Blue Zones: Secrets of a Long Life

good evening everybody welcome to the Murdoch mind/body/spirit series I'm jeanna Murdoch and I want to thank my husband Gerry Murdoch for supporting this series with me we are really honored and pleased to be able to do that to sponsor a series called the mind/body/spirit series are you guys all familiar with the aspen idea up here in the Aspen Institute yeah whoo I know there's some people from down valley here let's give a little shout out down valley anybody else yeah all right well obviously you're here because you want to learn how to live longer but not just longer and we want to learn how to live better and I think here in Aspen we do have some great examples we hosted a meeting earlier today of stakeholders in Aspen we were convening to think about could we become a blue zone here in Aspen and one of the people I invited was Klaus Obermeyer who's one of my heroes yeah we love Klaus he's 90 I said 95 he corrected me he's 96 he skis quite often especially with the bluebird days and swims here and we love that it's so inspirational so how many of you here are is anyone actually over let's say 80 they nice awesome welcome you know sometimes we don't we don't get that spectrum here in Aspen because it's full of young and fit people and there is a spectrum and I just want to say when I was walking over to this venue earlier today I was struck by the natural beauty of where we live and then walking into this auditorium thinking how special it is for us to be here so I just want to take a mindful moment which I like to do in this series because it's mind body and spirit to just take a moment take a deep breath in and as you exhale just calm and center and ground yourself into this space we all live these very busy lives and yet when you take a moment to pause you realize how lucky we are to live here and for those of you that are visiting you're really lucky to visit here I know our speaker Tony Buhner was talking about how lucky he feels to be able to visit here and his beautiful wife Tammy we feel really really honored to be able to present this program to you tonight Blue Zones live longer and better we don't to forget that part so this is the first series of the Murdock mind/body/spirit series this year we have several other speakers coming right around the corner is sach youngmee pom rinpoche that's a program that I think will surely sellout that's March 11th so be sure to buy your tickets a little bit about Tony he's been doing work in many cities around the globe actually I hope you're going to tell your stories to start off there's some incredible adventure stories he put some of our greatest adventures to shame here so he'll tell you a little bit about that he's led expeditions and he is the man that leads the blue zone community program and initiative and we brought him here literally to think about would this be a good fit for Aspen and so for those of you that think that's a good idea which I do I left some feedback forms outside and just think about that when you're leaving if you have some feedback or some ideas we'd love to take that and we're going to work with it and move forward on our project here bringing a more cohesive well-being initiative into this area so the blue zones they are working in eight state in 30 communities across the country to date and we are excited to maybe be a part of that I want you to really enjoy this presentation it's a lot about learning things that in some ways you may already know how to live longer and better but you may not do but maybe if we all look at it together it will be more enticing so enjoy the presentation and join me in welcoming Tony Buettner to the stage thank you very much I got to do something real quick I was pinching myself I am so incredibly honored to be here I'd like to thank Jerry and Nina burdock and the Institute for having me and my wife it's been an extraordinary visit and I am absolutely honored to stand on this stage how many of you love living here in Aspen raise your hand or in the valley how many of you would love to live here longer better raise your hand B I'm going to start tonight with a short video on the right hand side it's a side-by-side on the right hand side you're going to see what we believe is a Blue Zones Life and on the left hand side you're going to see what's happening here in America so let's go ahead and start with that you what will your last 10 years look like will you be quick enough for a game of tag with your grandchild strong enough to embrace every moment will you grow old with vitality or get old with disease it's time to decide is that impactful this is real researchers tell us here in America the human body is built to live to a healthy age 90 the reality on average we live to age 78 we're leaving 12 good years on the table and what we believe we've done at Blue Zones is identified ways from the longest-lived populations in the world for individuals families organizations and even communities to take some of these good years back so when I start a talk I always like to tell people how this all got started you see I come from a family of four boys I was born and raised in st. Paul Minnesota my father was an educator my mother was a stay-at-home mom and as we grew up all this boys were friends we were we did sports together we went on adventures together we came to Colorado and trout fished and height and mountain biked and and we liked each other so as we started to graduate from high school on college my older brother Dan came to us and said listen I think we should go on one last great adventure before we go out into our careers he said let's go on a bike ride so what we did and what the team did as we put our back tire in the Antarctic Ocean and bicycle 15,000 miles to the southern tip of South America now for those of you that have seen a globe before if you look at it it's all downhill it's really not that big a deal it's just a really long hill two years later Dan came to us again and said what are we going to bike ride from st. Paul a minute to Minneapolis and for those of you that that might not know that it's about ten miles so I said well I got some free time on Saturday let's do it well unfortunately with Dan he decided to go the long so again the team bicycle around the 45th parallel the first two diverse a Soviet Union left from Minneapolis and arrived in st. Paul and then two years later the team put their bicycle tires in the northern tip of Africa biked through the Sahara Desert