151: Unlocking the Secrets of the Blue Zones: 'Live to 100' (Expert Physician's Take on Longevity Lessons)

How many of you would like to live to 100? 

Dr. Adrienne Youdim, personally might be okay with 95. But seeing the joyful centenarians in the new Netflix documentary, The Secret of the Blue Zones, made her think twice. 

In this week's episode, we will talk about some of the features uncovered by the research of the Blue Zones, the healthiest areas across the globe that contain the longest-living humans. And we'll see how we might extrapolate their lifestyles to ours. 

What You’ll Learn From This Episode 

• Learn about the features uncovered by the research of the Blue Zones, the healthiest areas across the globe that contain the longest-living humans. 
• Find out how to incorporate the 80% rule of moderation in eating to promote longevity. 
• Embrace the four buckets of eat, move, connect, and outlook for Health and Longevity

Eat until you are 80% full - practicing moderation in our eating habits can contribute to a longer and healthier life." - Adrienne Youdim

The 4 Buckets of Health and Longevity

1. Eat: This bucket focuses on how and what we eat. It includes the 80% rule of moderation, favoring a plant-based diet that does not vilify carbs, and drinking modest amounts of alcohol.
2. Move: This bucket emphasizes incorporating movement into daily life. It highlights the importance of movement being baked into the culture and day-to-day activities, such as sitting on the floor, gardening, and using the body for transportation.
3. Connect: This bucket emphasizes the importance of social connections and community. It includes putting family first, living in the community, and finding ways to enhance social circles and support networks.
4. Outlook: This bucket focuses on changing the way we see and experience the world. It includes stress management, finding ways to unwind, having faith (which can be religious or a belief in a higher power), and living with purpose.

People and References Mentioned:

• Dan Buettner 
• Netflix documentary: The Secret of the Blue Zones
• Book: Ikigai

Ways that Dr. Adrienne Youdim Can Support You

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Connect with Dr. Adrienne Youdim

• Website :https://www.dradriennespeaks.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dradrienneyoudim/

Transcript

So, how many of you would like to live to 100? I personally might be okay with 95. But seeing the joyful centenarians on the new Netflix documentary, The Secret of the Blue Zones, made me think twice.

 In this week's episode, we will talk about some of the features uncovered by the research of the Blue Zones, the healthiest areas across the globe that contain the longest living humans. And we'll see how we might extrapolate their lifestyles to ours.

 Welcome back to Health Byte. I'm your host, Dr. Adrienne Youdim. I'm a triple board-certified internist, obesity medicine, and physician nutrition specialist. And I help people redefine nutrition so that they not only eat well, but live well, learning how to nourish themselves physically, mentally, and emotionally. I just love this stuff. So if you enjoy this podcast, head over to my show notes and sign up for my newsletter. 

I'll send you my integrated approach to nutrition, five ways to redefine nutrition, mind and body. Like I said, this is my bread and butter. I love it. So let's get back to it and dig in to this week's bite. 

So my husband clicked on this Netflix documentary, it's been a couple months now, that is based on Dan Buettner's research. He is a longtime journalist of National Geographic. And he spent his life crisscrossing the globe, investigating the blue zones. Like I said, these are the areas in which the longest living humans reside. And it just so happened I was reading this book called Ikigai, who referenced his research as well. More on Ikigai in a minute. So Dan crisscrosses the globe, as I mentioned, and the first episode takes place in Okinawa, Japan. He goes to Sardinia, Ikaria, Greece, Loma Linda, that's right here in Southern California, and an area of Costa Rica called the Nicoya Peninsula.

 Now you might be surprised to know that as of 2021, there were an estimated 570,000 centenarians around the world. And it's expected that this number is going to jump by 2050 to 3.7 million people. Imagine 3.7 million people across the globe that are living over the age of 100. So how is it done? 

As Dan crosses the nation and the globe, he gathers some of the key features of a life of longevity. And basically, he puts these features into several buckets. Eat, move, connect, and outlook. So let's dig into each one. The first bucket is eat and related to how and what we eat. 

