On my 80th birthday, I was dealing with a host of medical problems. I had been a Type 2 diabetic for over 20 years, and I’d had high blood pressure since I was 35. One doctor called it “resistant” high blood pressure, because the standard medicines failed to bring it down. It took five medications at full doses to keep my blood pressure under control. I think it’s hereditary; my father died at 31 from repeated small strokes because they couldn’t control his blood pressure, and both his sisters were diagnosed with high blood pressure, one of them when she was in her teens. I counted myself lucky that there were medications to help me avoid suffering my father’s fate.

On top of high blood pressure and Type 2 diabetes, I had high triglycerides and high cholesterol. And now, on my 80th, I was dealing with the latest bad news from my doctor: I had chronic kidney disease, stage 3C.

Surprising Improvements

Much to my surprise, after only a couple of months of eating WFPB dinners—only dinners!—my A1C improved enough that my doctor started stepping down my diabetes medication, and before long, without fanfare, I was off of all of it.

I watched the Forks Over Knives documentary and felt my objections to eating vegetables weakening. Then, while browsing my health care provider’s website to see what it had to say about my latest diagnosis, chronic kidney disease, I saw that the advice for CKD patients was to avoid animal protein. Here was my medical team saying pretty much exactly what the documentary said. That was it. I was on board. I said goodbye to my beloved bacon-and-egg breakfasts. My daughter happily started making us both steel-cut oats every morning.

My health improvements accelerated. My cholesterol dropped enough that my doctor was able to take me off statins. My limp, thinning hair plumped up, and one day, while going through the motions of putting on makeup, I realized I had eyelashes again; the mascara was actually coating something. My splitting fingernails toughened up. My age spots lightened. My BMI had been in the “obese” range for decades, and I began to lose weight, with ease, at a healthy rate. My kidney numbers turned around. I began to look forward to going to the doctor, knowing my weight would be lower and my blood work would be better, not worse.

Undoing a Family History of Disease

It’s been five years since I made the switch. My A1C has been lower than my daughter’s for years now (and she’s never been diabetic). My total cholesterol is consistently 170 or lower. My kidney numbers continue to look better at each checkup.

Most amazing of all is the improvement in my blood pressure. I didn’t think anything could affect my blood pressure this much! Even my skeptical doctor commented, “Your plant-based diet is doing well for your blood pressure.” One by one, she has cautiously taken me off medications. I’m down to two, from the five I’d been taking for decades, and my blood pressure is so good that I wouldn’t be surprised if she takes me off the final two. It’s almost incredible. If only my father had known.

My lunch is often homemade soy yogurt, dressed up with raisins and orange slices. Our favorite dinners are bulgur-wheat pilaf; orange tofu; black bean tacos; bean chili; and a lot of variations on brown rice and beans. We also like to do potato bars, where we make baked potatoes and set out different toppings. For holidays, one favorite is a lentil shepherd’s pie. We use Forks Meal Planner and cookbooks by plant-based doctors.

My friends are interested in my successes, and at least two of them have started their own plant-based journeys. Now I’m 85 and in better health than I was at 45. I know I’m not immortal; something is going to take me out eventually. But eating a WFPB diet has given me the chance to enjoy good health until then. I’m so grateful.

Ready to get started? Check out Forks Meal Planner, FOK’s easy weekly meal-planning tool to keep you on a healthy plant-based path. To learn more about a whole-food, plant-based diet, visit our Plant-Based Primer.

The post It’s Never Too Late: How I Improved My Health at Age 80 with a WFPB Diet appeared first on Forks Over Knives.

A recent study published in BMC Medicine found compelling evidence that people who consume a diet rich in whole plant foods may age slower than those who eat more animal products and ultraprocessed foods. The researchers looked at health data from more than 10,000 people over the age of 50 for eight years to determine how their diet impacted their biological age.

Biological age (the age of your cells) differs from chronological age (the amount of time you’ve been alive) and is gaining traction in scientific communities as a more accurate measurement for determining a person’s true age. Scientists are able to look at cells and determine whether they have entered senescence, a phase in cellular development where they lose the ability to regenerate and repair themselves. As we age, more of these defunct cells build up in our bodies and pave the way for age-related diseases. If you are exceptionally healthy, you may not have as many senescent cells as someone your age who’s in average health, thus making your biological age lower than the number of candles you’ll blow out on your next birthday cake.

Eating to Slow Down the Clock

Using a newly developed biological aging measure that factors in 14 key cellular biomarkers, the researchers identified three aging trajectories within the sample of participants: slow, medium, and high. They discovered that those who ate diets rich in fruits, vegetables, and legumes and low in animal products were more likely to be in the slow aging group and to have a lower overall mortality rate than those who ate more animal products and/or unhealthy plant-based foods.

To put it further into perspective, participants who consumed the most whole plant foods cut their risk of accelerated aging by about a third. In contrast, participants who followed an unhealthy plant-based dietary pattern were 70% more likely to fall into the fastest-aging group. Refined grains, salt-preserved vegetables, and dairy products were identified as potential key contributors to the higher aging scores of those who followed an unhealthy plant-based dietary pattern.

