Do you want to extend your time on earth? Take a leaf out of DAN BUETTNER’s book. He has spent decades discovering the secrets of healthy living among the world’s oldest people.
Choose pickleball over personal training
You heard it here first: exercising is a bad idea. Or at least the form of slogging it out at the gym, which Buettner says “doesn’t work for a significant percentage of the population.” Why? “They’re all excited about it, it’s going to be difficult and then they’ll run out of gas.” Instead, Buettner draws inspiration from people from the blue zones who, like the non-peers who climb the hills every day in the mountain villages of Sardinia, “just live their lives and move naturally.”
“I make it a point to live in walkable communities,” says Buettner, 63, “so that every time I go to work, to the grocery store or to get coffee, I’m walking.” “I live in Miami Beach and I can’t use a car for weeks.” Fitness works best when it’s fun – take Singapore, where the National Steps Challenge turns logging your 10,000 steps into a game. “I love biking, so I have seven bikes, including a trail bike, road bike and a beach bike,” says Buettner. “I also like paddle boarding and pickleball.”
Do you want to extend your time on earth? Take a leaf out of DAN BUETTNER’s book. He has spent decades discovering the secrets of healthy living among the world’s oldest people
Lose lazy friends
“Friendships last decades and can have a measurable impact on how active we are,” says Buettner. ‘I have redesigned my social network. I don’t spend much time with my sedentary friends who just want to sit at the bar. I really like pickleball and hang out with pickleball people. When we come together, we are always moving.” In Loma Linda, a Blue Zone in California, the Seventh-day Adventist community focuses much of its social contact on sports and encourages all ages to stay active. “Make friends with someone whose idea of recreation is cycling, racquetball, or golf,” says Buettner.
Perfect recipes that you will love
As the backlash against ultra-processed foods grows, it’s no surprise that Buettner is a fan of cooking from scratch.
His advice? “Buy a whole food, plant-based cookbook,” and “then scroll through to find maybe a dozen recipes that appeal to you and cook them until you find five that you absolutely love.” This is important because you need to love these recipes so much that you can repeat them for decades. Buettner is particularly fond of minestrone soup: ‘I eat it maybe three to four times a week because I love it. And it is de facto a cocktail for longevity.’ Why? Because it contains ‘several servings of vegetables’ and ‘a full daily dose of beans’ – staples of the famous Mediterranean diet. Buettner adds, “I’ve cut out all meat, almost all dairy, and my doctor says I’m the fittest 63-year-old he knows.”
Use the ‘1,000 V 100’ rule
Although he advocates a plant-based diet, Buettner doesn’t believe in blanket rules or hardcore bans. “If you tell people they have to limit a certain food for the rest of their lives, only a handful of them will stick with it,” he says. “In blue zones they might slaughter a pig and eat a ton of it, but only once a month.” For Buettner, that means “every now and then, if I feel like something, I just eat it.”
Keeping in mind that we eat about 1,100 meals a year, Buettner recommends taking a 1,000 versus 100 approach: “Try to make 1,000 of the meals the kind that will keep you fueled all day – whole food, plant-based meals – and then if you want to celebrate on Friday or Saturday night, you have about 100 meals to play with.”
Beware the year after you retire
Many of us have been dreaming of retirement for decades, but, Buettner says, “The year after you retire is the most dangerous year of your adult life.” There is talk of a ‘massive mortality spike’, which is the result of a sudden loss of purpose.
“You really need something to replace the activity and social network you had at work, otherwise death will follow quickly.”
If you don’t have a goal, try this ten-minute exercise, says Buettner: “Take a blank sheet of paper and divide it into four columns. In the first column, write down your values – just short sentences like conservative, liberal, Christian, Muslim, or something like “I put family first.” In the second column, mention your passions, such as ‘I love sports’,
“I like children”, “I like playing games”, “I like helping people” or “I like fixing things”. Then, in the third column, write down the things you are good at, such as “I am good at resolving conflict,” “I am good at nurturing,” and so on. In the fourth column you can look for common patterns in your answers and try to find an outlet for these things.
Let’s say you wrote that you like dogs and are good at walking. An idea might be to help walk the animals at a local dog shelter.” Volunteering not only gives you purpose; according to Buettner, it can also be “a very powerful strategy for longevity” because “volunteers in every country in the world have a lower BMI, less cardiovascular disease, and report high levels of satisfaction.”
You heard it here first: exercise is a bad idea. Or at least the form of slogging it out at the gym, which according to Dan Buettner (pictured) “doesn’t work for a significant percentage of the population.” Why?
Create a cave
In the blue zones, most centenarians go to bed shortly after sunset and wake up at dawn, giving them eight hours of sleep. In Britain we sleep an average of six hours and 24 minutes a night, despite the NHS recommending seven to nine hours. “People who don’t sleep enough lose years of their life expectancy,” says Buettner. He has several tips to improve sleep, including limiting booze and creating a cave-like bedroom. ‘
I don’t drink alcohol after 7 p.m., and the room should be completely dark and cool, about 18 degrees.’
Organize your own ‘Dan camp’
In Okinawa, Japan, where people are three times as likely to live to be 100 than in the U.S., friends form moai: dedicated social circles that support each other in a variety of ways, from financial to emotional. “I used to work too much, and now I realize how important friendships are,” Buettner says. ‘I have a circle of fifteen friends with whom I spend a lot of time organizing dinner parties and pickleball tournaments. “I have a big house on the lake that I call ‘Dan Camp’ and I take all fifteen friends over for overnight stays, cooking and playing games.”
I consume minestrone soup four times a week – it’s a de facto sustainable cocktail
Family time is also important for longevity; Buettner recommends taking inspiration from the people of Nicoya, Costa Rica, and establishing regular family rituals, whether that’s all together on the same night every week or an annual family vacation.
“If it’s a quick fix, it’s not a quick fix.”
Buettner is skeptical of anything advertised as a superfood; the really beneficial foods are things like Okinawa’s purple sweet potatoes, which don’t have major promotional campaigns. As for supplements, Buettner points out that “supplement users as a population actually have a higher mortality risk than people who never go near them. So the only time you need a supplement is if your doctor tells you you’re deficient in something, which is rare,” although he mentions vitamin B12 for vegans as an exception. Overall, though, Buettner’s mantra is simple: “If it’s a quick fix, it’s not a fix.” Longevity can only be achieved through a long-term commitment to the cause.
The Blue Zones: Secrets for Living Longer by Dan Buettner is published by National Geographic, £16.99*
*To order a copy for £17 UNTIL NOVEMBER 12, VISIT MAILSHOP.CO.UK/BOOKS OR CALL 020 3176 2937. FREE UK DELIVERY ON ORDERS OVER £25.