Now, My favorite part of this practice that he uncovers is the 80% rule that he discovered in okinawa essentially the 80% rule is a rule of moderation and what it says is that. you should intentionally eat until you are not full-full, but merely 80% full. And you know, that makes a lot of sense in science as well, because as I've shared with you on prior podcasts, it takes some time for our gut and our brain to communicate. You know, we have these hormones that are released by our GI tract, that communicate to the brain that food has been received and therefore we are full. 

And this communication doesn't happen instantaneously. It takes about 15, 20 minutes to occur. And that's why sometimes we eat until we're full. And then when we get up from the table, we're like, oh God, we are full, full, like beyond full, over full. Well, this practice of eating to 80% addresses that very thing. Because if we eat to 80%, then we likely will find that by the time we get up and allow the gut and the brain to communicate, we truly are 100% full. 

So the 80% rule is a rule of moderation. Now, Dan also uncovers certain how-tos in terms of eating. And a lot of the places he visits favor a plant-based diet. He talks a lot about beans and legumes. And in fact, in an interview I subsequently read, he states that He eats or starts his day every morning with a minestrone soup that he discovered while in Sardinia. This is a soup that contains lots of different kinds of beans and veggies, and he uses that as his daily base of a healthful diet. Now, in order to follow this rule, we have to question one of our main dietary tenants. 

That is that we vilify carbs or carbohydrates. We feel that carbohydrates in general is a no-no. and we lump them all together. Well, what the research of the blue zones has showed us is that the majority of these places where these centenarians live are actually really leaning into carbohydrates. In fact, their diet is primarily carbohydrate. But of course, the type of carb matters. It is not the refined, processed, and packaged carbohydrate that we consume in the United States, but rather a significant amount of, again, beans, legumes, and veggies. 

So the second part of the eat practice is favor a plant-based diet that does not vilify carbs. And finally, the last tenant that he found to be similar in these various regions is to drink modest amounts of alcohol. Now, I kind of questioned this one a little bit because there is a lot of data that is now coming out that shows that even one drink per day increases the risk of heart disease. I know that may come as a surprise to you because we always talk about alcohol, wine, resveratrol and benefits on the heart, but actually even one drink a day increases the risk of hypertension, which in the United States is one of the primary causes of heart disease and heart attacks. not to mention other things like breast cancer. 

So what I would take home from this is that if you do drink alcohol, that you really reserve yourself to moderate amounts. And I wanna say that none of these practices can be taken in isolation because while Dan does give us buckets that I have defined as eat, move, connect, and outlook, These are buckets that can't be taken in isolation, that in fact require us to engage as much of all the buckets as we can in order to live a balanced life that is a truly wholehearted life that results in longevity. So onto the second bucket, which is move or movement. 

And what I found really fascinating in this documentary was that movement was baked in to the culture of these various places. And what I mean by that is that they didn't make time for exercise. They didn't have gym memberships. They didn't go to fitness or workout classes, but movement was essentially baked in to their day-to-day activities.

 For example, in Okinawa, Japan, Dan points out that there's very little furniture, that people actually sit on the floor. And this practice of getting down, sitting down and getting up from the floor multiple times a day is a form of movement, is a form of exercise. In fact, it strengthens our core muscles, or their core muscles rather, by doing so. And guess what? What is the number one predictor of death in the elderly or in older people? It's actually a hip fracture. 

And what is the biggest risk factor to a hip fracture? It's lack of strong core muscles. So by not having furniture or significant amount of furniture in their house, I'm sure this is not how the Japanese were thinking, this is just part of their culture, they are required to squat multiple times a day, thereby building their core muscles, and in essence, reducing the risk of common morbidities like hip fractures that in this country then go on to shorten the lifespan. 

They also do things like gardening. Gardening was a feature in several of these areas. So again, this is a lifestyle feature that you could put under the connect category as well, because you're connecting with nature, you're connecting with the environment. But gardening is a way to move your body, but not for the purpose of exercise. for the purpose of something else. 

