The mistake we make with health in this country and the United States is we pursue Health. The reality is Health in Sue's longevity in zoos from the right
environment. Hi, my name is wangan Chastity GP, television presenter and author of the best-selling books, the stress solution and the four pillar plan. I believe that all of us have the ability to feel better than we currently do with guessing healthy has become far too, complicated.
Gated with this podcast, I aim to simplify it. I'm going to be having conversations with some of the most interesting and exciting people both within, as well as outside the health space. So, hopefully inspire you as well as Empower you with simple tips that you can put into practice immediately to transform the way that you feel. I believe that when we are healthier, we are happier because when we feel better, we live more, hello and welcome to episode 67 of my
Feel better live, more podcasts. My name is wrong and Chastity. And I am your host. What is the secret to a long and happy life? That is a topic up for discussion on this week's podcast. You see living a long and healthy life does not occur by accidents. It begins with good genes, but it also depends on good habits. If you adopt the right lifestyle experts say chances. Are you may live up to a decade longer? So what is that formula?
For Success. Well today's guest is National Geographic, Explorer and best-selling author. Dan buettner. Dan has led teams of researchers across the globe to uncover the secrets of blue zones, areas around the world were high. Percentages of centenarians are enjoying, remarkably long, full and happy lives. Like last week's guest the endurance athletes Killian Jean, a either pleasure have been invited to speak at a special Google events in London recently. Where down
Was also a speaker and was absolutely delighted when he agreed to be a guest on my show in this week's episode. I talk with Dan about his adventures in the blue zones and discuss what we can all learn from his findings. Dan found commonalities amongst each of these blue zones, which led to a formula for Success, that includes the lifestyle community and purpose. We also discussed Downs, blue zones, projects, a Health and Longevity initiative. That models.
The principles of communities around the world that have the longest living people and applies them to other cities and communities. The results have been staggering. Finally Dan explains how the findings of his research has changed his own lifestyle and shares, his top tips for living a long and happy life. This is a fascinating conversation. I hope you enjoy it. Now, before we get started. I do need to give a quick shout out to the sponsors of today's episode who are essential in order.
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You can check it out at athletic greens.com /live more now onto today's conversation sedan. Welcome to the feel better live more
podcast, but it's an honor to be here and serendipitously
serendipitously. Absolutely.
I like the universe, brought us together. It
feels that way, doesn't it? Because I what I want. I saw your name on the list for this event. We rats. I thought I've got to get some time with you. To speak to you been reading your work for years. So, thanks.
All the books that you have written a lot of great useful content and that. But Dan, for a lot of people listening to this who may not know, you know about your life, your history, your career. I want, if you could give a quick overview of how you started off, I think as an Explorer and became one of the world's maybe leading voices on longevity,
when you were doing useful and productive things after college, I bicycle from Alaska to Argentina set a Guinness.
Record a second Guinness record for biking around the world and then a third record for biking across Africa from from bizerte Tunisia. All the way to the southern tip and that really led to a career with National Geographic. It comes through, I guess you could call boot camp for National Geographic and for about six years. I let a series of expeditions that sought to unravel, unravel, great Mysteries. Why the Maya civilization collapsed De Marco Polo? Go to China, and the idea behind them was to actually let an
an online audience, direct a team of explorers to solve a mystery rather than the Explorer going and making discoveries and Reporting what he or she found the idea was to democratize it a little bit and let an online audience decide where the Explorer goals and then synthesize those Clues there by harnessing, the wisdom of the crowd. And one of those Mysteries we came across in the year, two thousand tiny cluster violence about 1,500.
South of Tokyo, the islands of Okinawa did a hundred and sixty. One of these islands, you find the longest live population in the history of the earth. And I thought, aha. Now there's a good mystery. How do you how do these Islanders? You know with no great technology with no great access to top-of-the-line medicine. How are they living? So long and avoiding disease and that really launched me into blue zones, which is what I do now.
Yeah, well the word blue zones is is well known all across world. I've written about the blue zones and both of my books which are all based upon the research that you put out there. And I guess the starting point for me is a lot of those that research on the blue zones. It's absolutely fascinating to look at that combination of factors that exist that actually push people towards, you know long but also healthy lives do blues and still
Exist today or has modern living, permeated them and change longevity in
them. I would say, the blue zones are disappearing there. The elements that produce long life are still visible in most of them, if not all of them, but the phenomena is disappearing, along with the American food culture along with modernization as mechanical conveniences, push, physical activity out of everybody's lives, but maybe be useful.
To describe. What a blue zone is. So, the idea originally was to, in a sense reverse-engineer longevity. So, rather than looking for longer life in a Petri dish or a test tube, we had the idea. I guess I had the idea to identify the populations around the world where people are living manifestly longest and then, so once you find that your, you have thousands and sometimes millions of people that
Avoiding heart disease, and cancer, and diabetes, and obesity and dementia. The diseases that are killing us today. And then I brought another team of experts after identified these place. And by the way, it took me three years to find the five blue zones, then we brought another team of experts to identify. What's correlating. What are the common denominators? And all five of these places that is producing manifestly the health that the rest of us
want. So these are, you know, these are
Real world results rather than, you know, hypothesizing about what might be going on. You actually went into these areas and study them heavily to find out, actually, in real life. What is going
on? Yeah. So the first, the first job is to make sure people are as old, as they say they are. There's been a lot of misinformation about longevity. The vilcabamba valley of Ecuador, the hunza valley of Pakistan, the caucuses and Soviet Georgia. These all were rumored to be longevity in and
He case, people didn't either know how old they were because they didn't have birth certificates or they were lying about their age. So our first job was to work with demographers. Who could look at birth certificates from a hundred years ago and follow those births for a century. Correct for immigration emigration to make sure you have people living a long
time. Very complex, really lot of complex statistics for man.
Yeah, and you have immigration, people come into countries, people lose, leave country. For example,
the the highest percentage of centenarians in America is in a re in a county called lock caparo in Minnesota where I'm from. But if you go to that Kony you discover why there's so many hundred year olds is because all the young people have left. So you naturally have a higher proportion of really old people so we had to correct for that. It was a big job. It took three years and thank you National Geographic. They fund it. This work. There'd be no blue zones. It wasn't for National
Geographic. It's fascinating for me.
As someone who has looked at the blue zones research that you put out of that and just thinking back. Now that actually at some point that that term that concept didn't exist. Obviously, there's blue zones were out there, but nobody has studied them. Nobody had, you know coined a term for them and you you went to Okinawa and you thought this is pretty interesting. So can we say that was the first Blue Zone that you came across?
