whatwillImakebeautifultoday: blue zones

Tuesday, 14 August 2012

Social Media Angst and Blue Zone Longevity. Can Being Nice Help You Live a Long Life?

My last few posts have focused on social media. How its misuse generates and spreads anxiety and unhappiness; both in the instigators and the recipients of the negativity.

I have also mentioned about Dan Buettner’s Blue Zones and his philosophy on longevity. I love one of Buettner’s ‘must do’s’ everyday .... ‘say something nice to the first person you see in morning.’

We have probably all experienced how 'being nice' is infectious and gives you a warm feeling inside.

Chatting with a stranger on a genuine level about things that are good in the world; or helping someone, without them asking; just because you can. Getting a hug from someone you love, donating to a charity, etc... the good karma comes galloping in and can make the rest of the day wonderful. How can this not be good for you?

Buettner’s importance of community and family belonging (nice-ness) rings true on so many levels.

If you have a stressful job, when you go home to a family that is full of love and laughter, understanding and hugs, it is an escape into a healing environment.

If you have friends to listen and laugh with you, to accept and share with; you always feel better for having caught up with them.

Doing something you love, every day, is good for the soul. Especially if the effects of this are good for others around you too. (For example; exercise=endorphins=makes you feel good=happy with those around you). Is this why so many people keep a pet?

Many of the health surveys on the internet (Dr Oz etc.) have questions such as ‘Are you married?' and 'Do you have a strong family, social or friendship group?’

The Blue Zone octogenarians, apparently, lack social anxiety, understand the importance of family and community and live in areas where the western world has only recently been introduced, or is shunned.

Of the current generation of social media users: Those who read the hype, those who write the hype and those who believe the hype: I wonder what their level of social anxiety is.

It will be interesting to see if the advent of the computer age coincides with a lowering of the average life expectancy in humans. If the current younger generation living in Blue Zone areas carry on the legacy of longevity that their grandparents and great grandparents have established.

Wednesday, 18 July 2012

Blue Zones: is diet really the key?

I was reading Sarah Wilsons blog – and she mentioned research being done in Blue Zone areas. Of course, I Googled; because it was a term I was unfamiliar with.

According to Wikipedia, Blue Zone is “a concept used to identify a demographic and/or geographic area of the world where people live measurably longer lives, as described in Dan Buettner's book, "The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer from people who lived the longest."

Phew, what does this mean? That, in certain parts of the world, people live for longer.

These places are:

Sardinia in Italy: the Islands of Okinawa in Japan, Loma Linda in California: (Seventh-day Adventist ), Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica and Ikaria in Greece.

In particular, the Island of Ikaria has the highest percentage of 90 year-olds on the planet and a 20% lower rate of cancer, 50% lower rate of heart disease and almost no dementia.

Now, Sarah is a huge advocate for the Paleo diet – lots of red meat and animal proteins, vegetables and limited bread and sugars. She has her own version of it that suits her health issues, with no grains or alcohol or sugars at all.

Peter D’Adamo is the author of the Blood Type diet, an interesting concept I 'sort-of' follow. I found it interesting that my blood type, A -, should be a vegetarian, which I am, but not because he said so. The things that D’Adamo says I should not eat are the foods I know upset my digestion. Go figure. He also advocates that certain foods cause ongoing health issues and may trigger certain diseases.

There is a great deal of support for the Mediterranean diet too. Eat like the Greeks: most - fresh veges and fruit, grains, legumes, fish, wine, less – cheese, chicken, eggs, olive oil, limit - red meat and sugar.

Now, if you ask me, the places where long life is expected have great diversity between their diets. You have your vegan Seventh Day Adventists, your Mediterranean Sardinians and Ikarains, your low calorific eating Okinawans (where yellow and green veges dominate and most natives are low in their BMI) and the Chorotega diet of beans, rice and vegetables three times a day for the Costa Ricans.

So, where are the similarities, for those of us who would like to live longer, healthier, and presumably happier lives.

Buettner has identified the following:

So, my personal check list for the above is not too bad; I have to work on the stress bit, love the idea of the wine! Sugar- hmmm does chocolate count?

It seems to me that it is not so much what you eat, but your total attitude to life and how you live it (inherent in places of longevity through circumstance, not through premeditated decision making).

Western Society, in so many ways, seems toxic. Not only the pace of life, the shallowness of our lifestyles and consumerist culture, but also the way we purchase and eat food; wrapped in plastic, pesticide filled, homogenised, coloured, flavoured........

Even the plastics and rare metals in the products we use (tv's, foam couches etc) exude a small amount of vapour that we absorb, not to mention the chemicals we slather on our bodies in the name of cleanliness and beauty.

Our judgement on other people, molded through the plethora of 'reality shows' and other forms of media; the way people treat each other in everyday life (just read the news, which I now shy away from) erodes our sense of community and harmony.

I have a lot to think about; the purposefulness of my life, the clarity of my role in family and society and what will bring meaning to myself. Perhaps I should mull it over with a piece of chocolate and a glass of wine.