There is an on-going project to research these long-lived and healthy people. The results of studying these people – giving us insight into how to live a long and healthy life – are now starting to be presented.

The most accessible presentation of this data is a kind of ‘long and healthy life pyramid’. There are nine factors, organised in a pyramid of four layers, that are shared by all the societies characterised by long and healthy lives. You can find the graphic on the Blue Zones About page.

The foundation is a sense of belonging to a group. This has three components:

• putting loved ones first
• connecting with a faith tradition, and
• surrounding yourself with the ‘right people’.

The next tier in the pyramid is eating wisely. This also has three components:

• eat 20% less at meals (eat ‘til 70% full or until ‘lightly satisfied’),
• eat whole foods, mostly plants (to paraphrase Michael Pollan), avoid processed foods, and,
• the fun one: a couple of glasses of wine daily.

The next tier is concerned with outlook, which they call “Right Outlook”. This only has two components:

• a sense of purpose, and
• periods of calm each day.

Finally, at the top of the period there is movement. This is concerned with,

• moving naturally. That is, having our living spaces organised to encourage movement and moving in ways we love – doing things with our loved ones but also doing activities we love (walking, dancing, gardening, playing and so on)

These nine factors are shared by all those societies characterised by living to a healthy old age. Most encouragingly they are things that are often within our control and can involve small adjustments.  Our health in our old age (with a little luck) is largely within our control – and there are small things we can do that can make a real difference.

These findings I think are remarkably important and quite encouraging.

If you like this post, you might also like:
Ageing Well: can we do anything about it?
Can We Have A Healthy Old Age?
Change the World (one bite at a time)

The answer is living authentically. Buy the book or sign up for the course now from my Living Authentically website.

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Throughout the world there are groups of people who are known to live to quite advanced ages.  What’s more these people tend to live to a healthy old age.

There is now a project to study these different groups and what they have in common.  The zones of healthy old people are called ‘blue zones’ – simply because one of the researchers circled one of these areas with a blue marker.

The good news is that, for a healthy old age, lifestyle habits are more important than genetic inheritance.

And what are the lifestyle habits that we need to adopt?  So far the researchers have isolated nine:

• Stop eating when you’re 80 percent full
• Eat more veggies, less protein and fewer processed foods
• Drink red wine, in moderation
• Have a sense of purpose in life
• Maintain a spiritual or religious belief system
• Work less, slow down, take vacations
• Make physical movement a vital part of each day
• Create a healthy social network
• Make family a priority

These are all things we are capable of doing.  If we can’t do all of them immediately, then we should be able to start with one or more.  We have a good chance of living a long and healthy life by making modest lifestyle adjustments – none of them involve huge effort and sacrifice.

If you would like to know more about the research there is a website for the Blue Zone Quest.

Wishing you a long and healthy life.

If you liked this post you might also like:

What do the Whitehall Studies mean to you?

Wellbeing and our friends

Big benefits of a little exercise

Increase your inner peace to improve your health

I have an eight week membership course, Living Authentically.  The course is currently open for enrolments.  There is also the Living Authentically book.  You can buy them both from the Living Authentically website.  On this blog you can find out more about the course and the book on the Living Authentically page.

My free report, It’s Not About Success, is available on it’s own page.

If you have a topic you would like me to write about please let me know.  Just leave a comment on this post about any topic you would like to see discussed.  Looking forward to hearing from you.

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1. You’re Never Too Old.
In a recent study of 213 people, aged from 70 to 89, the better the participants’ adherence to a physical activity program, the greater their improvements in physical functioning.

At the beginning of the study, all of the male and female volunteers were sedentary and had a variety of physical health problems. Those who improved the most reported exercising 150 minutes or more per week.  That’s just a little over 20 minutes a day!

The study was led by physiologist Roger Fielding at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (HNRCA) at Tufts University, Boston, Mass.  The study was published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise.


2. It Is Beneficial for Overweight Women.

A study of 430 women, average age 57, who were sedentary, overweight or obese fournd that women can improve their quality of life by exercising as little as 10 to 30 minutes a day.