“We … found that adopting a plant-based dietary pattern, especially when rich in healthful plant foods, was associated with substantially lowered pace of aging,” concluded the study authors.

Several studies in recent years that have pointed to the age-defying benefits of a plant-based diet. A 2022 study concluded that adopting a plant-based diet could increase one’s lifespan by more than a decade. Another 2022 study found that mortality rates in older adults decreased when they ate a diet rich in healthy plant foods. And for those concerned about the aesthetic changes that come with aging, a study from 2020 found that a WFPB diet rich in antioxidants may slow skin aging.

To learn more about a whole-food, plant-based diet, visit our Plant-Based Primer. For meal-planning support, check out Forks Meal Planner, FOK’s easy weekly meal-planning tool to keep you on a healthy plant-based path.

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Cue Dan Buettner, one of the world’s leading experts on how we can create longer, healthier lives. Nearly 20 years ago Buettner set out with a team from National Geographic to document specific populations around the world that have a higher concentration of centenarians (people who live to 100) than anywhere else. These pockets of good health are called Blue Zones, and Buettner has dedicated his life to understanding—and sharing—the common denominators among these diverse populations that all experience unusually long lives.

With the state of American life expectancy, it seems as if there’s no better time for Netflix to debut its new docuseries that takes an in-depth exploration of the Blue Zones. The four-part series, Secrets of the Blue Zones, which premieres on August 30, follows Buettner from California to Japan as he talks with the people who have uncovered the secret formula for living to 100. In addition to the series, Buettner is releasing a new book, The Blue Zones Secrets for Living Longer, which distills the wisdom of the Blue Zones and serves as a how-to manual to help you create your own mini Blue Zone no matter your ZIP code.

“The book brings up-to-date insights on all the five Blue Zones…and identifies a Blue Zone 2.0, Singapore, which is an intentionally engineered Blue Zone instead of one that just occurs naturally,” Buettner told FOK. “Sixty years ago Singapore was an unhealthy island. It’s now become one of the healthiest, longest-lived places on Earth. They’ve done it because of good policies. It’s a proof of concept that if you create the right environment, people live measurably longer with a fraction of the rate of the diseases that cost us trillions of dollars a year in America.”

The Blue Zone Formula

Upon first learning about Blue Zone populations, it can be easy to write off these niche pockets of good health as the result of a small group of people who’ve won the genetic lottery. Buettner says this is not the case.

“I would argue that 20% of it is genes, 10% of it is personal choices, 10% of it is the health care system, and the remaining 60% is your environment,” says Buettner. “There are areas in Kentucky where life expectancy is 20 years less than Boulder, Colorado. In both cases you have a diverse set of genes and a spectrum of people who take responsibility for their health. The only thing that’s different is that it’s much easier to walk or bike across town in Boulder than it is to drive your car. It’s a food environment where you can get delicious plant-based meals much easier than you can in Kentucky. It’s easier to socialize, it’s easier to get out in nature, and the air is cleaner. These are all environmental factors which we vastly underestimate in the formula for longevity.”

So, what do these centenarian-saturated populations do so differently from the rest of us? Surprisingly, it isn’t anything revolutionary; rather, it’s an accumulation of small daily habits, a supportive living environment, and social policies and attitudes that reinforce every person’s value, dignity, and health. While there are much more detailed insights revealed in the docuseries and the new book, here are four key factors that all Blue Zones share:

WFPB Diet

“Overwhelmingly, they eat a plant-based diet that’s somewhere between 90 to 100% whole-food, plant-based—more or less a Forks Over Knives diet,” says Buettner. Apart from what they eat, Blue Zone inhabitants also have strategies for not overeating throughout the day, and they tend to keep electronics away from the dining table to keep their full attention on sharing meals with loved ones.

Natural Movement

It turns out that our current understanding of exercise—performing concentrated bursts of activity that meet our fitness goals each day—may be completely misguided. “[People in the Blue Zones] don’t exercise, but they live in environments where they’re nudged to move naturally every 20 minutes,” Buettner says. Between their work, household chores, social activities, and walkable towns, movement is a built-in part of their day, instead of an extracurricular activity.

Social Connections

Social isolation has been found to be as deadly as smoking 15 cigarettes per day, and the longevity of Blue Zone inhabitants provides further evidence that strong social ties keep you alive for longer. “They put their families first and keep aging parents nearby,” explains Buettner. “They tend to belong to a faith-based community, and they surround themselves with people who reinforce [healthy] behaviors.”

Sense of Purpose

Buettner emphasizes that these long-lived populations “know their purpose and live by it.” As one of the more abstract characteristics of Blue Zones communities, he defines living with purpose as “being clear on your values, knowing what you’re good at, and finding an outlet that provides some good for the rest of the world or helps other people.”

