Speaker 1: We make about two hundred and twenty food decisions a day,
Speaker 1: only ten percent of them are conscious. If you're unhealthy
Speaker 1: and overweight, it's probably not your fault, and I'll tell
Speaker 1: you why.
Speaker 2: New York Times best selling author, award winning journalists Dan.
Speaker 1: You these five areas where people are living measurably longer.
Speaker 1: Not only is there plenty of evidence that these approaches work,
Speaker 1: but also it offers a path to longevity that's enjoyable.
Speaker 2: Before we jump into this episode, I'd like to invite
Speaker 2: you to join this community to hear more interviews that
Speaker 2: will help you become happier, healthier, and more healed. All
Speaker 2: I want you to do is click on the subscribe button.
Speaker 2: I love your support. It's incredible to see all your comments,
Speaker 2: and we're just getting started. I can't wait to go
Speaker 2: on this journey with you. Thank you so much for subscribing.
Speaker 2: It means the world to me, the best selling author
Speaker 2: in the host the number one health and well in this.
Speaker 1: Podcast, Purpose with Jay Sheetty.
Speaker 2: Hey everyone, and welcome back to On Purpose, the number
Speaker 2: one health podcast in the world. Thanks to each and
Speaker 2: every one of you that come back every week to
Speaker 2: become happier, healthier, and more healed. Now. I love sitting
Speaker 2: down with people who have deeply studied, obsessed, and excavated
Speaker 2: insights and ideas for us. People who have focused deeply
Speaker 2: on mining the world, traveling the world and finding wisdom,
Speaker 2: finding tenets of ideas and concepts that can transform the
Speaker 2: way we live in the modern world. And today's guest
Speaker 2: is someone I've had on the show before, but I
Speaker 2: am so excited to see him again after around four
Speaker 2: or five years it's been since we were last together.
Speaker 2: I'm speaking about Dan Buttner, an explorer, National Geographic Fellow,
Speaker 2: award winning journalist and producer, and New York Times best
Speaker 2: selling author. Dan discovered the five places in the world
Speaker 2: dubbed Blue Zones hotspots where people live the longest, healthiest lives.
Speaker 2: New book that I have right now, The Blue Zone
Speaker 2: Secrets for Living Longer Lessons from the Healthiest Places on Earth.
Speaker 2: Dan talks about his travels and journeys of living and
Speaker 2: learning from people all over the world that will dive
Speaker 2: into today. I want you to grab a copy of
Speaker 2: this book. It beautifully synthesizes and summarizes really complex and
Speaker 2: difficult ideas and really really simple and beautiful ones In
Speaker 2: a way that you can practice them and bring them
Speaker 2: to life in yours and the people you love. Welcome
Speaker 2: to the show, Dan, butener Dan, thank you for being.
Speaker 1: You're such a master. It's a complete joy to see
Speaker 1: you again and to be here in your studio.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and congratulations on your documentary too on Netflix. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's been received exceptionally well. If anyone hasn't seen it yet,
Speaker 2: make sure you go and see that and get the
Speaker 2: book at the same time. It's so beautiful because when
Speaker 2: we met you'd been dedicated to this work for so
Speaker 2: long already, and the fact that it's now having another resurgence,
Speaker 2: and you know, it's becoming even more mainstream, which I
Speaker 2: love because I think these ideas need to be mainstream.
Speaker 2: Talk to us just about how long you've been fascinated
Speaker 2: and obsessed about this journey and how amazing it is.
Speaker 2: You just said a moment ago outside to me, you said,
Speaker 2: you know, I thought the work had had its course,
Speaker 2: but here it is again. It's timeless.
Speaker 1: Nineteen ninety nine, I did a read a study in
Speaker 1: the World Health Organization finding that Oki now Japan, produces
Speaker 1: the longest live disability free lives in the world.
Speaker 2: I thought, ah, that's a.
Speaker 1: Great mystery, and it did a very quick expedition there
Speaker 1: and became personally on fire about the topic. And then
Speaker 1: in two thousand and four I got an assignment from
Speaker 1: National Geographic and a grant from the National Institutes on
Speaker 1: Aging and wrote a cover story for National Geographic, and
Speaker 1: the idea here Jay, was, you know so many it's
Speaker 1: very hot in Silicon Valley right now to search for
Speaker 1: longevity hacks or anti aging, no storms and so forth.
Speaker 1: And instead of looking for secret to longevity test tube
Speaker 1: or some sort of genetic code, we've very methodically found
Speaker 1: these five areas where people are living measurably longer. And then,
Speaker 1: because only about twenty percent of how long we live
Speaker 1: is dictated by our genes, eighty percent of something else,
Speaker 1: then we took teams of scientists to find the common
Speaker 1: denominators and the correlits. And I think the reason the
Speaker 1: Netflix series is resonating so much right now is because,
Speaker 1: in our fast paced world, where we're constantly looking for
Speaker 1: answers and technology, we've overlooked this wonderful repository of time
Speaker 1: honorn wisdom that if we stop pay attention, you can
Speaker 1: see not only is there plenty of evidence that these
Speaker 1: approaches work, but also it offers a path to longevity that's.
Speaker 2: Enjoyable, absolutely, and I'm so happy that you are shining
Speaker 2: a light on that because I think it's so interesting
Speaker 2: how obsessed we can get and even how stressed we
Speaker 2: can get about health and almost when you go back
Speaker 2: to these very grossroots ways and methods and approaches, it's
Speaker 2: so much more natural and organic. But we'll come through that.
Speaker 2: You said twenty percent is genes. What's the other eighty percent?
Speaker 1: Maybe ten percent is healthcare? You know how good your
Speaker 1: insurance is, how much access do you have to hospitals
Speaker 1: and doctors. But the other seventy percent or so, I
Speaker 1: argue it is largely your environment. We spent over one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty billion dollars a year on diets and
Speaker 1: exercise programs. But if you look at the duration of
Speaker 1: how long those lasts, it's measured in months and maybe
Speaker 1: a year and a half or so. And when it
Speaker 1: comes to longevity, there's no short term fix, there's no pill,
Speaker 1: there's no supplement. It is the sum of lots of
Speaker 1: small improvements to your life's aggregated over decades. That's what works,
Speaker 1: and I've been shown nothing else that can work in
Speaker 1: the in the in the short runs. So that seventy
Speaker 1: percent is how you set up your environments so that
Speaker 1: you are unconsciously nudged to do things that favor longevity
Speaker 1: and nudged away from the things that we know take
Speaker 1: away from health and vitality. That's kind of the general idea.
Speaker 2: And I love that idea about environment. I think the
Speaker 2: challenge is today that a lot of us would find
Speaker 2: that environments we grow up in, or environments we live
Speaker 2: and work in, are almost set up against longevity. Yes,
Speaker 2: would you agree with that? And what are some of
Speaker 2: the ways in which we almost have to not fight,
Speaker 2: but we have to almost defend, protect and create environments
Speaker 2: to grow and be abundant in.
Speaker 1: So we're in Los Angeles right now, I happen to
Speaker 1: know that the average Angelino spends forty seven hours a
Speaker 1: year not just in traffic, stopped in traffic, in places
Speaker 1: that are walkable, where there are bike lanes, where there
Speaker 1: are nice wide sidewalks with trees so they're esthetically pleasing,
Speaker 1: cleaned up playground. The physical activity level of the entire
Speaker 1: community is twenty percent higher. So we live in a
Speaker 1: nature nation where freer than twenty four percent of people
Speaker 1: get the minimum amount of physical activity, which is only
Speaker 1: about twenty minutes. So just by living in a walkable neighborhood,
Speaker 1: you're probably going to get more physical activity over the
Speaker 1: long term than you are signing up for a gym.