The study divided the women into four groups.

one group exercising  about  70 minutes a week;

another exercising about 135 minutes per week;

a third group exercising about 190 minutes a week; and,

a fourth group had no planned exercise.

“While the women who participated in the highest exercise group saw the greatest improvements in most quality of life scales, the women in the lowest exercise group also saw improvements,” said Angela Thompson, M.S.P.H., co-author of the study and research associate at Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, La.

“The public health message is tremendous, because it provides further support for the notion that even if someone cannot exercise an hour or more daily, getting out and exercising 10 to 30 minutes per day is beneficial, too.”

Thompson said. “Some of the women did lose weight over the course of the study but the self-reported improvement in quality of life was not dependent on weight loss.” 

All participants in the exercise groups reported a statistically significant improvement in social functioning compared to those in the control group of women who didn’t exercise. However, women who participated in more exercise, from 135 to 150 minutes a week, also showed significant improvements in general health, vitality and mental health.  That is, a little over 20 minutes a day of exercise improves general health, vitality and mental health as well.  And even ten minutes a day will significantly improve your life.

3. And It Reduces the Risk of Heart Disease in Post-Menopausal Women.

Aerobic exercise significantly decreased the chemical imbalances that can lead to heart disease and stroke in postmenopausal women.

A study (conducted at Temple University’s College of Health Professions)  followed 48 sedentary, postmenopausal women (21 on HRT and 27 not on HRT) through an exercise program consisting of three supervised sessions of aerobic exercise per week for 24 weeks. Participants were between 50 and 75 years of age and were postmenopausal for at least two years. Weight loss was limited to 5 percent or less of the women’s initial body weight in order to determine the independent effects of aerobic exercise independant of weight loss.  The women also were stabilized for six weeks on the American Heart Association Step I diet to elminate the influence of a change in diet.

The HRT users and non-users both experienced an 11 to 18 percent drop in plasma thiobarbituric acid reactive substances, an indicator of oxidative stress.  (Oxidative stress is an indicator of overall health.)  There were also decreases in body mass index and total body fat, and a significant increase in VO2 max (maximal oxygen uptake or aerobic capacity) in both HRT users and non-users after the exercise intervention.  (VO2 max is a measure of how deeply you are able to breathe.  It measures what we in everyday language call aerobic fitness.)

“Regardless of your hormone replacement therapy status, regular physical activity is a good way to not only decrease postmenopausal symptoms, but also to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease” said study co-author Nicola Fenty-Stewart, Ph.D.

“Postmenopausal women can now use aerobic exercise training to lower chemical stress levels, thus reducing another risk factor for chronic disease,” said Michael D. Brown, Ph.D., a co-author and associate professor of kinesiology at Temple University’s College of Health Professions.  The study is published in the Journal of Women and Aging.

To sum up: just 20-30 minutes of exercise each day has real health benefits.  And it takes as little as ten minutes a day to start to experience benefits – even for the quite elderly or sedentary.  You don’t need to be an athlete, just going for a brisk walk for a few minutes a day will do it.

If you like this post you might also be interested in these other posts.

Three Pieces of Health News

Four Simple, Little Things to do for Big Health Benefits

Fitness Not Fatness

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A Little Exercise can Decrease Fatigue

Sedentary people who regularly complain of fatigue can increase their energy and decrease their fatigue engaging in regular, low intensity exercise, according to a new University of Georgia study published in the February issue of the journal Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics.

Tim Puetz the lead author of the study said,

“We have shown that regular exercise can actually go a long way in increasing feelings of energy – particularly in sedentary individuals.”

Those studied had persistent fatigue that was not serious enough to be classified as a medical condition like chronic fatigue syndrome. This applies to about 25 percent of the general (US) population.

The volunteers were divided into three groups: The first engaged in 20 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise three times a week for six weeks; the second engaged in low-intensity aerobic exercise for 20 minutes three times a week for six weeks; and the third group did not exercise. Surprisingly, the second group (the low-intensity group) had a greater reduction in fatigue levels (65 percent) than the moderate-intensity group (49 percent). Low intensity means walking at normal speed rather than briskly. (If you imagine a scale of 1 to 10 where zero is asleep and 10 is running flat out then low intensity is a 4 and moderate intensity is 7.)

