Dan Buettner :如何活過100歲

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http://dotsub.com/view/39a668b2-01a9-4e1c-bc99-d1c119249011
Dan Buettner :如何活過100歲
一个叫“丹麦双胞胎”的研究表明， 普通人在生物学允许的限度内的寿命， 仅仅有百分之十 是由我们的基因决定的。 另外的百分之九十则取决于我们的生活方式。 因此，对蓝区研究的前提是：如果我们能找到 长寿的最佳生活方式， 我们就可以得出一个实际的 长寿公式。
但是，如果你问个普通的美国人，最佳的 长寿公式是什么，他们就有可能答不上来。 他们也许听说过南海岸饮食法，或者阿特金斯饮食法。 你见过农业部的食物金字塔 奥普拉会这么说 欧兹博士会那么说©
但是我们真的很困惑 什么东西才真的能使我们更健康长寿。 你应该跑马拉松，还是练瑜伽？ 是该食用有机肉制品呢？ 还是该吃豆腐？ 需不需要服用滋补品， 激素，或者白藜芦醇（一种营养补充品）？ 还有，能否达到食用这些东西的目的？ 我们的信仰呢？我们与他人的交往呢？这些重要吗？
我们找到健康长寿秘诀的研究方法是 与《国家地理》杂志 和国家老龄化研究院的研究人员合作© 找出四个人口统计学信息确切的 并且有明确的地理界线 的地区™ 然后带领一组专家到这些地区 仔细分析在那里生活的人们做些什么 提取出跨越文化的健康长寿真谛©
在我的报告的最后，我会揭晓这些真谛© 但首先，我想戳穿一些常见的 关于长寿的谣言。
谣言一：如果你很努力地尝试， 你就可以活到一百岁。 错了。 事实上，在美国，每五千人中只有一人 能活到一百岁 你的机会太小了。 尽管现在美国正处与人口增长最快的时期¼ 活到一百岁仍然还是很困难的 问题在于， 我们人类没被设为长寿， 只是被预设为需要达到 繁衍的成功的状态 这个词棒极了 让我回想起我上大学的时候™
生物学对生殖成功的定义是™ 你有孩子的年龄 以及下一代，你孩子有他们自己孩子的年龄 达到这个年龄后，生物遗传的意义 就完全淡化了® 不论你是哺乳动物，老鼠 大象，人，或是其它，道理都一样 所以要活到一百岁，你不仅要 有一个很好的生活方式，你还必须 拥有长寿基因的好运
第二个谣言是， 拥有能够帮助我们减缓 倒转甚至阻止衰老的方法 错 说到这，有99种可能会使我们老去。 让大脑缺氧，仅几分钟 就会使得脑细胞死亡并永不能复活 过度打网球会损害膝盖的软骨 你的软骨永远不再复原。 我们的动脉会堵塞。大脑会因血小板凝结 而得老年痴呆症 我们体内有35万亿个细胞
出问题的可能性太多 我们这里说的是国债数量。 哈哈 这些细胞每八年翻转一次 每次翻转都有一些损伤 这些损伤 以指数性规律成长。 有点像是那段时间里 我们都有披头士和老鹰乐队的相册一样 我们会复制盒式磁带 并让朋友们也复制 很快，代代相传 磁带现在听起来过时了 同样细胞也是如此。 这就是为什么一个65岁的老人 的老化速度 是一个12岁孩子 的125倍
所以如果没有什么能够 减缓或停止老龄化 我为何还站在这里 事实上， 最可信的科学表明人类能活， 我和你们一样 大约九十岁 当然，女性稍微长一些 但是这个国家的平均寿命 仅仅78岁 距离平均线 明显还差了12年 这十二年是我们能得到的。 研究表明这些年主要是免于慢性疾病的年月，比如 心脏病，癌症和糖尿病
我们认为要得到这12年，最好的方法是 去欣赏全世界的文化 并且实地体验 100岁的人居住的地方 比我们大十倍 的地方的人平均寿命 要多12年。 这个国家的 中年人死亡率很低。
我们发现第一个蓝区距离撒丁岛的 意大利海岸大约125英里 这个岛大约有140万人，但是并非分布于整个岛屿， 他们只在一个叫怒奥罗的高低上居住 这个区域的人寿命最长 逾百岁的人是我们在这里居住的美国的10倍多 这个地方的人不仅活到100岁 而且精力异常充沛 活到102岁仍然骑自行车工作 伐木，能打败小他们60岁的人 哈哈
他们的历史追溯到基督时代 是被隔离的青铜时代的文化。 因为这块地如此贫瘠 他们大多是牧羊人 工作时间稳定，体力活动强度低。 他们的饮食以素食为主， 是地里自产的食物 他们找到了一种未经发酵的全麦面包 那是由硬质小麦和 一种食草动物的奶做成的奶酪 所以奶酪含有高欧米茄-3脂肪酸 而不是食谷类动物奶做成的欧米茄-6脂肪酸奶酪 还有一种酒，它的多酚含量 是世界所有已知酒类所含含量的三倍 它叫卡诺乌红葡萄酒