Speaker 1: The other problems are food environment. You know, we evolved
Speaker 1: with genetic hardwiring to favor salt, favor sugar, urn for fat,
Speaker 1: and take rest whenever we can. That served us very
Speaker 1: well in an environment of scarcity and difficulty like we
Speaker 1: evolved in. But now we live in this environment where
Speaker 1: we're never more than five steps away from a salty
Speaker 1: snack or soda or hamburger pizza, and you know, our
Speaker 1: genes lusts for that, and we can try to deploy
Speaker 1: discipline or presence of mind to overcome it three or
Speaker 1: four times, but the sixth times you're confronted by it
Speaker 1: in a day, you know that discipline muscle wears out.
Speaker 1: The next thing you're you know, eating that snickers or
Speaker 1: digging into that bag of chips. And it's hard to
Speaker 1: wake your finger at Americans and say it's your responsibility
Speaker 1: to eat healthy when ninety seven out of one hundred
Speaker 1: choices out there for most people aren't healthy.
Speaker 2: I want to dive into all the lessons and the
Speaker 2: insights that we can make shifts. How have you found
Speaker 2: people being able to apply the Blue zones work in
Speaker 2: their modern lives in these big cities, in places when
Speaker 2: ninety seven out of one hundred options are unhealthy or
Speaker 2: toxic or whatever they may be. What examples have you seen?
Speaker 2: What have you learned about people actually making changes and
Speaker 2: transformations in their life?
Speaker 1: So I have two answers, and I'll first, I'll take
Speaker 1: it at the community level. So my daytime job for
Speaker 1: most the last thirteen years has been working with cities
Speaker 1: were publicly endorsed but privately funded, so we don't get
Speaker 1: involved with people worried about spending tax hours. We've gone
Speaker 1: into cities like Fort Worth, Texas, Naples, Florida, Jacksonville, the
Speaker 1: whole state of Hawaii, and instead of trying to get
Speaker 1: people to convince people to eat mostly a plant based
Speaker 1: diet and to get physical activity, we work with city
Speaker 1: council to help them identify policies that favor healthy food
Speaker 1: over junk food, that favor the pedestrian over the motors,
Speaker 1: that favor the non smoke over the smoker. And we
Speaker 1: don't come in telling cities what to do. Nobody wants
Speaker 1: to be told what to do. We bring them menus
Speaker 1: and then we go through every item on that policy
Speaker 1: menu and assess it for number one, effective to people
Speaker 1: in this room from the public and private sector, think
Speaker 1: it to be effective in this city? And two is
Speaker 1: it feasible? Is there enough sort of political equity to
Speaker 1: get these things done? And in every city, we're able
Speaker 1: to find a half a dozen to a dozen policies
Speaker 1: that float to the top and my team could get implemented.
Speaker 1: And that's the biggest According to the CDC, the most
Speaker 1: powerful lever we have to create a healthier America is policy.
Speaker 1: It's the most cost effective. But then we also have
Speaker 1: a Blue Zone certification program for restaurants, grocery stores, workplaces
Speaker 1: in schools, and over five years we can usually get
Speaker 1: thirty to forty percent of those places to agree to
Speaker 1: optimize their designs and their policies so people mindlessly move more,
Speaker 1: eat better. Cafeterias are healthier with healthier choices, socialize more.
Speaker 1: We all know loneliness kills and then no one live
Speaker 1: their purpose. And it only works when you're comprehensive, and
Speaker 1: from the time people wake up till the time they
Speaker 1: go to bed, they are nudged unconsciously nudged into slightly
Speaker 1: better behaviors. Over the period of decades, and in every
Speaker 1: city we worked in and Gallop measures this, we've seen
Speaker 1: the obesity rate go down, life satisfaction go up, and
Speaker 1: healthcare go down a lot. And in a country where
Speaker 1: we're spending four point four trillion dollars on healthcare, that's
Speaker 1: an important consideration.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, I mean it's incredible to have these very
Speaker 2: I love how you're approaching it almost from a very
Speaker 2: macro level, like in the sense if it's not just
Speaker 2: about micro habit changes, it's about redesigning entire cities or
Speaker 2: reformatting entire cities, which which I was fascinated when we
Speaker 2: first met and you walked me through the models, and
Speaker 2: I remember you showing us how you were thinking parks
Speaker 2: and spaces could be redesigned, and how schools and homes
Speaker 2: and how they all need to be close to each other,
Speaker 2: and I was thinking, wow, this is it's such a
Speaker 2: practical but macro level. I want to dive into some
Speaker 2: of these areas because I want to give people a
Speaker 2: small tour of this beautiful book that you've created, and
Speaker 2: of course highly recommend that everyone grabs the book for
Speaker 2: all the full details. But the blue zones are Sardinya
Speaker 2: and Nkoya, Lomlinda, Ikaria, Okinawa and Singapore, and so they're
Speaker 2: not necessarily the most they're not predictable, and they're not
Speaker 2: places that you'd go, oh yeah, I know that place,
Speaker 2: like of course, those people live a long time and
Speaker 2: I've only been to I've been to Sardinia before and
Speaker 2: I remember going and meeting with some of the people.
Speaker 2: Then I was totally blown away. I've been to Singapore
Speaker 2: before and I met some local individuals. But I wanted
Speaker 2: to dive into a couple of areas that I highlight,
Speaker 2: So I wanted to talk a little bit about a
Speaker 2: few things that may sound counterintuitive to people. One of these.
Speaker 2: One of these ones was the plant based diet, because
Speaker 2: I think a lot of people right now there's a
Speaker 2: lot of debate over plant based versus meat based diet,
Speaker 2: but this was something that you saw across the board
Speaker 2: as quite a strong indicator of longevity.
Speaker 1: I think people should eat what makes them feel the best,
Speaker 1: and I'm not here to tell people what to eat,
Speaker 1: but I'm also right for National Geographic and my feet
Speaker 1: are held to the fire. So if I want to
Speaker 1: talk about a diet of longevity, our process was to
Speaker 1: aggregate dietary surveys in all five Blue Zones universities go
Speaker 1: out and find what the population is eating. And we
Speaker 1: did that for over the past eighty years, so one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty five dietary surveys over eighty years, so
Speaker 1: we know what a centenarian was eating when they were
Speaker 1: twenty and what they're eating when they were newly retired
Speaker 1: and recently. I had over side from Harbor to do
Speaker 1: what's called a meta analysis. And if you really want
Speaker 1: to know what a centenarian has eaten most of his
Speaker 1: or her life, it is about ninety to ninety five
Speaker 1: percent whole plant based food. Contrary to sort of the
Speaker 1: popular keto diets and so forth. It's very high in carbohydrates,
Speaker 1: but complex carbohydes carbohydrates. Both jelly beans and lentil beans
Speaker 1: are carbohydrates. And obviously you know in a way carbohydrates
Speaker 1: is the worst word in the nutritional dictionary, because I
Speaker 1: would argue simple carbohydrates like jelly beans are the most
Speaker 1: toxic components of our diet, whereas beans is the most healthy.
Speaker 1: The five pillars of every longevity diet in the world
Speaker 1: are whole grains, greens, and other garden vegetables. It's all
Speaker 1: seasonal tubers like sweet potatoes. In Okinawa, until nineteen seventy,
Speaker 1: about sixty five to seventy percent of all the calories
Speaker 1: consumed were from purple sweet potatoes nuts as a snack.
Speaker 1: And then the cornerstone of every longevity diet in the
Speaker 1: world is beans. And if you're eating a couple of
Speaker 1: beans a day, it's probably worth about four years of
Speaker 1: extra life expectancy. They do eat meat, and I readily
Speaker 1: acknowledge that the Adventists don't all eat meat, but in
Speaker 1: all Blue zones, on average, they were eating meat about
Speaker 1: five times per month. Average American eats about two hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty pounds of meat a year, which is just
Speaker 1: too much. I think there's plenty of evidence to show
Speaker 1: that that level of meat consumptions highly associate it with
Speaker 1: about a doubling or tripling of your chances of cardiovascular
Speaker 1: disease and even type two diabetes. In blue zones, they
Speaker 1: might be consuming twenty pounds of meat a year, and
Speaker 1: it's a celebratory food. It's usually from an animal that's
Speaker 1: had a pretty decent life. Not to say that justifies
Speaker 1: killing it, but it's just a whole different way of
Speaker 1: consuming meat and much lower quantities. So is there room
Speaker 1: for meat people's diet, Probably, but a lot less. I
Speaker 1: think we're me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I love how you've connected, And I mean
Speaker 2: the amount of analysis that's been done is truly remarkable,
Speaker 2: and obviously the amount of years. The fact that you
Speaker 2: know what someone was eating at twenty years old and
Speaker 2: what they've eating for their whole life is pretty phenomenal.
