The Blue Zones (Lessons for Living Longer)

Dr. Cooper

Welcome to the latest episode of the Catalyst Health, Wellness, and Performance Coaching podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Bradford Cooper of the Catalyst Coaching Institute. And today we’re talking blue zones. Now you likely know the term. It represents a handful of areas around the world where people live the longest healthiest lives. And today, today we get the chance to hear from the person who discovered the blue zones and is the author of the best-selling book by the same name, Dan Buettner. Now on the coaching front, if you’re looking to pursue your certification as a health and wellness coach in the coming year, your first opportunity to get started is coming up January 23rd and 24th. This one does look like it’s going to fill early. So please don’t wait too long. If that’s a priority for you, all the details, CatalystCoachingInstitute.com or feel free to reach out to us anytime Results@catalystcoachinginstitute.com and we can chat about it. By the way, for those who are subscribers over at youtube.com/coaching channel, you know, we posted an early release of the video version of this interview over there last week, along with our feature video on the best books heading into 2021. If you’re not yet there, you can access the full library over a hundred videos again at youtube.com/coachingchannel. Now let’s listen in as blue zones author, Dan Buettner joins us on the latest episode of the Catalyst Health, Wellness, and Performance Coaching podcast. Well, Dan, welcome to the Catalyst Health Wellness and Performance Coaching podcast. It’s fantastic to have you join us today.

Dan Buettner

Great to be here.

Dr. Cooper

Now, first thing I looked at your background. You’ve got to be getting the cool award from your kids. I mean, explorer, national geographic fellow, award winning journalist, New York times bestselling author. You’ve done it all. Do your kids look at you and go, you know our Dad is actually kind of cool.

Dan Buettner

No, none of that stuff matters. Yeah.

Dr. Cooper

Uh, they’ll get it at some point. All right, let’s jump right in. We, we, we want to keep this pretty tight today with you. Your schedule is pretty time limited, but can you walk us through what blue zones mean? I think folks that have read your book, they know about your, your new book that’s coming out. We’ll talk about your wines a little bit, but can you, can you tell us a little bit about this concept of a blue zone?

Dan Buettner

It grew out of an idea from, uh, or an assignment from national geographic to a big project, actually to identify the areas around the world where people live statistically longest, and then, uh, in a sense reverse engineer longevity, only about 20% of how long you live is dictated by your genes. The other, the other 80% is something else. So the premise of the project was, well, if we can find places where people have achieved the longevity outcomes we want, which is essentially make it to mid nineties, mid nineties, without chronic disease, then I think we can find those places and find out what they’ve been doing the last hundred years. You get a pretty good idea of what, what might really work at helping the rest of us. Make sure, you know, our journeys are as long and healthy as possible.

Dr. Cooper

How many blue zones? Can you give us some examples of those?

Dan Buettner

There are five blue zones, longest women in the world are Okinawa longest of men and live in the Highlands of Sardinia, uh, in, in, uh, Greece. There’s an island where, uh, there people live about eight years longer on average, but they, uh, virtually no dementia, which is extraordinary. In the Western hemisphere and the Americas, the longest lived people live on the McCoy, peninsula, Costa Rica. They have the lowest rate of middle-age mortality, make it to a healthy age, 90 at a rate of two and a half times greater than we do in the United States spending 1/15th of what we do on healthcare. And then in the United States is among the seventh day Adventists concentrated in and around Loma Linda, California. And that’s a population that lives up to 10 years longer. And then, none of these places have extraordinary genes. They’re, they’re doing something that is yielding measurably, longer life. And my job with blue zones, all my blue zones book was to capture how they do it, what they eat and how to put, how to put their wisdom to work in our lives.

Dr. Cooper

And, and you’re saying, this is quality. This is not just quantity. You’re, you’re saying there’s no dementia in the one group that essentially, there is never no, but there’s essentially no dementia in the one group you talked about, this is higher quality of life, not just an additional six to 10 more years of, of quantity.

