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[Music]
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[Applause]
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something called the Danish twin study
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established that only about
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10% of how long the average person lives
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within certain biological limits is
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dictated by our genes the other 90% is
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dictated by our lifestyle so the premise
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of Blue zone is if we can find the
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optimal lifestyle of longevity we can
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come up with a deao formula for
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longevity but if you ask the average
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American what the optimal formula of
00:00:42
longevity is they probably couldn't tell
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you they've probably heard of the South
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Beach Diet or the Atkins diet and you
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have the USDA food pyramid there's what
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Oprah tells us there's what Dr Oz tells
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us the fact of the matter is there's a
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lot of confusion around what really
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helps us live longer better should you
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be running marathons or doing yoga
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should you eat organic meats or should
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you be eating tofu when it comes to
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supplements should you be taking them uh
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how about these hormones or Resveratrol
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and does purpose play into it
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spirituality and how about how we
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socialize well our approach to finding
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longevity was to team up with National
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Geographic and the National Institute on
00:01:25
Aging to find the four demographically
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confirmed areas that are geographically
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defined and then bring a team of experts
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in there to methodically go through
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exactly what these people to to distill
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down the crosscultural
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distillation and at the end of this I'm
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going to tell you what that distillation
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is but first I'd like to debunk some
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common myths when it comes to longevity
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and the first myth is if you try really
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hard you can live to be a
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100 false the problem is only about one
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out of 5,000 people in a America uh live
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to be a 100 your chances are are very
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low even though it's the fastest growing
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demographic in America it's hard to
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reach 100 the problem is that we are not
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programmed for longevity we are program
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for something called procreative success
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I love that word it reminds me of my
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college
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days biologist term procreative success
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to to mean the age where you have
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children and then another generation the
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age when your children have children
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after that the effect of evolution
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completely
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dissipates if you're a mammal uh if
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you're a rat or an elephant or a human
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in between it's the same story so to
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make it to age 100 you not only have to
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have had a very good lifestyle you also
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have to have won the genetic Lottery the
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second myth is there are treatments that
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can help slow reverse or even stop aging
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false when you think of it there's 99
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things that can age US deprive your
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brain of oxygen for just a few minutes
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those brain cells die they never come
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back play tennis too hard on your knees
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ruin your cartilage that cartilage Never
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Comes Back Our arteries can clog our
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brains can Gunk up with plaque and we
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can get
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Alzheimer's there's just too many things
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to go wrong our bodies have
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35 trillion cells
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with the tea we're talking national debt
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numbers
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here those cells turn themselves over
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once every eight years and every time
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they turn themselves over there's some
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damage and that damage builds up and it
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builds up exponentially it's a little
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bit like the days when we all had uh
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beetles albums or Eagles albums and we
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make a copy of that on a cassette tape
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and then let our friends copy that
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cassette tape and pretty soon with
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successive Generations that tape sounds
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like garbage well the same things happen
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to ourselves that's why why a
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65-year-old person is aging at a rate of
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about 125 times faster than a
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12-year-old
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person so if there's nothing you can do
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to slow your aging or stop your aging
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what am I doing here well the fact of