Speaker 2: One of these ones that you had here was laughing
Speaker 2: with friends, and you know, I think laughter is laughter
Speaker 2: and crying both as such underestimated emotions and expressions. And
Speaker 2: I almost feel like I wonder if every one of
Speaker 2: us who's listening and watching right now did a personal
Speaker 2: audit on how much we laughed per week. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: I would be intrigued to see how many of us,
Speaker 2: And I would love that everyone who's listening and watching
Speaker 2: just for the next seven days. It sounds like a
Speaker 2: stupid activity and maybe this makes you laugh, and that's great, right,
Speaker 2: down how many times you truly laugh, not just like
Speaker 2: ha ha ha, but like truly laughed every day. What
Speaker 2: did you discover about the importance of laughter? Because that
Speaker 2: sounds like such a subtle, soft, small thing, but you
Speaker 2: put in the book.
Speaker 1: Well, it's hard to quantify, quite honestly, but where that
Speaker 1: comes from. The word sardonic, which is a type of
Speaker 1: kind of slightly biting but good natured humor, comes from Sardinia,
Speaker 1: and it very much pervades the culture. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of sort of ribbing, good natured ribbing, of each other,
Speaker 1: and that's sort of a social currency. So when they
Speaker 1: get together at the end of the day for their
Speaker 1: glass of wine or two, it's usually they're not sitting
Speaker 1: around griping about politics or what the left is doing
Speaker 1: or what the right is doing. They're poking fun of
Speaker 1: each other or the shepherd over the hill. And so
Speaker 1: that's an anecdotal observation, but it just seemed to be
Speaker 1: one of the propellants of a very hearty and healthy
Speaker 1: social life. I wrote the cover story for National Geograph
Speaker 1: in two thousand and five. I don't think anybody was
Speaker 1: connecting social the quality of your social relations with health
Speaker 1: or longevity until my first articles and books were And
Speaker 1: I think there's a general realization that transcends blue zones.
Speaker 1: That you know, if you could put the health full
Speaker 1: properties of a good social life in a tablet, it
Speaker 1: would be a billion dollar blockbuster drug. Being Having at
Speaker 1: least three friends who you can laugh with, who care
Speaker 1: about you on a bad day is worth about eight
Speaker 1: years of life expectancy over being alone. And I don't
Speaker 1: know of any other supplement or pill that will give
Speaker 1: you anywhere near that.
Speaker 2: We inherently know that. Like when someone hears that, they sound, yeah,
Speaker 2: I have three friends. But I think, like you said,
Speaker 2: it's the topic of conversation, it's the energetic exchange. It's
Speaker 2: the vulnerability and the depth of that relationship that seems
Speaker 2: to be stifled. Like you're saying, like we're all searching
Speaker 2: for the magic pill, but you're saying, actually, just having
Speaker 2: three friends that you can call on a bad day
Speaker 2: is actually going to increase your life expectancy greater than
Speaker 2: any pill you could take. Which just to think about
Speaker 2: that for a second, Like you make it sound so easy,
Speaker 2: but that's a really powerful point. But we maybe don't
Speaker 2: engage as effectively with three people in our life. Where
Speaker 2: have we gone wrong in that social space? What did
Speaker 2: you kind of come across?
Speaker 1: There's this great Harvard researcher named Robert Putnam. He wrote
Speaker 1: a book called Bowling Alone, and when he first read
Speaker 1: it wrote it in the late eighties, he calculated that
Speaker 1: the average American has three friends. He now calculates we're
Speaker 1: down to under two. So we may think that we're
Speaker 1: socially connected, but as a nation, we're getting less and
Speaker 1: less socially connected. And I think part of it is
Speaker 1: this thing right here. We're using this as a proxy
Speaker 1: for the face to face conversations like we're having right now,
Speaker 1: which isn't nearly as good. Part of it's our environment.
Speaker 1: We spent about twice as much time in our cars
Speaker 1: than we did in nineteen eighty. If were't our cars,
Speaker 1: we're not out walking interacting with people and having those
Speaker 1: serendipitous social interactions that can lead to friendships. We spend
Speaker 1: four and a half hours a day at least interacting
Speaker 1: with our screens, yet again, another time taken away from
Speaker 1: social interaction. And we are humans. The reason why we're
Speaker 1: successful over other simions is that we have this capacity
Speaker 1: to feel empathy for each other, to cooperate with each other.
Speaker 2: And at the end of the.
Speaker 1: Day, most things that feel good favor our health and
Speaker 1: our longevity. That's why we get hungry and it feels
Speaker 1: good to eat, or you know, we get that little urgent,
Speaker 1: it feels good to have sex. These are all things
Speaker 1: that sort of favor the thriving of our species.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to pick up a few things that
Speaker 2: really resonated with me there. First is you spoke about
Speaker 2: serendipitous moments, and I think that that's such a Again,
Speaker 2: it's become so random or rare now to bump into
Speaker 2: someone at a grocery store and start a conversation. We're
Speaker 2: in a line at anywhere, whether it's the doctors, whether
Speaker 2: it's a store, whatever it may be, and everyone's on
Speaker 2: their phone, and it would be rare or actually we'd
Speaker 2: see it as weird. If someone said hello to us,
Speaker 2: we'd kind of look around, going like are you okay?
Speaker 2: Like what do you need? It would be uncomfortable. And
Speaker 2: I actually think that when those synchronous or serendibitous moments
Speaker 2: happen where you kind of have a moment of surprise
Speaker 2: or delight, or you bump into someone that feels familiar.
Speaker 2: I had this happen to me through a work thing
Speaker 2: last week. We were going on a work project. One
Speaker 2: person on the team hadn't come to an event yet.
Speaker 2: We hit it off immediately and it felt like serendibity,
Speaker 2: and it was through work, and I was just like,
Speaker 2: I want to build a relationship with this person. And
Speaker 2: I often feel that way. And because I moved country
Speaker 2: and I moved city, so I moved from London to
Speaker 2: New York to now La, I've had the positive pressure
Speaker 2: of having to rebuild community. And I remember when I
Speaker 2: moved to New York and then moved to LA. I
Speaker 2: said to my wife, I was like, we're not just
Speaker 2: I'm not just trying to build my career. I want
Speaker 2: to build community at the same time, because you can't
Speaker 2: really have one without the other. I could have an
Speaker 2: amazing career here, but if I don't have community, how
Speaker 2: meaningful is my career going to feel? And so they
Speaker 2: were both pursuits and efforts, and I remember having this
Speaker 2: really and I still do it today and I'm thirty
Speaker 2: six years old, and I'm not shy about it. If
Speaker 2: I connect with someone or if I enjoy someone's company,
Speaker 2: I'll just say, hey, do you want to come over
Speaker 2: for dinner? Let's hang out. And I try and avoid
Speaker 2: going out for dinner, and I try and avoid going
Speaker 2: to bars and restaurants because I find them to be loud,
Speaker 2: I find them to be impersonal, and I find them
Speaker 2: also to be short, Like you've got for dinner for
Speaker 2: an hour and a half and then everyone look at
Speaker 2: their phone and leave. And I almost think that if
Speaker 2: there's someone that I deeply want to connect with, I'd
Speaker 2: rather meet them one on one and if they can
Speaker 2: come over to my apartment or my home or whatever
Speaker 2: it may be, that intimate time and ordering food in
Speaker 2: kind of creates more time. You're now going to spend
Speaker 2: three hours with someone, it's likely that you're going to
Speaker 2: extend that period of time. And another thing that's been
Speaker 2: massive in helping me is I think often we hide
Speaker 2: in groups. So we go out with big groups. We
Speaker 2: go out with twenty people, we go out with thirty people,
Speaker 2: and you then end up having or you go up
Speaker 2: with six people and you end up having five shallow
Speaker 2: conversations as opposed to one or two deeper ones. Now
Speaker 2: I'm not saying I don't hang out in groups. I do,
Speaker 2: and I enjoy it, and my wife and I throw
Speaker 2: regular game nights and we love that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: But I also crave deep, intimate, valuable conversation as well,
Speaker 2: and I know my friends do, and so to me,
Speaker 2: I've tried really, really hard, and sometimes you know, you
Speaker 2: wear your heart and your sleep and you say to someone, hey,
Speaker 2: do you want to hang out and they're like no,
Speaker 2: And it's okay because I feel like if I do
Speaker 2: feel that with someone and someone feels it back with me,
Speaker 2: that's the beginning of a beautiful friendship as an adult.