Dan Buettner

Yeah. So in other words, these aren’t people with superior bodies, their human machine is no better than yours or mine. They’re just eluding heart disease, diabetes, uh, several types of cancer, dementia. They’re not suffering these diseases because of the way they live. And that’s, that’s something everybody that’s listening right now has the capacity to do. They also achieve it, not by spending hours and hours in a gym or eating restrictive diets or taking regiments of pills and supplements and so forth. They’re, they’re, they’re achieving, uh, doing things that make the quality of life high. So they’re socially connected, six hours a day. They’re very clear on their sense of purpose. And they wake up every morning knowing why they’re on this earth and what their responsibility is to their families or communities and, and where to put their gifts to work. Or they tend to have very strong spiritual lives. Uh, they tend to have very strong families. Uh, they take time every day to downshift and reverse the inflammation that comes with the chronic worry and hurry and, and, uh, stress of most Americans lives. So, um, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a cluster of factors that we can all put to work, but they’re mutually supporting and they’re, they’re helping people manifestly live into their nineties and hundreds, largely free of disease.

Dr. Cooper

You just touched on about three or four of your power nine. I think that’s a great place to start to give some people some practical way, and then they can dig into your book if they want to go deeper. Can we just briefly hit on a, a definition or a high level view of each one of these and, and we can start wherever you’d like, I’ve got them right here in front of me, maybe with the move naturally, and then just working around clockwise through that?

Dan Buettner

Sure. So, you know, this is disruptive, but exercise and the way we think of exercise is that an unmitigated public health failure, uh, fewer than 15% of Americans get enough, quote, unquote exercise yet lo and behold, in the blue zones, people are fit into their nineties and hundreds with very low BMI. So you start asking yourself, well, are they doing burpees or going to CrossFit or going to yoga classes? And the answer is no, they live in places where every time they go to work or a friend’s house or out to eat at occasions, a walk, they have gardens in their yards. So they’re spending an hour or two every day with range of motion, low, low intensity physical activity, stress reducing in their gardens. And they haven’t riddled their homes with, uh, mechanical conveniences. So they’re still needing bread by hand doing yard work by hand housework, by hand lifting up their own garage doors, et cetera. So every 20 minutes or so, they’re experiencing a burst of physical activity, which adds up to a much greater caloric burn. Then, you know, going to the gym twice a week, which is really what people do. And they keep their metabolism running at a higher rate all week long, which burns a lot more calories than the folly of thinking we’re going to sit in our, our office chairs all day and make up for, for a half hour in the gym. And just our bodies just don’t work that way.

Dr. Cooper

Next one up is purpose. That sounds self-explanatory. But what do you mean by that as you go through your power nine?

Dan Buettner

Well, it’s getting very clear with yourself and I, I often think people ought to just write this down, but, but doing an inventory of what your values are, what you like to do, your passions, what you’re good at, and, you know, just like two word key phrases, uh, um, resolving disputes, first idea, fixing things, whatever it is, you know, making that list in each of those categories and then finding the commonalities. And if that’s not what your job is, that’s not what you show up to do to work at work. You want to make sure that you’re either volunteering or your hobby has given you an outlet for that purpose, because it’s very clear. The national institutes on aging did a landmark study finding that people, this is a retrospective study, but finding that people could articulate their sense of purpose, were living about eight years longer than people who are rudderless. So it is arguably more important than any supplement you can take or any Hocus Pocus diet you could sign on for, uh, just getting to know yourself and making sure there’s an outlet for those, for your gifts and passions every day.

Dr. Cooper

Wow. That’s huge. Thank you. All right. Next one up is downshift you, you touched on this as you were going through kind of the quick overview. This is a certain time of day. This is kind of a, let the breath out, or is it a different, different route?

Dan Buettner

It manifests differently in every culture. So the Okinawans have ancestor veneration where they’ll spend a few moments there. There’s always an ancestor shrine in the nicest room, and they’ll take some time to, to, um, give thanks to the people who came before them remind themselves for not just a point in time, but part of a continuum. The, um, Adventist pray morning, noon, and night, which is a form of meditation. The, uh, it kinda ends and the Costa Ricans take naps, which is a very effective way to downshift associated with about a third lower rates of heart disease. Uh, really, I mean, it’s a great way to catch up on sleep for most people and, you know, largely overlooked in our hurry, go, go, go culture. But I take a nap every day. And then, um, the advent, I mean the Sardinians, they just do happy hour, which is also a great way to carve out an hour at the end of the day, maybe have a glass of wine and get together with friends. And, um, you know, that a little bit of wine lowers cortisol levels and, um, helps unwind some of that stress. So, um, the sacred daily rituals are more important than we think instead of just motoring through the day and then exhaust flopping, uh, exhausted in, in your sofa for four hours of TV which a lot of people do.