Okinawa was first identified as a longevity hotspot by a dr. Suzuki who started work in 1960 and followed up by Craig and Bradley Wilcox. I think that was the first area and World Health Organization recognized it as such and then the second one to come online was what. So I done an expedition there and I got this idea if there are is Extreme. Longevity in Asia, there must be extreme longevity in Europe and maybe
America and maybe the United States. So, I figured, if I could find the Pinnacle or the summit of longevity, and each of these continents, and find the common denominators. So, the longest of women in the world have been Okinawa. The longest-lived men live in the highlands of Sardinia, an area called the Norrell Province, six Villages, 40,000 people. And you have about 8 to 10 times more male centenarians there than you would expect to see in London, for example,
and do we know why that's not difference between male longevity and female longevity? I
can only
Hypothesize. Okay. So in Okinawa, for example, women have much stronger, social networks than men do men tend to be solo and women form these and stick with these social constructs known as the moai. So it's so they support each other. Not only literally, but figuratively, they take care of each other. Men have a higher suicide rate. In Okinawa in Sardinia. Most of the Mediterranean, is a sort of paternal culture. The dad sits at the head of the table.
Sort of pounds his fist and says this is how our family's going to live in Sardinia to the woman. The women are the heads of the household and while that confers a certain amount of authority. It also confers stress. So they're the ones worrying about the kids. They're worried about the Leaky Roof. There, weren't worried about the finances. Meanwhile, the traditional male centenarian in the Blue Zone. The men reached a hundred are Shepherds. They have low intensity, physical activity and Great Britain here.
Or everyone male centenarian. There are five female centenarians in Sardinia that proportion is 121. So it may just be that the women in Sardinia are taking the load off the men and allowing them to to succeed better in the longevity department
is so fascinating about. So just think about that. You know, who's at the head of the table who's making the decisions and how that might potentially be factoring into sort of that chronic life stress, you know, day after day week after week month
after I die.
This really good, London Doctor, Who wrote a book about stress. It's a maze is called the stress solution. You should read it
because you should consult with him one day. Yeah, you mentioned my wife friendship. And, and yeah, I've got a section in the stress. They should called my wine mates about this whole idea of friendship and couplings want to pick up on, you know, it when I first got, you know, when I first came across the blue zones, I remember thinking
You know, what's the diet? What's going on there? As maybe many people do, but it's become quite clear, hasn't it? But there are multiple factors and you mentioned to already stress and you also mentioned strong, social networks. And I wonder if you could just sort of expand on those two. And how important do you think those two areas are for longevity?
So if you don't have at least three good friends, you can count on a bad day, people with whom you can have a meaningful conversation your life.
Expectant sees about eight years lower than if you have four or five good mates who you can borrow money from, who you who, who are there when times are tough as he. It's always easy to find friends if you're buying the beer but it's a lot harder when you're depressed or your justifiably mad about something. So those that those I argue in the Blue Zone, the one most Dependable thing you can do.
To add years to your life, is to curate, a circle friends, four or five friends, who are you can count on. But that also means you have to be willing to be counted on, on their bad days. People whose idea of recreation is walking or golfing or playing? Tennis people quite honestly to plant based diet, vegetate should have one or two vegetarians in your immediate Social Network and and and
People who will keep your mind challenge. The thing is, we live in this world where we're always looking for the quick, fix the magic diet, the 30-day diet to a hundred or some supplement that is going to make you live long. It doesn't exist. It's not even on the scientific Horizon. The only thing things that work for longevity are things that help you do the right things and avoid the wrong things.
For decades, so you don't develop a chronic disease. Yeah, and I should make it clear. My branch of longevity is not about extending the limit of the human body. Which on average is about 93, by the way, it is about avoiding the diseases that for shorten our lives. So as you know, about 85% of the diseases that most of us are grappling with are avoidable. Yeah, if we do the right,
Things. So the essence of what I'd done, I did in Blue zone is figure out how these measurable verifiable. Populations have avoided these diseases that make our lives crappy and that for shorten
them. Yeah. So many things said to follow up that, I guess one thing we should cover you mentioned eating more plants. And from what I understand of the blue zones. I mean for me the commonality appears to be that it's
It's all of their diet supposed to be minimally processed. That they're sort of whole food diets, but they do appear to be some blue zones, which from what I know eat meat and some eat more meat than others, but they're having a lot of vegetables and plants as well. You've obviously been there and studied them. Is it true that in some of these blue zones, a teasing, a little bit of meat. So
I did a deep dive. My book is a Blue Zone solution and we did what's called a meta-analysis. So, if you want to know what, a centenarian eight to live to be,
You want to know what people ate and blue zones to live a long time. You can't go there today and look around. I mean Sardinia right now with the they'll start their day with a or the meal, they'll start their meal with prosciutto and then it'll go to the lamb and then they'll have a pork chop and then they'll be battling with prosciutto on it from its that's not the way they've eaten. If you want, we want to know what a centenarian Aid to live to be a hundred. You have to know what he or she was eating when they were 4 and 24 and 40, Ford 64.
So we went in and we found dietary surveys done over the past hundred years and all five blue zones and I should say the blue zones are Okinawa, Japan Sardinia Italy, it Cuddy, a grease nicoya, peninsula of Costa Rica and Among The Seventh-Day Adventist. So we have five places that produce longevity. And if you look at what they've eaten over the last hundred years and you average it out. You see, first of all, as you pointed out, minimally processed 92
5% of their dietary intake comes from Plants. It's a very high carbohydrate diet. It flies right in the face of Quito or paleo. Neither of which I believe in, by the way, but they're eating mostly complex carbohydrates and the rest is fats and proteins. The the five pillars of every longevity diet in the world and it took me eight years to tell you what, I'm going to tell you right now, whole grains corn wheat.
Rice nuts of all kinds tubers, which include sweet potatoes and like the Okinawan emo greens. Some of these blue zones. They're eating 80 or 90 different kinds of greens. The kind of stuff we would weed. Whack from our backyard. They're making beautiful salad sand pies with them. And then I argued the Cornerstone of every longevity diet in the world is beans great source of protein, great source of fiber.
Brr, we don't know how to make beans taste good in our country. And from what I've tasted in London here, you know, there's room for improvement as well. And they and they know how to make bean sing. The beautiful experience to with fennel and extra virgin olive oil, and beautiful red onions or Sardinian minestrone with five different beans and vegetables
that there's something in that. Isn't that a bit? But
this is a perception with so much a society that healthy eating is boring, and it's a bland salads. And I guess what you're saying is in these blue zones that they're eating healthy food, but they're making it taste good as well.
The you hit the point right on the head. The most important ingredient when it comes to a longevity. Diet is taste. I could tell you with some evidence that the healthiest foods in the world are tumeric. Bitter melon also known as Goya.
Or sweet potatoes purple sweet potatoes or fermented me. So, but if you don't like those Foods, you're not going to eat them. So it doesn't matter because remember when it comes to longevity, have to do it for decades or a lifetime. If I make for you a beautiful minestrone with borrowing and five beans and tomato and maybe just a little bit of pecorino cheese on the top and you love it. You might eat it every week and and there's when the longevity
Power comes into
it. Do you mentioned low-carbon keeps out and just really old, keep sorry, paleo and key. So, yeah, and it is there an argument in your opinion, that's studying the blue zones. Studying people who have been, you know, for the last one of the last century, really hit me doing a lot of things right, day in day out. That's a very different Society from how, let's see here, where, you know, not far from, from London at the moment, having this conversation.