但我认为真正的秘诀多取决于 他们社会组成的方式。 撒丁岛社会里一个最显著的现象是， 他们如何对待老人 你曾注意过美国的社会平等 在大约24岁时达到高峰吗 来看看这些广告吧 在撒丁岛，年纪越大 享受的平等权就越多， 被颂扬的才智就越多。 进入撒丁岛的酒吧 不看体育画报的泳装表演日程，取而代之的是 看每月日历上的百岁老人
这个已被证明，不仅有益于你的年迈父母 使他们更靠近家庭 而且传授大约4到6年的额外寿命。 研究表明对那些家庭的孩子也很有益 因为这些家庭的死亡率和疾病率比较低 那被称为祖母效应
我们找的第二个蓝区 在地球另一端 离东京南部约800英里 在冲绳县的古拉格岛 古拉格群岛由161个小岛组成 中心岛屿的北部 是世界长寿的起点 最长寿的女性就是在这个地方发现的 这个地方的人是世界上 寿命最长的无伤残人群 他们拥有我们渴望的东西 他们活很久，常常在睡觉中死去 速度快 而且通常是在性行为之后。
他们比普通美国人寿命长7年 是美国百岁老人的5倍 在美国结肠癌和乳腺癌是强大杀手 致死率为五分之一 六分之一死于心血管疾病 事实上，国家产生的这些数量 强烈暗示我们有许多要向他们学习的。 他们做什么呢 还是植物性食物为主 绿色蔬菜繁多 他们是美国人吃豆腐 数量的八倍
比吃什么更重要的是如何来吃 他们有各种各样的小策略来 杜绝过度饱食 众所周知，这在美国是一个大问题 我们观察了几个策略如下： 他们吃饭用较小的盘子，所以每次就吃较少的卡路里 不是家庭型用餐 在这种类型的用餐上，你会边聊边没意识的吃， 他们是在吧台服务，把食物拿走 然后拿回桌子上
他们有一个流传三千年的谚语， 我认为是前所未有的最棒饮食建议 是孔子提出的。 这种饮食就是周知柯罗，八术门，卜饮食。 吃饭前这些人简单说一点谚语 提醒他们吃到8成饱就停止进食 这种饱腹感要用一个小时 才能从肚子到大脑。 只吃到八成饱 能阻止你做出极端的事情
但是，和撒丁岛一样，冲绳有很少社会建构 能和长寿联系起来 我们知道那次的隔离杀戮 15年前，平均每个美国人有三个好朋友 现在仅有一个半 如果你很幸运生在日本冲绳 你就生在了一个自然而然 地一生轻易就能拥有 四个朋友的地方。 他们称作魔埃 如果你在魔埃碰到好运的话能与人分享馈赠 如果运气糟糕 则孩子生病父母死亡 总有一个人带你走， 这个特殊的魔埃，这五个女人 在一起已经97年了 她们平均102岁
在美国， 我们把成人寿命分成两部分 一个是工作寿命， 是我们多产的时间。 然后某一天，繁荣，然后退休。 这就意味着 退到安乐椅上 或者去亚利桑那州打高尔夫。 在冲绳语言里 压根没退休这个词。 而有一个词却 深嵌在你的一生 这个词叫做“生活价值”。 简单解释一下，就是 “你早晨醒来的理由。”
对这个102岁的空手道大师来说， 他的生活价值在武术中实现着。 这个百岁渔翁 每周还出海为家庭打三次渔。 对于这个问题，老年研究所 给我们做了这些百岁老人的调查问卷。 对其中一个问题，他们的文化警惕性很高， 即是谁提出的问卷。 有一个问题是，“你的生活价值是什么？” 他们立马知道早晨为何而醒来。 这个102岁的老人，她的生活意义 只是她的玄孙女。 这两个女性年龄差距是101岁半。 我问她养育这个玄孙女 感觉怎么样。 她仰着头说道： 真像跳入天堂一般。 我认为这是个顶好的想法。
我地理学的编辑 想让我找个美国的蓝区。 一时间我们观察了明尼苏达草原， 那里确实有相当比例的百岁老人。 但只是因为所有的年轻人都离开了。 哈哈 因此，我们再次依赖数据。 我们发现美国最长寿的人群 都在星期六耶稣再生派论者当中 这些人集中在加利福尼亚州的罗马琳达及周围地区。 再生派论者是守旧派人物。 他们从周五日落到周六日落 一直庆祝安息日。 他们称为“二十四小时至圣时间”。 并且遵循五种 相对而言传递给他们的 能够特别长寿的习惯。
在美国，女人平均寿命 为80岁。 但再生论者的女人， 平均寿命是89岁。 男人之间的差别则更为显著， 他们大约比其他美国男同胞 多活11岁。 这项研究是跟随7万人大约用了三十年 才做出来的。 是一项纯正的研究。我认为它极好地阐述了 对蓝区项目的假定。