Dr. Cooper

Uh, let’s skip ahead a couple, since you mentioned wine at five is one of the power nine. Talk to us about that a little bit.

Dan Buettner

Yeah. You know, I put that in there, first of all, all the blue zones, except maybe the Adventist are enjoying a little bit of their, their quote unquote wine of choice. You know, the Okinawans are drinking Saki, um, but certainly in the Mediterranean it’s red wine in, in, um, in Sardinia, it’s a blue zone wine, but, um, they, um, you know, there’s, there’s, it depends on what study you want to look at. But most studies show that people are drinking a couple glasses of wine a day, have lower rates of mortality. I put it in there because it gives people a reason to come together at the end of the day. It gives you some punctuation at the end of the day. So you really do slow down. And it’s certainly a lesson for the blue zone that, um, having a glass or two or something with friends, or even with a meal, you know, having a glass of really good quality red wine with a blue zone meal, which is to say whole food plant-based, um, you’re about quadrupling the, the, uh, the flavonoid absorption. So there’s actually an argument that drinking wine with a meal is better for you than water, but, you know, you’ve got to stop at two glasses.

Dr. Cooper

Don’t take that too far. Exactly. All right. 80% rule.

Dan Buettner

Stop eating. That’s that comes from the Confucian adage from Okinawa, which is in tone before meals, a reminder to quit eating when your stomach is 80% full. And, um, you know, it’s, it’s a, it’s a good idea. It’s, um, you know, we, we tend to often have 120% rule in America. Most of the time when we go out to eat, we’re overserved, there’s a number of strategies, people in blue zones, first of all, they don’t eat out a lot. Uh, secondly, they tend to eat with families, they tend to actually eat fewer calories and, um, higher quality. When you’re eating with family or friends, they have a huge breakfast medium-size lunch and small or no dinner. And, um, they tend to eat off of smaller plates. And there’s some evidence that when you’re, when you’re eating off of smaller plates, you also tend to consume fewer calories. So these are all blue zones ways to keep you from overeating.

Dr. Cooper

Absolutely. Okay, good. Uh, plant slant. I can take a guess at what that means. Probably tied to what we’re talking about with the eating side, but take us through that one.

Dan Buettner

I wrote a whole book, the blue zone solution, which, which, uh, hit the New York times bestselling list twice. Um, but from that I did a meta analysis. So meta analysis, sort of a worldwide average, all five blue zones, 155 dietary studies done over the past 100 years. If you want to know what a centenarian lived to be a hundred, you have to know what that person was eating as a child. And as a young adult and middle age and newly retired, you can’t just ask, what have you been eating like most, you know, these kind of BS accounts you read about in USA today or something. Um, but we did the hard work. It took three years. We did it with Harvard and it’s very clear that on average in blue zones, about 95% of their dietary intake comes from a whole plant based foods. So, um, flies right in the face of keto and paleo, they’re eating a very high carbohydrate diet. Now carbohydrate is a largely meaningless word because carbohydrates include unbelievably unhealthy things like, you know, jelly beans and lollipops and donuts and cookies. But it also includes regular beans, which are incredibly healthy and whole grains. And, um, in fact, if you look the five pillars of every blue zone diet in the world, it’s whole grains, wheat, rice, corn it’s it’s, um, greens and fruits, it’s tubers, uh, 70% of the dietary intake of Okinawa until about 1970 was, was purple, sweet potatoes, uh, nuts, that’s the go-to snack and then beans. And if you’re eating and about a cup of beans a day, it’s probably adding about four years to your life expectancy over eating meat or eggs or cheese, or any of the other things that we know is increase your chances of chronic disease.

Dr. Cooper

Wow. Wow. And you said I missed the percentage 80%, 70% whole plant-based, what was the number you?

Dan Buettner

Well, the 95% it’s whole plant-based food and the carbohydrate, uh, is 65%.

Dr. Cooper

Okay, perfect. Uh, right tribe, right tribe. What are we getting to there?