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the matter is the best science tells us
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that the capacity of the human body my
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body your body is about 90 years a
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little bit more for women but life
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expectancy in this country is only
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78 so somewhere along the line we're
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leaving about 12 good years on the table
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these are years that um we could get and
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they uh research shows that they could
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that they would be years largely free of
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chronic disease heart heart disease
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cancer and diabetes we think uh the best
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way to get these Missing Years is to
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look at the cultures around the world
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that are actually experiencing them
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areas where people are living to age 100
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at rates up to 10 times greater than we
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are areas where the life expectancy is
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an extra Dozen Years and the rate of
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middle-aged mortality is a fraction of
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what it is in this
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country we found our first Blue Zone
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about 125 miles off the coast of Italy
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on the island of Sardinia and not the
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entire Island the Island's about 1.4
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million people but only up in the
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highlands an area called The noral
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Province and here we have this area
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where men live the longest about 10
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times more centenarians than we have
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here in America and this is a place
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where people not only reach age 100 they
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do so with extraordinary Vigor places
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where 102 year olds still ride their
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bike to work chop wood and can beat a
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guy 60 years younger than
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them their history actually goes back to
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about the time of Christ it's actually a
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Bronze Age culture that's been isolated
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because the land is so infertile they're
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largely Shepherds which occasions
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regular low intensity physical activity
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their diet is mostly plant-based exent
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ated with foods that they can carry into
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the fields they came up with an
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unleavened whole wheat bread called
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notus made out of Durham wheat a type of
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cheese made from grass-fed um animals so
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it's high the cheese is high in omega-3
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fatty acids instead of omega-6 fatty
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acids from cornfed animals and a type of
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wine that has three times the level of
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polyphenols than any known wine in the
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world it's called kanau but the real
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secret I think lies more in the way that
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they organized their society and one of
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the most Salient elements of the
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Sardinian Society is how they treat
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older
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people you ever notice here in America
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social Equity seems to Peak at about age
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24 you just look at the advertisements
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uh here in Sardinia the older you get
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the more Equity you have the more wisdom
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you're celebrated for uh you go into the
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bars in Sardinia instead of seeing the
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Sports Illustrated swimsuit calendar you
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see the centenarian of the month
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calendar this is a turns off is not only
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good for your aging parents to keep them
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close to the family it imparts about
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four to 6 years of extra life expectancy
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research shows it's also good for the
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children of those families who have
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lower rates of mortality and lower rates
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of disease that's called the grandmother
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effect we found our second Blue Zone on
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the other side of the planet about 800
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miles south of Tokyo on the archipelago
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of Okinawa Okinawa is actually 161 small
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island islands and in the northern part
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of the main island uh this is Ground
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Zero for World longevity uh this is a
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place where the oldest living female
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population is found it's a place where
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people have the longest disability-free
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life expectancy in the world they have
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what we want they live a long time and
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tend to die in their sleep very quickly
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and often I can tell you after
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sex they live about seven good years
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longer than the average American five
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times as many centenarians as we have
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America 1/5th the rate of colon and
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breast cancer big Killers here in
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America and one sixth the rate of