Changes Big and Small

While the lessons gleaned from Blue Zones can be applied on an individual level, their transformative potential lies in the fact that these core tenets can be replicated and customized to reshape the health of entire cities. After discovering these unique age-defying pockets, Buettner founded the Blue Zones organization, which works with cities across the U.S. to enact policies that extend the lifespans of their inhabitants. Over the past two decades, the organization has successfully worked with 72 cities, including Fort Worth, Texas, where obesity rates were lowered, smoking rates dropped by 31%, and more than 58% of residents are now categorized as “thriving.”

Buettner has personally shifted elements of his life to embody the wisdom of the Blue Zones, such as moving to Miami Beach, Florida, so he can swim daily, enjoy a walkable neighborhood, and surround himself with health-focused friends. The goal of his new book and the Netflix series is to inspire you to design a life that gives you more time to do the things you love, with the people you care about most, for as long as possible.

“I hope people who read the book take away 10 extra years of good life,” says Buettner. “The average American leaves more than a decade of life on the table by living the way we’re living. [Blue Zone living] is not a biohack, it’s not an anti-aging gimmick, it’s not any of the other maelstroms designed to make money off of you. These are real people who’ve lived an identifiable way for hundreds of years, and they have a very average set of genes, so there’s no reason we can’t achieve their outcomes if we pay closer attention to our own lives.”

The Secrets of the Blue Zones docuseries is now streaming on Netflix. The companion book, The Blue Zones Secrets for Living Longer, is available online and in bookstores August 29.

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The large-scale study, published in the ​​Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia, and Muscle, analyzed data from more than 85,000 women aged 60 and older over the course of two decades to determine whether the type of protein they consumed impacted their likelihood of developing frailty—a common and sometimes very dangerous condition in older adults. Frailty greatly increases the risk of infections, falls, surgical complications, and illnesses that require hospitalization. For the study, researchers defined frailty as meeting at least three of the following five criteria: fatigue, low strength, reduced aerobic capacity, five or more chronic illnesses, and weight loss of 5% or more. Food intake questionnaires provided data on the womens’ diets.

Over the course of the study, researchers recorded more than 13,000 cases of frailty and found that women who ate the most animal-based protein (red meat, poultry, fish, seafood, eggs, and dairy) experienced the highest rates of frailty, while the women who consumed the most plant-based protein (bread, cereals, pasta, nuts, beans, and legumes) experienced the lowest rates.

After adjusting for variables such as baseline body mass index, alcohol intake, and smoking status, the study found that swapping just 5% of protein intake from animal-based sources to plant-based sources could drastically reduce frailty. Researchers further discovered that the level of frailty reduction differed based on the specific type of animal protein that the plant protein replaced:

• Replacing overall animal protein reduced the risk of frailty by 38%
• Replacing dairy protein reduced the risk of frailty by 32%
• Replacing nondairy animal protein (including meat, fish, and eggs) reduced the risk of frailty by 42%

“Plant-based foods are associated with lower risks of chronic diseases, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, and certain cancers,” says Vanita Rahman, MD, clinic director at Barnard Medical Center in Washington, D.C. “They are also associated with less inflammation and improved joint health. By collectively decreasing the burden of chronic disease, plant-based foods support lower rates of frailty.”

While previous research has suggested that eating more protein in general can reduce the risk of frailty, this latest study found that only plant-based protein seemed to offer protective benefits, with the authors noting that “habitual long-term intake of total protein, animal protein, and dairy protein was not associated with lower risk of frailty.”

“Although we need definitive research evidence, I suspect that the more women move towards a plant-based diet, the more improvements they can expect in their health and frailty scores,” says Rahman.

Apart from mitigating the physical symptoms of frailty during old age, a 2019 study published in Advances in Nutrition found that a plant-based diet could also slow cognitive decline in elderly adults. Researchers found that polyphenol-rich foods such as citrus, berries, nuts, and cocoa improved specific regions of cognition in the brain, particularly the frontal lobe which controls executive functioning. Eliminating animal products has also been shown to reduce cancer risk, increase your lifespan by more than a decade, and lower medication usage for older adults.

To learn more about a whole-food, plant-based diet, visit our Plant-Based Primer. For meal-planning support, check out Forks Meal Planner, FOK’s easy weekly meal-planning tool to keep you on a healthy plant-based path.

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The Blue Zones Challenge focuses on setting up your environment to make healthy choices the easiest choices. By borrowing lifestyle practices common to blue zones—areas with the longest-lived people in the world—we can optimize the places we live, socialize, and work. Our homes can become mini blue zones, and along with our social network, we can expand the reach and improve the overall health of our immediate circle, including friends and family and even our greater community.

Individual change is hard—willpower runs out quickly. Most New Year’s resolutions last just four to six weeks. In the Blue Zones Challenge, I help you make over your own environment—in your kitchen, in your home, in your yard, in your office, and even in your social circle. Each aspect of the Blue Zones Challenge will help you create a lifestyle that supports longevity and a better quality of life. 

1. Enjoy a Japanese or Costa Rican breakfast.

Breakfast in the blue zones looks vastly different from the standard American breakfast of eggs and bacon. Beans and rice are a common breakfast staple in Costa Rica, while miso soup and rice are popular in Okinawa. In Loma Linda, centenarians often eat a hearty breakfast of oatmeal or a somewhat nontraditional tofu scramble.