这是一个多种族群体。 有白人，黑人，西班牙人和亚洲人。 他们唯一的共同点是都有一套 适当的生活习惯 而且一生多半都恪守着 这种习惯。 他们的饮食来自于圣经。 第一章诗节 在这一节上帝讲豆科蔬菜和种子， 并且讲了一节多的绿色蔬菜， 基本上忽略肉类。 对待这种圣事，他们很严肃。
每周有24小时 不管多忙，工作压力多大， 孩子们要在那里受到鼓舞， 所以他们放下一切事情只关注上帝， 在宗教里，他们的社会交际网，固定的权利 都是对大自然的探索。 这能量不是偶然发出 而是一生中每周如此。 没有难度也没有花费。 冒险家也想与同行一同去闲逛。 所以，如果你去参加一个冒险者聚会， 你看不到人们痛饮玉米威士忌或做烟卷 他们正讨论的是下一次自然大探索， 交换食谱然后祈祷。 他们以深刻有策略的方式影响着彼此。
在这种文化中诞生了埃尔斯沃斯 他活了97岁 是个百万富翁， 但是一个承包人想要6000美元 建个私人栅栏时， 他说这点钱我自己搞定。 所以接下来的三年他外出铲水泥 到处搬运电杆。 正如预想，大约在第四天 他在手术室去世。 但根本不像手术台上 做心脏直视手术的家伙。 到97他仍然每月做20次心脏手术。
爱德罗林斯，现103岁， 是个活泼的牛仔，每天早晨游泳。 周末他喜欢上舞台 抛公鸡尾巴符咒
马吉德顿 104岁 她的孙子住在双子城® 她每天先练举重 然后骑自行车。 然后驾着她1994年的啤酒色 凯迪拉克塞维利亚 驶向圣贝纳迪诺高速公路 在高速上她是七个不同组织的志愿者。 我已经经历了19次远征， 也许是你见到的唯一骑自行车 穿过 撒哈拉沙漠却没有晒伤的人。 但是让我告诉你，没有比运输途中担任马吉德顿护卫更加 让人头痛的事情。 她说：“陌生人是一个我还未见过的朋友。”
所以，这三种文化有什么 共同特性呢？ 他们都有做了什么事情？ 我们试图归结为九点 其实在这次蓝区远征前 我们已经调查了两个蓝区 第一个 我想说个异端邪说， 他们谁都不运动 至少是我们认为的运动方式。 反而建立他们的生活 以便常常进行体力伙动。 这些100岁的冲绳女人 在地上上来下去， 每天坐地上30到40次。
撒丁岛人居住在垂直房屋里，上下楼梯 每次去商店，教堂或朋友家里 都走上片刻。 没有任何方便性。 做打扫工作和家务没有按钮一按则使用。 如果想做蛋糕，就自己动手。 这就是是体力劳动。♪ 这个燃烧的热量和跑步机上消耗的一样。 进行惯常体力运动， 是他们享受这些事情的时候。他们常常步行， 这被证明是防止认知降低的唯一方法， 并且他们人人有花园。 他们知道如何安排生活 因此有正确的观点。
每种文化都不慌不忙地变换。 撒丁岛人祈祷。再生论者也祈祷。 冲绳人有祖先祭拜的规约。 但是你的匆忙或压力引发的 炎症反应 这些都与老年痴呆症和心血管疾病 都有关系的。 每天减缓行动15分钟 这种炎症 就能变成一种反炎症状态。
冲绳人把这个目的感叫做 有意义的生活。 一个人一生中最危险的两年 一是出生的时候，因为婴儿死亡率高 另外就是退休的时候 这些人知道他们的生活目的感 他们生活活跃，能有7年 的额外寿命。
没有长寿食品 这些人每天就喝一点酒， 酒是不用强行卖给美国人的。 哈哈 他们常吃蔬菜食品 不是说不吃肉但是吃很多豆类和坚果。 他们有办法避免饮食过量， 几乎没有什么能把他们推向餐桌。
这些的根本是他们如何联系。 把家庭放在第一位， 照顾孩子和年迈的父母。 他们的社区建立在诚信基础上， 这个能增加4到14年 的生命。 当然，你一月至少要做四次才可以。 这里最重要的事情是 他们属于一个正义的群体。 他们或者生在正义之家 或者是主动和正义之士呆在一起。
从弗雷明翰研究中我们得知 如果你有三个好朋友都肥胖 你也有一半肥胖的可能。 所以如果你和不健康的人在一起 随时间推移会受到很大影响。 如果你朋友娱乐的主意 是体力活动，打保龄球或打曲棍球 自行车或园艺工作， 他们饮酒适量 饮食适度，他们投入工作值得信任， 最后就会对你产生最大影响。
食物没有什么用，历史上没有一种食物 能养活2%的人口。 练习项目通常在一月开始 十月结束。 至于长寿， 没有药片或其他什么东西 能在短期内奏效。 但当你想到 你的朋友是长期的冒险活动时， 因此，它是你为增加寿命和让生命生机勃勃能够做的最重要 的事情
谢谢 喝彩