through Central Africa climbed Mount Kilimanjaro and ended in Cape Town so the reason that I show you these trips is not to brag about accomplishments it's to show you what it did to our family what it did for Dan it turned us into explorers and adventurers it showed us that there were different ways people eight different ways they set up their homes different way they set up their faith-based communities and their social networks and it set us out on a path of exploration the next expeditions that Dan led was called the quest Network and he started them to solve some mysteries of the world things like what happened to the Mayan civilization or what is the secret to longevity so the first one was we hired experts around the Mayan civilization we actually embedded ourselves in Central America for about six months but what was really interesting about this opportunity is that we uplinked with over a million students around the country and we uplinked every night and on Friday we had them vote on what direction the expedition went and it was a huge success it caught the eye of National Geographic something called the Danish twin studies has established that our longevity is tied to our genes by only 20% and I think that's counterintuitive to people I think they think oh that family has big good genes they're do not live forever well the reality is 80% of how long you live is tied to your environment and your lifestyles so the premise for Blue Zones was if we could find the right environments the right lifestyles that support longevity we'd have the de-facto recipe our approach was to find demographically confirmed and geographically defined areas where people are living extraordinary long lives in some case to age 100 at 10 times the rate we do here in America with just a fraction of chronic disease that we have here so after 15 years of embedding ourselves into these cultures with experts we find what we call Blue Zones and it's here to these Blue Zones that we look for the secrets of longevity and we found nine commonalities that you see over and over and over again and I'll share those with you in a little bit with the nan with a grant from National Geographic in the National Institute of Aging we set out to find the brightest and the best epidemiologist anthropologist medical researchers demographers and nutritionists to come with us on these trips we found our first Blue Zones here on the island of Sardinia about 150 miles off the coast of Italy it is here that you find the longest-lived men they live ten good years on average longer than we do here in America it's also interesting on average for every one centenarian man there's four centenary and women here it's one to one so what do we find here here in America for every six thousand births that we have we yield one centenarian here in this bullseye region Noro province of sardinia for every 1000 births there's four centenarians we find a Bronze Age culture a culture made up of shepherds so you see men and women out with their flocks for weeks at a time low intensity exercise moving naturally back in the villages you don't see many cars so you see people walking you see them biking you see almost every trip affords some natural movement taking the kids to school going to church going shopping what we found here was a population that ate primarily a plant-based diet 95 percent of what they eat is plants they either grow it they get it at the market the exchange with neighbors you see it's supplemented with fruits and legumes and nuts and we do see them eating a little bit of animal protein typically it was goat or chicken or pork but portion size was very very important on average they eat it about five times a month and only about three to four ounces and let me tell you when they do finally get that pork they're pretty excited about that yeah they get real excited about that we see a population that's created a portable diet pictured here is pond D de musica it's unleavened bread made out of durum wheat and they just put it in their packs and they go this is a population that has created a cheese made out of sheep's milk it's called pecorino cheese it's delicious it's easy to get here in American it's very high in omega-3 fatty acids and everywhere we went we saw people drinking wine they had vineyards that sounds good doesn't it they'd have vineyards but it wasn't like you were seeing people just getting bombed and hanging out by themselves they were with family or they were with friends and it was almost always with a healthy meal and we have this wine tested it's called Connie now wine it has three times the level of polyphenols our artery scrubbing compounds and I can tell you after many Friday and Saturday nights there it tastes good too but what really amazed us about this culture was how they set up their society as you get older here you are more revered you are not put into retirement homes you're actually kept very close by your extended family and we know that aging parents that are kept close from their family live on average four to six years longer than those that don't what we also found here for the first time is what's called the grandmother effect the children of these extended families live longer excuse me have lower rates of infant mortality and disease this is a culture where you see 103 year-old mountain biking to work chopping wood and beating a man sixty-five years younger than a man in armwrestling tournament I have to tell you this is the favorite part of my talk this is my older brother Dan Buettner foundered CEO of Blue Zones and let me tell you growing up he picked on me he has never seen me do speech I've done 200 of them around the country and I get to show people him getting looked by a guy 65 years older now we found our second blue zone on the archipelago of Okinawa this is ground zero for longevity Okinawa has what every city in America wants they have the longest live women they live 12 good years longer than we do here in America they have an extraordinary profile they have the longest disability life expectancy in the world on average the population lives seven good years longer than we do here in America they have five times as many centenarians one-fifth the rate of breast and colon cancer and one-sixth the rate of cardiovascular disease it's absolutely amazing well people say well that's a homogeneous population that doesn't count no it is a heterogeneous population it is a cultural melting pot well what do we find here well we find again a