People, here are living a sedentary lives that teasing out, huge proportion of the week. They're eating processed, highly processed foods, their sleep deprived. They are overly stressed. There's a real, you know, loneliness is on the rise here in the UK and in other countries around the world, so do it's, you know, I want to, I guess what I'm getting at, we have a profoundly sick Society here and therefore,
Or.
To the blues and principles work beautifully. Well, if you sort of do that from birth, and you actually are living that sort of active low stress, strong sense of community, sort of Life. What happens when you're let's say 50 years old here and you're overweight and your insulin resistant. You've got type 2 diabetes. Let's say and because this is where a lot of the a lot of people are getting huge benefit from something like a you know,
Low carbohydrate diet. Let's say, for example, so do you understand what I'm getting at? Is there a clash there at all between how to fix somebody who is metabolically? Broken versus someone who grows up in that sort of healthy Society from birth.
Well, I think if you're sick in England
and fat and and suffering
from a chronic disease is probably not your
fault. Yeah, we're
degree. So in so this is where this is where I diverge from most other sort of Health. Gurus. Most health. Gurus will say you need to get on a diet you need to develop the routine and the discipline and the individual response, but you did you need to take responsibility for your health.
And I say that's all bullshit because America, and in England, America are pretty parallel on this in the 1980s. There was one-third the rate of obesity and 1/7 the rate of diabetes and there is now now, is that because in the 1980s, people had more individual responsibility or more discipline and they had better diets. Know what's happened is our environment has changed in every one of these blue zones. People are
Been a long time in stains sharp until the very end, not because they have better discipline, not because they're better people in US, longevity happened to them. They didn't wake up one day and when there are 50 and say, well, gosh darn it. I'm going to get on that, longevity, die and live. Another 50 years. The mistake we make with health in this country and the United States is we pursue Health. The reality is Health in Sue's longevity in zoos from the right environment.
Aunt. So in blue zones, for example, they eat mostly a plant-based diet because the cheapest most accessible foods are beans nuts, whole grains greens and tubers. They have time-honored recipes to make those delicious. Their kitchens are set up so they can make it fast. And they have rituals around these foods that it figures into their quotidian diet, not necessary the celebratory celebratory. They're going to will kill a pig or goat and pig out but the day-to-day
Is going to be these very simple peasant foods to taste delightful the option to recede into your home and into your device is doesn't exist. They live in places where if you don't show up to the Village Festival, if you don't show up to church temple or Moss, somebody can be pounding on your door saying where are you? You can't. We just mentioned before that loneliness. There is vocabulary for purpose. You're probably right the about this in the stress solution, but people
Who are rudderless in the world? They don't know why they woke up. They don't know how they fit in. They don't know why their lives matter. It is very hard to navigate a world when you don't feel like you're needed in blue zones, you the purpose comes with mother's milk. There's ikigai in Okinawa, plan de Vida in the nicoya peninsula, people know their sense of purpose, live their sense of purpose and they have a Rudder to get through every single days. And that eliminates not only the existential stress of, do I matter?
But it also makes day-to-day decisions really easy that we were you don't stress over me, you know, what's right? And you know, what's wrong. So these are all my point, the environmental factor and to get to get back to your question. If you want to make a healthier country. Here, you do. Well - if the focus from trying to change individual behaviors. How many people live in this country now?
Well in the UK, maybe I think 66 million, I think.
Okay, so you're a very
Effective doctor. I know you've been on TV. How many lives do you think that you impact it for? The long run? They're going to be healthier because of you for the long run on a, your patience. I mean, the
people people, I see in my practice. Yeah. Well, I mean, this is actually one of the reasons why I did the TV shows because we could scale exactly. Because I realized that, you know, I sat there one day in my clinic and I looked at my whole list.
People had seen, I think it was maybe 40 or 46 people in a day. I saw that day and I went through the list and I thought how many people have you really helped today?
And I thought, honestly there's about 20% of people. I think I've really helps in the other 80%. I don't feel, I've done much for, I feel I put a sticking plaster on their problem, maybe giving them a pill for to suppress a symptom, but get to the root cause of the problem that I didn't really feel I done much and I thought and over the last two years. I realized that about 80% of what I see as a doctor in my practice is a some way related to our Collective modern Lifestyles. And so, when the opportunity came up to, you know, make
My to sort of series of doctor in the House TV shows, which went around the world's. I thought I remember, when I signed up to it, when I got chosen to do, and when I before I agree to do the whole series, I'm sat down with my wife and I was discussing this, I thought this is a really big opportunity but also huge amount of exposure and I thought is this what we want as a family, you know, to have that level of exposure and I thought well, we're told that about five million people are going to watch the show each week and I thought
I thought, if one percent of people who watch the show each week, make a change. You know, how much is that? I'm but sleep-deprived today, maybe 10,000. No 5050, 5050, 50 thousand. People. I thought God. Well I can I can maybe in with one show. Helped 50,000 people. So sorry. It's come back to your original question. I don't feel I was helping that many people in my practice. I think we can help more if doctors get a new way of being trained. But ultimately I think as you are.
So I'm sure is that we have overestimated, willpower and determination and we've underplayed Shane do the role of the environment. Yes.
So even if you were 100% successful for the long run with your five million viewers of getting them to change for decades, you're still only talking about fewer than 10% of the people in this country. So it is delusional. You know, I you see these finger-wagging politicians that say, it's your individual responsibility to take charge of your health.
Both know you you can't. So in Middle America Where I Come From, You can tell a single mother. You have to feed your child healthy food. Stay away from the fast food restaurants and the pizzas and the chips and the sodas and then you Unleash Your into town. And there's no restaurants where you can get a good plant based food 98 out of 99 decisions, 98 out of a hundred food decisions that she will be confronted with will be bad, will be some junk food or some
Fast food or some chips. So less we ship the focus from trying to change individual Behavior to modifying the environments. We live in. We're not going to see the major health improvements that that everybody wants, and that we see in blue zones.
And what's really interesting about that, is that, that's what you have started to do, right? You have taken your research from these five Pockets. The, these populations around the world and you are trying
Trying to bring those blues and principles into helping cities in America, change their environments. It's
actually working. I started my
first this is probably the most interesting thing for me because it's all very well. People will be listening. Oh, that's great. But you know what, they their them active every day. They're doing this. They've got all these Community. If I don't show up, someone comes and knocks on my door and people might be listening thinking, you know what, that's not a world that I can live in but you're trying to show that maybe we can.
Is an environment where that can happen, right?