This could mean that moderate-intensity exercise is too much for people who are already fatigued.

One result of the study, which I find very intriguing was that, the improvements in energy and fatigue were not related to increases in aerobic fitness. Puetz said the finding suggests that exercise acts directly on the central nervous system to increase energy and reduce fatigue.

Puetz concludes: “Exercise traditionally has been associated with physical health, but we are quickly learning that exercise has a more holistic effect on the human body and includes effects on psychological health. What this means is that in every workout a single step is not just a step closer to a healthier body, but also to a healthier mind.”

Stress and Cancer
A new study led by Prof. Shamgar Ben-Eliyahu, from Tel Aviv University’s Department of Psychology, published in the journal Brain, Behaviour, and Immunity (2007) has shown that psychological and physiological stress prior to, during and after surgery has a biological impact that impairs immune system functioning. He was studying those operated on for cancer.

Prof. Ben-Eliyahu: “Ours is among the first studies to show that psychological fear may be no less important than real physiological tissue damage in suppressing immune competence. A weak immune system is one of the major factors that promotes cancer metastases after an operation, explains Prof. Ben-Eliyahu.

In a recent study (in progress), Prof. Ben-Eliyahu found that he could increase long-term post-operative survival rates from cancer in animal models, by as much as 200-300 percent.

Prof. Ben-Eliyahu concludes, “By boosting the immune system and blocking its suppression by psychological and physiological stress, starting a day or two before surgery, during surgery and after surgery, we may be able to provide an intervention program that can extend people’s lives and potentially increase their chances for long-term survival.”

If you feel fatigued it is worth trying out a little light exercise – not starting an aerobics routine but something like going for a walk for twenty minutes. And if you are undergoing surgery it is well worth finding ways to reduce fear as much as possible. Our “bodies” and “minds” interact in interesting ways.

P.S. I usually only link to sites that are of immediate, practical use for individuals. However, if you are someone, like me, who loves the big picture then it is worth checking out the Oxford Health Alliance. They take the big picture view of health: concentration on prevention, designing cities with places to play and that encourage walking around. They are also concerned witht the global imbalance in health between the rich and poor. They have a program at www.3four50.com which targets the three biggest risk factors (tobacco, poor diet and inactivity) of the four big chronic diseases (heart disease, type 2 diabetes, lung disease and cancer) which are now responsible for 50% of deaths. So if you love the big picture stuff this is a delightful site to check out.

If you enjoyed this article you may be interested in this post:

Four Simple, Little Things to do for Big Health Benefits

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1. Mobile Phones

For years there has been debate about the effects of radiation from mobile phones. The debate is still not settled. The newest evidence is that the radiation from the phones does affect your skin.
A new study completed by the Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (STUK) on effects of mobile phone radiation on human skin has examined whether a local exposure of human skin to RF-EMF (the radiation from devices like mobile phones) will cause changes in protein expression in living people.

In the study, a small area of forearm’s skin in 10 volunteers was exposed to GSM signal for one hour. After that skin biopsies were collected from exposed and non-exposed areas of skin and all extractable proteins were examined. The analysis of 580 proteins identified 8 proteins that were statistically significantly affected.

”Mobile phone radiation has some biological effect. Even if the changes are small, they still exist”,

says Dariusz Leszczynski, Research Professor at STUK. According to Leszczynski it is much too early to say will these changes induced by the mobile phone radiation have any effect on health.

The entire article “Mobile phone radiation might alter protein expression in human skin” is available in the BMC Genomics web journal: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2164/9/77/abstract

This is a long way from showing that mobile phones are a significant health risk and even further from showing that mobile phones can cause cancer. For me, it means I won’t be talking for extended periods on my mobile.

2. At your desk

If, like me, you work at a desk, it can be hard to get good exercise. The healthblogger has a post (taken from the LiveSmarter blog) listing 20 exercises you can do at your desk, “deskercises”. It is so good that I would like to quote the whole post, but google penalises you for doing things like that. So I’ll just give you some of the highlights for me and then give you the link.