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Dan Buettner: How to live to be 100+
Something called the Danish Twin Study established that only about 10 percent of how long the average person lives, within certain biological limits, is dictated by our genes. The other 90 percent is dictated by our lifestyle. So the premise of Blue Zones: if we can find the optimal lifestyle of longevity we can come up with a de facto formula for longevity.

But if you ask the average American what the optimal formula of longevity is, they probably couldn't tell you. They've probably heard of the South Beach Diet, or the Atkins Diet. You have the USDA food pyramid. There is what Oprah tells us. There is what Doctor Oz tells us.

The fact of the matter is there is a lot of confusion around what really helps us live longer better. Should you be running marathons or doing yoga? Should you eat organic meats or should you be eating tofu? When it comes to supplements, should you be taking them? How about these hormones or resveratrol? And does purpose play into it? Spirituality? And how about how we socialize?

Well, our approach to finding longevity was to team up with National Geographic, and the National Institute on Aging, to find the four demographically confirmed areas that are geographically defined. And then bring a team of experts in there to methodically go through exactly what these people do, to distill down the cross-cultural distillation.

And at the end of this I'm going to tell you what that distillation is. But first I'd like to debunk some common myths when it comes to longevity. And the first myth is if you try really hard you can live to be 100. False. The problem is, only about one out of 5,000 people in America live to be 100. Your chances are very low. Even though it's the fastest growing demographic in America, it's hard to reach 100. The problem is that we're not programmed for longevity. We are programmed for something called procreative success. I love that word. It reminds me of my college days.