And it and we, we can do, it 2009. I was given one small City, overtly Minnesota. It was Middle America. They were obese, heavy smokers. And I brought a team in the team had three different squads. One Squad worked with city government and we brought in menus of food policy. So if you live in a city,
We were chip sodas pizzas and burgers are cheapest. And most accessible, you're going to have much more obesity than a city where fruits and vegetables are cheaper and more accessible. That's mostly driven by policy. By the way, but business is part of it. So, for example, if you live in a neighborhood where there are more than six fast food restaurants within a half, a kilometer of your home, your about 40% more, likely to be obese than you are. If you live in a neighborhood where there are fewer than three fast food.
So, rather than me, going to the neighborhood knocking on every door and trying to convince every individual in that neighborhood to change their diet. If I can convince city council to just only allow for three fast food restaurants in this half of half a kilometer radius. I'll drive down obesity by 30% way, cheaper and more effective. If you live in a neighborhood where there are Billboards, is that what you call them here Billboards? Billboard Billboards that advertise junk food that neighborhood has a BMI or obese obese.
GR8 about 10% higher than the same neighborhood were there? No Billboards allowed. So I will try to convince city council to get rid of the Billboards to pass an ordinance to get rid of the. So we have 30 ordinances like that and we don't tell the city you don't you don't have to do any of them. But we say if you want us to help you will help your city. Get consensus are what will work best here and then you pick what's most effective and most feasible will help you get it implemented. We do the same thing with
Built environment. So if you live in a neighborhood where there's a bike Lanes in your streets, there are sidewalks. There's public transportation and parks are clean the physical activity. Level of that whole neighborhood is 20 to 30 percent higher. Just just, because that it poses walkable because you can walk to the cafe, you can walk to the store. You can walk to your friends out, by the way, in blue zones. Nobody's running triathlons. Nobody is.
An iron or doing CrossFit or any of that. Crap that we do to try to get healthier. They're keeping their metabolisms, running at a higher rate all day long because their bodies in constant motion, they're not sitting in their office for eight hours a day and then driving home and then watching four hours of TV
is that because their lives are a little bit inconvenient in some way. That's right. Yeah, and that is, that not - so many problems but is not the root of the root of the root that there's maybe that Modern Life.
Is just too damn
easy. Yeah, I think we're a little bit too obsessed with comfort and much of the things that we get.
That's gratifying to us, is the result of putting forth a little bit of effort. And I think that's true in our day-to-day day-to-day living in blue zones. Their houses aren't full mechanical convenience. There's not a button to push for housework, and another button. Push for yard work and another button to push for kitchen work, there needing that bread by hand, you know, which could take a half hour. They're grinding their corn. I like to think of it in terms of nudges and defaults there. Gently mindless.
He nudged into movement every 20 minutes or so, and they don't mind it. It's, it doesn't feel like they're getting up to go do a workout. They're just living their life, but they're not judged at, they're lifting up their own garage door. They're going out in the garden and picking the weeds. They are walking to their friend's house and they don't then I don't think about it exercise, but it is exercised, it burns calories and it keeps their metabolisms higher all day long. And that's the what we have to start thinking about. I think, if we want to get to a healthier,
Country in these Blue Zone. Well, and these cities in these neighborhoods in the United States where you are trying to bring in these Blue Zone. Environmental Concepts. What's happening are people getting more active. Are they getting tighter communities? Are they getting healthier? What's going
on? So remember I said, there are three squads, one Squad optimizes policy, and we get the mayor and the city manager, and the City Council on Board. Second Squad, administers the Blue Zone, sir.
Vacation, for restaurants, grocery stores, workplaces and schools, and faith-based organizations, and our team can usually get about thirty percent of all those places certified. That means those environments are 30% healthier, people are nudged into moving more in these workplaces and schools to eating last to eating more plant-based to knowing their sense of purpose of living their purpose. And then a third Squad Works to get 15% of the population. There's some Tipping Point Theory at 50. If you get 15% of the population to do something that's
It spreads to take a Blue Zone pledged to join them away. We actually manufacture moais, these committed social networks around walking and plant-based potlucks.
How many moai friends do you think you've
got five? Five? Yeah, series, friends,
but same as me and I know it's a slight tangent from what we're talking about. But I think it's so fascinating that you know, technology this world of Facebook and Instagram where we have phaedo and Facebook, we might have, I think the average user has maybe five six.
Hundred friends. Yeah, and this whole but moais are something different. Are they, they're really that tight group, but you can rely on when you're down in the dumps. That's for them. Yeah, so and it seems to be I ask people like because it's interesting how many you have and think about I'm honest it's probably five as well.
Yeah. I mean I have friends who, you know, will run a lot more friends on call and
go out and have a beer with her. Something sure bike
ride, but people who would you know, a sustained stretch a bad luck. If they'd still be around. I'd say it's five.
So sorry, sorry, but
so, so, by the way, it's not easy, when we're now doing this in 35 cities, and in every city, we worked in, we've seen the BMI or the obesity rate drop a single or double digits. And that's really the, that's the, that's the marker of diseases, most
incredible, that just by changing the environment, you are getting these sort of results, almost, without trying, of course. There's a lot of work going about going on behind it, but that
Virtual doesn't realize, it doesn't realize that it has to be the key. For look, I'm all for educating and empowering people, right? I get that. I love writing books to help show people what they might want to consider doing to live healthier and happier lives. But ultimately, it just becomes so much easier. When you're not fighting the environment around you, and I've got a question that pops into my head there. And then, what you think about this? I went as a kid. I went to a school called man.
To grammar school. And I went and gave a talk there, a few months ago, when the stress solution came out. And I remember on stage been quite vocal, that they have something called an ice cream van that comes in every lunchtime. And I remember, I remember it as a kid and I would often go and you'd get you change out on, you'd buy this that, you know, the sweets and their fizzy drinks because it was there, and I said, quite vertically on stage. I don't
I think that there is a justification anymore for having that in the grounds, which they still do in the face of such a be City that we're now facing particularly, you know, childhood obesity. I wonder what your view would be. Is it acceptable? Now in the west, do you think accepts also wrong word? Do you think it's advisable that schools have things that ice cream vans in their premises at lunchtimes?
So as more than just that
Our toe in our Blues are about to become a Blue Zone, certified school. And this also extends the city. There's what we call it a no-fly zone, 500 meters around the school. There's no trucks or any other fast food, vendor and it also extends some who to vending machines. And also, snack trolleys that we have in schools. They also agree. No, eating in classrooms and hallways, that right. There will lower the BMI or the obesity rate in a school by about 11%. Because if you let kids
Let's eat in hallways and classrooms. What are they
eating?
