0:12 [Music] [Applause]
0:18 something called the Danish twin study
0:20 established that only about
0:23 10% of how long the average person lives
0:25 within certain biological limits is
0:28 dictated by our genes the other 90% is
0:32 dictated by our lifestyle so the premise
0:33 of Blue zone is if we can find the
0:36 optimal lifestyle of longevity we can
0:39 come up with a deao formula for
0:41 longevity but if you ask the average
0:42 American what the optimal formula of
0:44 longevity is they probably couldn't tell
0:46 you they've probably heard of the South
0:48 Beach Diet or the Atkins diet and you
0:51 have the USDA food pyramid there's what
0:53 Oprah tells us there's what Dr Oz tells
0:56 us the fact of the matter is there's a
0:58 lot of confusion around what really
1:02 helps us live longer better should you
1:05 be running marathons or doing yoga
1:07 should you eat organic meats or should
1:10 you be eating tofu when it comes to
1:12 supplements should you be taking them uh
1:15 how about these hormones or Resveratrol
1:17 and does purpose play into it
1:19 spirituality and how about how we
1:22 socialize well our approach to finding
1:24 longevity was to team up with National
1:25 Geographic and the National Institute on
1:29 Aging to find the four demographically
1:31 confirmed areas that are geographically
1:34 defined and then bring a team of experts
1:36 in there to methodically go through
1:38 exactly what these people to to distill
1:40 down the crosscultural
1:42 distillation and at the end of this I'm
1:43 going to tell you what that distillation
1:46 is but first I'd like to debunk some
1:48 common myths when it comes to longevity
1:51 and the first myth is if you try really
1:53 hard you can live to be a
1:57 100 false the problem is only about one
2:01 out of 5,000 people in a America uh live
2:04 to be a 100 your chances are are very
2:06 low even though it's the fastest growing
2:08 demographic in America it's hard to
2:13 reach 100 the problem is that we are not
2:16 programmed for longevity we are program
2:20 for something called procreative success
2:22 I love that word it reminds me of my college
2:24 college
2:27 days biologist term procreative success
2:29 to to mean the age where you have
2:31 children and then another generation the
2:33 age when your children have children
2:35 after that the effect of evolution completely
2:37 completely
2:40 dissipates if you're a mammal uh if
2:43 you're a rat or an elephant or a human
2:45 in between it's the same story so to
2:48 make it to age 100 you not only have to
2:50 have had a very good lifestyle you also
2:53 have to have won the genetic Lottery the
2:56 second myth is there are treatments that
3:01 can help slow reverse or even stop aging
3:04 false when you think of it there's 99
3:06 things that can age US deprive your
3:08 brain of oxygen for just a few minutes
3:10 those brain cells die they never come
3:13 back play tennis too hard on your knees
3:15 ruin your cartilage that cartilage Never
3:17 Comes Back Our arteries can clog our
3:19 brains can Gunk up with plaque and we
3:20 can get
3:22 Alzheimer's there's just too many things
3:25 to go wrong our bodies have
3:29 35 trillion cells
3:31 with the tea we're talking national debt numbers
3:33 numbers
3:36 here those cells turn themselves over
3:37 once every eight years and every time
3:39 they turn themselves over there's some
3:41 damage and that damage builds up and it
3:44 builds up exponentially it's a little
3:46 bit like the days when we all had uh
3:48 beetles albums or Eagles albums and we
3:50 make a copy of that on a cassette tape
3:51 and then let our friends copy that
3:53 cassette tape and pretty soon with
3:55 successive Generations that tape sounds
3:58 like garbage well the same things happen
4:00 to ourselves that's why why a
4:02 65-year-old person is aging at a rate of
4:06 about 125 times faster than a 12-year-old
4:07 12-year-old
4:10 person so if there's nothing you can do
4:13 to slow your aging or stop your aging
4:15 what am I doing here well the fact of
4:18 the matter is the best science tells us
4:21 that the capacity of the human body my
4:24 body your body is about 90 years a
4:28 little bit more for women but life
4:30 expectancy in this country is only
4:33 78 so somewhere along the line we're
4:38 leaving about 12 good years on the table
4:40 these are years that um we could get and
4:43 they uh research shows that they could
4:45 that they would be years largely free of
4:47 chronic disease heart heart disease
4:51 cancer and diabetes we think uh the best
4:53 way to get these Missing Years is to
4:55 look at the cultures around the world
4:57 that are actually experiencing them
4:59 areas where people are living to age 100
5:02 at rates up to 10 times greater than we
5:04 are areas where the life expectancy is
5:06 an extra Dozen Years and the rate of
5:08 middle-aged mortality is a fraction of
5:10 what it is in this
5:12 country we found our first Blue Zone
