Warren Buffett, the world's famous stock god, is one of the richest people in the world.
Once he joked with a reporter, he said that he spent a lot of time researching, what is the most important thing to determine the life span of a person? Later, it turned out that one of the most important factors was the age of the parents. In other words, if your parents live longer, you can live longer. So he said that in order to make himself live a little longer, he bought a treadmill for his parents to run more.
Whether longevity is determined by genes, environment, or lifestyle habits. The answer from modern research is that about 25% of a person's lifespan is determined by genes, but 75% is determined by the way we live our daily lives.
This study was conducted in Denmark in the 19th century.
Denmark is a small country with a population of only a few million, so they registered all the twins born and followed them to see if they fell ill and died. In total, they tracked about 3,000 pairs of identical twins.
After following the twins, they came to the conclusion that 25 percent of the difference in life expectancy was genetically determined and 75 percent was lifestyle-determined.
The four cornerstones of human longevity.
To sum it up, there are four sentences, called "be active every day, eat in moderation, have hope every day, and live not alone".
The first two sentences, "Be active every day and eat in moderation", are the requirements for our living habits. The last two sentences, "There is hope every day, life is not lonely", is a requirement for our psychological aspects. These four sentences are called the four cornerstones of human longevity. It's called the Blue Zone Study.
There was an American named Dan Buettner, who was a reporter for the famous American magazine National Geographic. He was very, very interested in the question of longevity, and he wanted to understand what the mystery of human longevity was.
Because of his work, he visited almost all the longevity villages on the planet, and together with many medical scientists and anthropologists, he selected the five most representative areas for research.
At that time, when they drew these five areas on the map, they used a blue pen, so this study was called the blue area study.
These five places are Loma Linda in California, Sardinia, Italy, and Okinawa, Japan. In addition, there is the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica and the island of Icaria in Greece.
On the Italian island of Sardinia, there are more than 20 centenarians in one village. More than a third of people on the Greek island of Ikaria live to be over 90 years old.
This conclusion was sensational, and in 2012 there was even a movement in the United States to learn about the lifestyle of people in the Blue Zone.
Tom Perls, a professor at Harvard University, made an estimate that if all four of these things can be achieved, the average life expectancy can be extended by 8 years.
Be active every day.
We're talking about activity, not sport. This activity refers to something that we can naturally participate in in the course of our daily lives and do not require special facilities and venues.
For example, for people in the blue zone, the activities are that the herdsmen have to graze their cattle every day, the fishermen have to go out to sea to fish, and even we have to cook, grow vegetables, and walk the dogs, these are all activities.
Now that we live in the city, we live in buildings, and most of our work is sitting, so how can we move?
When we can walk and ride bicycles, we don't want to ride in a car. If we can take the stairs, we don't have to take the elevator. Usually we go out to buy groceries, cook and stir-fry by ourselves, wash dishes after meals, take a walk, these are all activities. There are even some clothes that you can rub by hand without the washing machine, which can also increase your activity. Can we stand up and do exercises while watching TV instead of sitting all the time.
As for what activities to do, for the elderly, running, swimming, enhancing cardiopulmonary capacity, and explosive power are actually not particularly significant.
Especially for improving quality of life, improving muscle strength, improving joint flexibility, and improving balance are key. Because many elderly people are sometimes inactive because the joints have become stiffer and the flexibility has decreased, the harder the joints, the more reluctant they are to move, and the more unwilling they are to move, the harder they are, which forms a vicious circle. In addition, there is a big health risk for the elderly that is fractures. This is also related to the flexibility of the joints and the loss of balance throughout the body.
What kind of sports or activities can improve both? One is yoga and the other is tai chi. Yoga and tai chi not only improve joint flexibility and balance, but also increase muscle strength, and the meditative state you enter during exercise can also help your mind to be clearer.
Eat in moderation.
Medically speaking, first, the accumulation of excess nutrients in the body is prone to chronic diseases.
For example, diabetes is too much sugar, high blood lipids are too much fat, high blood pressure is too much salt, and gout is too much purines, so these diseases are related to eating too much.
Second, the human body produces a lot of oxygen free radicals in order to digest too much food.
Oxygen radicals can attack human cells and cause lesions and even cancer.