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cardiovascular disease and the fact that
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this culture has yielded these numbers
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suggest strongly they have something to
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teach us what do they do once again a
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plant-based diet full of vegetables with
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lots of color in them and they eat about
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eight times as much tofu As Americans do
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more significant than what they eat it's
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how they eat it
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they have all kinds of little strategies
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to keep from overeating which as you
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know is a big problem here in America a
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few of the strategies we observe they
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eat off of smaller plates so they tend
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to eat fewer calories at every sitting
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instead of serving family style where
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you can sort of mindlessly eat as you're
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talking they serve at the counter put
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the food away and then bring it to the
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table they also have a 3,000-year-old
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Adit which I think is the greatest sort
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of diet suggestion ever invented was
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invented by confucious and that uh diet
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is known as the hadachi Buu diet it's
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simply a little saying these people say
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before their meal to remind them to stop
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eating when their stomach is 20% full it
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takes about a half hour for that full
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feeling to go travel from your belly to
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your brain and by remembering to stop at
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80% it helps keep you from doing that
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very thing but like Sardinia okanawa has
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a few social constructs that we can
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associate with
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longevity we know that isolation kills
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15 years ago the average American had
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three good friends we're down to one and
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a half right now if you were lucky
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enough to be born in Okinawa you were
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born into a system where you
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automatically have a half a dozen
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friends with whom you travel through
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life uh they call it a moai and if
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you're in a moai you're expected to
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share the Bounty if you uh if you
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encounter luck and if things go bad a
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child gets sick a parent dies you always
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have somebody who has your back this
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particular moai these five ladies have
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been together for 97 years their average
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age is
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102 typically in America we've divided
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our adult life up into two uh sections
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there's our work life where we're
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productive and then one day boom we
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retire and typically that is meant um
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retiring to the easy chair going down to
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Arizona to to play golf uh in the okan
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language there's not not even a word for
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retirement instead there's one word that
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imbus your entire life and that word is
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eeky guy and roughly translated it means
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the reason for which you wake up in the
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morning and for this 102y old karate
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master hiiki guy was carrying forth this
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martial art for this 100-year-old
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fisherman it was continuing to catch
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fish for his family three times a week
00:10:55
and this is a question the National
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Institute on Aging actually gave us a
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questionnaire to give these centenarians
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and one of the questions they were very
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culturally astute people put the
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questionnaire one of the questions was
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what is your eeky guy they instantly
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knew why they woke up in the
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morning for this 102y old woman or eeky
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guy uh was simply her great great great
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granddaughter uh two girls separated an
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age by 101 and a half years and and I
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asked her what it felt like uh to hold a
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great great great granddaughter and she
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put her head back and she said it feels
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like leaping into heaven thought that
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was a wonderful thought my editor at
00:11:37
Geographic wanted me to find America's
00:11:40
Blue Zone and for a while we looked on
00:11:41
the Prairies of Minnesota where actually
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there's a very high proportion of
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centenarians but that's because all the
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young people left
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so so we turned to the data again and we
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found America's longest lived population
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among the Seventh Day Advent VST
00:12:00
concentrated in and around Lolinda
00:12:02
California Adventists are conservative
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methodists they celebrate their Sabbath
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from sunset on Friday till sunset on
00:12:12
Saturday a a 24-hour sanctuary in time
00:12:15
they call it and they follow five little
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habits that conveys to them