Dan Buettner

Well, if your three best friends are obese or overweight, there’s about 150% better chance that you’re going to be unhealthy yourself. I mean, when my grandmother used to say it was absolutely true, show me your friends, and I’ll tell your future. You’re hanging out with people where, you know, barbecue and bratwurst and are sitting around and, and drinking beer and watching TV, guess what you’re going to be doing. As opposed to, as we see in the blue zones, people curating a tribe of friends, four or five people. It’s often called a Moai of people whose idea of physical activity is playing tennis or, uh, gardening or, or walking, or, um, they’re, um, they care about you on a bad day, which is that’s the measure of a good friend, not a slap on the back, you know, exchange sports stories. And, um, it’s also not a bad idea to have a, a vegan or vegetarian in your immediate social network. And I mean, this is somebody you see every week, because every time you go to their house, that they’re going to have delicious plant-based food. So you’ll be introduced to it every time they come to your house, they’re going to expect you to learn how to make it. And when you go out to eat, you’re going to go to restaurants that have good plant based. There’s no better way to change your diet than make friends with a vegan. And I mean, a real vegan whole plant based, not this crappy processed vegan.

Dr. Cooper

Sure. I like it. That’s good. Excellent. Uh, loved ones first. We’ve got two left here on the power nine. Loved ones first.

Dan Buettner

Yeah. That’s um, well, I, I also had a family first, but people’s definition of family changes, but, uh, you keeping your aging parents nearby conveys two to six years of life expectancy to them, staying in a committed relationships worth about four extra years of life expectancy, as opposed to going it alone. And when you invest in your kids, they tend to invest in you later on. So you’re more likely to be taken care of when you’re old. Um, you know, if you take care of your kids when you’re young. So we see that very clearly in all blue zones, family is a much bigger priority than people’s individual pursuits, their job or sports, or, you know, whatever other selfish, um, endeavor that they, they might otherwise focus on.

Dr. Cooper

Okay. And then last one belong.

Dan Buettner

Yeah. So that’s, uh, belong to a faith. Um, I’m not a particularly religious person, but I, I could not ignore the fact that in all these blue zones, um, people showed up, you know, the faith is there. It doesn’t matter if you’re Muslim or Jewish or Christian or Buddhist, but it was very clear that people had a strong faith component and you can’t really measure spirituality and health, but you can measure religiosity. This has been rigorously measured. And it’s very clear that people who show up to church, temple or mosque are living four to 14 years longer than people who, you know, are just they don’t show up, or, you know, don’t have a religion. And we don’t know if that’s because church goers and temple goers and Moscow goers are, are, have a one day a week where they downshift and release releasing the gas, or they have a better social network, or they’re less likely to engage in risky behaviors or, you know, who knows, maybe there is a God and God smiles favorably on those people who show up. I don’t know, but it’s very clear in the data they’re living longer.

Dr. Cooper

Interesting. Very interesting. All right. What were some of the things that surprised you most as you dug into this and you came out of it going, what?

Dan Buettner

The biggest surprise was that people in blue zones have no better discipline. Remember these people, no obesity, almost no diabetes, living healthy into their nineties. Uh, not one of them has an outsized sense of individual response. No, none of them are quote unquote, taking responsibility for their health, or none of them have outside discipline. None of them have a program. None of them measure their food or buy books or call 800 numbers and buy supplements. The biggest surprise was that, and this is 180 degrees counter to the way we look at it in America. When you think of getting healthier in America, you think of a proactive strategy. I’m going to find a program. I’m going to join an eating program, an exercise program, the nutrition regimen, and I’m going to stick to it. And the reality is, uh, fewer than single digit percentage, people actually stick to a diet or stick to an exercise program for more than a year or two. So really doesn’t work in the long run. So we pursue health and it fails for almost all the people all the time. In blue zones in a way, health pursues, them, uh, health ensues from living in the right environment. And that’s the big aha. The people in blue zones, their only advantage is they live in places where a whole plant-based foods are cheapest and most accessible, and they have recipes to make them taste good. The option to be lonely, which cuts about eight years off your life expectancy doesn’t exist because they’re living in places where, um, you know, they’re expected to show up to church or show up to the village festivals, or just show up. You just, if you implode into your house for more than a day, somebody is going to be knocking, trying to get you to come. Um, there’s vocabulary for purpose. So it’s, so it comes with mother’s milk. And, you know, like I said, their towns are set up, so they have to move naturally all day long. So their exercise, diet, social determinants of health, all flow from living in the right place. And what most of my work over the past 10 years has been organizing these blue zone projects where insurance companies hire me, hire my team. We have about 200 employees that go into cities and help cities shape their surroundings, their political environment, food environment, work, school environment. So that the healthy choice comprehensively is the easy choice. And as measured, we’ve seen this occasions, sometimes double digit drops and the obesity rate of people report much higher levels of happiness. And in one city we know, um, Fort worth, Texas, they’re reporting a quarter of a billion dollars a year in healthcare savings because of the blue zone project. And that was the biggest surprise from doing this work.