Speaker 2: And I feel like we make less friends as adults
Speaker 2: than obviously we did as kids, and especially for men especially.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, interesting, go ahead, Sorry, No, I'd.
Speaker 1: Actually like explore this side. There's a positive pressure to socialize.
Speaker 1: I think there are a lot of Americans who would
Speaker 1: love more social interaction. It's just hard, and I'm wondering
Speaker 1: what you like if you're a middle age American living
Speaker 1: in Iowa in a small town, how would you use
Speaker 1: this positive pressure and actually start to build network or
Speaker 1: build meaningful relationships.
Speaker 2: I find places of equal value, and that could be
Speaker 2: a bar, a restaurant, a pool, bar, adarts place, I
Speaker 2: don't know. I'm thinking places that people in England definitely
Speaker 2: go to connect, like you know, I think sports to me,
Speaker 2: finding this has happened recently to me here, it's like
Speaker 2: and I know this isn't Iowa, but the idea of
Speaker 2: I have melmos and I haven't made I have made
Speaker 2: so many new friends simply playing pickleball. So pickleball is
Speaker 2: taken over the nation. I go to a local park,
Speaker 2: like literally ten minutes down the road. I go there
Speaker 2: and I play, and if we've lost the doubles partner
Speaker 2: or whatever, we'll go up to someone random or someone
Speaker 2: will come up to us and say, hey, you guys
Speaker 2: looking for another pairent. We're like, yeah, sure, And all
Speaker 2: of a sudden you're on a text thread and you're
Speaker 2: all friends and you're playing pickleball together twice a week.
Speaker 2: And so I found that sports places of equal value.
Speaker 2: I think charities and give back opportunities are amazing places.
Speaker 2: I think there are so many social networks inside a
Speaker 2: city that we're not even aware of. Obviously, people's schools
Speaker 2: and your children's schools and communities. I think there are
Speaker 2: just so many opportunities to meet like minded people. And
Speaker 2: I think if we go there wanting to connect and
Speaker 2: find people of equal value, I think it's possible. And
Speaker 2: so I don't know. I've never been to Iowa, so
Speaker 2: I can't speak specifically for their but I definitely feel
Speaker 2: like getting into places of yeah, finding tangents to connect.
Speaker 2: And I don't think you're going to bump into someone
Speaker 2: at a grocery store. I don't think you're going to
Speaker 2: bump into someone on the street anymore. It doesn't work
Speaker 2: like that. But you will bump into someone if you
Speaker 2: went to a class, a course, a program, an event.
Speaker 2: I went on a world tour this year. We went
Speaker 2: to nearly forty cities across the world, and I had
Speaker 2: people who turned up to my show single alone, came
Speaker 2: by themselves, and left with a group of friends, right,
Speaker 2: And that I think that's possible. But because you're going
Speaker 2: to a place where you feel safe and they.
Speaker 1: Share interests you share, exploring what you're in probably sharing
Speaker 1: values exactly. Yeah, It's just that you know, we're sort
Speaker 1: of relentlessly marketed that the path to health is through
Speaker 1: this diet program or this exercise program, or these supplements
Speaker 1: or a longevity hack, and the realization that quality social
Speaker 1: interaction is probably better for your health than any of
Speaker 1: those things. Just marketers can't make money off of it,
Speaker 1: so you don't hear about it. To your point about Pickaball,
Speaker 1: I think it is the most important social innovation that
Speaker 1: America has seen in the last three decades. I'm also
Speaker 1: pickaball financially.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And we have this place where I'll just show
Speaker 1: up at nine o'clock in the morning alone and within
Speaker 1: ten minutes I'm playing a game and often because there's
Speaker 1: so much kind of talking back and forth. By the
Speaker 1: end of it, I have the seeds of three new friendships,
Speaker 1: and after three months it's a community. I think it's
Speaker 1: a wonderful thing. A few other things that have worked
Speaker 1: for me This past summer, I visited Minnesota some I
Speaker 1: want to expand my social circle, so I started. I
Speaker 1: just went through my own context, just one by one
Speaker 1: and thought, yeah, that's a person who's a healthy and
Speaker 1: I'm interested in and I'd like to get to know.
Speaker 1: And I just made Tuesday and Thursday afternoons lunch days
Speaker 1: because it was a low bar, you know, for me
Speaker 1: to ask somebody to come to lunch with me. I'll pay,
Speaker 1: you know, and instead of investing in a diet program
Speaker 1: or something or you know some supplements. I you know,
Speaker 1: had eight lunches, and out of that eight lunches, three
Speaker 1: of those people are you know, more of a I
Speaker 1: would say in my media social circle now, so there's
Speaker 1: ways to do that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's brilliant, super practical. Another one that stuck out,
Speaker 2: and I want to go into so many more. But
Speaker 2: this one kind of on that community element and again
Speaker 2: potentially more anecdotol, but really powerful and a big part
Speaker 2: of how we lived in the monastery and how I
Speaker 2: was raised celebrating elders. And I love that idea because
Speaker 2: my wife's one of my wife's favorite people in the world,
Speaker 2: or her favorite person in the world is her grandmother,
Speaker 2: who's thankfully still with us, and she loves celebrating her.
Speaker 2: She loves spending time with her, she loves learning from her.
Speaker 2: She a few years ago, she sat down and interviewed
Speaker 2: her just for herself so she'd have those memories to
Speaker 2: hold on to her grandma's experiences. She went in asked
Speaker 2: her grandmother to share with her, like old photos and
Speaker 2: all of this kind of stuff. When I think about
Speaker 2: my monk teachers who are twice my age, and celebrating
Speaker 2: them and being present with them and learning from them.
Speaker 2: I think celebrating elders is such a part of society
Speaker 2: that's completely been lost, but especially in Sardinia, that stood out.
Speaker 2: Walk us through what you saw there.
Speaker 1: It's very easy to map respect of elders as a
Speaker 1: long gravity strategy for a community. So you go into
Speaker 1: these sort of old man bars up in the mountains
Speaker 1: and instead of seeing the sports illustrate it swimsuit of
Speaker 1: the month, you know, you would see the Senate Tenarian
Speaker 1: of the month and they actually have that. Yeah. Yes,
Speaker 1: in Bonnay, it's called in the cluster of the blue zone.
Speaker 1: I mean that's just an outward manifestation. But in Sardinia,
Speaker 1: it would shame the family to put your aging parent
Speaker 1: in a retirement home. So they all stay nearby or
Speaker 1: usually living in the home. And they're not just recipients
Speaker 1: of care. I think a lot of people are afraid
Speaker 1: of that. They're expected to participate. So the women are
Speaker 1: helping with childcare. They are the keepers of the food tradition.