In most blue zones regions, breakfast doesn’t look that different from other meals of the day. Retraining yourself to enjoy soup and bread or even a hearty salad and sandwich in the morning might take some getting used to, but it’s an easy way to simplify your cooking routine while cutting out American breakfast favorites that are most often heavy in fat and sugar. Put together a hearty meal using healthy blue-zones staples such as cooked whole grains, fruits and veggies, and beans. 

2. Set up your home for better health by design.

Trying to change your behavior without changing your environment will lead to failure. Now is the time to set up your home and your kitchen for success. You will have a much easier time if you don’t have candy on your counter and a pantry filled with chips and soda. We’re not telling you to never have this kind of food, but please don’t bring it into your house.

Prepare to make this transition easy by decluttering your pantry, kitchen, and refrigerator: Physically remove foods that are off-limits or might be too tempting but that your family members don’t want to throw out, such as candies or junk and processed items, and clear your countertops of any kinds of snack foods (that open bag of chips, the box of crackers). Most of us are on a “see-food diet”: We tend to eat what we see. Create an inconvenient junk food cabinet or drawer that is up high or down low.

3. Socialize more. 

Americans had an average of three close friends in the 1980s. Today, that number has dropped to between one and two. If you don’t have at least three friends whom you can call up on a bad day, research shows that you could be shaving about eight years off your life expectancy.

Research also shows that happiness is contagious, but so are smoking, obesity, and loneliness. The social circles of long-lived people have favorably shaped their health behaviors. To reap the benefits that blue zones residents experience, reach out more socially and nurture strong friendships. The more you socialize, the happier—and healthier—you’ll be.

To start: Volunteer in your community for a cause that you care about and that speaks to you. If it’s something you do weekly or monthly, hopefully you will see and meet people with like-minded interests.

4. Start an outdoor or container garden.

In all blue zones, people continue to garden even into their 90s and 100s. Gardening is the epitome of a blue zones activity because it’s sort of a nudge: You plant the seeds and you’re going to be nudged in the next three to four months to water the plants, weed them, harvest them. And when you’re done, you’re going to eat an organic vegetable, which you presumably like because you planted it. Plus, you’re moving naturally while you’re outside enjoying the healing power of the sun and nature and fresh air.

Mugwort, ginger, and turmeric are all staples of an Okinawan garden, and all have proven medicinal qualities. By consuming these every day, Okinawans may be protecting themselves against illness.

5. Optimize your mealtimes.

Focus on food. Turn off the TV and the computer. If you’re going to eat, just eat. You’ll eat more slowly, consume less, and savor the food more. Use smaller vessels: Choose to eat on smaller plates and use tall, narrow glasses. Studies show you’re likely to eat significantly less without even thinking about it.

Excerpted and adapted from The Blue Zones Challenge by Dan Buettner, published by National Geographic books

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Combining subtle flavors from Southeast Asia, East Asia, and some of the world’s most powerful longevity ingredients, the Okinawan diet has produced not only the world’s longest lived population but also some of Asia’s most delicious food. 

Okinawa is a Pacific archipelago that was once known as the Ryukyu Kingdom. Its location—south of most of the Japanese islands, roughly 800 miles south of Tokyo, 400 miles east of the coast of China, and 300 miles north of Taiwan—has meant that it has served as a trading post for centuries.

For hundreds of years, China exerted most of the culinary influence, along with the traditional Chinese medicine practice of categorizing foods as cooling or warming foods. When Japan annexed Okinawa in 1879, the Japanese culinary influence grew stronger. Today Okinawan cuisine is a delicious blend of Chinese, Southeast Asian, and Japanese cooking styles, along with its native tropical vegetables and fruits. You won’t find many of these regional dishes and delicacies anywhere else.

Through the mid-20th century, when the current crop of Okinawan centenarians were developing as young adults and establishing lifelong eating habits, the quotidian diet consisted mainly of tubers, garden-grown greens and vegetables, tofu, and a little seafood. About 60 percent of all calories came from just one source: a purple variety of sweet potato known locally as beni imo. Why? Mostly because typhoons blew through the islands several times a year, wiping out most other crops but sparing these underground tubers. The Okinawan sweet potatoes were abundant, easy to prepare, and—dressed up with garlic chives or sesame oil—could be made to taste delicious.

Over the centuries, Okinawan cooking assimilated rice, sugarcane, and many of the other wild vegetables you might see in an Asian market. Okinawans’ use of bitter melon, as well as herbs and spices like turmeric, is evidence of the southern and southeastern Asian influence. In the 16th century, a semi-savage strain of black swine arrived on the island and proliferated slowly; by the late 19th century, most households kept a family pig, and pork found its way into Okinawan cuisine (though mostly as a celebratory food).