5:16 about 125 miles off the coast of Italy
5:18 on the island of Sardinia and not the
5:20 entire Island the Island's about 1.4
5:21 million people but only up in the
5:23 highlands an area called The noral
5:25 Province and here we have this area
5:27 where men live the longest about 10
5:28 times more centenarians than we have
5:30 here in America and this is a place
5:32 where people not only reach age 100 they
5:35 do so with extraordinary Vigor places
5:36 where 102 year olds still ride their
5:40 bike to work chop wood and can beat a
5:43 guy 60 years younger than
5:46 them their history actually goes back to
5:47 about the time of Christ it's actually a
5:49 Bronze Age culture that's been isolated
5:51 because the land is so infertile they're
5:54 largely Shepherds which occasions
5:56 regular low intensity physical activity
5:59 their diet is mostly plant-based exent
6:01 ated with foods that they can carry into
6:03 the fields they came up with an
6:05 unleavened whole wheat bread called
6:08 notus made out of Durham wheat a type of
6:11 cheese made from grass-fed um animals so
6:14 it's high the cheese is high in omega-3
6:17 fatty acids instead of omega-6 fatty
6:20 acids from cornfed animals and a type of
6:22 wine that has three times the level of
6:24 polyphenols than any known wine in the
6:27 world it's called kanau but the real
6:29 secret I think lies more in the way that
6:31 they organized their society and one of
6:33 the most Salient elements of the
6:35 Sardinian Society is how they treat older
6:36 older
6:38 people you ever notice here in America
6:41 social Equity seems to Peak at about age
6:44 24 you just look at the advertisements
6:46 uh here in Sardinia the older you get
6:49 the more Equity you have the more wisdom
6:51 you're celebrated for uh you go into the
6:53 bars in Sardinia instead of seeing the
6:55 Sports Illustrated swimsuit calendar you
6:57 see the centenarian of the month
7:00 calendar this is a turns off is not only
7:02 good for your aging parents to keep them
7:04 close to the family it imparts about
7:07 four to 6 years of extra life expectancy
7:09 research shows it's also good for the
7:10 children of those families who have
7:12 lower rates of mortality and lower rates
7:15 of disease that's called the grandmother
7:18 effect we found our second Blue Zone on
7:21 the other side of the planet about 800
7:25 miles south of Tokyo on the archipelago
7:29 of Okinawa Okinawa is actually 161 small
7:30 island islands and in the northern part
7:33 of the main island uh this is Ground
7:35 Zero for World longevity uh this is a
7:38 place where the oldest living female
7:40 population is found it's a place where
7:42 people have the longest disability-free
7:45 life expectancy in the world they have
7:47 what we want they live a long time and
7:49 tend to die in their sleep very quickly
7:52 and often I can tell you after
7:54 sex they live about seven good years
7:57 longer than the average American five
7:59 times as many centenarians as we have
8:02 America 1/5th the rate of colon and
8:04 breast cancer big Killers here in
8:06 America and one sixth the rate of
8:08 cardiovascular disease and the fact that
8:11 this culture has yielded these numbers
8:13 suggest strongly they have something to
8:17 teach us what do they do once again a
8:20 plant-based diet full of vegetables with
8:22 lots of color in them and they eat about
8:26 eight times as much tofu As Americans do
8:28 more significant than what they eat it's
8:30 how they eat it
8:32 they have all kinds of little strategies
8:34 to keep from overeating which as you
8:37 know is a big problem here in America a
8:39 few of the strategies we observe they
8:41 eat off of smaller plates so they tend
8:43 to eat fewer calories at every sitting
8:45 instead of serving family style where
8:47 you can sort of mindlessly eat as you're
8:49 talking they serve at the counter put
8:51 the food away and then bring it to the
8:53 table they also have a 3,000-year-old
8:55 Adit which I think is the greatest sort
8:57 of diet suggestion ever invented was
9:00 invented by confucious and that uh diet
9:03 is known as the hadachi Buu diet it's
9:05 simply a little saying these people say
9:07 before their meal to remind them to stop
9:10 eating when their stomach is 20% full it
9:11 takes about a half hour for that full
9:13 feeling to go travel from your belly to
9:16 your brain and by remembering to stop at
9:18 80% it helps keep you from doing that
9:21 very thing but like Sardinia okanawa has
9:23 a few social constructs that we can
9:25 associate with
9:28 longevity we know that isolation kills
9:30 15 years ago the average American had
9:33 three good friends we're down to one and
9:35 a half right now if you were lucky
9:38 enough to be born in Okinawa you were
9:39 born into a system where you
9:41 automatically have a half a dozen
9:43 friends with whom you travel through
9:46 life uh they call it a moai and if
9:47 you're in a moai you're expected to
9:50 share the Bounty if you uh if you