plant-based diet about 95 percent of what they're eating is plant-based we saw some fruits and vegetables we knew and some we had no idea can anyone tell me what this vegetable is raise your hand close very close so it's called Goya or bitter melon and what they do with it is chop it up and they sauteed in their stir fries and what's so interesting about this vegetable and you can get it here it's been proven to kill cancer cells clean your blood and reduce inflammation we find a culture that's eating lots and lots of legumes they eat seven times so much tofu as we do here in America and for the first time we see a culture stopping every day and down shifting when I say that I mean taking a break and reversing stress and they do it with what they call ancestor veneration they stop every morning and they think about the people that came before them and their family they relax they downshift something called the Framingham study has established that isolation and loneliness kills everyone in this room understands that 30 years ago the average American had three best friends that they could count on on a good day and a bad day and they would listen today we're down to one and a half we're becoming this isolated Society if you are lucky enough to be born into no Keene Island culture you would have been put into what's called a mole why and what this stands for is a committed social network so at about age 2 they take the women in the little boys or kids little boys down to the city center and they're put into a group of fibery boys five or eight girls and these moais travel through life together supporting each other in good times in bed these women have been in this boy for 97 years their average age is 101 years of age and we know that this committed social network has a profound effect on this population but that's not to say they still don't argue about that hot guy they still loved in high school because they do I was there and I saw it can anyone tell me the two most dangerous years of life for Americans anyone nice work usually someone says oh when you're 15 and my mom agrees with that but it is it's the year you're born because of infant mortality and it's the year you retire and I ask you all what why is that do we retire and just start doing drugs and drinking too much and and just risky behaviors no researchers believe it has to do with purpose we travel through life with this profound sense of purpose and then all of a sudden one day it's all askew what we found in Okinawa was a language that didn't even have a word for retirement instead of we heard over and over again my Achy guy and when we had that translated it simply meant the reason I get up in the morning that sense of purpose and researchers show us those people that have that sense of purpose live seven years longer than those that don't this one hundred and three year old Crotty master is a key guy was just simply sharing his art this 97 year old fisherman's a key guy was spear fishing every day to bring fresh fish to his family 97 years old I wish and this woman's a key guy was simply her family at a hundred and four years old this woman is pictured here with her great great great granddaughter two women separated by four generations and we asked her how does it feel to hold this fourth-generation she put her head back and said like leaping into heaven we found America's Blue Zone in a extraordinary confusing place you get in the car and you drive through the pollution of the San Bernardino freeway you hit the loma linda exit you take a right-hand turn you get to the top of the exit and on the left hand side is a del taco and on the right hand side is a vie nur hot you have arrived at America's Blue Zones really so what's happening here this is a city that has the same challenges that every other city in America has but what we found here was a large concentration of seven-day dentist and something called the Venice Health Study has been tracking this population for over 30 years and it's considered a gold standard epidemiology study and from it we were able to get some great data here in America on average women live to about age 80 but amongst these Adventists they live to age 89 from we live to about age 76 but here they're living 11 years longer a population here in America living 10 good years longer than any other city there's no magic here what what's going on again we see a cultural melting pot a heterogeneous population but we see a population implementing habits that support longevity they take their diet directly from the Bible Genesis chapter 1 verses 27 to 29 where it talks about fruits and legumes and greens this is a culture that takes a 24-hour sanctuary of time so again we start seeing that down shifting again from sunset on Friday to sunset on Saturday they stop everything doesn't matter if the kids need to go to ball game and you gas in the car or gallon of milk they stop everything they focus on three things faith family and friends they take nature walk so we see this this moving naturally concept again during the sanctuary of time you often see them eating and sharing vegetarian potlucks they go to someone's house everyone brings their favorite healthy meal they eat together they talk together they support each other we know the sense of community has a profound effect on this population this is a population that has given us a hundred and six year old active cowboy mr. ed Rawlings ed starts his day with a swim and like a good Minnesotan on the weekends he still puts on the board's incredible this is a population that is yielded this gentleman multi-millionaire 97 year old Ellsworth Wareham when he was quoted $6,000 for privacy fence he said for that price I'll do it myself and we watched him for four days dig footings mix concrete put in stringers build a fence and as you can imagine on the fourth day he ended up in the emergency room so amazing about this photograph though is this isn't Ellsworth where this Iselle is worth we're at age 97 he still assists with 20 open-heart surgeries a month and now I'd like to introduce you to the buter boys favorite centenarian 104 year old mrs. Marge Jetton okay get this Marge starts her day with what she calls a prune juice shooter let that go in one ear and get it out of there you don't want that in there she starts her day lifted weights he gets on a stationary bike and then she jumps in a rootbeer colored Cadillac and wails down the San Bernardino freeway where she still volunteers to seven organizations I said