Most of what we know about Okinawa’s longevity diet comes from Blue Zones collaborators Bradley Willcox and his brother Craig, along with their mentor, Dr. Makoto Suzuki. For more than a half-century and in their best-selling book, The Okinawa Program, they’ve chronicled what Okinawans have eaten traditionally and how the ingredients may explain longevity. They reveal that Okinawan tofu is firmer and more packed with protein and phytonutrients; turmeric, used in teas and soups, is a powerful antioxidant and anticancer agent; and goya, the main ingredient in champuru stir-fries, has powerful compounds that control blood sugar. Plus, the ubiquitous purple sweet potato is high in B vitamins and potassium, and it has a higher concentration of the antioxidant anthocyanin (from purple pigment) than blueberries.

Lately, the brothers have been investigating FOXO3, what they call a “genius gene.” It helps our cells clean up waste and reduces inflammation in the body. (Chronic inflammation is at the root of every major age-related disease.) FOXO3 also helps cells detect a malfunction and signals the cell to destroy itself, lowering the chances of cancer. And what activates FOXO3? Turmeric, kelp, green tea, and tofu—all four pillars of the traditional Okinawa diet.

Like all other blue zones regions, several nondietary factors explain longevity on Okinawa. First, the word “retirement” doesn’t exist in the native dialect. Instead ikigai, or “a reason for being,” imbues every adult life. Having a strong sense of purpose is associated with about eight extra years.

Other longevity advantages include the Okinawan propensity to support each other by forming moais (pronounced moe-eye), or committed social circles, and by practicing yuimaru, the spirit of mutual aid. Traditionally, Okinawan peasants didn’t have access to bank loans, so they’d form groups of five to eight people and agree to meet regularly. At each meeting, moai members would chip in a sum of money to be given to the member with the greatest need. Through the middle of the 20th century, moais helped the community, providing aid to farmers needing to buy seed or covering the medical costs of a sick child. While moais are still popular in Okinawa, they’re now mostly a social affair, and an excuse to gather around a meal. Nevertheless, the bond is authentic, and moai members tend to support each other, literally and figuratively. This ancient practice helps prevent loneliness, an increasingly prevalent ailment in the modern world that can be as bad for your health as a smoking habit.

Want a taste of Okinawan cuisine? Try Sweet Potato Bites, a recipe from The Blue Zones Kitchen.

The post Dispatch from Okinawa: What the World’s Longest-Lived Women Eat appeared first on Forks Over Knives.

That number comes from new, not-yet-published research led by Walter Willett, M.D., professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston, who discussed his findings at the Unite to Cure Fourth International Vatican Conference in Italy April 26–28, 2018.

“We have been doing some calculations looking at the question of how much could we reduce mortality [by] shifting toward a healthy, more plant-based diet, not necessarily totally vegan, and our estimate is about a third of deaths could be prevented,” Willett said during a panel discussion on plant-based eating.

“That’s not even talking about physical activity or not smoking, and that’s all deaths, not just cancer deaths,” Willett said. “That’s probably an underestimate as well as that doesn’t take into account the fact that obesity is important and we controlled for obesity.”

Watch the entire panel discussion, which also features Dr. Neal Barnard, founder of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine; Dr. Francesco Branca of the World Health Organization; Dr. Patrick Brown of Impossible Foods and Stanford University School of Medicine; and Dr. David Jenkins of the University of Toronto.

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For Longevity

Beans and other legumes (lentils, peas, etc.) are the most important dietary predictor of longevity in people of different ethnicities. Among 785 older adults in several countries, each 20-gram increase in daily legume intake resulted in a 7 to 8 percent lower risk of dying during the study period. No other food groups consistently predicted survival. Similarly, legumes are a dietary staple in the “Blue Zones,” areas of the world known for longevity.

To Reduce Your Risk of Heart Disease

Eating legumes four times a week or more, compared to less than once a week, confers a 22 percent lower risk of coronary heart disease. Research also shows that legumes lower blood pressure and that a single serving of beans a day can reduce LDL (bad) cholesterol by 5 percent!

To Protect Against Diabetes

Eating legumes helps prevent type 2 diabetes, and it improves blood sugar control in people who already have diabetes.

For Weight Management

Legume-based meals have been shown to be more satiating than animal-based meals, probably due to the combination of fiber, protein, and slowly digested carbohydrate. Regular legume eaters have healthier body weights than those who do not eat these foods regularly, and legumes can help people lose excess weight.

For Essential Nutrients

Legumes are rich in protein, fiber, iron, antioxidants, and other essential nutrients. What about lectins? Well, most of these are destroyed by cooking, and those that remain may have important anticancer benefits.

Plus, beans are delicious, versatile, and inexpensive!

What about gas and bloating? If you’re not used to eating legumes, start slow, and try lentils, split peas, and smaller beans first. Your body will adjust gradually. Also try rinsing canned beans well, cooking them thoroughly, sprouting beans before cooking, soaking beans longer or doing double soaks, adding a strip of kombu seaweed, and eating fermented legumes such as tempeh.