9:53 encounter luck and if things go bad a
9:55 child gets sick a parent dies you always
9:58 have somebody who has your back this
10:00 particular moai these five ladies have
10:03 been together for 97 years their average
10:05 age is
10:09 102 typically in America we've divided
10:12 our adult life up into two uh sections
10:15 there's our work life where we're
10:18 productive and then one day boom we
10:22 retire and typically that is meant um
10:25 retiring to the easy chair going down to
10:28 Arizona to to play golf uh in the okan
10:30 language there's not not even a word for
10:34 retirement instead there's one word that
10:36 imbus your entire life and that word is
10:40 eeky guy and roughly translated it means
10:42 the reason for which you wake up in the
10:45 morning and for this 102y old karate
10:49 master hiiki guy was carrying forth this
10:51 martial art for this 100-year-old
10:53 fisherman it was continuing to catch
10:55 fish for his family three times a week
10:57 and this is a question the National
10:59 Institute on Aging actually gave us a
11:01 questionnaire to give these centenarians
11:02 and one of the questions they were very
11:04 culturally astute people put the
11:06 questionnaire one of the questions was
11:08 what is your eeky guy they instantly
11:11 knew why they woke up in the
11:14 morning for this 102y old woman or eeky
11:19 guy uh was simply her great great great
11:21 granddaughter uh two girls separated an
11:25 age by 101 and a half years and and I
11:27 asked her what it felt like uh to hold a
11:29 great great great granddaughter and she
11:31 put her head back and she said it feels
11:34 like leaping into heaven thought that
11:37 was a wonderful thought my editor at
11:40 Geographic wanted me to find America's
11:41 Blue Zone and for a while we looked on
11:44 the Prairies of Minnesota where actually
11:45 there's a very high proportion of
11:47 centenarians but that's because all the
11:55 so so we turned to the data again and we
11:57 found America's longest lived population
12:00 among the Seventh Day Advent VST
12:02 concentrated in and around Lolinda
12:05 California Adventists are conservative
12:09 methodists they celebrate their Sabbath
12:12 from sunset on Friday till sunset on
12:15 Saturday a a 24-hour sanctuary in time
12:18 they call it and they follow five little
12:20 habits that conveys to them
12:23 extraordinary longevity comparatively
12:26 speaking in America here life expectancy
12:29 for the average woman is 80 but for an
12:32 Adventist women their life expectancy is
12:34 89 and the difference is even more
12:36 pronounced among men who are expected to
12:39 live about 11 years longer than their
12:41 American counterparts now this is a
12:44 study that followed about 70,000 people
12:47 for 30 years Sterling study and I think
12:50 it supremely illustrates the premise of
12:53 this Blue Zone project this is a heterog
12:55 genius Community it's white black
12:58 Hispanic Asian the only thing they have
13:00 in common are set of very small
13:02 lifestyle habits that they follow
13:04 ritualistically for most of their lives
13:06 they take their diet directly from the
13:11 Bible Genesis 1 verse 26 where God talks
13:14 about legumes and seeds and on one more
13:17 stanza about uh green plants ostensibly
13:19 missing his meat they take this
13:20 sanctuary in time very
13:24 serious for 24 hours every week no
13:26 matter how busy they are how stressed
13:28 out they are at work where the kids need
13:30 to be driven they stop everything and
13:33 they focus on their God their social
13:34 network and then hardwired right in the
13:38 religion are nature walks and the power
13:39 of this is not that it's done
13:41 occasionally the power is it's done
13:44 every week for a lifetime none of it's
13:47 hard none of it costs money Adventists
13:48 also tend to hang out with other
13:50 Adventists so if you go to an Adventist
13:53 party you don't see people swelling Jim
13:56 Beam or rolling a joint instead they're
13:58 talking about their next nature walk
14:01 exchanging recipes and yes uh they pray
14:03 but they influence each other in
14:05 profound and measurable
14:08 ways this is a culture that has yielded
14:10 Ellsworth Wham Ellsworth Wham is 97
14:12 years old he's a
14:15 multi-millionaire yet when a contractor wanted
14:16 wanted
14:19 $6,000 to build a privacy fence he said
14:21 for that kind of money I'll do it myself
14:23 so for the next three days he was out
14:25 shoveling cement and Hauling poles
14:28 around and predictably perhaps on the
14:31 fourth day he ended up in the operating
14:35 room but not as the guy on the table the
14:38 guy uh doing open heart
14:42 surgery at 97 he still does 20 open hard
14:44 surgeries every
14:48 month Ed Rollins 103 years old now an
14:50 active Cowboy starts his morning with
14:52 the swim and on the weekends he likes to
14:55 put on the boards through all rooster
14:59 taals and then Marg toon U Marge is a