Dr. Cooper

Wow, tremendous. Now you talk about the blue zones of happiness. So a little bit of a shift here, overlapped, obviously, what are some of the myths on that front that can help us as we look at our own lives and think about, well, am I happy? What does this look like? Maybe I’m doing things wrong. Maybe I’m focused on the wrong things. Talk us through that a little bit.

Dan Buettner

Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s another conversation that was another 10 years work, but uh, why don’t I just tell you one thing here, I’ll say that two things if you want to get happier, a hard one and an easy one. If happiness were a cake recipe, and you know, you, you know, you need food and shelter and healthcare and education, and you want satisfying work and a way to give back and you want to have a good partner in life. But the variable with the most variability is, um, where do you live? And in other words, if you’re unhappy and want to get happier, the statistically, most powerful thing you can do is move to a happier place. And we see this with people from Moldavia, which is a former Soviet block country. Not very happy there when they moved to Copenhagen, which is a happy place, and nothing else changes about these people, their, their sex doesn’t change their age, doesn’t change much their education level, their interests, their religion, their sexual orientation, but yet when they moved to Copenhagen, they experiencing about, a doubling of happiness. Um, and there’s nothing else out there that has that powerful effect. We also see it with African immigrants moving to Canada, which is another happy country. But then the most important thing people can do, especially around COVID, you know, we evolved to be social creatures. And it’s very clear that the happiest people are socializing, uh, six to seven hours a day. Face-to-face uh, before COVID, I, I used to say, it’s gotta be in person, but now I’m a big believer in doing what we’re doing right now on zoom. This ability to see, I can see your facial expressions. I see you nodding your head, in, in, in understanding consent. And I mean, you can do that with people. So, uh, the more, even if you’re an introvert, introverts are actually happier around people than they are alone, just for less time than extroverts are. So trying to get as many hours of social interaction in your life is, is I would say the, probably the best thing we can do, uh, as a quick fix.

Dr. Cooper

Speaking of where we live, folks watching this on the YouTube coaching channel are seeing your background and they’re drooling a little bit. What, where, where are you? Where, where do you live?

Dan Buettner

This is, yeah, this is what I’m looking at, right?

Dr. Cooper

Ah, you poor guy. He’s suffering folks. He’s really suffering.

Dan Buettner

No, it’s, I’m living in Miami these days. I talk walks around here, I go swimming in the ocean every day. I know my neighbors. And you know, I can stay away from COVID.

Dr. Cooper

Last question, and then I want to talk about your book and how people can keep track of you. On a personal level, which of these are most challenging for you as you look at this power nine, and you’re out there talking about it all the time and writing about it. You’re still a human being. You still have your stuff that maybe this one’s not as easy as that one. Where, where are you challenged the most in these?