Marge why you working so hard she goes Tony somebody's got to look out for them old folks now not many of you know me but I've been in two earthquakes over seven I've been through two hurricanes I flipped a car at a mountain road I had a gun put in my mouth I was beat by gypsies in Romania but I've never had a more harrowing experience in writing shotgun for Marge Jetton I mean it good we found the fourth Blue Zone on the dacoit penance of Costa Rica it is here that the whole population has three times the chance to live to a healthy age 90 again we start seeing habits here commonalities we see people moving naturally we see people down shifting we see them eating wisely they eat more or less a Mesopotamian diet so they're eating legumes and corn and squash and we see them connecting to their population it's here that you see aging men marrying young wives and research shows that that affords an additional 3 years of longevity and now guess what I did that knowing we found our last Blue Zone and this was really the only isolated blue zone we found up until about the 1970s it is here that you see a perfect storm of longevity behaviors and what it has yielded is a population of 8,000 people that live eight good years longer than we do with almost no dementia and no chronic disease so what do we see here well same thing people are moving naturally they're connected they're downshifting faith is important they're eating mostly a plant-based diet I was at a wedding here about four months ago and I don't know if you've ever been to a Greek wedding but it's very active you put your arms around each other and you dance all night it's about 3 o'clock in the morning starting to get tired and I look to my left and there is a 93 year old man I look to my right and there's a 97 year old man dancing 3:00 in the morning there's this profound sense of movement and activity and culture what we found here that was unique though were these herbs and spices there's over a hundred and fifty of them that just grow wild and the it Koreans cook with them they infuse drinks and teas with them they actually even put them into their honey and early research is showing a connection between these herbs these spices and the lack of more of dementia it is here we ran into this guy Stu my teas Moriarty's what he did was he fought in World War two he actually mangled his arm he was injured and he couldn't get proper medical attention he ended up sneaking on to the Kiwi too he arrived in New York and worked his way north to a place called Port Jefferson New York very high concentration of Greeks there he quickly got his arm healed he met a girl he became a painter they got married they bought a house they had three kids he was living the American dream until about age 65 when he was a little out of breath kind of like I am he you're in Aspen he went his doctor and his doctor came back and said stamatis I'm sorry I have some bad news you have uncurable for stage lung cancer get your life in order you have six months to live so my tease didn't believe it he ended up going to three other doctors they told him the same thing so what did he do he didn't go on chemo or radiation he actually decided to move back to Korea he said if I'm going to die I want to be buried with my ancestors so the first couple months he's back some old childhood friends come by they were you know talking and socializing sipping the little wine after a couple months started feeling a little better he said you know what I can't lay in this bed anymore I'm gonna get out of here I'm going to plant a garden I won't be able to harvest it but my family will he wanted to get outside he wanted to feel that Sun feel that salt air so he went out and planted a garden six months came and went he didn't die he actually started to feel better and he just eased himself back into a Korean life this is a true story it's been captured in the New York Times and fact-checked it's called the island that forgot to die but this is also a metaphor none of these centenarians that we met woke up in the morning and said listen I'm going to try to live to age 100 they had lifestyles and lived in environments that subtly but relentlessly nudge them into healthy behaviors so we came back dan wrote an article for National Geographic to date it's the second most read edition in their hundred and twenty eight year history people want to learn how can I live longer better he went on to write a book called Blue Zones that captures the commonalities a New York Times bestseller was hired by National Geographic to find the happiest places in the world and capture that work and thrive and about six months ago wrote the Blue Zone solution which captures the hundred-year food history of all five blue zones and gives people recipes and nudges how to optimize their homes and how to eat and and starts to talk about some of the population health initiatives that we've done we found nine commonalities everywhere we went you see the same thing we call them the power nine secrets to living a longer better life these commonalities point out that a long happy life can be had by surrounding yourself your family and even your community with habits and environments that support longevity the first one was these populations move naturally what I'm saying here is they did not belong to gyms and they did not run marathons they moved on average every 20 minutes they were not sedentary they were moving they had Gardens they lived in d convenience to homes they walked or bike to places they did not have a button for this electronic and this one they use their hands they use their body they move naturally they have the right outlook these populations knew how to downshift to reverse stress to reverse and eliminate the inflammation from stress that is associated with almost every preventive disease they did it through yoga or meditation or prayer or eating with their family or gardening or like the Sardinians they just went out to happy hour they had a sense of purpose and they could articulate it the reason they were getting up in the morning the Okinawans called a Nicki guy in Costa Rica it's called plan de vida but they could articulate it and they lived it every day they ate wisely in every one of these Blue Zones they drink a little bit of alcohol typically it was red wine it was almost always with friends or family and almost always with a healthy meal for women it was about three-quarters of a glass for men it was about two glasses and I know what you're