Biologists term procreative success to mean the age where you have children and then another generation, the age when your children have children. After that the effect of evolution completely dissipates. If you're a mammal, if you're a rat or an elephant, or a human, in between, it's the same story. So to make it to age 100, you not only have to have had a very good lifestyle, you also have to have won the genetic lottery.

The second myth is, there are treatments that can help slow, reverse, or even stop aging. False. When you think of it, there is 99 things that can age us. Deprive your brain of oxygen for just a few minutes, those brain cells die, they never come back. Play tennis too hard, on your knees, ruin your cartilage, the cartilage never comes back. Our arteries can clog. Our brains can gunk up with plaque, and we can get Alzheimer's. There is just too many things to go wrong.

Our bodies have 35 trillion cells, trillion with a "T." We're talking national debt numbers here. (Laughter) Those cells turn themselves over once every eight years. And every time they turn themselves over there is some damage. And that damage builds up. And it builds up exponentially. It's a little bit like the days when we all had Beatles albums or Eagles albums and we'd make a copy of that on a cassette tape, and let our friends copy that cassette tape, and pretty soon, with successive generations that tape sounds like garbage. Well, the same things happen to our cells. That's why a 65-year-old person is aging at a rate of about 125 times faster than a 12-year-old person.

So, if there is nothing you can do to slow your aging or stop your aging, what am I doing here? Well, the fact of the matter is the best science tells us that the capacity of the human body, my body, your body, is about 90 years, a little bit more for women. But life expectancy in this country is only 78. So somewhere along the line, we're leaving about 12 good years on the table. These are years that we could get. And research shows that would be years largely free of chronic disease, heart disease, cancer and diabetes.

We think the best way to get these missing years is to look at the cultures around the world that are actually experiencing them, areas where people are living to age 100 at rates up to 10 times greater than we are, areas where the life expectancy is an extra dozen years, the rate of middle age mortality is a fraction of what it is in this country.

We found our first blue zone about 125 miles off the coast of Italy, on the island of Sardinia. And not the entire island, the island is about 1.4 million people, but only up in the highlands, an area called the Nuoro province. And here we have this area where men live the longest, about 10 times more centenarians than we have here in America. And this is a place where people not only reach age 100, they do so with extraordinary vigor. Places where 102 year olds still ride their bike to work, chop wood, and can beat a guy 60 years younger than them. (Laughter)

Their history actually goes back to about the time of Christ. It's actually a Bronze Age culture that's been isolated. Because the land is so infertile they largely are shepherds, which occasions regular, low-intensity physical activity. Their diet is mostly plant-based, accentuated with foods that they can carry into the fields. They came up with an unleavened whole wheat bread called notamusica made out of durum wheat, a type of cheese made from grass-fed animals so the cheese is high in Omega-3 fatty acids instead of Omega-6 fatty acids from corn-fed animals, and a type of wine that has three times the level of polyphenols than any known wine in the world. It's called Cannonau.

But the real secret I think lies more in the way that they organize their society. And one of the most salient elements of the Sardinian society is how they treat older people. You ever notice here in America, social equity seems to peak at about age 24? Just look at the advertisements. Here in Sardinia, the older you get the more equity you have, the more wisdom you're celebrated for. You go into the bars in Sardinia, instead of seeing the Sports Illustrated swimsuit calendar, you see the centenarian of the month calendar.

This, as it turns out, is not only good for your aging parents to keep them close to the family; it imparts about four to six years of extra life expectancy, research shows it's also good for the children of those families, who have lower rates of mortality and lower rates of disease. That's called the grandmother effect.

We found our second Blue Zone on the other side of the planet, about 800 miles south of Tokyo, on the archipelago of Okinawa. Okinawa is actually 161 small islands. And in the northern part of the main island, this is ground zero for world longevity. This is a place where the oldest living female population is found. It's a place where people have the longest disability-free life expectancy in the world. They have what we want. They live a long time, and tend to die in their sleep, very quickly, and often, I can tell you, after sex.

They live about seven good years longer than the average American. Five times as many centenarians as we have in America. One fifth the rate of colon and breast cancer, big killers here in America. And one sixth the rate of cardiovascular disease. And the fact that this culture has yielded these numbers suggests strongly they have something to teach us. What do they do? Once again, a plant-based diet, full of vegetables with lots of color in them. And they eat about eight times as much tofu as Americans do.