3. Body lift
This is a really easy one. Just place your hands on the arms of your desk chair and lift yourself up. Repeat (if you can).

5. Cherry picking
This exercise can help release tension in your upper body and looks just like it sounds. Stretch your arms up, one at a time, as high as you can, as if reaching to pick fruit out of a tree. Repeat 10 times, alternating sides as you go along.

10. The funky chicken

This is an exercise that can help loosen up your upper body. You just might want to wait until none of your coworkers are looking. Put your fingertips on your shoulders and lift your elbows up and then push them down to your sides, as if you’re trying to fly. Repeat 10 times.

17. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee

Did you get an email from your boss that’s making you livid? Put that energy to good use and get some muscle tone out of it. Just scoot your chair back (so you won’t actually punch a hole in your computer screen) and do some tae-bo action, punching your arms out in front of you and switching sides.

18. Touch your toes
Another easy exercise that will help you work out some tension and maintain flexibility. Stand up in your chair and let your body hang forward, touching as far down on your body as you can. Then, take your right hand and touch it to your left toe and vice versa.

3. Get Out and About.
So much for the phone and the desk. Now some reason to get out and about – or at least to get some aerobic exercise.

Aerobic exercise has now been shown to protect against stroke as well as heart attack. And this is moderate levels of aerobic activity – you don’t need to be an elite level athlete.

“Fitness has a protective effect regardless of the presence or absence of other stroke risk factors”

said Steven Hooker, director of the Prevention Research Center at the University of South Carolina Arnold School of Public Health.

Researchers, led by Steven Hooker, analyzed data on more than 60,000 people — 46,405 men and 15,282 women who participated in the Aerobics Center Longitudinal Study between 1970 and 2001 at the Cooper Aerobics Center in Dallas. The participants were followed for an average of 18 years. (If you remember those aerobics books with lots of charts for all the different kinds of exercises, they were written by the Mr. Cooper who runs this centre.)

“We found that a low-to-moderate amount of aerobic fitness for men and women across the whole adult age spectrum would be enough to substantially reduce stroke risk,” Hooker said.

That corresponds to 30 minutes or more of brisk walking, or an equivalent aerobic activity, five days a week.

So don’t talk too long on the mobile, take a break at the desk, and get out and about for a brisk walk for a half hour each day.

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To have good health doesn’t require adopting unusual or bizarre behaviours.  Doing little things can make a big difference.  (This is for those in normal health, if you have a major problem it may take major changes to address it.)  Here I’ll deal with simple and easy changes in three areas: exercise, eating and thinking.

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1. Walking (or other moderate exercise).

Moderately strenuous exercise, about 30 minutes a day, can lead to enormous benefits in terms of your mood, health, weight and the ability to live an independent and fulfilling life. Studies have shown that simply walking at a brisk pace for 30 minutes or more on most days can lead to significant health improvements.
The January issue of Mayo Clinic Health Letter lists some of the benefits of 30 minutes of exercise a day:

• Lower blood pressure: A reduction of 5 to 10 millimeters of mercury (mm Hg) is possible. In some cases, that’s enough to prevent or reduce the need for blood pressure medications.
• Exercise often increases the concentration of high-density lipoprotein (HDL or “good” cholesterol in the blood), especially when accompanied by weight loss. Exercise also helps reduce triglyceride levels.
• Prevent osteoporosis: Exercise may increase bone density and protect against bone mass decline, especially if weight-bearing activities are involved.
• Prevent cancer: Exercise has been shown to strengthen the immune system, improve circulation, reduce body fat and speed digestion. Each has a role in preventing cancer, particularly cancers of the colon, prostate, uterine lining and breast.
• Maintain mental well-being: Exercise may help reduce stress, improve mild-to-moderate depression and anxiety, improve sleep and boost moods.
• Increase energy and stamina: A lack of energy often results from inactivity, not age.

A Lot of Walking Can Assist with the Mental Symptoms of Menopause
Simply adding a brisk walking routine can reduce a variety of psychological symptomsfor post-menopausal women: symptoms such as anxiety, stress and depression . The research is published in the January issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.  Temple University public health researcher Deborah Nelson, is the study’s lead author.