thinking out there no you can't save up and have 14 on Friday it does work that way they eat a plant-based diet again 95% of what they was plant-based we believe legumes are the Blue Zones superfood they're cheap they're easy to make they're filling they're good for you they supplement it again with a little bit of goat fish chicken and pork and portion size incredibly important you don't see these populations eating 16-ounce t-bones about 3 to 4 inches is about it they had strategies not to overeat now I love this one if you get a chance to go home and look at your parents or grandparents dinner plates what you're going to find on average is a 10-inch plate now I want you to go home and measure your plate and what you're going to find on average is a 13-inch dinner plate now it's only 3 inches doesn't sound like much right but when you calculate the surface area it's 71% more space and what do you do when you're eating family-style these populations actually pre plated their food in the kitchen they put the leftovers away and they ate in another room they ate off the smaller plates they had strategies like this they would eat breakfast like a king lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper and what the okinawan stood before every meal as they close their eyes and they say this how during Hachi Bou and when we had that translated it simply means stop eating when your stomach is 80% full imagine being able to do that at every meal and just cut out 20% of your caloric intake Americans didn't get overweight and obese on thousands of calories it's it's hundreds and this is what we believe the foundation is they were well-connected they put their families first they kept their aging parents close and we know that affords between four and six years of extra longevity they add monogamous spousal relationships we know married people live four years longer than those that aren't and they took care of their kids and as we get older that's probably a pretty good idea this is the one that shocked us we talked to 243 centenarians and these people had faith all but three did not belong to faith-based community it didn't matter what the religion was and we know faith has many faces but research shows people that show up to a faith-based community at least four times a month and our act of live four to fourteen years longer than those that don't we do not know why is it because of the committed social networks or the healthy behaviors we don't know and this is the big one they belong to the right tribe when I say tribe I mean they were either born into or actively seek out healthy friendships and we know these social networks are as contagious as a cold if your three best friends smoke tobacco you have a hundred and sixty percent greater chance of smoking it's the same with depression loneliness or obesity but imagine if these behaviors are healthy and positive how that would flow through social networks so we get we went on these trips we have all this great research can we just tell America what to do and they'll listen nope communities and people are using three strategies to get healthier here in American they're spending a hundred and ten billion dollars a year diets gym memberships and supplements don't get me wrong exercising is great for you but these are short-term wins and long-term strategies that fail and I'll show you why if all this in this room started a diet today we're going to get skinny three months ten percent they're gone seven months ninety percent of us are gone after two years we'd have three percent of the people on that diet there is not a diet in the history of men that has helped more than three percent of the population for over a course of two years it doesn't work how about gym memberships its January first I'm going to shape right that model is set up on failure people start and they give up and if we could come back with a blue zone pill that you could take every day and live 12 good years longer we couldn't get enough people to take it so what works we with a grant from National Geographic again we're asked to study community health initiatives around the world that actually worked when I say worked I mean it reduced a chronic disease and sustained it it took two years to find one and it was in North Karelia Finland in the early 70s they had the highest rate of cardiovascular and heart disease in the world women and men at age 40 dropping over from heart attacks in three short years this team took the focus off of individuals telling people what to do instead they looked at the environments and the lifestyle of people had again what drives longevity environments and lifestyles in three short years they reduced the heart attacks of working age men by 85% Ave has sustained that for 30 years so what our team did was develop eight approach to population health and our thought was this we're going to take the focus off of individuals and telling them what to do because they're not going to listen we know though that people spend 90% of their time in a life radius of about 10 miles where they live and they work this is where they live work play and interact so we said how about if we put our interventions to that environment and those lifestyles so we start with individuals we help them optimize their home you're probably think about what does that mean I'll give you an example when you get home tonight where do you find your fruits and vegetables in your refrigerator down below outta sight right just a little hint clean out the dirty vegetable or they have rotten vegetables what blue zones would say how about on Sunday night just cut the vegetables and fruit up put them in single serving containers and put them on the top shelf wouldn't that make the Healthy Choice the easy choice and how about your pantry and I'm guilty you go to your pantry open it up where are the chips and the cookies right in front of you how about putting them up high or down low and put the healthy choices at eye level then we work with communities to form my wives how can we get people that want to change their health behavior to commit to walking or biking or healthy eating or discovering purpose how about purpose workshops could we help people find what they're really good at and what they want to do and help them create a mission statement and maybe put those skills to work volunteering you know volunteers suffer lower rates of BMI and lower rates of chronic disease then we look at the places people live how about grocery stores how can we