Speaker 1: The men, you know, they're still advising when to plant
Speaker 1: when they're sold. They know how to make that wonderful
Speaker 1: blue Zone's wine which has the very high levels of antioxidants.
Speaker 1: So it's this beautiful virtuous circle where older people are
Speaker 1: told they matter, they're they're given a reason to get
Speaker 1: up in the morning, to take their meds, to stay
Speaker 1: physically fit, to eat right, so they're living longer. And
Speaker 1: then there's something called the grandmother effect that shows that
Speaker 1: a household with a grandmother living in it, or at
Speaker 1: least nearby grandfather or grandmother, those children have lower rates
Speaker 1: of mortality and lower rates of disease. So this circle
Speaker 1: is what sort of think of it, an upward ratcheting
Speaker 1: of the life expectancy of the whole community.
Speaker 2: And that becomes harder, like even for us, like we've
Speaker 2: moved away, we're not close to us our own parents
Speaker 2: and of course our grandparents getting older as well, And
Speaker 2: it's harder when the world is growing in the world
Speaker 2: is getting bigger and you're moving and traveling more. Is
Speaker 2: there a way of keeping that connection through phones, through facetimes,
Speaker 2: through visits, like does it? Can it still have a
Speaker 2: similar impact to.
Speaker 1: Us or even more immediate have a surrogate grandparent. There's
Speaker 1: a Yale researcher named Becca Levy, who found that just
Speaker 1: having a positive attitude towards aging lowers your mortality by
Speaker 1: about forty percent. And part of that is having older
Speaker 1: people in your life and learning from their wisdom and
Speaker 1: honoring it. Not forcing them to retire, but finding a
Speaker 1: way for their wisdom to put work, even though they
Speaker 1: might not have as much fluid intelligence as they had
Speaker 1: when they were thirty.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, yeah, No, I have a lot of That
Speaker 2: makes me feel really good. I'm really happy you brought
Speaker 2: that up as such a research point. I definitely have
Speaker 2: people in LA that I see as those elders in
Speaker 2: my life and in my world that can replace those
Speaker 2: people that I don't always have access to. That's really powerful.
Speaker 2: A couple of things that I want to surprise people
Speaker 2: with because this was huge. A couple of fun ones.
Speaker 2: This ideal to drink seven cups of green tea a day.
Speaker 2: I think this is on your TikTok seven cups of
Speaker 2: green tea tooke me through that. That sounds like a
Speaker 2: lot hard to do.
Speaker 1: I was just in Kyoto last week with the researcher
Speaker 1: who actually very clearly mapped it to frailty. Seven is ideal,
Speaker 1: but as little as three cups of green tea to
Speaker 1: day is associate with about four extra years of healthy
Speaker 1: life expectancy. And we don't know why. I mean, you
Speaker 1: can you can guess. It's probably the antioxic oxidants or
Speaker 1: the catchickins they call but it or there's there's probably
Speaker 1: fifteen hundred compounds in green tea. We don't know for sure,
Speaker 1: but green tea has been around for a long time
Speaker 1: and it's consumed daily and volume by at least two
Speaker 1: of these blue zones. And you know, it's one of
Speaker 1: these things that you know, rather than turn to the
Speaker 1: super food or the super beverage, why not drink what
Speaker 1: we learn from our ancestors who've achieved the outcomes we want,
Speaker 1: which is a long, healthy life.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, My wife and I created this sparkling adaptogenic
Speaker 2: tequo June and we put one cup of green tea
Speaker 2: in there, and so that's one of the seven At least,
Speaker 2: I'm doing this for my long chovity. It's got zero
Speaker 2: grams of sugar and it's delicious, thank you. It's got
Speaker 2: zero grams of sugar in only five calories. Rely it's
Speaker 2: old natural products. It's you know, it was part of
Speaker 2: that like how do you create something that's fun and
Speaker 2: healthy at the same time.
Speaker 1: And that's right, yes, and that competes with the sugar
Speaker 1: sweet and beverages and much much better off grabbing a
Speaker 1: junie than a pepsi.
Speaker 2: Yeah you said no, but no, but that was the goal.
Speaker 2: It was like, I think it's about what you're doing
Speaker 2: here as well. It's about how do we make alternatives
Speaker 2: accessible and how.
Speaker 1: Do we makes you hit the nail on the head
Speaker 1: and easy, yeah, and you remove the friction of price.
Speaker 2: Correct you know, I was.
Speaker 1: I named Singapore a blue zone two point zero and
Speaker 1: the reason is in one lifetime, life expectancy has jumped
Speaker 1: twenty years. They now have the highest health adjusted life
Speaker 1: expectancy in the world, so the the longest, healthiest life.
Speaker 1: It's not some coincidence from some ancient culture. They very
Speaker 1: deliberately went went about making unhealthy food more expensive and
Speaker 1: harder to get. So, for example, they taxed sugar. We
Speaker 1: all know sugar is not good for us. If a
Speaker 1: coke in Singapore has twenty percent less sugar than the
Speaker 1: same coke in America, so they've they've mandated it it
Speaker 1: has to be less sugar. Meanwhile, they they subsidize things
Speaker 1: we know are good for us, like brown rice. They
Speaker 1: know that driving, especially in traffic, is bad for the air,
Speaker 1: it's bad for you know, kids get killed in accidents.
Speaker 1: You don't get much physical activity when you're sitting in
Speaker 1: the car. So they've made car driving incredibly expensive, one
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars just to have the right to drive
Speaker 1: a car, three hundred percent tax on top of that. Therefore,
Speaker 1: eighty nine percent of people in Singapore walk, but they
Speaker 1: take yeah, the on eleven percent people own cars in Singapore.
Speaker 1: But what that means is that there's all this tax
Speaker 1: revenue that they're able to sink into a fast, efficient, clean,
Speaker 1: air conditioned, wonderful public transport system. And nobody's more than
Speaker 1: about three hundred meters away from fast, much faster than
Speaker 1: driving public transportation.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: With the side of benefit of that is everybody takes
Speaker 1: about seventy five hundred steps a day without even thinking
Speaker 1: about it. So they're already ahead of seventy five percent
Speaker 1: of Americans just getting to work in the morning, or
Speaker 1: going out to see their friends or going out to
Speaker 1: eat because they're walking to the subway.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's the.
Speaker 1: Way American policy makers need to start thinking if we
Speaker 1: really want a healthier America.
Speaker 2: Are you working on the policy shifts too? Is that
Speaker 2: a big part of your focus or is that well, yeah,
Speaker 2: you have to work on local pots.
Speaker 1: I'm working with one of my favorite congressman's, Dean Phillips,
Speaker 1: about a Design for Healthier America bill that would provide
Speaker 1: block grants for cities to do this kind of work.
Speaker 1: So designing for us setting Americans up for health right now,
Speaker 1: we're set up for ill health in this country, I
Speaker 1: need to say it. So it's just instead of the
Speaker 1: four point four trillion dollars a year we spend cleaning
Speaker 1: up America's health mess, getting ahead of it, which is
Speaker 1: a much better investment, and it also avoids lots of
Speaker 1: suffering and lots of premature death.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. I mean speaking on that, you know, one of
Speaker 2: the things I wanted to ask you is what are
Speaker 2: things that Americans do currently that is seen as healthy
Speaker 2: but are actually causing us to gain weight and live
Speaker 2: a shorter life. Are they certain things that you think
Speaker 2: a marketed promoted to focused on for us to become
Speaker 2: healthier than having the opposite impact.