The researchers found that high levels of physical activity were the most beneficial to postmenopausal women and African-American women. This meant walking at a moderate pace (4 miles per hour) for an hour and a half at least five times a week.

While the study found mental benefits of exercise, it did not show that exercise reduced physical symptoms such as hot flashes.

“You don’t have to run 20 miles a week to reap the benefits of exercise. If you stick to a moderate-paced walking schedule, it can keep your body mass index down and lower the risk of stress, anxiety and depression,” said Dr. Nelson.

I love to walk but for those who don’t you can probably find an enjoyable alternative, such as a sport or recreation such as dancing.  However it needs to be aerobic exercise (not quick bursts of energy such as sprinting) and done most days – if you aim for every day then it won’t matter if you miss one here and there.

Moderate exercise is pretty easy to judge.  It means you are breathing more heavily but still able to talk.  Another way is to picture a scale from 1 to 10.  Where ten is absolutely flat out and 1 is flat out on your back (doing nothing at all).  Moderate exercise is a seven on this scale.  It is especially important to stick to the moderate range if you are taking up exercise after being sedentary.

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2. Eating

Below is a list of foods high in anti-oxidants which have major health benefits.

1. Dark Green Leafy Vegetable: Dark greens deter cognitive decline, heart disease and Alzheimer’s.

2. Tomatoes: Tomatoes are a massive source of Lycopene which has been shown to reduce risks of heart disease, improve mental functioning in old age, and most impressive reduce cancer by over 40% (highest success in prostate, lung and stomach cancers).

3. Garlic: Garlic has also been linked to reducing cancer risk, it can also reduce blood pressure and cholesterol levels.

4. Spinach: Second only to Garlic for anti-oxidants.

5. Think Red – Red Grapes, Red Grape Juice, and yes Red wine:  red grapes have up to four time the anti-oxidants of orange or tomato juice. Red Wine (in moderation, up to 2 glasses a day) is equal to drinking grape juice or tea.

6. Tea: Black or Green tea is a powerful anti-oxidant. One cup of black tea a day has shown to cut heart disease risk in half.

7. Olive Oil: The oil, high in anti-oxidants, reduces death from cancer and heart disease. Folks regularly using the oil have HALF the death rate of folks on ordinary low fat diets.

8. Salmon and Other Fatty Fish: The fat in Salmon and other fatty fish (herring, tuna, sardines and mackerel) contains Omega 3 oils that fight virtually every known disease. They also increase brain and joint function, and improve mood disorders.  Two servings of week is all you need.

9. Go Nuts: Most varieties are full of (yet again) good (monounsaturated) fats. 5 ounces of nuts a week reduce heart attacks in women by 40%. Almonds and Walnuts have been shown to reduce cholesterol.

10. Blueberries: Half a cup a day of blueberries has been shown to ward off declining memory.

You can find a huge amount of information on foods and aging at the Neurosciences Laboratory of the Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (Tufts University in the US).

The easiest way I have found to change my eating is to make one little change at a time.  Things like: substitute olive oil for another oil or add a new dish to my repertoir of meals.  This stops me getting overwhelmed and giving up.  Making one little change every month or two means a big change in diet in the space of one or two years.
3. Bigger Changes Can Add Up (Not Smoking and Moderating Drinking)

People who adopt four healthy behaviours:

• not smoking;
• taking exercise;
• moderate alcohol intake; and,
• eating five servings of fruit and vegetables a day

live on average an additional fourteen years of life compared with people who adopt none of these behaviours, according to a new study.

(The study is: Khaw KT, Wareham N, Bingham S, Welch A, Luben R, et al. (2008) Combined impact of health behaviours and mortality in men and women: the EPIC-Norfolk Prospective Population study. PLoS Med 5(1): e12. http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0050012)

After factoring in age, the results showed that. over an average period of eleven years, those who did not undertake any of these healthy forms of behaviour were four times more likely to have died than those who did all of them. Furthermore, the researchers calculate that a person who engages in none of these behaviours has the same risk of dying as someone 14 years older who does all of them. This was independent of social class and body mass index.

