Blue Zones Top Ten for TV
Written by Dan Buettner
Preparing and taping for the Oprah show (which aired four times during 2008 and 2009) teaches you to condense every idea, no matter how complex, to short sound bites. Talk shows want news "you can use." And then they break for a commercial.
In my book, The Blue Zones, I take 38 pages to explain the nine common denominators of the world's longest-lived people (the Power 9). An average reader could read the whole book in two hours. Most people just want the ten things they could do to live longer and stay younger.
So, here's Blue Zones Top Ten for TV. Do them, and you can add up to 14 good years to your life and stay younger along the way:
- De-convenience your home – lose the remote, buy a light garage door and lift it yourself, use a shovel instead of a snowblower
- Eat Nuts – Have a can of nuts around your office or home, eat a handful daily
- Drink Sardinian wine – Sardinian canonau wine has the world's highest levels of antioxidants. Drink a glass or two a day
- Play with your children – this is excellent low intensity exercise and will strenthen a family. Both associated with longer life expectancy
- Grow a Garden – This proven stress reducer will put your body through the range of motion and yield fresh vegtables
- Hour of Power – Downshift daily with a nap, meditation, prayer or a quiet walk--destressing is a proven way to slow aging
- Eat Tofu – Arguably the world's most perfect food, eaten by the world's longest lived women. Contains a plant estrogen that makes skin look younger
- Get a Tan – Doctors are rethinking the notion of slathering yourself with sunscreen. Up to half of Americans are Vitamin D deficient--a condition that can double your chance of dying in any given year. A tan not only looks healthy, it is.
- Donate your large dinner plates – eat off 9 inch plates as the Okinawans do and reduce calorie consumption at dinner by 20-30%
- Write Down your Personal Mission – Know and putting into practice your sense of purpose can give you up to a decade of good life.
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What is 'Move'?
Moving naturally the idea of making low-intensity, daily physical activity an unavoidable part of your environment. Read more...
Hailing from a sunless isle (well most of the time - that is how the UK seems!! ;D) I used to do what most Brits do on vacation - and lay out in the holiday sun as many hours as possible. I also used very high factor creams for many years - and basically feel I got the worst of both worlds - missed out on the VitD and allowed a lot of nasty chemicals to be absorbed by my super-heated skin!! Bad news.
Being out in the fresh open air when possible, in light shade to take the harshness off the sun - but with enough reflected sunlight to provide the VitD is definitely the way to go I now feel.
Also it the tan is NOT the issue. The burning ans damage is the issue. A tan is the body simply providing the natural defence to becoming burnt - but it takes time for milky white office folk to build up this resistance and 1 week and 2 week vacations have a lot to answer for.
I would argue that a tan IS healthy because it is the sign that your body has effciently done what it should to protect you. BUT if you have over-cooked your skin during a tan's development that is when you pay the price. In reality we should NEVER need to lie out naked (or nearly so) in the sun - it is obviously a foolish thing to do!