Speaker 1: Anytime anybody markets you as super food, you can be
Speaker 1: pretty sure it's not many, if not most of them
Speaker 1: have added sugars or processed ingredients will are to all
Speaker 1: that good for you. Basically, any packaged food that that
Speaker 1: trumpets some health benefit, it's probably all not all that
Speaker 1: good for you. In blue zones, the foods they eat
Speaker 1: have one ingredient, you know, the high as it comes
Speaker 1: out of the ground. For the most part, it's combined
Speaker 1: in wonderfully delicious ways, but it's not processed, and it's
Speaker 1: seasonal too, right, it's often seasonal, but several of the
Speaker 1: blue zones only have two growing seasons, so they still
Speaker 1: have to get through winter. The cornerstone of all these
Speaker 1: longevity diets are beans and grains, which store beautifully for
Speaker 1: years at a time, and those sort of get people
Speaker 1: through the times where their gardens aren't producing. By the way,
Speaker 1: you know, we put enormous burden on ourselves trying to
Speaker 1: tell Americans that they need to eat fresh fruits and vegetables.
Speaker 1: You go into the inner city, a lot of people
Speaker 1: don't know what to do with fresh fruits and vegetables.
Speaker 1: They don't have a taste for them. A much greater,
Speaker 1: easier solution is beans and rice. Beans and corn, tortilla
Speaker 1: beans and pasta pasta pajoli. Whenever you have a bean
Speaker 1: and a grain and you put them together, you have
Speaker 1: a whole protein. They're cheap. Almost every ethnicity knows how
Speaker 1: to cook them and make them taste delicious. They're usually
Speaker 1: fast to combine and cook. We would serve Americans much
Speaker 1: better if we sent the message to eat healthy. To
Speaker 1: start your journey to perhaps live a new one hundred,
Speaker 1: eat beans and rice.
Speaker 2: What's really hard is I'm listening to you, and I
Speaker 2: see this as the challenge too. It's like, it almost
Speaker 2: seems like all of our bad decisions, whether it's what
Speaker 2: we eat, whether we walk, whether we work out, are
Speaker 2: primarily based on high levels of stress. So when we're stressed,
Speaker 2: you're going to reach for unhealthy food because it makes
Speaker 2: you feel better. When you're stressed, you're more likely to
Speaker 2: reach for sugar. When you're stressed, you're more likely to
Speaker 2: sleep in or try to sleep in, or have bad sleep,
Speaker 2: and then you don't have energy to work out. You're
Speaker 2: more likely to skip a workout or skip walking because
Speaker 2: you feel stressed, you want to rush home in your
Speaker 2: car and just get in front of the TV, and
Speaker 2: so so much of our choices are all based on
Speaker 2: a lot of stress. And obviously in the blue zones
Speaker 2: they don't have a stressful life.
Speaker 1: I imagine you're right fundamentally that stress drives poor decisions.
Speaker 1: And also, if we're eating a meal, we're stressed, you're mixing,
Speaker 1: you're interrupting the digestion process with cortisol, which is not
Speaker 1: good for not good for you. But people in blue
Speaker 1: zone suffer stress just like we do. They worry about
Speaker 1: their kids, they worry about their finances, they worry about
Speaker 1: their health. If you're unhealthy and overweight in America, it's
Speaker 1: probably not your fault. And I'll tell you why. In
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty about fifteen percent of Americans were obese. Now
Speaker 1: it's forty two, going to forty three percent. Of its
Speaker 1: almost tripling of the OBC rate. There's seven times as
Speaker 1: many people are suffering from type two diabetes or pre diabetes.
Speaker 1: That's not because thirty five years ago people had more
Speaker 1: discipline or better diet programs, or they were better people,
Speaker 1: or they were exposed to less stresses. What has changed
Speaker 1: is our environment. I mentioned before, we're driving more, but
Speaker 1: also the number of fast food restaurants has gone up
Speaker 1: exponentially over fifty percent of all retail outlets, including the
Speaker 1: place you get your tires changed, in the place you
Speaker 1: pick up your diabetes medicine, force you through a gauntlet
Speaker 1: of sugar, sweeten, beverages, chips, and sodas. We make about
Speaker 1: two hundred and twenty food decisions a day. Only ten
Speaker 1: percent of them are conscious. The other two hundred or
Speaker 1: so I have been orchestrated by marketing and by proximity
Speaker 1: and convenience and really mindless decisions. And two point some
Speaker 1: of those bad, mindless decisions are because of stress, but
Speaker 1: most of it is because of our unhealthy environment.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I've always said that being plant based has saved
Speaker 2: me from those gauntlets because I can't eat any of it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it has some tot of dairrea, some sort of animal
Speaker 2: in it. And it's like, that's the only reason. Me
Speaker 2: and my wife talk about that all the time. Whenever
Speaker 2: we walk past donuts, we was doughnuts and pastries and
Speaker 2: we're just like, oh gosh, if I wasn't plant based,
Speaker 2: I would be because I have a massive sweet tooth.
Speaker 2: I grew up being a ton of sugar. I was.
Speaker 2: I was exposed to it since I was a kid,
Speaker 2: and so it's taken me years to curb that. But
Speaker 2: the thing that saves me the most from exactly what
Speaker 2: you're talking about right now, the doughnut shop, that the
Speaker 2: pizza shop or whatever, and plant based and that's the
Speaker 2: only thing that saves me.
Speaker 1: I hate to tell you there are plant based donuts.
Speaker 2: Oh no, there are, yeah, I know luckily I live.
Speaker 1: So that's called all rounded meal.
Speaker 2: No, so I'm gonna put I'm gonna put it out.
Speaker 2: There is an amazing if you live in La there
Speaker 2: is an amazing plant based donut place called Doughnut Friend.
Speaker 2: It is unbelievable. And I am so lucky that I
Speaker 2: live like over thirty minutes away from so thinking about
Speaker 2: driving for thirty minutes then thirty minutes back to get
Speaker 2: a donut they don't deliver it to where I live
Speaker 2: is like that saves me. Again. Van Lewin is too
Speaker 2: close though that's not taken ice cream.
Speaker 1: Just imagine if there were you you walk went came
Speaker 1: out your driveway. Every time you came out your driveway,
Speaker 1: there was a there was a special little donut vendor
Speaker 1: right there. Totally, and that's what most Americans are confronted
Speaker 1: with that, the convenience stores, it's hard no matter where
Speaker 1: you shop, you're tempted by this stuff. And yeah, we're
Speaker 1: set up for really a tough time.
Speaker 2: Yeah. One of the things you mentioned again on your
Speaker 2: TikTok was you've said that you believe the best weight
Speaker 2: loss tool is the scale. I want to ask you
Speaker 2: about that because I think for a lot of people,
Speaker 2: getting on a scale is stressful. It's like anxiety inducing.
Speaker 2: They look at it and it makes them more aware
Speaker 2: of a number, and now they get focused on a number,
Speaker 2: and if they don't make that number, they judge themselves
Speaker 2: and criticize themselves, or they call themselves fat or ugly
Speaker 2: or name, you know, whatever it may be. So how
Speaker 2: what were you trying to get at when you were showing.
Speaker 1: You're right there is a minority of people who obsess
Speaker 1: about it and it's in anxiety inducing. But for the aggregate,
Speaker 1: people who step on a scale every day and confront
Speaker 1: their weight. And by the way, you know, if your
Speaker 1: weight goes up, yeah you're gonn feel att kick in
Speaker 1: the pants, But if your weight goes down, there's a
Speaker 1: little endorphinserge. It's a little reward and setting up that
Speaker 1: system putting a bathroom scale in your way. People who
Speaker 1: self weigh every day after two years weigh about eight
Speaker 1: pounds less than people who never self weigh well. I
Speaker 1: actually have one of my little social groups from Los
Speaker 1: Angeles here I used to live here. I still have
Speaker 1: four people, and I hardly know I've seen them once
Speaker 1: in my life, but every day we email each other
Speaker 1: our weight, and it kind of keeps us doing it.
Speaker 1: We were accountable to somebody and every one of us.
Speaker 1: Our weight has gone down a little bit over the
Speaker 1: last decade or so, and for the average American male,
Speaker 1: in ten years, you can expect to gain an extra
Speaker 1: ten years. So we've been among my little focus group,
Speaker 1: we've been. It's worked really quite well.