So you happen to be moving while you are engaging in an effort or practice that has nothing to do with the exercise or movement itself. They also use their bodies to get to work and to do other things. Again, this is a function of habit stacking. We've talked about habit stacking before. It's a way of essentially ensuring that we do a certain habit, it's by stacking it with another habit. So if you stack your movement or exercise with the fact that you have to get to work anyway, by walking to work or biking to work, or walking or biking to the grocery store or to your friend's house, you are thereby baking in movement into your day to day. habit stacking it with something you otherwise were going to do, like go to work or go hang out with a friend. 

So movement is really baked into the culture and into the society, not for the purpose of exercise, but for the purpose of something else, doing it in the work of something else. By the way, movement is also built into their sense of community. So in Loma Linda, for example, they had these groups that were playing pickleball. And really it was a way of community coming together. It was really a way of connecting, but they were doing it through movement.

 So the second tip I think we can take away from the research of the Blue Zones is, see where you might be able to incorporate movement into your day-to-day life so that you're not doing it as a function of exercise, but it is a feature of your life while you are living, baking in movement to your day-to-day activities. The next bucket we've already alluded to was connection. 

So again, I talked about how in Loma Linda, they habit stacked, perhaps that's not what they thought they were doing, but they connected connection and maintaining a social circle with their movement. So that's a perfect twofer right there. But connection was central to every single region of the blue zone. they put family first. So something that really stood out for me was that in the United States, We rely on caretakers, sometimes hired caretakers. We rely on nursing homes to take care of our elderly. I don't blame us. We are busy and we don't have the infrastructure to take care of the elderly when they get sick and old. 

But in these regions, Family is first and it again is built into their culture. They have a network of caretaking by living in community, by living together, by being bound. These social circles maintain an infrastructure that allows for older people to be cared for by members of the community so that the responsibility is not left to the shoulders of one. And that's what makes it so hard in the United States is that we are so independent that we feel the burden exclusively. We are isolated in the work of caring for family. You know, this makes me think of something that I wrote about in my book, Hungry for More. And it was a juxtaposition of my life as a new mother, as a resident. 

So I had my first child when I was in residency, in training, working 100 hours per week. You can imagine how easy that was in this independent mindset that I had. And the feeling that I couldn't rely on or didn't want to burden my family members by having them take care of my child. And so I hired help. Compare that to the community that my grandmother and my great grandparents lived in, where she describes that mothers would literally breastfeed each other's children. 

So if a mother was out for the count, sick, unavailable, another mother would fill in the space by literally breastfeeding the person's child. So think about that, that level and degree of connection, where we're not isolated, but we actually live in community. it's hard for us to adopt that sort of lifestyle here in the ways that we live. But I want you to think about ways in which you can enhance the sense of community. Where are the ways in which you can enhance your social circle, one that supports you and your family, one that supports healthy behaviors as in Loma Linda, where they pickleball together, and also living in community with like-minded people. 

So for example, in some of these areas like Loma Linda, it was a religious connection between them. It doesn't have to look the same for everybody, but I'm certain that there are ways in which you can look at your own life and see where you've taken a more independent or isolated approach where you could lean in more to your tribe, lean in to your community. 

I want to just leave you with one more example. I can't remember the name of these social circles in Japan, in Okinawa, Japan, but essentially these were circles of elderly people who came together to play cards, to talk, and as part of that social circle they would pay a fee. That money would go into a bucket and at the end of the month or at any pre-specified period of time, they would decide who in their community needed that money. 

And they would use that money to support somebody in need. So really kind of highlighting the novel and ingenious ways that we can use community to support our goals and values of supporting each other in greater ways. So the third bucket was connection. And again, I urge you To think about creative ways in which you can enhance connection and community in your own life. he terms as outlook. So these are ways in which we can change the way that we see the world and the way that we experience the world. And a big part of that was stress management, essentially what we would call in the United States as stress management. But again, these were things that were baked into these cultures. 

They didn't go out and do a meditation class, for example, but meditation was baked into their culture. And in general, so were ways for them to unwind. And think about that, because in our culture, we have a very production-focused, productivity-focused culture in which we have engineered ways, whether it's with technology, or even our mindset to enhance productivity, to hack productivity. It's all about how to get more hours out of the day, more productive, workable hours out of the day. Whereas in these cultures of the blue zone, they actually look at something different. 