Quick junk food is something they could have really quick easy sweets crisps. That's exactly. So if you cut that out, you cut out eight
hours of. So we ask this this school to pass a policy, no eating classrooms and hallways. We ask them to pass a policy where you don't sell candy bars as fundraisers. So there's a walkathon or something. Like I want
to lock you up and take you with me to my Children's Schools right now because I'm so passionate about this and it almost feels. Sometimes it's that I know there's many
Listening to this podcast, who you know, who may share my view, or maybe it may think I'm being a little bit extreme, but I just don't think there's any place for any more in society to have, you know, fundraisers at school where everyone, you know, is being fed, fizzy drinks and cakes and sweets. I just saw
all these sports games. There's a policy that parents can't bring the juice box, which is sugar, or the cokes or the cookies. So, but the point is, you know, we live in a society where you, where you can't tell you can't,
Limit people's freedoms, but you can give them what calm policy menus. So our school policy that for ideas that I just rested that that's for of about 25. And as long as they had adopt, 16 of them that work for them and their PTA, they'll give lose own certification. So here's the big idea. We tend to look for silver bullets and health. And the answer is silver, Buckshot. So, we look across the whole life radius, the school's, the restaurants.
See your home. And we look at all the nudges and detail defaults that we can Implement and we can usually get 70 or 80 of them working, and we takes about five years, by the way. It's not quick. It takes five years to get these implement but every city we worked in now. I have a huge cities now that have hired me Fort Worth Texas two million people. Orlando Florida, two million people. They just hired my team. I have a 200 people on my team, full-time people who, and it's very
With otic, it's very programmatic. But the essentially is we're trying to piece by piece change the environment. So the healthy choice is not only the Easy Choice. As many as many times as possible. It's the only choice and that's the secret.
Yeah, it's so profound what you're doing. Because I think this sort of work is what's really going to move the needle in a big way, you know, it's going to move away from those individual success stories, which are great. When people
Do motivate themselves and they do make a change, but it brings the whole of society up. Are you getting inquiries from other countries that people from the UK getting in touch said, hey, can we use some of your work care or or is it is it mainly US based
diplomacy? You can't would work so much better. The problem with us Health System. All the incentives are lined up behind sickness. Yeah, as Jack Welch, the CEO of GE once pointed out the Folly of incenting for a and hoping for
Be. So in the u.s. All of the incentives, the only way you make money in America, if you're a pharmaceutical company or your hospital or your doctor, I hate to say it, is if people get sick. Pharmaceutical companies, need you to get a prescription in hospitals. Need you to run a bed and doctors need you to come in for a procedure test here in the UK. You have this universalized health where this actually government government wants to see, people get healthier here.
It's in their best interest in the United States. It's not so clear. I mean, there's there. I mean, of course everybody wants to people get health. But all the money is lined up behind sickness. So it's this is all long-winded. Way of saying, it's very hard for us to operate in. In the environment where sicknesses were money is made as opposed to in the UK, where health is where money can be made.
How much do people sleeping in the blue zones?
Centenarians are sleeping about eight hours, but north of seven,
seven hours duration of the life. Pretty
much. Yeah, they're often have two sleeps, you know, they'll go to bed at Sunset and then the wake up after midnight and clean their house and go back to bed. Really? And well, that's in mostly see in the Koya Peninsula. But yeah, there's sleeping from just after Sunset to Just Before
Sunrise and is napping.
Something that features all of them and and
there's good evidence to that. People are taking naps have significantly lower rates of cardiovascular disease. Naps are good thing.
Hey, I'm a huge fan of maps and that's just it feels quite in tune with our body's natural Rhythm and it's something here. I've always struggled with actually because you know, my family came over to the UK. My dad came over in the early 60s from India and on the days where he wasn't working, he
Was take a nap after lunch. So I sort of grew up with that some thought, you know, it's just a normal part of what I saw happening and then, as you know, become an adult here in the UK and the culture around you. It's it's almost as if napping is frowned upon and obviously the work culture lends itself to you know, working right through. So it's not that convenient to take a nap but I've always I often feel like taking a nap after lunch and you know, if I'm not in practice or in my surgery, I may actually do that may take half an hour or try and sort of put my head down. Sometimes, I don't fall asleep, but I switch off a half.
An hour. Yeah, and it totally, we charge. There's a pile of evidence behind the power of they're lowering,
cortisol levels, and Lauren stress levels. Yeah. Regenerating your brain, regenerating your immune system. It's just and you know, what's interesting
is a lot of these big employers. Now from what I understand are actually taking note of that research and saying, hey guys, we've got, I think Google actually have sleeping pods or you know,
just a now bro. Yeah, which is a baby blues on certified. If you're a, if you're an employer to be Blues on certified, you you
LOL, your employees to take a nap, you provide a provision where and they can take or at least to put at least allow them to figure out how to do it themselves or better yet, provide a room.
Don't want to move this on from health because what I've realized over the last few years is that guess I'm a doctor and I want to help people get healthier.
But for me, it's not about health. Actually. It's about
Happiness. Really because health is a necessary ingredient. I think to getting the most out of your life. And it's interesting to me. That was it. Your last book was actually on happiness. Yes. So, you know, you've written about how the event about happiness. I think these things are sort of closely intertwined, and you, it's very hard to separate them out. Is that something that you found? And I guess, before we go down, this sort of rabbit hole. It's probably worth defining. What is happiness.
Happiness itself is a meaningless term academically because you can't measure it, but social scientists can measure life satisfaction, which is how you evaluate your life and they can measure how you experience your life by asking you to recall the last 24 hours and they can kind of measure purpose by asking you, how often you use your strength to do, what you do best. That's sort of that academic so
Are measured by social scientists, the eurobarometer in this on this continent, but it's best measured by the Gallup World Poll, which represents ninety-five percent of the world population. So, for blue zones of happiness, I worked with Gallop to identify the places in the world where people themselves rate their lives best. And then as an extension, kind of a big data exercise to find out what sorts of
things we can do to make it more likely where we're going to be happy because we're 40 percent of your happiness, or lack thereof is genetically driven. 15% is luck. But what about 40% is, how you play that chess game with your life, to optimize the satisfaction? You get out of it? And I tried to do a, this was a cover story for National Geographic. Last November's issue. What exactly can you do to stop?
Ack, the proverbial deck in your favor. So you're more likely to be happy and that's about all you can promise people. What are those
things? What's the secret?
When we want to be? Happy won't be happy for decades. Not just for the next week. So similar to longevity. It's about shaping your surroundings. So the most powerful thing I've happiness, where a cake recipe and the ingredients of happiness is you need your Necessities. You need food.