More significant than what they eat is how they eat it. They have all kinds of little strategies to keep from overeating, which, as you know, is a big problem here in America. A few of the strategies we observed: they eat off of smaller plates, so they tend to eat fewer calories at every sitting. Instead of serving family style, where you can sort of mindlessly eat as you're talking, they serve at the counter, put the food away, and then bring it to the table.

They also have a 3,000-year-old adage, which I think is the greatest sort of diet suggestion ever invented. It was invented by Confucius. And that diet is known as the Hara, Hatchi, Bu diet. Simply a little saying these people say before their meal to remind them to stop eating when their stomach is 80 percent full. It takes about a half hour for that full feeling to travel from your belly to your brain. And by remembering to stop at 80 percent it helps keep you from doing that very thing.

But, like Sardinia, Okinawa has a few social constructs that we can associate with longevity. We know that isolation kills. Fifteen years ago the average American had three good friends. We're down to one and half right now. If you were lucky enough to be born in Okinawa you were born into a system where you automatically have a half a dozen friends with whom you travel through life. They call it a Moai. And if you're in a Moai you're expected to share the bounty if you encounter luck, and if things go bad, child gets sick, parent dies, you always have somebody who has your back. This particular moai, these five ladies have been together for 97 years. Their average age is 102.

Typically in America we've divided our adult life up into two sections. There is our work life, where we're productive. And then one day, boom, we retire. And typically that has meant retiring to the easy chair, or going down to Arizona to play golf. In the Okinawan language there is not even a word for retirement. Instead there is one word that imbues your entire life, and that word is "ikigai." And, roughly translated, it means "the reason for which you wake up in the morning."

For this 102-year-old karate master, his ikigai was carrying forth this martial art. For this hundred-year-old fisherman it was continuing to catch fish for his family three times a week. And this is a question. The National Institute on Aging actually gave us a questionnaire to give these centenarians. And one of the questions, they were very culturally astute, the people who put the questionnaire. One of the questions was, "What is your ikigai?" They instantly knew why they woke up in the morning. For this 102 year old woman, her ikigai was simply her great-great-great-granddaughter. Two girls separated in age by 101 and a half years. And I asked her what it felt like to hold a great-great-great-granddaughter. And she put her head back and she said, "It feels like leaping into heaven." I thought that was a wonderful thought.

My editor at Geographic wanted me to find America's Blue Zone. And for a while we looked on the prairies of Minnesota, where actually there is a very high proportion of centenarians. But that's because all the young people left. (Laughter) So, we turned to the data again. And we found America's longest-lived population among the Seventh-Day Adventists concentrated in and around Loma Linda, California. Adventists are conservative Methodists. They celebrate their sabbath from from sunset on Friday till sunset on Saturday. A "24-hour sanctuary in time," they call it. And they follow five little habits that conveys to them, extraordinary longevity comparatively speaking.

In America here, life expectancy for the average woman is 80. But for an Adventist woman, their life expectancy is 89. And the difference is even more pronounced among men, who are expected to live about 11 years longer than their American counterparts. Now, this is a study that followed about 70,000 people for 30 years. Sterling study. And I think it supremely illustrates the premise of this Blue Zone project.

This is a heterogeneous community. It's white, black, Hispanic, Asian. The only thing that they have in common are a set of very small lifestyle habits that they follow ritualistically for most of their lives. They take their diet directly from the Bible. Genesis: Chapter one, Verse [29], where God talks about legumes and seeds, and on one more stanza about green plants, ostensibly missing is meat. They take this sanctuary in time very serious.

For 24 hours every week, no matter how busy they are, how stressed out they are at work, where the kids need to be driven, they stop everything and they focus on their God, their social network, and then, hardwired right in the religion are nature walks. And the power of this is not that it's done occasionally, the power is it's done every week for a lifetime. None of it's hard. None of it costs money. Adventists also tend to hang out with other Adventists. So, if you go to an Adventist's party you don't see people swilling Jim Beam or rolling a joint. Instead they're talking about their next nature walk, exchanging recipes, and yes, they pray. But they influence each other in profound and measurable ways.