15:01 104 her grandson actually lives in the
15:03 Twin Cities here she starts her day with
15:06 lifting weights she rides her bicycle
15:08 and then she gets in a rot beer colored
15:11 1994 Cadillac Seville and tears down the
15:14 San Bernardino freeway where she still
15:16 volunteers for seven different
15:19 organizations I've been on 19 hardcore
15:21 Expeditions I'm probably the only person
15:23 you'll ever meet who rode his bicycle
15:25 across the Sahara Desert without
15:27 sunscreen uh but I'll tell you there was
15:30 no Adventure more ing than riding
15:32 shotgun with Mar
15:35 chatan a stranger is a friend I haven't
15:37 met yet you'd say to
15:40 me so what are the common denominators
15:42 in these in these three cultures what
15:45 are the things that they all do and we
15:48 managed to boil it down to nine in fact
15:50 we've done two more Blue Zone
15:52 Expeditions since this um and these
15:55 Comin nominators hold true and the first
15:59 one and I'm about to utter heresy here
16:02 none of them exercise at least the way
16:04 we think of exercise instead they set up
16:07 their lives so that they're constantly
16:10 nudged into physical activity these
16:12 100-year-old okan women are getting up
16:14 and down off the ground they sit on the
16:18 floor 30 or 40 times a day uh sardinians
16:20 live in vertical houses up and down the
16:22 stairs every trip to the store or to
16:24 church or to the friend's house
16:27 occasions a walk they don't have any
16:28 conveniences there's not a button to
16:30 push to do yard work or house work if
16:32 they want to mix up a cake they're doing
16:35 it by hand that's physical activity that
16:37 burns calories just as much is going on
16:39 the treadmill does when they do do
16:41 intentional physical activity it's
16:44 things they enjoy they tend to walk the
16:46 only proven way to Stave off cognitive
16:49 decline and they all tend to have a
16:52 garden they know how to set up their
16:53 life in the right way so they have the
16:55 right Outlook each of these cultures
16:58 take time to downshift the sardinians
16:59 pray the
17:01 seventh day Adventists pray the okan
17:03 have this ancestor veneration but when
17:05 you're in a hurry or stressed out that
17:06 trigger something called the
17:07 inflammatory response which is
17:09 associated with everything from
17:11 Alzheimer Alzheimer's disease to
17:14 cardiovascular disease when you slow
17:16 down for 15 minutes a day you turn that
17:18 inflammatory State into a more
17:21 anti-inflammatory State they have
17:24 vocabulary for sense of purpose iyy like
17:26 the owans you know the two most
17:27 dangerous years in your life are the
17:30 year you're born because of infant
17:33 mortality and the year you retire these
17:35 people know their sense of purpose and
17:37 they activate in their life that's worth
17:39 about seven years of extra life
17:41 expectancy there's no longevity diet
17:43 instead these people drink a little bit
17:45 every day not a hard sell to the American
17:46 American
17:48 population they tend to eat a
17:50 plant-based diet doesn't mean they don't
17:52 eat meat but lots of beans and nuts and
17:54 they have strategies to keep from
17:56 overeating little things that nudge them
17:58 uh away from the table at the right time
18:00 and and then the foundation of all this
18:02 is how they connect they put their
18:03 families first take care of their
18:06 children and their aging parents uh they
18:08 all tend to belong to a faith-based
18:10 community which is worth between four
18:13 and 14 extra years of life expectancy if
18:15 you do it four times a month and the
18:18 biggest thing here is they also belong
18:21 to the right tribe they were either born
18:24 into or they proactively surrounded
18:28 themselves with the right people we know
18:30 from the framing studies that if your
18:32 three best friends are obese there's a
18:34 50% better chance that you'll be
18:37 overweight so if you hang out with
18:38 unhealthy people that's going to have a
18:40 measurable impact over time instead if
18:44 your if your friend's idea of of
18:46 recreation is physical activity bowling
18:49 or playing hockey or biking or gardening
18:51 if your friends drink a little but not
18:53 too much and they eat right and they're
18:55 engaged and they're trusting and
18:57 trustworthy that is going to have the
18:59 biggest impact over time diets don't
19:01 work no diet in the history of the world
19:04 has ever worked for more than 2% of the
19:06 population exercise programs usually
19:08 start in January they're usually done by
19:11 October when it comes to longevity there
19:14 is no short-term fix in a pill or anything
19:15 anything
19:18 else but when you think about about it
19:21 your friends are long-term adventures
19:23 and therefore perhaps the most
19:25 significant thing you can do to add more
19:27 years to your life and Life to your
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