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Perhaps most interesting is how people in the Blue Zones are not only living longer, but better; that is, they remain active in their 80s and 90s, typically without the degenerative conditions that people suffer from in most of the industrialized world. In the United States, for example, the average lifespan is about 78 years (about ten years less than the Blue Zones), and almost 50 percent of adults have one of the three leading risk factors for cardiovascular disease.

Having seen and studied these remarkable people, Buettner has a new passion project: Bring—and implement—the secrets of living long and well to willing communities here in America, and around the globe.

From Curious Adventurer to Longevity Expert

Buettner has a long history of traveling off the beaten path: he holds three Guinness World Records for transcontinental endurance cycling and has an Emmy award for his PBS documentary about his “Afratrek” expedition, which covered over 11,885 miles through Africa. He is also an intensely curious adventurer, which, along with being comfortable with long-term trekking, made him uniquely qualified to unlock the “secrets” of these far-flung places.

Along with his brother Steve, Dan founded an adventure company called Quest in 1995. A pioneer in ed tech, Quest connected thousands of classrooms with their explorations around the world as they tried to unravel some of the world’s greatest mysteries, including the fall of the ancient Mayan empire, mapping Darwin’s route through the Galapagos islands, and retracing Marco Polo’s trail over the Silk Road.

It was during these expedition years that Buettner learned that Okinawa in Japan had the longest disability-free life expectancy in the world. It was a mystery he wanted to unravel, so he went there to discover the hows and whys. In addition to students, many adults also followed his particular journey, which showed him how interested people were in the idea of aging gracefully.

Buettner decided this would be his next big mystery and adventure—to visit places in the world where people lived long and healthy lives. He wanted to see what they were doing right, what they had in common, and what they could teach the rest of us about health and longevity. He returned to the States and approached people at National Geographic, who were excited about the project. He then got a research grant from the National Institute on Aging and assembled a team of top demographers, scientists, epidemiologists, and experts.

Together, they started studying the long-living people of Okinawa, Japan; Sardinia, Italy; and Loma Linda, California. His quest was to answer the question of what these far-flung people and places had in common, including a locale only an hour away from downtown Los Angeles.

The story, when it was finally published in National Geographic as the cover story, became a print and Internet sensation. It got coverage on all the major networks including Anderson Cooper, Fox, and CNN, and Oprah loved him.

Buettner wanted to go further and deeper for his book on the same subject, so he extended his research into other slivers of the world with centenarians who were living happy, healthy lives (low middle age mortality was also a factor). He added Costa Rica’s Nicoyan Peninsula and Ikaria, a Greek Island, to the list of official Blue Zones.

The Nine Principles (Pillars) of the Blue Zones

After years of study, Buettner and his expert group came up with the nine habits and practices at work in these far-flung locations and populations. He discovered it was an interconnected web with food at the center: Centenarians eat 95 percent plant-based foods focused around fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and beans. Meat is consumed in small amounts on rare occasions. Blue Zones residents also have a sense of purpose (family, volunteer work), have a strong community (friends, family), move naturally throughout the day (walking, gardening), socialize regularly, and regularly take some stress-relieving time to decompress. (See also: What do Do the Healthiest, Longest-Living People in the World Eat?)

Now that lifestyle medicine is a popular idea, some of these things seem like common sense. But Buettner’s team was ahead of the curve, and made the important point that overall health is determined by a number of factors. Even though what someone eats is a key element, all of the Blue Zones residents were doing healthy things regularly as part of their daily lives. Buettner describes it as a “combination of good habits.”

Buettner compiled the research and findings into The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who’ve Lived the Longest. It was a New York Times bestseller and made another big splash. He was on Oprah, gave a TED Talk, and was part of Bill Clinton’s Health Matters Initiative. People were hungry for more knowledge about how to live longer and enjoy their senior years.

With his team, he spent many months and years talking and meeting seniors who were enjoying happy, healthy lives. Every time he returned from one of his trips in the Blue Zones, he was saddened by the state of health in America. He went on to found Blue Zones as a company, and wanted to find a way to help people at home put the principles of longevity into practice.

NOW: Applying Blue Zones Best Practices to American Cities

His next quest was on home soil, as he sought to figure out a way to bring the “secrets” of the Blue Zones home. We recently spoke to Buettner about this huge mission, and about the difficulties in bringing back the Blue Zone lessons to American culture, rich with fast food, sprawling car-dependent suburbs, and one of the highest obesity rates in the world.

Since community was part of the reason that people in the Blue Zones thrived, Buettner knew he’d have to think big. He explains: “Health behaviors are contagious. If all your close friends are obese, there’s a 150-percent better chance that you are too. The reason 97 percent of diets fail in the long run is because you do them in isolation. Instead of just thinking about diet, we think of good health as an interconnected cluster of characteristics that connect and support each other.”

It’s not possible to create a community where there is none. So Buettner did the next best thing—he decided he needed to transform whole cities and communities to make healthy choices easier for residents. He met with Nancy Graham, editor of AARP magazine, with the idea of doing a city health makeover. She was on board. He then presented the project at the United Health Foundation, which was also impressed with the idea. They underwrote $750K toward the $1M project.