This is a culture that has yielded Ellsworth Wheram. Ellsworth Wheram is 97 years old. He's a multimillionaire, yet when a contractor wanted 6,000 dollars to build a privacy fence, he said, "For that kind of money I'll do it myself." So for the next three days he was out shoveling cement, and hauling poles around. And predictably, perhaps, on the fourth day he ended up in the operating room. But not as the guy on the table; the guy doing open-heart surgery. At 97 he still does 20 open-heart surgeries every month.

Ed Rawlings, 103 years old now, an active cowboy, starts his morning with a swim. And on weekends he likes to put on the boards, throw up rooster tails.

And then Marge Deton. Marge is 104. Her grandson actually lives in the Twin Cities here. She starts her day with lifting weights. She rides her bicycle. And then she gets in her root-beer colored 1994 Cadillac Seville, and tears down the San Bernardino freeway, where she still volunteers for seven different organizations. I've been on 19 hardcore expeditions. I'm probably the only person you'll ever meet who rode his bicycle across the Sahara desert without sunscreen. But I'll tell you, there is no adventure more harrowing than riding shotgun with Marge Deton. "A stranger is a friend I haven't met yet!" she'd say to me.

So, what are the common denominators in these three cultures? What are the things that they all do? And we managed to boil it down to nine. In fact we've done two more Blue Zone expeditions since this and these common denominators hold true. And the first one, and I'm about to utter a heresy here, none of them exercise, at least the way we think of exercise. Instead, they set up their lives so that they are constantly nudged into physical activity. These 100-year-old Okinawan women are getting up and down off the ground, they sit on the floor, 30 or 40 times a day.

Sardinians live in vertical houses, up and down the stairs. Every trip to the store, or to church or to a friends house occasions a walk. They don't have any conveniences. There is not a button to push to do yard work or house work. If they want to mix up a cake, they're doing it by hand. That's physical activity. That burns calories just as much as going on the treadmill does. When they do do intentional physical activity, it's the things they enjoy. They tend to walk, the only proven way to stave off cognitive decline, and they all tend to have a garden. They know how to set up their life in the right way so they have the right outlook.

Each of these cultures take time to downshift. The Sardinians pray. The Seventh-Day Adventists pray. The Okinawans have this ancestor veneration. But when you're in a hurry or stressed out that triggers something called the inflammatory response, which is associated with everything from Alzheimer's disease to cardiovascular disease. When you slow down for 15 minutes a day you turn that inflammatory state into a more anti-inflammatory state.

They have vocabulary for sense of purpose, ikigai, like the Okinawans. You know the two most dangerous years in your life are the year you're born, because of infant mortality, and the year you retire. These people know their sense of purpose, and they activate in their life, that's worth about seven years of extra life expectancy.

There's no longevity diet. Instead, these people drink a little bit every day, not a hard sell to the American population. (Laughter) They tend to eat a plant-based diet. Doesn't mean they don't eat meat, but lots of beans and nuts. And they have strategies to keep from overeating, little things that nudge them away from the table at the right time.

And then the foundation of all this is how they connect. They put their families first, take care of their children and their aging parents. They all tend to belong to a faith-based community, which is worth between four and 14 extra years of life expectancy if you do it four times a month. And the biggest thing here is they also belong to the right tribe. They were either born into or they proactively surrounded themselves with the right people.

We know from the Framingham studies, that if your three best friends are obese there is a 50 percent better chance that you'll be overweight. So, if you hang out with unhealthy people that's going to have a measurable impact over time. Instead, if your friend's idea of recreation is physical activity, bowling, or playing hockey, biking or gardening, if your friends drink a little, but not too much, and they eat right, and they're engaged, and they're trusting and trustworthy, that is going to have the biggest impact over time.

Diets don't work. No diet in the history of the world has ever worked for more than two percent of the population. Exercise programs usually start in January, they're usually done by October. When it comes to longevity there is no short term fix in a pill or anything else. But when you think about it your friends are long-term adventures, and therefore, perhaps the most significant thing you can do to add more years to your life, and life to your years. Thank you very much. (Applause)