4. A Simple Mental Exercise for Big Results.

Guided imagery is helping patients use the full range of the body’s healing capacity, according to the January issue of Mayo Clinic Health Letter.

Guided imagery is learning to:

• listen to someone’s voice,
• relax the breathing and
• consciously direct the ability to imagine.

The effect of guided vivid imagery is to send a message to the emotional control center of the brain.  From there, the message is passed along to the body’s endocrine, immune and autonomic nervous systems. These systems influence a wide range of bodily functions, including heart rate, breathing rate and blood pressure.

Guided imagery has been shown to benefit patients by:

• Reducing side effects from cancer treatment
• Reducing fear and anxiety prior to surgery. Studies have shown that surgery patients who participated in two to four guided imagery sessions required less pain medication and left the hospital more quickly than those who hadn’t used imagery.
• Managing stress
• Managing headaches. Studies have shown that guided imagery may aid in reducing the frequency of migraine headaches as effectively as taking preventive medications.

All these things are pretty easy to do (though changing smoking and drinking habits can be hard).  And they have big health benefits.  This benefits not only ourselves but, if taken up widely, could have a major impact on making our countries health budgets more affordable.  We can all win from doing things that, on the whole, are enjoyable to do.

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They are extraordinary findings. 

Yes, this comes from a large epidemiological study (following about 80,000 people), we call it the aerobic centre longitudinal study and we’ve been following these people for now over 25 years and again and again, in different sub groups in women and in men, in healthy individuals and those who were sick at base line like with Type 2 diabetes, when we look at objectively measured fitness determined by a maximal exercise test on a treadmill and objectively determined body composition, not self reported height and weight, or not even just body mass index but hydrostatic weighing to estimate percent fat, skin folds, waist circumference, we look at all of those things and the conclusion we come to again and again is that it is low fitness that is a much more important predictor of mortality than is body mass index, fat distribution, overall percent body fat.

In our analyses over and over again fitness wipes out the hazard associated with obesity. When we look at obese men and women, at least up through class 2 obesity, I don’t think there are any fit 500 pound people, but if we look at class 1, class 2 obesity - A body mass index which is a ratio of weight to height 30 to 34.9 is class 1, 35 to 39.9 is class 2 – and well up into the class 2 obesity category we see that those who are fit as proven by the treadmill test, not because they told us they were physically active, we find their death rate is not elevated at all as compared with normal weight people who are also fit. And indeed we find that normal weight people who are unfit on the treadmill test are about twice as likely to die during a follow up of 10 or 12 years when we compare them with the obese people who are fit. You can be fat and fit . . .

The bottom line: get exercising at a level that improves your breathing.  If you are only moderately overweight this is what it’s all about. 

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Especially if you are an adolescent woman.  Christine Halse at the University of Western Sydney has been conducting research on the impact of schooling on young women, especially concerning anorexia.  The paper is in the journal Gender and Education, 19(2), 219-235.  The whole story is told in her book Inside Anorexia, which is co-authored with Anne Honey and Desiree Boughtwood.

The problem is:

promoting a culture of high achievement, competition and self-discipline that is carried into the eating habits of vulnerable teenagers

These are of course the very qualities which schools use to promote themselves.  They are values deeply embedded in our culture.  And it is the culture of schools that is the problem.

School bells, timetables, fixed meal times, assignment deadlines and controlled exams created a regimented environment that students extended to their eating habits

    “The girls in our study took up the notion of discipline as a virtue, reproducing its regulatory practices in other aspects of their existence,”

This makes it clear that some of the values on which schooling is based can have very bad consequences for a minority of women.  I would propose that this culture bad effects on just about everyone who falls into its clutches.  Consider what schooling teaches:
Do what you don’t want to do.
Do what you don’t want to do because the authority says so.
You will be rewarded for the ability to bore yourself.
Don’t move.
Follow silly rules.
Don’t question silly rules.
Learn (ie memorise and regurgitate) stuff of no use or relevance to you.

It is said that schooling prepares people for society.  This is (appallingly) true.  It is the best possible reason to change society – and changing schooling would be an excellent place to begin.

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