Ep. 164: Dan Buettner, Author and Blue Zones Founder on Living Longer & Better
On this episode of Health Gig we are joined by author, National Geographic Fellow, and Blue Zones Founder, Dan Buettner to discuss how we can add years to our lives. Longevity can be added by the simplest things from having a sense of purpose to the power of beans. Join us as we talk about living better, longer!
More on Dan Buettner:
Website: www.danbuettner.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/bluezones
TikTok: www.tiktok.com/@danbuettner
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Bluezones
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Quotes:
“If we do everything right, we should make it to about ninety three.” Dan Buettner
“If you're eating a cup of beans a day, it's probably worth four extra years of life expectancy.” Dan Buettner
“Our friends have a measurable impact on our health.” Dan Buettner
Show Notes:
Dan Buettner: I got a grant from the National Institutes on Aging to hire demographers to look for more of these longevity hotspots, which we came to call Blue Zones.
Doro Bush Koch: How many blue zones exactly are there? Dan Buettner: There are five.
Dan Buettner: I reasoned that these people would achieve the outcomes we want if we could find the common denominator or detect a pattern that we may indeed have a real fountain of youth.
Dan Buettner: Traditional people who live real lives who have actually made it into their mid nineties and in some cases beyond a hundred.
Dan Buettner: Sardinia, Italy actually, that was first identified by a doctor there named Johnny Pesce and he was going through census data and finding where centenarians were living or have lived over the last century and putting a blue checkmark on a map.
Dan Buettner: In the normal province, there were so many blue check marks that it just was a blue blob. So he started calling it the Blue Zone.
Dan Buettner: I don't think there are any more blue zones.
Dan Buettner: Globalization and largely the American diet or the sort of global diet now is so toxic that it is just completely destroying any hope of longevity anywhere in the world.
Dan Buettner: The Blue Zone way is they live in environments where every time they go to work or friend's house or out to eat occasions, a walk. They haven't engineered out all the physical activity from their lives with mechanical conveniences.
Dan Buettner: My team calculates that they move every 20 minutes or so, keep their metabolisms high, all day long.
Dan Buettner: They have secret daily rituals that reduce some of the stress of the human condition. They pray. They take naps. They honor their ancestors for a few minutes.
Dan Buettner: We find that 90 to 100 percent of what they put in their mouths, are whole plant based food, they're eating meat, but only about five times a month.
Dan Buettner: Overwhelmingly they're eating a high, complex carbohydrate diet.
Dan Buettner: Send the message that they're important, that has enormous psychosomatic impact and psychological impact on older people's propensity to move and take their medicines.
Dan Buettner: Paying attention to who you're surrounding yourself with is a really big blue zone lesson for living longer.
Dan Buettner: The key insight is they live in environments where the healthy choices not only easy but often unavoidable.
Dan Buettner: The British Journal of Medicine just came out with yet another article showing that diets don't work.
Dan Buettner: Taking a page from blue zones with the Blue Zone Challenge does, is it shows you OK, here's the diet of the world's longest lived people.
Dan Buettner: We show people how to set up their kitchen, their bedrooms, their homes, their workplaces, their commute and their social circle so that they are unconsciously nudged into making better choices throughout the day.
Dan Buettner: When it comes to longevity, you have to think about things you will do for decades, not just for a few months.
Dan Buettner: We actually have a tool in the book that allows you to assess your friends. We don't tell you to dump your old, unhealthy friends, but we do want your eyes wide open.
Dan Buettner: We know that volunteers have lower BMIs, lower rates of heart disease and measurably lower health care costs.
Dan Buettner: A main book is the Blue Zone Kitchen when it comes to recipes for longevity, but I've included some in the Blue Zone challenge.
Dan Buettner: We know that people who take a nap, their cortisol levels drop. That's the stress hormone.
Dan Buettner: People who show up to church or temple or mosque once a week; they're slowing down and focusing on something.
Dan Buettner: Connecting with people at the end of the day could be a happy hour walk. Or it could be just getting together to play cards or have a conversation.
Keywords:
TriciaReillyKoch, DoroBushKoch, HealthGig, DanBuettner, BlueZones, NationalGeographic, Longevity, Wellness, PhysicalHealth, MentalHealth, Health, Routine, HealthCare