make healthy choices a little easier there how about employers how can we make that environment a little healthier how about restaurants and maybe schools and faith-based communities and how about policy could we bring best practices to communities to choose food policies and built environment policies tobacco policies to make environments healthy well this all sounded good we had a great time doing all this research what we ended up doing is putting this all into pledges a list like a Chinese menu of best practice set that all these sectors could actually choose what works for them to optimize their environments and their lifestyles the question is would all of this work no one had ever tried it in 2007 AARP came to us and they asked us could you replicate a blue zone here in America we said we'd love to so we put out an RFP we had about 70 cities raise their hand say we want to do this and we ended up choosing Elbert Lee Minnesota and the reason that we chose them population about 20,000 was because their leadership was aligned city manager mayor city council employers restaurants grocery store superintendents non prophets they wanted to change the health trajectory of this city the first thing we do is come in and listen understand what's happening what's working what's been tried and failed where's the low-hanging fruit when we talk about the built environment we bring this gentleman and his name is Dan burden dan has helped 3,700 cities in America become more walkable bikeable and livable so again he brings best practices to to tell the community to teach them to listen to them what they want to do and create the right strategies when we got to Elbert Lee it looked like the downtown was closed for business 50% of the stores were vacant they were thinking about widening their Main Street and increasing their speed limit and just moving people right through town and we wonder why small towns are collapsing what we did is put blue zone goggles on them and say listen why don't we look at all the four neighborhoods that surround downtown and make sure there's sidewalks how about bike lanes make it easy for people to walk downtown and support those businesses how about putting the Main Street on a diet lowering the speed limit maybe putting in diagonal parking so you can move more people to support those businesses how about outside dining placemaking maybe bump-outs so that older people can walk across without feel like they're going to get run over then we turned our attention to the gem of Elbert Lee fountain Lake it's it's two blocks from downtown but there's no way to get there six lanes of traffic and when you get across there's nowhere to walk or bike so with the money they saved in the downtown renovation they created a Blue Zone walkway and bike trail around the lake now on any given day you see people walking biking socializing spending time with their family no diets no gems no supplements people connecting then we turned our focus to the green space they were fertilizing acres of grass and just cutting it we said how about community gardens they put in a hundred community gardens they sold out the same weekend now you have people moving naturally teaching their kids how to garden connecting with their neighbors and their friends and eating fresh fruits and vegetables then we took a look at the restaurants we brought this gentleman in here right here guy by the name of Brian wonsik I think he's written the best book that I've ever read called mindless eating he's an expert in food habits and food environments we brought him in to look at how could we help restauranteurs make the Healthy Choice the easy choice ones that actually could increase their bottom line things like do we have to put bread on the table right away or can people just ask for bread and we'll take it out how about maybe taking salt shakers off but if people want them to bring them right out and my question to you is what is the one word that's on a menu that guarantees an entree will not sell the healthy choice people don't want the healthy choice they want something that tastes good so why not name it to sound inviting and make it taste good and my question to you is does every single sandwich have to come with a compost pile of french fries or can the default be fruits and vegetables if you want the French fries of course you can have them then we went to the grocery stores we label what we believe to be 43 super Blue Zones foods and in one year we saw a 37% increase of those foods we helped these grocery stores take out sugar sweetened beverages from the checkout waves all the gum candy and sweets and salty snacks out we put in healthy beverages and healthy snacks well what happened a hundred percent increase in total sales and imagine the mothers and the fathers that have all the little kids how nice it was for them to just go do it healthy checkout lane then we went to the school we brought this cow in her name is Leslie Lyle expert in policies and programs for schools how many of you walked to school when you were a kid please raise your hand I want you to look around about 80% how many of you have children or grandchildren that walk to school raise your hand like everyone to look around 20 years ago 57% of kids walked to school today it's down to 11% the problem with that is research shows it is safer to walk to school today than it was 20 years ago but we all wonder why our kids obese and overweight but we've just reengineered on average three miles a day of kids activity so what we did with Albert Lee was suggested safe routes to school walking school buses where parents and volunteers could walk with the kids so by the time they got to school they were ready to learn and focus on their studies Albert Lee took one policy it was simply this to prohibit the eating in the classrooms in the hallways in their school now why would that benefit the health of kids what a kids eat in the classroom and always junk we saw a four percent drop in BMI in one year then we form moais we got people that had no idea they weren't friends I didn't even know each other we got 16% of the community to say I'll commit to walk one night a week for 10 weeks 16 percent of the population did it they walked 35 million steps and lost 17,000 pounds two years later 60% of these moais were still together so talk about breaking down loneliness and isolation then we went to the employers said how can we make this atmosphere in this environment a healthier one with vending or policy or or