Speaker 2: Competition and collaboration together are really fascinating. Really yeah, yeah, powerful, Yeah,
Speaker 2: It's why pickabull works for me. It's also why I
Speaker 2: think I have so many people I know do ten
Speaker 2: thousand step challenges within their family, and most of those
Speaker 2: people are walking way over ten thousand steps simply because
Speaker 2: they're trying to beat someone in their family. And then
Speaker 2: everyone's average is growing up, and so I think that
Speaker 2: making something competitive and collaborative is the genius of the
Speaker 2: social network, the fitness, the fun in life like, so
Speaker 2: much of it comes from that. I think we've lost that.
Speaker 1: One of the strategies we deploy in our cities. It's
Speaker 1: an idea we took from Okinawa, the notion of a moi,
Speaker 1: a committed social circle. And we'll get four or five
Speaker 1: hundred people to show up to a gym. We'll have
Speaker 1: them circle up according to what neighborhood they live in.
Speaker 1: We ask them a bunch of questions about, you know,
Speaker 1: are they religious, what their favorite food is, what they
Speaker 1: listen for music, and have them look at each other
Speaker 1: as these questions are being answered, and then we have
Speaker 1: them self select in groups of five people. And a
Speaker 1: lot of these people are completely lonely. And once they
Speaker 1: self select in these clusters we call the moai's, We
Speaker 1: have them give themselves a name, and then we organize
Speaker 1: them around walking together. Everybody can walk together, and then
Speaker 1: we offer a little prize at the end of ten weeks.
Speaker 1: What happens during that ten weeks is not only are
Speaker 1: these people walking a lot more than they normally would,
Speaker 1: they're creating a social network or social circle around walking
Speaker 1: that in many cases about sixty percent are still around
Speaker 1: four years later, so as you were starting to latch
Speaker 1: onto it's the power of collaboration. But creating a social
Speaker 1: circle around a healthy behavior, that's what's going to last
Speaker 1: and that's what's going to matter over time.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I wanted to quickly jump back to diet and
Speaker 2: food because there's this great technique that you have and
Speaker 2: you method mentioned and this was popular in parts of
Speaker 2: India that we're teaching it from this perspective as well.
Speaker 2: That the method you spoke about was being eight out
Speaker 2: of ten full when you're eating, and when we were
Speaker 2: trained about that, when we'd hear about it from an
Speaker 2: Eastern or Vadic perspective, the idea of how breath is
Speaker 2: part of feeling full and so food is not the
Speaker 2: only thing that your stomach is full on was how
Speaker 2: I was introduced to that idea of being seven tenthsful
Speaker 2: or eight tenths full and the rest would be covered
Speaker 2: by breath. Of course, there's water as well. Walk us
Speaker 2: through that idea of how we can all stop eating
Speaker 2: at eight tenthsful, because I think most of us wait
Speaker 2: till ten ten or twelve ten, Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So it has its roots in a Confucius. The
Speaker 1: Okinawans have this saying hatahachibou, which is a reminder to
Speaker 1: stop eating when their stomachs are eighty percent full. And
Speaker 1: they'll say that like a prayer before a meal, so
Speaker 1: instead of saying grace or whatever, it's a reminder, I believe,
Speaker 1: though much of it is actually done at the table.
Speaker 1: They tend to preplate their foods and put the leftovers
Speaker 1: away at the beginning of the meal instead of the end,
Speaker 1: when you might be minds leading. They don't have a TV,
Speaker 1: so they're not mindlessly eating to their favorite television show.
Speaker 1: They're sitting around with friends, slowing the meal down. It
Speaker 1: takes about twenty minutes from the full feeling to travel
Speaker 1: from your belly to your brain. And if you're wolfing
Speaker 1: your food down, if you're not breathing like you say,
Speaker 1: not drinking water, there's a pretty good chance you're going
Speaker 1: to overeat before you know it.
Speaker 2: It's so fascinating how how have they been able to
Speaker 2: in these places hold onto these traditions, like even you
Speaker 2: saying they I won't say it like you said. It's
Speaker 2: the repetition, even the reminder of hey, let's stay eight
Speaker 2: tents full at this meal. How have they managed to
Speaker 2: hold onto these very old traditions and ideas and concepts
Speaker 2: in places that I'm sure of being you know, commercialized, gentrified,
Speaker 2: and all the rest of it. Like, how have they
Speaker 2: managed to hold onto it?
Speaker 1: Well? It worked until about the year two thousand or
Speaker 1: two thousand and five because there haven't been outside influences.
Speaker 1: But in all these blue zones, the American food culture
Speaker 1: and the onslaught of ubiquitous media is starting to hit.
Speaker 1: It's legged by ten or twenty years because these are
Speaker 1: remote areas. But you know, as soon as the American
Speaker 1: food culture walks in the front door, longevity walks out
Speaker 1: the back, and all of these blue zones sadly are disappearing,
Speaker 1: they'll be gone. I figure in about half a generation.
Speaker 1: Okinawa is already no longer a blue zone. So yeah,
Speaker 1: sadly they're making the same mistakes that we're making.
Speaker 2: You think in our lifetime that blue zones.
Speaker 1: Will probably gone in about a decade and a half.
Speaker 1: The Nicoya blue zone has shrunk to about one fifth
Speaker 1: of size. The Okanawan blue zone is gone except for
Speaker 1: people ninety and over, you still have a blue zone
Speaker 1: in that demographic Sardinia. You're starting to see fast food
Speaker 1: restaurants show up. Greece. I CUTI is doing a good job,
Speaker 1: and I'll tell you why, because the recognition they're getting
Speaker 1: as a blue zone has created an awareness of the
Speaker 1: incredible treasures that the older people are and younger people
Speaker 1: in their twenties and thirties are bringing back these traditions
Speaker 1: and they're celebrating this diet that is producing longevity. And
Speaker 1: I have real hope for the Ikuti in blue zone.
Speaker 2: Do you think that might be the last standing one?
Speaker 1: I think it'll be the last of the of the
Speaker 1: blue zone one point zero. Yeah, the Singapore is I
Speaker 1: think there are more, and my current project is to
Speaker 1: track down more of these areas where governments have been
Speaker 1: successful at manufacturing blue zones, and so I think those
Speaker 1: are going to be the most relevant lessons because hey,
Speaker 1: let's face it, we live, you know, in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: and there are modern forces that we have to contend with,
Speaker 1: and the lifestyle that evolved beginning in fifteen hundred isn't
Speaker 1: as useful. It provides lessons and we can use it
Speaker 1: to I think, model new environments and new policies, but
Speaker 1: it's not exactly an apples to apple.
Speaker 2: Yeah, at a government level, at a decision making level,
Speaker 2: what is making people care or not care? Because I
Speaker 2: think that's something people always think about, right, Like, all
Speaker 2: of this makes so much sense. If I was in charge,
Speaker 2: I'd say, this is how we should be wanting to
Speaker 2: help people and support people, and let's make it easier.
Speaker 2: Because my job on a day to day basis is
Speaker 2: so much about empowering the individual to make better choices,
Speaker 2: to find healthier options, to build discipline, to almost deal
Speaker 2: with the onslaugh and the gauntlet of everything. That's kind
Speaker 2: of my day job, right, That's what I'm focused on here.