Dan Buettner

None of them challenged me, because I don’t think, the way I think about it is this is a behavior I have changed. The way to think about it as shaping your surroundings. So if you make the right friends, you put effort into getting a few healthy friends in your communities. You don’t have to think about it anymore. You know, I have I’ll show you right now. I mean, this is, this is my, I got one of these, um, InstaPot’s. There’s my Sardinian minestrone I’m going to make that, uh, this is for, uh, this is for the next week I make in one day. So it’s, it takes me 10 minutes to make that pot of minestrone. I have a recipe from my book and it’s delicious. So I know I like it. I don’t have to think about it anymore. Most of the time I live near my family. So I don’t have to, it’s not hard for me to put them first. So, so here’s the bottom line. The bottom line is if you want to live longer and be healthier, don’t try to change your behavior because you’ll fail. 97% chance you’re going to fail because there’s no short-term fix. When it comes to longevity, there’s no pill. There’s no supplement. There is no quick diet that you could do today, or for the next year that’s going to add years to your life in 60 or 70 years when you’re getting ready to die. The only thing that works is when you do something for decades, so doing the right thing and avoiding the wrong thing for long enough. And the key to that is shaping your surrounding setting up your kitchen. So it’s easy to eat healthy food and places where junk food would normally live, that are out of the way. Setting up your house so it’s spread out over three floors and it’s not, everything is a push of a button that you actually have to move, setting up your social network, thinking about where you live. This is what works. It’s counterintuitive. I can’t make a bunch of money off of it. So you don’t hear it from marketers because nobody can make money off of this, but, but we’ve seen it work in, in the blue zones. And we’ve seen it work in, in, in these blue zone project cities that we manufactured don’t change behavior, change surroundings.

Dr. Cooper

Beautiful. Beautiful. All right. So how do people keep track of you? And real quick, I want to mention, you’ve got the blue zone wines. I want you to mention something about that. That’s gotta be intriguing to people and you’ve got a new book coming out. Let us know the details on that as well.

Dan Buettner

Yes. So, uh, blue zones kitchen, uh, it’s a, from national geographic gorgeous photography, a hundred recipes to live to a hundred. Number one, New York times bestseller. And I always stay that not to brag, but I know people are more likely to read a book when they know it’s been there. And then, um, I spent five years, so we found a wine in Sardinia, uh, continental wine, one of our blue zones, uh, that has three times the level of antioxidants to any known wine in the world. And it’s rich, it’s deep red, Garnet red. They call it Vino narrow. Uh, it’s delicious. We got a 93 rating on it. If you Google blue zones wine or come to DanBuettner.com, um, there you can, you can order it there. It’s a great Christmas gift. We package it with, with the book. And, um, you know, if anybody has any direct questions, if you direct message me on Instagram at Dan Buettner, I personally answer all of those questions and would love for people to follow me there. And, um, I tried to put up some new dollop wisdom every day.

Dr. Cooper

Love it. Dan, really appreciate it. Your schedule is packed even in the midst of everything going on right now. Thanks for making the time today.

Dan Buettner

I really appreciate it. I enjoyed talking and good luck with everything and Merry Christmas. And in, in Sardinia, what people say to each other when they pass each other in the street means I’ll see you when you’re a hundred.

Dr. Cooper

Beautiful. I love it. Thanks. Take care, Dan. So interesting. I love what he mentioned about, there’s no secret elixir in these blue zones. It’s a matter of making the best choices, the easy choices and the way they’ve done that as communities, it reminds me of the guidance, some of our other guests like Dr. Wendy Wood, you heard earlier this year and actually one that’s upcoming with Dr. BJ Fogg is powerful stuff. And it’s really a big key that we’re finding a lot more out about. Thank you so much for tuning in to the number one podcast for health and wellness coaching. Next week’s a little bit different. I’m going to be taking you through the steps of dialing in your own powerful, personal vision for the coming year. Last year, we did this and it became one of our most popular of all time. So there was no question about whether we should do it again this year, it’s fresh brand new. I’ll be walking you through the process I go through every year to create my own personal vision. I’ve been doing it about 10 years now. Really a fun, powerful process, and I’ll walk you through all that next week. Now it’s time to be a catalyst on this journey of life. The chance to make a positive difference in the world while simultaneously improving our own lives, which is the essence of being a catalyst. By the way, some exciting news about that phrase, be a catalyst. You can now share that message with the world. We’ll include a link to a description to access anything you’re looking for, shirts, hoodies, stickers, that kind of stuff. This is not intended to be a revenue stream for us. I want to emphasize that is part of our mission. So for the foreseeable future, 100%, 100% of all profits to go from any of those sales, will go to charity. This is Dr. Bradford Cooper of the Catalyst Coaching Institute. Make it a great rest of your week. And I’ll speak with you soon on the next episode of the Catalyst Health, Wellness, and Performance Coaching podcast, or maybe over on the YouTube coaching channel