programs or benefits or active maybe giving someone five dollars a day if they walk right to work how can we encourage people to move more eat less and be more connected we put on a huge kickoff event we had 27% of the community show up they raised their hand and they said I will change one health behavior this had never been done before we worked in this community for thirteen months the eyes of the world were on us we had Good Morning America there Today Show New York Times USA Today when the results came in they were astounding city workers health care claims down 40% tobacco usage in the county down 17% we had trail counts out we saw an increase of 56% of people walking and biking downtown we saw an 80% increase in people walking and biking in the community but what happened in Albert Lea seven years ago was simply this a community that took a brand that came together to use evidence based environmental lifestyle changes that created permanent or semi-permanent changes that they could choose that they could lead they got the support they knocked down the silos and got everyone marching together two years later Walter Willett from a Harvard came in embedded himself with his team and called the results stunning he said the reason this was stunning is this was not last month's weight loss challenge or fun run or those things that don't stick these were permanent changes to the environment so we started looking at how can we help overly this year this is over Leeds Main Street and their County Road doesn't look very livable but after Blue Zones their whole downtown is occupied so they have to grow downtown so we helped them picture what a built environment change could be this is what Elbert Lee is building they received a 40 million dollar grant because of their built environment visioning from the state from the county we started in Albert Lee we formed a partnership with a company called health ways to expand our work their well being company that worked on disease management one on one they wanted to turn that into a community we wanted to scale this our first project was in the beach cities I think somewhat similar to Aspen a very healthy population active healthy we hired 45 employees hired from those communities had about 500 volunteers working in the first two years Gallup measured our results and you see a drop in obesity a drop in tobacco usage you see people moving more you see them eating less this population has tracked childhood obesity for 25 years in the last five years they've cut childhood obesity by 50% and you're probably going how can they do that well when we got there seven percent of kids walked to school today it's 67 percent who is walking those kids to school volunteers grandparents parents they say 15,000 car rides a day that caught the eye of the governor of Iowa invited us to be the cornerstone of his healthiest state initiative and currently we're working in 15 cities they're helping them become the healthiest state in the country we created what's called a Blue Zone Institute so city leaders and employees from Blue Zones can come every day or excuse me every year and exchange best practices how can we get grants how can we leverage this work and the learnings of all these communities they've seen a $90 reduction in the cities that are Blue Zones compared to non Blue Zone and this is from boost Blue Cross Blue Shield this is our largest project right here Fort Worth Texas population of eighty thousand eight hundred thousand we actually have over two thousand volunteers working there our second statewide initiative is in Hawaii where we're there for 10 years we kicked off a third statewide initiative in Oregon we're in Florida New York and in five short years we are currently in eight states and 30 communities you're probably saying well how does this all work how do you get people to show up and do this don't get me wrong this is about media and marketing it's about awareness awareness drives engagement people like to be part of something big they want their families to be healthy they want their kids to be healthy they want their grandparents they want their community healthy so our outreach and I will own about a billion media impressions but when you ask people you know what the blue zone project is about ninety percent say yes and about forty three percent on average are active mind this is what a lose military so I on the ground have lived in Cedar Rapids all my life I was born here and I live in the house that I grew up in in 2008 we were flooded and we rebuilt our house at that time I weighed 278 pounds Cedar Rapids was going to start the Blue Zones project and I was diagnosed with sleep apnea and Russell's leg syndrome by room al uh diabeetus and a doctor at Mayo had told me that I was obese so I decided that the Blue Zone project was a wonderful thing for me to do because I was getting our city healthy thought about it and decided that I wanted to see my grandchildren grow up graduate get married have children I started going through my covers and realizing at home things that we ate that we're not healthy I don't use margarine anymore I don't eat whole bread we eat more fruit than probably the average family I was lucky if I could walk down the block being tired now I can walk a couple of miles so I have now lost 105 pounds my husband and I LA and we ride our bikes and we do the meet me at the market in our city and so it's made us closer Kody my grandson gave me a hug one day grandma this person I ever got my arms all the way around you and I it just brought tears to my eyes and I still when I think about it it's still raised here's my eyes my name is Lynn Stansbury I live in Cedar Rapids Iowa and because of the Blue Zones project I'm going to live longer happier life so when we started this work there was no manual we have stumbled and we have failed and we have fallen and we have learned we have partnered with extraordinary communities that have incredible organizations and people green great work creating a best practice what's so incredible about that video is that it was sent to us at her office it was a 17 year old high school senior who had heard about this woman and went an interview dur and filmed her and I mean the quality of it is unbelievable Lynn Stansbury won an award in Iowa for the number one volunteer she pretty much single-handedly whooped the whole city of a hundred thirty thousand to become fluent certified so here's the reality and everyone in this room understands is there is