Transforming Albert Lea, Minnesota

With the funding secured, Buettner had to figure out where and how to start. He explains how he got the ball rolling on this exciting (and huge) undertaking:

“I asked a health behavior expert [Leslie Lytle] at the University of Minnesota to direct the project with me, and hired a former city planner [Joel Spoonheim] to run daily operations. Lytle and other experts at the University of Minnesota came up with the criteria. We wanted a town of 10-20,000 people with numbers that fit the national average for health conditions like cardiovascular disease and obesity. We also wanted it to be within driving distance to the Twin Cities.”

In 2009, Buettner, the AARP, and his team applied Blue Zones principles to Albert Lea, Minnesota. Buettner describes the impact it made at the time: “It was a huge success. The citywide health initiative raised life expectancy, lowered health care costs by about 40 percent, and residents collectively lost tons of weight.” The need is there, and other communities were eager to get on board after they saw that real changes could happen. “We’ve had over 300 cities contact us since we helped Albert Lea. About 70 percent of Americans are overweight and unhealthy; 87 million are suffering from prediabetes. People and communities know they have a problem, but they don’t know how to fix it. And we found great open minds in middle America.”

That was the beginning of the Blue Zones Project, the public health initiative that gets schools, employers, restaurants, grocery stores, residents, and leaders to work together to improve the health of everyone in the community. Buettner describes it as “transforming the places we live, work, and pray to support people in making healthy choices.” The effort is paying off, with tangible physical and economic benefits.

The Blue Zones Project: How They Do It

The public health initiative has what Buettner calls a “plant-slant” focus, which mimics the diet of people living in Blue Zones around the world (90-95 percent plant foods). But they go beyond just recommendations. He explains: “We have found that if you want to help people to eat plant-centered diets, there are some basic things that make it easy for them.”

These are:

1. Good plant food has to be cheap and accessible in your community.
2. You have to set up your kitchen so it’s easy to cook plant foods.
3. You need time-honored recipes that taste great (like these Mango and Black Bean Tacos, adapted from Blue Zones).
4. You need a social network of people who also enjoy eating plant-based foods.

The community aspect is at the heart of the project. Buettner explains, “It’s really hard to be a plant-based eater when all your friends and family meet up and eat ribs and BBQ all the time. It’s easier to fail if you constantly have to struggle or remember to do something. It has to be natural.”

To institute widespread change, the Blue Zones team sets up about 150 “nudges” in cities to make healthier choices easier. They start with community leaders: “We require that mayors, city councils, chamber of commerce, local CEOs, and superintendents of school understand and support what we’re doing. We have them sign a pledge to support the project to improve the health of their residents. And then we bring evidence-based ways to make healthy choices easier and unhealthy choices harder.”

The Blue Zones team works with cities to optimize ordinances and adopt food policies to make healthy food cheaper and more accessible. To do the latter, they make sure at least one-third of restaurants, schools, workplaces, and grocery stores work towards Blue Zones certifications.

“We give restaurants and schools certifications when they go ‘plant-slant.’ We recognize them when they offer some delicious plant-based meals and healthier options on their menu. They don’t have to be 100-percent vegan or vegetarian.”

At the community level, they work to set up networks and empower people to live healthier lives. They have found that if about 50 percent of the residents take up the pledge, the communities find success. “We set up Blue Zones potlucks where people can learn how to make delicious plant-based meals and taste them. From these, people build social networks around cooking and eating and enjoying plant-based meals. We teach people how to set up their kitchens for success and give them recipes we think they’ll love. We also set up and invite people to take purpose workshops to find volunteer opportunities that interest them. We encourage them to move, to connect, and to make their lives more meaningful.”

So far, the results have been inspiring. After Albert Lea, MN, the Blue Zones Project went to three California communities: Redondo Beach, Hermosa Beach, and Manhattan Beach. They’ve also brought the project to 15 cities in Iowa, Fort Worth in Texas, Naples in Florida, and Hawaii. In these communities, obesity, smoking, stress, and healthcare costs have decreased across the board. The quality of life has increased.

What’s next? According to Buettner, the rest of the country and then, the rest of the world.

(Photos by David McLain)

The post One Man’s Mission to Bring the Secrets of Longevity to Communities Everywhere appeared first on Forks Over Knives.

• Diabetes (by 46%)
• Hypertension (by 38%)
• High cholesterol (by almost 500%)

An international survey of adults 65 or older in eleven industrialized countries found U.S. respondents the sickest, with 87% reporting a chronic medical condition and 53% taking four or more medications. The statistics are discouraging, but this does not have to happen to you.

The secret to a longer life does not lie in prescription medications or expensive, sometimes dangerous, anti-aging pills and injections. Instead, you can find out how to stay vital by studying groups of people who have consistently maintained outstanding health into their old age.

WHAT DO CENTENARIANS EAT?

Scientists who study longevity often focus on centenarians, those aged 100 or older. You may be familiar with this idea through the popular concept of Blue Zones, where populations have unusually high concentrations of healthy centenarians.