All you need is very hard to be. Happy. If you don't have food, you need shelter. You need safety. You need some healthcare. You need meaningful work. You want to marry a nice person. That's really important. You want to have a feeling of giving back, but the most important ingredient in the happiness, recipe is where you live the ingredient with the most statistical variability. So, in other words that if you're unhappy,
The most statistically, powerful thing you can do is move and we know that and I'll tell you why this has been replicated twice. We, when you follow immigrants from Moldavia, which is one of the least happy places in Europe, as a Soviet Bloc country to Copenhagen and Moldavia, they self report on a scale of 1 to 10, about a 4. But in Copenhagen, they self report about an 8. If you follow moldavian immigrants to move to Copenhagen within one year, they don't change their sex. They
not change significantly, their education level. They don't often change their profession, their marriage status. They don't change your sexual orientation. But within one year, they start reporting the happiness, level of their adoptive home. And we've seen this even more powerfully in Canada. Canada is one of the top ten happiest countries in the world. When you take immigrants from India and Africa and unhappier places in Latin America, 500,000 of them and they moved to Canada.
Once again within a year, they're reporting the happiness level.
There is about like what you when we talk about health and blues as a longevity, you were saying that the environment dictates that the environment nudge them along. So that without thinking about it, they're healthier and it's almost the same thing that you're saying with happiness.
Exactly. And so it's perceives in my safe. That's huge. Yeah, being in a place where you perceive danger and it doesn't have to be. There's a Mugger around every corner. It can be graffiti.
It can be broken windows. So mu u bolt move to a place where it's green, your social surroundings, who you surround yourself with. We know that unhappiness and loneliness are measurably contagious. So if your three best friends are lonely and showing up at the pub bitching every night, that's going to be contagious. You can reshape that
social environment. I'm about can be really challenging but I've seen this with patients before but he really helping them to change their lifestyle.
I was really inspired them. Motivate them. Appreciate everything you're saying about environments. But you know, as a doctor, when your one-on-one with a patient who needs help, you know, I can't really wait for the environment to change, I have to do as much as I can, to help them. The person in front of me and often, you know, that they do really really well. And then it's their friends circle that drags them down and it's, it can be incredibly challenging for them. Especially they don't feel hugely securing themselves. It could be a real challenge.
So where I've tried to do actually,
And I have a team of people whose expertise is they've gone into the deep science and they're deeply trained on how to take a bunch of people and help. We don't tell them to dump their old friends, give that that's to you to your point. It's impossible. But when you start to help them add healthy and happy friends to their social network, they sense that after a while and the energy drains out of those old and healthy friend, completely agree. But because what nobody thinks of health or happiness in terms of actually thinking what
Take to help people reboot their social network to happy or healthy people. And if you do that, you see the results. So that's what we kind of do.
Yeah, it is amazing. I'd love to find out more about the work you're doing with on the neighbors,
Florida, or Fort Worth Texas. We'd be happy to
host E. I will take you up on that for sure. At some point. I'm saying it on the podcast. I have. Yeah, so
I'll just call you up and leave this part of the record.
I will do it will do a follow-up of this. Yeah, I went around that house that. Okay. So Community environment is key, how important is having a strong sense of meaning and purpose in your life to happiness.
It's important and you'd be shocked, how many people live in the middle of our continent? Wake up every morning for breakfast together for their kids rush to work. And
Or 45 minutes in traffic work at a job only 70, only 30 percent of Americans, actually like their job. They come home tired, throw together a dinner and then they watch four point four hours of TV. So, just taking the time with people to help them identify what they're good at, what they like to do, and what they have to give back and that takes about 2 hours. There's a process we take and we get people, we force them to get into one phrase. Let's just try it.
With you for a second. If you had to sum up your sense of the okinawans called ikigai. The reason you wake up in the morning, the the what you, what the your brand, your personal brand stands for. What is it?
It is to empower as many people as I possibly can to become the architects of their own health.
Perfect. So very few people can actually say that with meaning or have control over that but just giving how asking people that very question and making them articulate it and write that down. We even have them put it on a sticky piece of paper and put it on their bathroom mirror so they read it every day and that is governing some of their daily decisions. That will make a big difference. Yeah.
That's incredible, you know, even I can see the value of putting it down. Everyday riding it, they're seeing it every day as a bit, like something I wrote about it. And then the last book on affirmations and how, you know, our brain, our subconscious brain. It's incredibly powerful, and just repeating those positive messages day in day out. It does start to feed in that that information to your brain and it can often change your behavior. But I just wonder how many of these blue zones? Maybe they didn't have a gratitude Journal by their beds.
I'm guessing some of them would have a daily practice that before they ate their meal. They would give thanks.
Okay, so you hit the nail right on the head. So I don't know anybody who journals for for mental health for decades, but, in Okinawa, there's this notion of ancestor veneration, which means respect for your elders. The in the nicest room in the house. They'll be a shrine in that Shrine will be a lock of Grant deceased grandmother's hair. A picture of
Great, great, grandfather, some artifacts from maybe a deceased parent and they'll spend 10 or 15 minutes a day remembering where they came from that. They're not just a point in time, but part of a Continuum of the ancestors, then there's certain extent. They can relinquish up the challenges and the stresses of their day to their ancestors. And that's a form of gratitude in the Adventist. All pray. They start their day with the prayer beginning of
Camille. There's an expression of gratitude to thank you. Lord, for our food that at least makes it at the, brings it to the four of their thinking for a minute. So there there's this a gratitude but it's part of the daily ritual that goes on for years and decades. It's not just for a you know few weeks after you heard about this cool idea of the appreciation Journal. Yeah, so you gotta think long-term
knowledge of the unhappiness and that's the key thing. I'm getting from you and your work is
It, it's not about what you're doing for. The next few weeks is not about going on that January diet. And that's really your new you. It's it's the small things you do day in day out. So may not appear that big in isolation. But the add up over a long period of time.
Let me give you an easy one in Easy long-term nudge to illustrate my point. Adopting a dog. We know that dog owners have about 50 percent, the rate of obesity as non dog owners. Can you guess why? Well, they just
have to go and say it.
A dog for a walk.
That's right. Every it's a nudge and dogs are around for 12 13 years. So that that's a daily nudge. There's also some evidence that when you pet a dog, your cortisol levels, go down and you feel loved unconditionally. So, blue zones would say, go buy a dog, could use zones and say, forget the January resolution. Forget running that one Marathon. You'll do in, never do it again. Go buy a dog or
adopt a dog, you'll not from what I've read, a huge fan of marathons. It's not fair, or shall I?
Put it a different way. Well, instead of putting words in your mouth, when I just asked the question. What do you think of marathon runners? Because I believe on the same sort of shape as that question. What do you think of marathons? And do you think walking has become undervalued in Western Society?
Walk-ins vastly undervalued. We've were way too focused on the automobile and building roads for automobiles. That's why, you know, London.
Aiden is such a great template. I think for the rest of the country because so much of it is still very walkable. Marathons aren't a bad thing until you're probably 30 or 40 running. Mm. Are your body's forgiving. It's malleable. You can subject your body to the pain in the pounding of a marathon and there's probably not too many consequences when you're over 40. It's just dumb. That the when you're okay, if you need it to get yourself out of a bad routine to run a marathon, that's
Fine, but to think that it's going to contribute to your health. If you're over 40 or 50 their chances of being injured, I have an aroma right now. I have a real Roma because I overdid it. I went basically I bruised a nerve in my foot because I want on a 40 60 kilometer hike, I'm 58 that was actually dumb of me because now it's hard for me to walk. I hope it'll go away and that's where we're going to talk about after the podcast is for the doctor, but but you certainly
don't look familiar.