a health epidemic in America 67 percent of people are either obese or overweight in America diabetes is skyrocketing it's projected within 20 years that 4 out of 10 Americans will have diabetes this is the one that kills me because my wife and I have a 21 year old daughter it is projected now that our children here in America will live less long lives than we do and I ask you all is that because we're stupid of course not is because our parents loved us more than we love our kids of course not we have evolved as humans over millennial from an environment of hardship and scarcity to where now we live in this environment of abundance and ease we can't leave our house anymore without thinking well I got to get my car I can't walk or bike it gets too far and when we do get in our cars the typical city and I want to applaud you a typical city people have to run a gauntlet of fast-food restaurants what you have done here in this valley is unbelievable please give yourself a hand when we get past the fast-food restaurants we are funneled through convenience stores when we go to rent a movie snacks candy the brain is a muscle and muscles fatigue what the blue zone project does is partners with communities utilizing the lessons of the longest-lived populations harnessing all the great work that's being done in communities to create a perfect storm of well-being but don't get me wrong this stuff is hard and there's no silver bullet what DNA says Oh Tony let's just make sure we unleash silver buckshot so I'd like to leave you tonight with this gentleman here remember him my buddies too my teas Moriarty's check them out I love that guy so about six months ago Dan was writing that article I told you about the island that forgot to die and likewise he was stressed and busy called me up and he said hey we do me a favor costume ideas and ask him a question I said sure so I get on the phone phones ring and it picks up and here's what I hear ya what do you want I said to my tease hey it's Tony Buettner from Blue Zones he knows ya what do you want hurry up I only got a couple minutes I got my buddies they're here we're going up in the vineyard there he still produces two hundred liters of wine a year he doesn't drink it all himself so I said to my tease I just have one question can you tell me why you think you were cured of terminal lung cancer it's quiet for a minute and he goes I don't know it just happened but he says you know what Tony about 25 years agos back in the States and I went to go see them doctors to see what they thought and I go well what'd they say he goes nuttin they're all dead thank you very much thank you thank you very much thank you very much for coming I would be more than happy to answer any questions about our research or our work anyone questions comments yes sir hello the Blue Zones that I see are mostly in temperate climates except for your experiment in Albert Lea yep so I mean is there something about the temperate climates or well I think there's a lot to be said about a Mediterranean diet certainly I think the hardships of being in cold might have something to do with it we've always thought of that and when we are implementing these Blue Zone projects when you're implementing them in Minnesota and Iowa we have six months of the year where it's freezing cold how do you keep people moving on the other side in California Texas and Florida in the summer it's so hot you can't go outside so what we have done is created moais walking Moi's and potluck vegetarian moais so when it's summer when it's nice out we launch walking moais so people can walk and be active we work with city government to put together policies to do mixed-use policies so when it does get cold or maybe it's a civic center or a large shopping center where people can come and walk and then the opposite when it gets ugly out then what we do is implement the potluck cooking moais and so forth because it's a good point absolutely I live on a lake in minute northern Minnesota in the summer whit's Lake Lake unis it's near Detroit Lakes Minnesota I do the same anyway there's a lady there that skis on one ski she's 89 years old once a week she's a slalom skiing behind a boat I love it thank you very much for questions yes yes yep yeah thank you very much for the question in that blue zone solution that I had pointed out I that we took the hundred-year food history we also looked at what they drink and the number-one thing is water they also drink coffee they also drink tea so that's what we see in the longest-lived populations water primarily coffee and tea thank you very much yes ma'am two more questions okay yes on average of all the we we interviewed 80 year-old 90 year-old and centenarians and of all them in all five Blue Zones on average they sleep seven and a half hours a night and in many cases they rest so they're resting their downshifting they're getting that rest thank you for the question yes ma'am um types of medicine that they would have is this all a allopathic I mean our typical Western model or did they have herbal medicine or they doing their traditional medicine I guess you know I'm going to be completely honest with you and I'm sorry I don't have a great answer for you because I wasn't part of the medical research so I can't answer I can answer the little that I know and we certainly know in Okinawa they have their own medicines lots of herbs they're using but I don't have a great answer and I'm so sorry to end that way tonight one more quick one can you say something about the quality of the soil and the phone Okinawa where they grow a lot of their own food yeah in all the full you know all the soil you see them planting organically right so they're not a lot of tons of fertilizers they're working the ground themselves they rotate every couple years over they'll rotate their crops but it's all about moving naturally eating healthy healthy vegetables fruits legumes and so forth ladies and gentlemen I've had a wonderful diet thank you very much for having me tonight thank you very much you

Channel: The Aspen Institute

Views: 106,886

Rating: 4.8063493 out of 5

Keywords: Blue Zones, longevity, obesity, health, elderly, old age, centenarian, 100 years old, long life, senior citizen, Gina Murdock, Tony Buettner, Aspen Institute, Japan, Okinawa, Sardinia, bitter melon, goya, superfruit, diet, nutrition, Dan Buettner, living longer, Blue Zones Power 9

Id: EVauROroe1Y

Length: 64min 52sec (3892 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 01 2016