know in 2023 and and there are modern forces that we have to contend with and the lifestyle that evolved beginning in 1500 uh isn't as useful it provides lessons and and we can use it to I think model new environments and new policies but uh it's not exactly an apples to Apple yeah at a at a government level at a decision-making level what is making people care or not care because I think that's something people always think about right like all of this makes so much sense if I was in charge I'd say this is how we should be wanting to help people and support people and let let's make it easier because my job on a day-to-day basis is so much about empowering the individual to make better choices to find healthier options to build discipline to almost deal with the onslaught and The Gauntlet of everything that's kind of my day job right that's that's what I'm focused on here but if I was in charge at State levels I would want to see the changes you're making what is incentivizing and enduing people at that level to say let's build Singapore 2.0 and more blue zones 2.0 versus what's people going n it's all right like GDP is great like what what is that yeah Singapore realized a long time ago that its most important resources it's people it's not some industry or not some commodity like a lot of places and it has gone about a very discipline way of looking at each policy through the lens of does this increase the well-being of people or not and they don't have the the uh voice of a lobbyist speaking loudly in their ear some sort of uh fundraising incentive to to to favor some you know some big business I I think it it really starts with electing leaders who care about who put well-being first Thomas Jefferson in fact I believe was the wor first American to say that the charge of any leader is the health and happiness of of the people and uh I think if if we are able to you know I don't know we can't do much about Washington but we can do a lot in our own communities about the type of Mayor and City councils that we elect uh a lot of the best government in America right now is being done at the municipal level not the federal level and you can get a lot done in a hurry in in a in a city or even at the county level if someone wants to be involved or help or support and help their community in town become more of a blue Zone where would you suggest they start well if you go to the blue zones website there is a bluezones.com there's a button about my community and you can see how other cities have done it and there's lots of of good ideas but honestly Jay it requires a an orchestrated effort comprehensively so many have been sort of Half Baked ideas or they're not comprehensive enough and they get people really excited about it and sponsorship is money is spent and then not much happens so inconveniently unless it's comprehensive of four or five year effort staffed by people know what they're doing with enough intensity it's probably not going to work but it yeah it's good it's good to have that Clarity I think a lot of people would want to see this change I I can imagine you know wanting to back this change and I'm sure a lot of those people are already doing it in their own lives but they'd love to see it extended out to to others I do have one one suggestion that most cities can consider there's something called a complete streets policy bundle every street is redone on average every seven years and that provides an opportunity to make that street constructed not just for cars as most streets and roadways in America are but for humans too so in other words they have to be considered for narrower range which calms traffic to for bike lanes for wider sidewalks for trees for safe crosswalks and uh if a city council that adopts complete streets it it creates an onus for them to make a more walkable livable community and any City in American can do that and there's by the way there's great examples Santa Barbara California has done a fantastic job uh Boulder Colorado a fantastic job Madison Wisconsin these are places that are not only walkable but they're economically thriving and people report the highest levels of well-being they have some of the lowest uh rates of obesity in America so that's a great place uh to start for for most American cities I want to make sure everyone knows when you get the book you're going to hear about sleeps naps fasting sunlight I mean there are so many other topics that I don't want to go over here because I want you to go and read the book and and dive into the depth of just you know how much research how much thought how much work has gone into this over the last you know couple of decades from Dan and his team but Dan I have to ask you about purpose we're on on purpose and you talk about purpose in the book I remember speaking to you about it last time as being such a key attribute of a successful uh centenarian was purpose how did they Define or view purpose or contributing to the greater good like what does that look like for someone in a Blue Zone well I have a few things to say about purpose so it begins in blue zones with vocabulary for purpose in in um Costa Rica it's plita in Okinawa it's iki guy um so it's imbued in their in their culture um but it's manifested purpose in in blue zones is rarely an individual Pursuit it's like my my purpose is stamp collecting or something or butterflies it always has a a social component or a philanthropic giving back to the community supporting the family supporting my my group component to it a service component to it and um you know I do a lot of thinking about it in our in our Blue Zone work uh we have this purpose workshop and you'd be shocked of how many Americans wake up every morning tired they pull the breakfast together for their kids get them off to School rush to work wait work 8 to 9 hours muscle through traffic back home get dinner back together and the stress just never goes away and only about 30% of Americans uh have purpose in their work that's according to a gal poll that surveyed about 2 million Americans I think purpose is the intersection between having Clarity on what your values are knowing what you love to do knowing what you're good at and then studying those three lists for an outlet for him that's true purpose I think that's available to all of us but the founding director of the National Institutes on Aging Dr Robert Butler uh found that people who could articulate their sense of purpose over time were living about eight years longer than people who are rudderless so there's a real health benefit but more so than a health benefit it's just an enjoyable Rich way to live your life and anything you can do to get more purpose in your life uh including I might add listening to this podcast twice a week every week of your life uh is time well spent Dan thank you so much uh the book is called the Blue Zone secrets for living longer lessons from the healthiest places on Earth Dan this is the book make sure you go grab a copy like I said we didn't even Scrat the surface there are so many things I could talk to down about but I want you to go grab the book I want you to read it want you to study it I want you to see these beautiful uh summary pages that are absolutely fantastic that talk about the key learnings from each of the blue zones that Dan's been to and studied because it makes it really easy to just pick it up reflect have a discussion about it I hope that I hope that you're going to reach out to a group of people that should listen to this podcast that are going to be part of that try part of that Squad part of that Social Circle for you all whether it's a book club whether it's a pickle ball team whatever it may be uh I really hope that that social part is not underestimated and undervalued and Dan I thank you again for coming all the way you just flew in an hour before this literally landed came from the airport stepped in the sea gave a beautiful interview with all your energy passion and and uh it's it's truly remarkable and I'm really grateful for your work so thank you so much it's been an honor and a pleasure Jay thank you thank you always been a fan and continue to we'll see you when you're 100 yes thank you if you love this episode you'll love my interview with Dr gabal mate on understanding your trauma and how to emotional wounds to start moving on from the past everything in nature grows only where it's vulnerable so a tree doesn't grow where it's hard and thick does it it goes where it's soft and green and vulnerable

#Blue #Zones #Expert #Health #Dictated

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