That's for
sure. Thank you very much, have a lot of work now. I'm just kidding, but the the chances of injury and also the inflammation that comes from working out over over doing it for, too long. Isn't that negatives? It's bad for. Your arteries is bad for your skin. It shrinks your brain. I think you're much better off finding a walking buddy or to use your cool phrase ammo. I'm eight and gentle, low intensity physical activity.
That you enjoy that. You enjoy because if you enjoy your do it for a long time, if it's a chore, I gotta train for my marathon in three. You're not going to do it for long the same thing when you mention with food,
right? It's it can't be that struggle. I'm doing Health this month, isn't it? Boring? You know, I can't wait till I've finished this health scheme so I can get back to living if we're thinking like that with destined for failure rights.
That's right. So the blue zones solution gives there's a whole
Basically, checklist of things, you can do with your home, your social life. How you set up your kitchen, how you set up your physical activity, life, your friends, so that you can set it up once and forget about
it. You put this all in the books and beautiful detail, how many?
Yeah, and it's all evidence-based. I write for National Geographic where we actually have to pay attention to, you know, evidence facts. And yeah and it's a it it follows this basically feces of mind, which is if you want to live longer, be happier.
Try to change your behavior, change your environment, change your surroundings,
right? At the start of our conversation time. You said that when you went out to these blue zones, you mentioned that were very, there were very low technology environments. They were still needing the bread themselves. They were walking where they had to go and I guess it's just been sort of going there at the back of my mind, throughout our conversation. How much of a problem do you think is
He had this explosion of technology that now we do dictates and is involved with pretty much every aspect of Our Lives. Is this something that you you concerned
about what I think what technology when it comes to diagnosing disease, grade and creating new drugs that will address bad diseases. I'm all for it. I do think we're too obsessed with comfort in this in this culture and and it will lead to place. It'll lead for diminishing of happiness, and diminishing of Health.
So, I think that the mechanized convenience has that pervade our life. It's probably not that great. I know most of the things I'm proud of in my life, took a heck of a lot of effort. My physical fitness comes from putting forth some effort. So I don't think we can turn to technology to endlessly Addie's to our life and expect it to make our lives
better. Sure? And before we start to wrap this conversation up,
Up. One thing that comes up a lot when I go around talking about how this is whole idea of poverty and you know, the fact that
You know, areas in the country where they are of lower socioeconomic status at tend to have much worse Health outcomes, then higher, socioeconomic areas. So my question is, is the pursuit of longevity, a middle class, and
ever know. So, in the nicoya, peninsula of Costa Rica, you have the lowest rate of middle-age mortality in the world. In other words. They have the least Leslie.
Chance of dying at any age after age, 50, two and a half times more likely to reach a healthy age 90 than Americans. They are the poorest people in Costa Rica. They spend 115 fee amount. We do on Health Care in, Costa Rica their poverty and their way healthier than Americans are not only that I worked with researchers at Stanford who was taken a telomere samples of people throughout Costa Rica. We found these this area demo.
Demographically would through numbers, he found that the poorest people in nicoya, Peninsula of Costa Rica have the longest telomere is. In other words, they're biologically youngest, and they have the least amount of money. So it is a complete myth that you have to have money to be healthy. But what we do have to do for poor people, they are going to disproportionately benefit by us, improving their environment, making their environment more walkable.
Bikeable getting rid of The Temptations of junk food, marketing, getting rid of all the chips and the sodas and, and populating that environment with healthy defaults. Yeah,
I mean, Super inspiring done sets of here. That's and you know, if the people who still do think it's all individual responsibility and personal responsibility, you know, I challenge you to go to one of these food deserts. I used to work in the middle of one and Oldham and I remember Alden you probably don't know. This is just a bit north of Manchester.
Esther, I was working in the very in a practice right in the center, very deprived area. Lots of immigrants. Lots of people on benefits on Social Security. I would take a long time with Emma, try and educate them on what they could be doing with their diets and helping them see where they might be going wrong or how they could improve things.
And then they would they were going out literally
into an environments, which made it almost impossible, not quite impossible, but very very challenging to make those decisions and that's when I realized that.
There's this is not built a city. Environment needs to
change. Yeah. It may be morally. Correct to expect people to take individual responsibility, but I will tell you it is delusional. If you think or if any politician thinks they're going to get 55 million people in the UK to change their take charge of their own health and eat better, move more, get socially connected in the environment. They live in. It's just not going to happen. So if you're if you
You are a responsible policy maker. You're focusing on creating a healthier environment and UK and we know how to do it. Now. We just have to pay attention and shift the focus from the behavior change to environment change and it'll
happen and it will happen. Absolutely. In any, you know, if you think about it, we're not the first generation of humans. Now to suddenly become gluttonous and lazy are we not suddenly changed that much we're now suddenly, you know, all old or previous generations were motivated and they were active.
It's because the environments allow them to do it without thinking. And that's what we need to move back to
remember that old, that old experiment in high school. If he threw a frog in lukewarm water, you could turn up the temperature. One degree at a time and eventually, boil and die. That's what if you throw a frog in hot water, it jumps out right away, but we're like in that in that water, that's getting hotter and hotter and more lethal without us. Really realizing it. And that's why we're seeing all these premature
deaths. Done one of you changing.
Your own life since you've been on this Voyage of discovery about longevity and
happiness. I'm mostly plant-based. Probably 97 98 percent plant-based. I've led a bunch of
toxic friends better fish it with
a little bit of fish. You know, I meet maybe once a year or something like that, put some cheese on cheese on pasta, but I mostly
plant about is based upon what you have
seen. Yeah. There's just no question.
That the longest-lived people probably 15 meals out of 16 are 100% plant-based over time, you know on a so
so you've changed your diet. Yeah,
they're physically, you know, I've set 3 world records Force I used to be a fanatic and now I commute to work on bicycle and I live in walkable communities.
Have you have you dialed down the intensity of your
exercise? It's impossible to learn.
Turn me into some competitive. I'm no competition at all. But I when I do something every day, I enjoy, I do yoga. I bike I walk. I rollerblade, I lift weights with my son and went, that's her way of connecting socially. I'm very clear about my sense of purpose. Like you. I'm very clear on why I wake up in the morning and it's very hard for me to it's very hard for somebody to get me to deviate from that makes life. A lot easier you have ballast when times get tough and day-to-day decisions are very easy.