Studying Blue Zones is rewarding but also challenging. Researchers must validate that people are actually as old as they say they are, and reliable records are not always available. Also, although it’s possible to measure what centenarians are eating now, what did they eat over the preceding decades?

A look at the Okinawan islands of Japan, one of the Blue Zones, offers some important insight. Careful research has validated the birthdates on record for Okinawan centenarians. In addition, detailed information on diet going back to 1949 is available from population surveys periodically conducted by the local government.

The older group of Okinawans, generally those born before 1942, possess the highest functional capacity and longest survival in Japan, a country traditionally known for its longevity. Rates of heart disease and many forms of cancer are significantly lower among Okinawan seniors than in Americans and other Japanese people of the same ages. Almost two-thirds of Okinawans still function independently at age 97.

So what is the traditional diet of this group, remarkable for both longevity and healthy aging? Here were the major sources of their calories in 1949:

The following foods each contributed less than 1% of total calories: nuts and seeds, sugar, meat, eggs, dairy, fruit, seaweed, flavorings, and alcohol.

Overall, the diet of these centenarians derives 85% of calories from carbohydrate, 9% from protein, and 6% from fat.

Unfortunately, the mortality advantage that prior generations of Okinawans enjoyed has faded with the dietary changes that have occurred over the last several decades. Younger island residents have largely abandoned the sweet potato in favor of more “modern” choices: animal foods, white rice and other processed foods, and added oils. As a result they are sicker and increasingly overweight, and they are not attaining the advanced ages of earlier island generations.

Chart from “Caloric Restriction, the Traditional Okinawan Diet, and Healthy Aging: The Diet of the World’s Longest-Lived People and Its Potential Impact on Morbidity and Life Span.” Source here.

CAN DIET SLOW THE AGING PROCESS?

Why would a whole-food, plant-based diet, such as the one traditionally enjoyed in Okinawa and other Blue Zones around the world, have such a huge effect on aging? Is it just that this way of eating helps prevent killer events like heart disease, cancer, and diabetes? Or is nutrition impacting the aging process itself—putting the brakes on the complex interplay of processes that makes us age biologically? A recent study found that the latter outcome would result in a substantially longer period of healthy life than simply treating specific diseases as these pop up.

Scientific understanding of aging is in its infancy. Many interrelated factors contribute to the aging process. One of these determinants is the length of telomeres, protective structures found at both ends of our chromosomes. Shorter telomeres are linked to reduced life span and a substantially higher risk of chronic disease. Recent studies indicate that people with longer telomeres age more slowly.

Growing evidence confirms that lifestyle choices exert a powerful influence on telomere length. Dietary factors, as well as lean weight, are associated with longer telomeres. Researchers believe that a diet high in antioxidants (which is to say, a diet based on whole plant foods) protect telomeres from destructive oxidative stress. In a study of men with low-risk prostate cancer, findings indicated that a comprehensive lifestyle program that included a whole-food, plant-based diet was significantly linked to longer relative telomere length. The more closely the men followed the prescribed program, the more their telomeres lengthened during the five-year follow up period.

The bottom line: if you want to follow the example of centenarians around the world, a whole-food, plant-based diet should be the foundation of your lifestyle choices. It’s never too late to start.

_Sources:

_{Goldman, D., Cutler, D., Rowe, J., Michaud, P., Sullivan, J., Peneva, D., & Olshansky, S. (2013). Substantial Health And Economic Returns From Delayed Aging May Warrant A New Focus For Medical Research. Health Affairs, 32, 1698-1705.
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Osborn, R., Moulds, D., Squires, D., Doty, M., & Anderson, C. (2014). International Survey Of Older Adults Finds Shortcomings In Access, Coordination, And Patient-Centered Care. Health Affairs, 33, 2247-2255.
Shammas, M. (2011). Telomeres, lifestyle, cancer, and aging. Current Opinion in Clinical Nutrition and Metabolic Care, 14, 28-34.
Willcox, B., Willcox, D., Todoriki, H., Fujiyoshi, A., Yano, K., He, Q., Curb, D., Suzuki, M. (2007). Caloric Restriction, the Traditional Okinawan Diet, and Healthy Aging: The Diet of the World’s Longest-Lived People and Its Potential Impact on Morbidity and Life Span. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1114, 434-455.
Willcox, D., Willcox, B., Shimajiri, S., Kurechi, S., & Suzuki, M. (2007). Aging Gracefully: A Retrospective Analysis of Functional Status in Okinawan Centenarians. The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 15, 252-256.
Willcox, D., Willcox, B., He, Q., Wang, N., & Suzuki, M. (2008). They Really Are That Old: A Validation Study of Centenarian Prevalence in Okinawa. The Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences, 63A, 338-349.
Willcox, D., Willcox, B., Todoriki, H., & Suzuki, M. (2009). The Okinawan Diet: Health Implications of a Low-Calorie, Nutrient-Dense, Antioxidant-Rich Dietary Pattern Low in Glycemic Load. Journal of the American College of Nutrition, 28, 500S-516S.}

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