They think about how to hack the ability to unwind and they have built in ways to unwind in their day-to-day. So again, you see people gardening, you see people outdoors, you see people stopping work to come together in community, either in social circles or in gatherings after work. You see people coming together to have tea, coming together to commune and eat together. I mean, in the American lifestyle, we're hard-pressed to even eat with our own families between soccer practice and play practice and late work nights and homework. We are hard-pressed to even sit down together as a family, as a nuclear family, to eat dinner. 

And what you see in these other cultures is that they're getting together to commune as a community around food. These are all ways in which we unwind. It doesn't have to be fancy, like a meditation, a formal meditation practice. So again, think about ways in which you can bring a sense of ease into your day-to-day life. And again, these buckets, they're not isolated, but they're like Venn diagrams or circles that kind of overlap because you can unwind by being outdoors in nature, by moving your body, by coming together in community. 

And so you can habit stack these different buckets so that you can, again, said in the most productive way, kill two or three birds with one stone. But again, you can do or achieve multiple facets of these regions by seeing how you can bring various features of it together in one particular activity. So find ways to unwind and do it outdoors, do it with community so that you're also getting the benefit of these other buckets. Another aspect of Outlook was faith.

 And in some of these areas, faith meant religion. So in Loma Linda, for example, the community they looked at were Seventh-day Adventists, and they have a religious or faith-based practice. But faith doesn't have to be organized religion. Faith can be believing in a higher power. Faith can be believing in an underlying logic to the way we live. Faith can be believing that the energy you put out in the world is what you can receive, so being mindful about putting out that which you wish to have for yourself. Faith can be living with surrender, which to me means doing your part. It doesn't mean being lazy or not doing your part. It means doing your very best, but then letting the chips fall where they may. Understanding that you cannot control every variable and certainly every outcome. 

And so part of this outlook is having faith. And then finally, having purpose. And this goes back to what I referred to earlier as ikigai, which is this concept that Dan Buettner describes in Japanese culture that I happen to be reading about, which is living with this sense of purpose, having meaning in your life. And again, purpose doesn't have to be like you have to be a doctor or a philanthropist or a pioneer in a certain thing or having a nonprofit organization that saves children or offers food to the malnourished. It doesn't have to be so grandiose. It can be the simple things in life. Purpose can be just wanting to live with intention. 

Purpose can be wanting to bring more kindness in the world. Purpose can mean wanting to live in a way that is aligned with your greater outlook that what you do matters, what you say to yourself and to others matters. How you feed your body or nourish yourself and nourish your children or the people around you matters. That's a sense of purpose. And again, what Dan found in these different areas was that people did have this greater sense of purpose, this feeling that what they did mattered beyond their own self, beyond their own circle, but to the greater good outside of themselves. So those are the areas in which Dan Buettner and the Blue Zones focused on. 

Again, eat or food, and I want you to understand or note that while diet is a piece, it's not the only piece. We focus so much on diet when it comes to health, wellness, and longevity. And yes, it's important, but it isn't everything. So diet is one part, movement is another, connection is another, and finally, the last is outlook. And If you haven't watched this documentary yet, it's five episodes, 30 minutes each. It really is lovely. So I suggest that you check it out. And I hope that when you finish this podcast, you can think of these four buckets, eat, move, connect, and outlook, and see how you might be able to Bake that into your life. Again, don't give yourself another thing to do. Don't put something else on your to-do list. That's not the point of this. It's to look at your own life and see where you have low-hanging fruit. Where might there be areas in which you could easily incorporate some of these principles, easily, with ease, without too much work, but with intention. 

So that's a wrap for this week. I hope you liked this episode. If you did, I would love if you would go back over to where you're listening, Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and write me a review. I get so many beautiful DMs from so many of you. It would be great if you shared that information with the world so that we could grow this platform. 

And then, as I mentioned before, if you're new, head over to the show notes, sign up for my newsletter, and I'll send you my five actionable bites. I'll share with you my integrated approach to nutrition. 

So have a great week. I'd love to hear back from you, how you're incorporating these four buckets into your life. And I'll see you again here next week. Okay, take good care, and I'll see you then.