Blue Zones = Centenarians

If you want to live for 100 years, with vitality, find a centenarian who is healthy.   You have a better chance of finding a centenarian if you live in a place where centenarians are common.  We call these places “Blue Zones,” where centenarians live: Sardinia, Italy; Okinawa, Japan; Loma Linda, Calif.; the Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica; and Ikaria, an isolated Greek island.

“Blue Zones” people live 10 years longer, experience one sixth the rate of cardiovascular disease and one fifth the rate of major cancers.  A culture in Sardinia, Italy, has 20 times as many 100-year-olds, proportionally as the U.S. does.  In Okinawa, Japan, people were found with the longest disability-free life expectancy in the world.

Somewhere in a remote area of Costa Rica, a 101-year-old great-great-grandmother makes a life style with exercise. By the time you finish your morning coffee, she has already cleared brush (kindle), chopped wood, and is making tortillas from scratch. (Dan Buettner is a writer, holder of three Guinness world records in long-distance cycling, and leader of multiple international adventures. His latest book, The Blue Zone: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who've Lived the Longest, is in bookstores now).

How do the world's longevity all-stars become 100 years.  Simple, practice simple, common-sense habits as a natural part of their daily routine.  (Dan wrote of nine practices of Blue Zone living.  I will touch on three.)

Exercise is your life style. 

Identify activities you enjoy and make them a part of your day.  Take a bike to work, use a rake for leaves on the lawn (not use the leaf-blower), use an old fashioned snow shovel (this shovel is too big, it looks as if you can’t pick up the snow), and take the stairs, when you could take the escalator.

My wife and I walk one mile every day ... actually about five days.  I should be walking three miles every day ( I did walked five miles on Pinnacles National Park last month ... took me five days to recuperate).  But one mile a day is better than none, because for ten years I could not walk for 100 yards. 

Plants for eating and snacking.

No, you don't need to become a vegan. Simply, eat more of fruits, fresh vegetables, and cooked veggies.  (Read Dr. Fuhrman’s The Life Diet.)  As the mainstay of your meals, use beans (any bean), brown rice,  wild rice, quinoa, or tofu.  Eat nuts and seeds for snacking with a small handful of nuts and seeds daily (walnut, peanuts, almonds, sun seeds, raw, roasted, and light salt with sea salt if possible).

From 2004 to 2006, I ate three pounds of nuts every month:  one pound of walnuts, one pound of almonds, and one pound of peanuts.  I added raisins equal to the volume of the nuts.  For variety, I also added some dried fruits, like apricot, mango, and pineapple.  I would eat this nut and raisins mix for lunch and snacks.  I did not gain weight.  I felt very healthy.  (I currently eat about one pounds of nuts.)

Dr. Lynda Frasseto, at UCSF Medical School, has studied 1,000 people and found the fat was storing in acid waste.  Cholesterol and crystallized uric acid are solidified acids that have been dumped within the body for later disposal … until eat more alkaline foods … and never happens.  The average American diet contains way too much acid. Most people do not eat enough alkaline foods: spinach, broccoli, and beets.  Increase more fresh veggies, fresh fruit, and cooked vegetable … plus alkaline water. 

 

Try drinking RedOx water (try for thirty days for FREE)  which is alkaline, ORP, and small water units.  RedOx water is easier to drink than eating vegetables (eat the veggies, anyway).  I have eating more veggies since I began drinking RedOx water (2 years). 

Teach children about eating healthy foods, because thirty percent of grammar children are obese. James Oliver speaks that this generation of children will have a lower lifespan than their parents.  Watch James Oliver discuss why children are obese, and how to protect the children.  http://www.symbiosis4u.us/FLV/JamesOliver-TeachChildAboutFood.html (20 minutes)

Here is a good story for gum disease.  Nadine Artemis has a video that has helped my wife’s gums.  Watch the video, and try it.   It will not hurt you, and may prevent the need for pulling teeth and wearing dentures.  http://www.symbiosis4u.us/FLV/GumsTreatment.html (1 minute)

Make family a priority.

My brother Harry died today (Nov 5, 2012).  He was 74 years young.  He spent his last night talking with his family (my brother lived in Mexico): his two sons, and his loving wife.  His sons planned  to come back in the morning to take their father for coffee.  His sons found their father in the morning, sitting on the veranda, while waiting for his two sons.  He will be missed.  

Thanksgiving have all the family gathering to my home for dinner --- or any other day.  My wife and I feed about twenty family members for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and October (we have ten family birthdays in October).  

When you go into my home, the walls are plastered with pictures.  If you are part of my family, you have a picture --- with pictures of six generations: my wife and I have pictures of our grandparents, our parents, our pictures, our children, our grandchildren, and even a picture of our latest great granddaughter.  

Ready become a centenarian, or until you are ... ?

Sound too simple to have good life? Remember, simple does not mean easy. I don't recommend trying to change all these behaviors at once. Research has shown that if you can sustain a behavioral change for six weeks, you should be able to sustain it for the rest of your life. Which, as the world's centenarians have shown us, should be a long, long time.

Be happy, healthy, wise, and wealthy,

Tom Van Drielen

 

Symbiosis Enterprises

Box 18907

San Jose, Ca. 95118

http://www.symbiosis4u.us  (click on the RedOx on the center of homepage)

Home Office 408-723-4777

Linkedin www.linkedin.com/in/tvandrielen

 

RedOx machines triple conditioned water (1) helps remove many environmental  toxins out of the body, (2) alkaline water helps acid reflux, and (3) hydroxyl ions help to support the immune system by the reducing free radicals … and a month to try the machines before you buy.