Speaker 2: But if I was in charge at state levels, I
Speaker 2: would want to see the changes you're making. What is
Speaker 2: incentivizing and infusing people at that level to say, let's
Speaker 2: build Singapore two point zero and more blue zones two
Speaker 2: point zero versus what people going That's all right? Like
Speaker 2: GDP is great, Like what is that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Singapore realized a long time ago that it's most
Speaker 1: important resources. It's people. It's not some industry or not
Speaker 1: some commodity, like a lot of places, and it has
Speaker 1: gone about in a very disciplined way of looking at
Speaker 1: each policy through the lens of does this increase the
Speaker 1: well being of people or not? And they don't have
Speaker 1: the voice of a lobbyist speaking loudly in their ear,
Speaker 1: some sort of fundraising incentive to favor some you know,
Speaker 1: some big business. I think it really starts with electing
Speaker 1: leaders who care about who put well being first. Thomas Jefferson,
Speaker 1: in fact, I believe, was the worst first American to
Speaker 1: say that the charge of any leader is the health
Speaker 1: and happiness of the people. And I think if we're
Speaker 1: able to you know, I don't know, we can't do
Speaker 1: much about Washington, but we can do a lot in
Speaker 1: our own communities about the type of mayor and city
Speaker 1: councils that we elect. A lot of the best government
Speaker 1: in America right now is being done at the municipal level,
Speaker 1: not the federal level. And you can get a lot
Speaker 1: done in a hurry in a city or even at
Speaker 1: the county level.
Speaker 2: If someone wants to be involved or help with support
Speaker 2: and help the community in town become more of a
Speaker 2: blue zone, where would you suggest they stop.
Speaker 1: Well, if you go to the blue Zones website, there
Speaker 1: is a blue zones dot Com. There's a button about
Speaker 1: my community and you can see how other cities have
Speaker 1: done it, and there's lots of good ideas, but honestly, Jay,
Speaker 1: it requires an orchestra straighted effort comprehensively. So many have
Speaker 1: been sort of half baked ideas or they're not comprehensive enough,
Speaker 1: and they get people really excited about it and sponsorship
Speaker 1: as money is spent, and then not much happens. So inconveniently,
Speaker 1: unless it's comprehensive, a four or five year effort staffed
Speaker 1: by people know what they're doing with enough intensity, it's
Speaker 1: probably not.
Speaker 2: Going to work. It. Yeah, it's good to have that clarity.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of people would want to see
Speaker 2: this change. I can imagine, you know, wanting to back
Speaker 2: this change, and I'm sure a lot of those people
Speaker 2: are already doing it in their own lives, but they'd
Speaker 2: love to see it extended out to.
Speaker 1: I do have one one suggestion that most cities can consider.
Speaker 1: There's something called a complete Streets policy bundle. Every street
Speaker 1: is redone on average every seven years, and that provides
Speaker 1: an opportunity to make that street constructed not just for cars,
Speaker 1: as most streets and roadways in America are, but for
Speaker 1: humans too. So in other words, they have to be
Speaker 1: considered for narrower range, which calms trafficked, for bike lanes,
Speaker 1: for wider sidewalks, for trees, for safe crosswalks, and if
Speaker 1: a city council that adopts complete streets, it creates an
Speaker 1: onus for them to make a more walkable, livable community.
Speaker 1: And any city in America can do that. And there's
Speaker 1: by the way, there's great example. Santa Barbara, California has
Speaker 1: done a fantastic job. Boulder, Colorado, fantastic job Madison, Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: These are places that are not only walkable, but they're
Speaker 1: economically thriving and people report the highest levels of well being.
Speaker 1: They have some of the lowest rates of obesity in America.
Speaker 1: So that's a great place to start for most American cities.
Speaker 2: I want to make sure everyone knows when you get
Speaker 2: the book, you're going to hear about sleeps, naps, fausting sunlight.
Speaker 2: I mean, there are so many other topics that I
Speaker 2: don't want to go over here because I want you
Speaker 2: to go and read the book and dive into the
Speaker 2: depth of just how much research, how much store, how
Speaker 2: much work has gone into this over the last couple
Speaker 2: of decades. From Dan and his team. But Dan, I
Speaker 2: have to ask you about purpose. We're on on Purpose
Speaker 2: and you talk about purpose in the book. I remember
Speaker 2: speaking to you about it last time as being such
Speaker 2: a key attribute of a successful centenarian was purpose? How
Speaker 2: did they define or view purpose or contributing to the
Speaker 2: greater good? Like, what does that look like for someone
Speaker 2: in a blue zone?
Speaker 1: Well, I have a few things to say about purpose.
Speaker 1: So it begins in blue zones with vocabulary for purpose.
Speaker 1: In Costa Rica it's Plan Deevida. In Okinawa it's Ekey Guy.
Speaker 1: So it's imbued in their in their culture, but it's manifested.
Speaker 1: Purpose in blue zones is rarely an individual pursuit. It's
Speaker 1: like my purpose is stamp collecting or something, or butterflies.
Speaker 1: It always has a social component or of philanthropic giving
Speaker 1: back to the community, supporting the family, supporting my group
Speaker 1: component to it, a service component to it. And you know,
Speaker 1: I do a lot of thinking about it. In our
Speaker 1: Blue Zone work, we have this purpose workshop And you'd
Speaker 1: be shocked how many Americans wake up every morning tired.
Speaker 1: They pull the breakfast together for their kids, get them
Speaker 1: off to school, rush to work, wait work eight to
Speaker 1: nine hours muscle through traffic, back home, get dinner, back together,
Speaker 1: and the stress just never goes away. And only about
Speaker 1: thirty percent of Americans have purpose in their work. That's
Speaker 1: according to a Gallup poll that surveyed about two million Americans.
Speaker 1: I think purpose is the intersection between having clarity on
Speaker 1: what your values are, knowing what you love to do,
Speaker 1: knowing what you're good at, and then studying those three
Speaker 1: lists for an outlet for them. That's true purpose. I
Speaker 1: think that's available to all of us. But the founding
Speaker 1: director of the National Institutes on Aging, doctor Robert Butler,
Speaker 1: found that people who could articulate their sense of purpose
Speaker 1: over time, we're living about eight years longer than people
Speaker 1: are rudderless. So there's a real health benefit. But more
Speaker 1: so than a health benefit, it's just an enjoyable, rich
Speaker 1: way to live your life. And anything you can do
Speaker 1: to get more purpose in your life, including I might
Speaker 1: add listening to this podcast twice a week every week
Speaker 1: of your life is time well spent.
Speaker 2: Dan, Thank you so much. The book it's called The
Speaker 2: Blue Zone Secrets for Living Longer Lessons from the Healthiest
Speaker 2: Places on Earth, Dan, Bututnah, this is the book. Make
Speaker 2: sure you go grab a copy. Like I said, we
Speaker 2: didn't even scratch as surface. There are so many things
Speaker 2: I could talk to down about, but I want you
Speaker 2: to go grab the book. I want you to read it.
Speaker 2: I want you to study it. I want you to
Speaker 2: see these beautiful summary pages that are absolutely fantastic that
Speaker 2: talk about the key learnings from each of the blue
Speaker 2: zones that Dan been to and studied. Because it makes
Speaker 2: it really easy to just pick it up reflect have
Speaker 2: a discussion about it. I hope that, I hope that
Speaker 2: you're going to reach out to a group of people
Speaker 2: that should listen to this podcast, that are going to
Speaker 2: be part of that try, part of that squad, part
Speaker 2: of that social circle for you all, whether it's a
Speaker 2: book club, whether it's a pickleball team, whatever it may be.
Speaker 2: I really hope that that social part is not underestimated
Speaker 2: and undervalued. And Dana, thank you again for coming all
Speaker 2: the way. You just flew in an hour before this
Speaker 2: literally landed, came from the airport, stepped in the sea,
Speaker 2: gave a beautiful interview with all your energy, passion, and
Speaker 2: it's truly remarkable and I'm really grateful for your work.
Speaker 2: So thank you so much.
Speaker 1: An hour and a pleasure.
Speaker 2: Jay, Thank you, Thank You've always been a fan and
Speaker 2: continued we'll see you when you're one hundred. Yes, thank you.
Speaker 2: If you love this episode, you'll love my interview with
Speaker 2: Dr Gabor Matte on understanding your trauma and how to
Speaker 2: heal emotional wounds to start moving on from the past.
Speaker 2: Everything in nature goes on where it's vulnerable.
Speaker 1: So a tree doesn't grow where it's hard and thick,
Speaker 1: does it.
Speaker 2: It goes where it's soft and green and vulnerable.