00:12:20
extraordinary longevity comparatively
00:12:23
speaking in America here life expectancy
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for the average woman is 80 but for an
00:12:29
Adventist women their life expectancy is
00:12:32
89 and the difference is even more
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pronounced among men who are expected to
00:12:36
live about 11 years longer than their
00:12:39
American counterparts now this is a
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study that followed about 70,000 people
00:12:44
for 30 years Sterling study and I think
00:12:47
it supremely illustrates the premise of
00:12:50
this Blue Zone project this is a heterog
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genius Community it's white black
00:12:55
Hispanic Asian the only thing they have
00:12:58
in common are set of very small
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lifestyle habits that they follow
00:13:02
ritualistically for most of their lives
00:13:04
they take their diet directly from the
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Bible Genesis 1 verse 26 where God talks
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about legumes and seeds and on one more
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stanza about uh green plants ostensibly
00:13:17
missing his meat they take this
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sanctuary in time very
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serious for 24 hours every week no
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matter how busy they are how stressed
00:13:26
out they are at work where the kids need
00:13:28
to be driven they stop everything and
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they focus on their God their social
00:13:33
network and then hardwired right in the
00:13:34
religion are nature walks and the power
00:13:38
of this is not that it's done
00:13:39
occasionally the power is it's done
00:13:41
every week for a lifetime none of it's
00:13:44
hard none of it costs money Adventists
00:13:47
also tend to hang out with other
00:13:48
Adventists so if you go to an Adventist
00:13:50
party you don't see people swelling Jim
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Beam or rolling a joint instead they're
00:13:56
talking about their next nature walk
00:13:58
exchanging recipes and yes uh they pray
00:14:01
but they influence each other in
00:14:03
profound and measurable
00:14:05
ways this is a culture that has yielded
00:14:08
Ellsworth Wham Ellsworth Wham is 97
00:14:10
years old he's a
00:14:12
multi-millionaire yet when a contractor
00:14:15
wanted
00:14:16
$6,000 to build a privacy fence he said
00:14:19
for that kind of money I'll do it myself
00:14:21
so for the next three days he was out
00:14:23
shoveling cement and Hauling poles
00:14:25
around and predictably perhaps on the
00:14:28
fourth day he ended up in the operating
00:14:31
room but not as the guy on the table the
00:14:35
guy uh doing open heart
00:14:38
surgery at 97 he still does 20 open hard
00:14:42
surgeries every
00:14:44
month Ed Rollins 103 years old now an
00:14:48
active Cowboy starts his morning with
00:14:50
the swim and on the weekends he likes to
00:14:52
put on the boards through all rooster
00:14:55
taals and then Marg toon U Marge is a
00:14:59
104 her grandson actually lives in the
00:15:01
Twin Cities here she starts her day with
00:15:03
lifting weights she rides her bicycle
00:15:06
and then she gets in a rot beer colored
00:15:08
1994 Cadillac Seville and tears down the
00:15:11
San Bernardino freeway where she still
00:15:14
volunteers for seven different
00:15:16
organizations I've been on 19 hardcore
00:15:19
Expeditions I'm probably the only person
00:15:21
you'll ever meet who rode his bicycle
00:15:23
across the Sahara Desert without
00:15:25
sunscreen uh but I'll tell you there was
00:15:27
no Adventure more ing than riding
00:15:30
shotgun with Mar
00:15:32
chatan a stranger is a friend I haven't
00:15:35
met yet you'd say to
00:15:37
me so what are the common denominators
00:15:40
in these in these three cultures what
00:15:42
are the things that they all do and we
00:15:45
managed to boil it down to nine in fact
00:15:48
we've done two more Blue Zone
00:15:50
Expeditions since this um and these
00:15:52
Comin nominators hold true and the first
00:15:55
one and I'm about to utter heresy here
00:15:59
none of them exercise at least the way
00:16:02
we think of exercise instead they set up
00:16:04
their lives so that they're constantly
00:16:07
nudged into physical activity these
00:16:10
100-year-old okan women are getting up
00:16:12
and down off the ground they sit on the
00:16:14
floor 30 or 40 times a day uh sardinians
00:16:18
live in vertical houses up and down the
00:16:20
stairs every trip to the store or to
00:16:22
church or to the friend's house
00:16:24
occasions a walk they don't have any
00:16:27
conveniences there's not a button to
00:16:28
push to do yard work or house work if
00:16:30
they want to mix up a cake they're doing
00:16:32
it by hand that's physical activity that
00:16:35
burns calories just as much is going on
00:16:37
the treadmill does when they do do
00:16:39
intentional physical activity it's
00:16:41
things they enjoy they tend to walk the
00:16:44
only proven way to Stave off cognitive
00:16:46
decline and they all tend to have a
00:16:49
garden they know how to set up their
00:16:52
life in the right way so they have the
00:16:53
right Outlook each of these cultures
00:16:55
take time to downshift the sardinians
00:16:58
pray the
00:16:59
seventh day Adventists pray the okan
00:17:01
have this ancestor veneration but when
00:17:03
you're in a hurry or stressed out that
00:17:05
trigger something called the
00:17:06
inflammatory response which is
00:17:07
associated with everything from
00:17:09
Alzheimer Alzheimer's disease to
00:17:11
cardiovascular disease when you slow
00:17:14
down for 15 minutes a day you turn that
00:17:16
inflammatory State into a more
00:17:18
anti-inflammatory State they have
00:17:21
vocabulary for sense of purpose iyy like
00:17:24
the owans you know the two most
00:17:26
dangerous years in your life are the
00:17:27
year you're born because of infant
00:17:30
mortality and the year you retire these
00:17:33
people know their sense of purpose and
00:17:35
they activate in their life that's worth
00:17:37
about seven years of extra life
00:17:39
expectancy there's no longevity diet
00:17:41
instead these people drink a little bit
00:17:43
every day not a hard sell to the
00:17:45
American
00:17:46
population they tend to eat a
00:17:48
plant-based diet doesn't mean they don't
00:17:50
eat meat but lots of beans and nuts and
00:17:52
they have strategies to keep from
00:17:54
overeating little things that nudge them
00:17:56
uh away from the table at the right time
00:17:58
and and then the foundation of all this
00:18:00
is how they connect they put their
00:18:02
families first take care of their
00:18:03
children and their aging parents uh they
00:18:06
all tend to belong to a faith-based
00:18:08
community which is worth between four
00:18:10
and 14 extra years of life expectancy if
00:18:13
you do it four times a month and the
00:18:15
biggest thing here is they also belong
00:18:18
to the right tribe they were either born
00:18:21
into or they proactively surrounded
00:18:24
themselves with the right people we know
00:18:28
from the framing studies that if your
00:18:30
three best friends are obese there's a
00:18:32
50% better chance that you'll be
00:18:34
overweight so if you hang out with
00:18:37
unhealthy people that's going to have a
00:18:38
measurable impact over time instead if
00:18:40
your if your friend's idea of of
00:18:44
recreation is physical activity bowling
00:18:46
or playing hockey or biking or gardening
00:18:49
if your friends drink a little but not
00:18:51
too much and they eat right and they're
00:18:53
engaged and they're trusting and
00:18:55
trustworthy that is going to have the
00:18:57
biggest impact over time diets don't
00:18:59
work no diet in the history of the world
00:19:01
has ever worked for more than 2% of the
00:19:04
population exercise programs usually
00:19:06
start in January they're usually done by
00:19:08
October when it comes to longevity there
00:19:11
is no short-term fix in a pill or
00:19:14
anything
00:19:15
else but when you think about about it
00:19:18
your friends are long-term adventures
00:19:21
and therefore perhaps the most
00:19:23
significant thing you can do to add more
00:19:25
years to your life and Life to your
00:19:27
years thank you very much