Family, First is another thing. I put my, I just got done with the week with my son and Croatia. I'm very cognizant of the importance of keeping my aging parents nearby and really putting my kids first and my partner first, you know, I show up to church once in a while, never showed up in the past. My mom thing you should go every week. So chat. You changed
quite a lot. So I guess it must be hard. Not to, when you studied this, it becomes part of your life and
You see the research. You meet the people. It must be very hard not to apply that into our life as
when you're confronted by living evidence, is to I been doing this for 20 years, by the way, the first we set off on the first Blue Zone 1999 and Okinawa. So I've been marinating in this stuff. And at first, I ignored it, you know, first for five years, but then you see it over and over again. And but to your point, as you were making people in the blue zones, are not only living long lives, they're living happy lives. They're rich, they're fulfilled their full.
Great social connection, they're full of meaning. They're full of the things that make life worth living and when you pay attention to that, you say, oh, yeah. Yeah, I should start doing that.
Yeah, love it down, look down. And thanks for all the work you have done over the years. You've certainly informed, a lot of people's views on longevity around the world. Damn. This podcast is cool feel better live more because I genuinely believe and I've seen it over and over again that when people feel better in themselves, I get more out of life. I wanted.
You could live that leaves some of your top tips for my listeners in terms of what they can think about doing. Of course, it would be better if they environment around them changed. I accept that but maybe maybe three or four of your your top non-food tips. Potentially for what they can do to actually improve their happiness
and health. What like, Finance or Weight Management. If you can't measure it, you can't manage it. So if you go to my website blue zones.com, I have two free tools, one called the vitality.
He Compass will measure how long you're going to live and how long you're going to stay healthy. That's 33 questions and the true happiness test, which will measure not only how you experience your life. But how your, how you evaluate your life? So get a baseline, right? And they'll give you some suggestions on exactly what you should do. Given your current lifestyle. Number two, I would take the time to get clear on what you like to do. What your passions are, what you're good at and what's an outlet for it, volunteers when. And when I say, I'll let I mean.
Owen tearing for most of us volunteers are happier healthier, lower chance of heart disease and measurably lower healthcare costs. So find out what you love to do, whether it's walking dogs, or taking care of women and belt bet better women's shelter, volunteer. I would do an assessment of your five immediate friends and if they're all sort of people are eating bacon and Jammers, what do you call them bangers? Or whatever the sausages? Yeah. Yeah, then you might bring a couple vegetarian.
And then to your immediate social network, and then actually food is important and I would try a few plant based recipes until you find a few. You like, it might be Indian. It might be southeast Asia might be Mexican. But if you find a few that you like and you know, how to do it. You'll keep doing it for a long time. If you're single getting a committed relationship. It's really important. Adopt a dog, really important. I think there's an argument for getting
Rid of all your big plates and having 10 inch plates. I don't know how that translates to centimeters but eating off a smaller plates works.
Yeah. It's very powerful. You've done some of the we've seen some of the research on that. Haven't
you? Yes, I'm fact in our blue zones cities and our personal pledge. One thing we ask people to do is get rid of all their big plates because if they're eating off a smaller place are probably consuming. 15 percent fewer
calories. We we have I have literally done this at home with wife and kids in it's it's made a big difference.
Similarly, take the toaster off the counter, the toast.
Is a reminder to put something in there when you're hungry and most of the crap we put in poster and toasters aren't healthy. I love us. That's a great tip. Take that. There's actually good evidence that people who don't have a toaster or way about 6 pounds less or three kilos, less after two years than people who have a toaster. So it's about doing all these little things that add
up. Yeah, well down, and he's a great sets. Thank you. Appreciate your time today. Honestly, at guys, everything that down and I spoke about and a link to all dance books website.
All these resources will be on the show notes page, which is going to be dots. Chastity.com forward slash blue zones. So guys do check that out. Then. I don't know how active you are on social media. People do want to connect with you. Is there somewhere? They can go. Yeah, every blue
zones at Facebook, Instagram. We have fleas Twitter. We're very active social media as well. We'd love to, by the way, if you, if you tweet out me or Instagram out me, I will answer every one of your question. So, if you had a question that developed during this,
During this interview, I'd be happy to answer
personally down. Appreciate that. Thank you so much. And I look forward to seeing you again. When I come out to one of you Blues enzyme,
we're waiting for you. It's been a deep honor. And by the way, I just so those of you who haven't had the pleasure of meeting. Ranji. He was the first person I met. When I came into this conference. He immediately makes you feel at home. He makes you feel like you're his best friend and he doesn't really
I even know you yet. So I hope you all have the opportunity to meet in person. Like I have. So it's been a real, great honor and I can't wait to wrap my brain around the, the stress solution.
So, thank you so much until the next time. All
right,
that concludes this week's episode of the feel better live, more podcast. I really hope you enjoyed the conversation. As always, do try and have a think about something specific. You can take from this episode to apply in your own.
In the Life immediately. Is there going to be removing the toaster from the counter? Or will it be that you take up some form of volunteering? What you choose doesn't matter, but I would highly encourage you to pick one thing and try and introduce it into your own life. Please do let Dan. And I know what you thought of today's show, as well as the blue zones. Social media channels. Dan has his own Instagram page at damp wet sner to do tag down the blue zones and myself on social with a hashtag.
BLM and let us know what you thought. Everything that Dan and I spoke about today is available to see on the show notes page. Dr. Chaski.com forward, slash blue zones. Here. You will find links to dance, Ted Talk some articles that he has written his website and his many books. So if you want to continue your learning experience. Now that the podcast is overdue, check out the show notes page. Dr. Chatterjee.com forward, slash blue zones. Now, I wrote about some of the principles of off the blue.
Sounds particularly in relations of foods. In my very first book, the four pillar plan, which was also released in America and Canada with the title how to make disease disappear. In fact, this book outlines in detail, my philosophy on Foods. Many of you repeatedly asked me on social media what my view on different diets is on. I Do cover that in a reasonable amount of detail in this book. So if you are interested do check it out. I also plan to do some
Like podcast episodes on the topic of food in the near future to do. Let me know on social media, what you would like me to cover. As you heard today, a lack of stress and a strong sense of purpose or critical ingredients to a long and happy life. If you want to know more about this as well as some simple tips that you can absolutely apply in your daily lives. I would encourage you to check out my latest book, the stress solution, which is available in paperback ebook or as an audiobook, which I am narrating.
If you enjoy the weekly shows, please do give them your support by leaving a review on whichever platform. You listen to podcasts on, you can alternatively, take a screenshot and share on social media or you can simply tell your friends and family about the show. I really do appreciate your support, a big, thank you to Richard Hughes the sound engineer, but also Chastity for editing the podcast and Ali Ferguson and Liam saunas for the beam chain. That is it for today. I hope you have a fabulous.
Week. Make sure you have press subscribe and I'll be back in one week's time with my latest episodes. Remember, you are the architect of your own health, making Lifestyle Changes, always worth it because when you feel better, you live more. I'll see you next time.