I have a friend's family who works as a manager on a construction site in Wuhan and eats and drinks with my friends every day after work. He was only in his 30s, and he had already had the middle and late stages of diabetes, and all the complications came out, such as itching all over his body, soft teeth, and he couldn't see.
So to live a long life, it is very, very important to eat less.
One of these is the quantity of the diet, and the other is the type of diet. The fishermen on the Japanese island of Okinawa that we just mentioned have a saying called hara hachi bu, which means that they only eat eight minutes full.
Another good habit is to put a scale at home and weigh it once a day, because studies have shown that the habit of weighing yourself every day, if you can stick to it, can also help control your diet and weight.
The second is about the kind, what exactly to eat.
One of the most important ideas here is not to focus on staple foods, but to focus on vegetables and legumes.
Just don't eat a big bowl of rice or steamed buns with vegetables, but eat mainly fresh vegetables and legumes, and eat some staple foods and meat appropriately.
First of all, because vegetables and legumes are very nutritious, and they are very low in calories, they are not easy to grow meat, and they contain a lot of fiber, so they are not easy to get hungry after eating.
In the past, our staple food-based diet was more suitable for people with manual labor, while the elderly did not have much physical labor, and staple food should not be eaten too much.
One of my habits of eating by myself is that I either have a bowl of soup first, or a bowl of greens before eating anything else. At this time, the stomach will feel a little full, which will greatly reduce hunger and interest in staple foods.
In the Blue Zone study, most of their inhabitants eat a diet based on dark green vegetables and legumes. For example, common spinach, arugula, greens, cauliflower, purple cabbage, soybeans, red beans, chickpeas, mung beans.
The American College of Cardiology recommended a dietary prescription, which is to beat these vegetables just mentioned into juice and drink a large cup every morning, which even has the effect of lowering blood pressure and blood sugar.
Another important reason to eat more dark green vegetables is that they are rich in antioxidants like vitamin C and vitamin E. These antioxidants fight these oxygen radicals, so when eating these dark green vegetables, they can protect blood vessels and cells.
Another highly recommended ingredient is soy products, including soy milk and tofu, which are very high-quality plant proteins.
Soy milk also contains a large amount of soy isoflavones, which can supplement estrogen, which is especially helpful for middle-aged and elderly women.
Another thing to pay special attention to in terms of diet is to eat less sugar and salt, and the taste should not be too sweet or salty.
The starchy foods we eat, such as white rice, white noodles, flower rolls, steamed buns, sweet potatoes, and yams, although they are not sweet to eat, they all turn into sugar in the stomach, so less sugar means eating less starchy food.
There is hope every day, and life is not lonely.
People with a sense of purpose tend to be more proactive in doing things, actively deal with the pressures and challenges of life, and are not easy to give up, so they have a longer lifespan.
A doctor from the health department of a 301 hospital said that they served many old generals and old Red Army soldiers, and lived to be in their 90s and 100 years old.
He said that in addition to the good medical conditions, the most important reason for these people is that they are particularly psychologically balanced and open-minded, but this is easier said than done. I believe that many people can't answer why we wake up every morning.
In the blue zone, there is an example of a fisherman in Okinawa, Japan, who is in his 90s and still goes out to sea every day to fish, and has never retired.
When the reporter asked him, you are over 90 years old, and you still fish every day, don't you feel tired? Don't you think it's hard?
He replied, "My goal every day is to be able to get the fish back so that our whole family can eat it, so when I wake up every day, I know that this is what I am going to do today, so I don't think it's strange that I have been doing it for decades." ”
Waking up every day knowing why things are going on, what is the goal of each day, this is what we call hope.
If you don't know what your hopes are, here are a few ways to give them a try.
First, you can think about whether there are any things in your life that you think are particularly important, things that you are particularly looking forward to or looking forward to, and then write them down and look at them every day.
For example, if you are taking care of your children or grandchildren now, you must be looking forward to them growing up healthy and healthy, and they will be able to go to university in the future, and preferably to a prestigious university. If that's what you're looking forward to, write it down.
Second, think about whether you have any special hobbies or things you like to do, and you haven't had time to do them for a long time. Try to spend a little more time on these things and take it up a notch.
For example, if you like to raise flowers and grasses, can you raise them better? If you like some special pets or travel, you can pick up these hobbies and make it more brilliant.
Third, try to learn a new thing, such as a new instrument, learn to sing, dance, or learn a new language, give yourself a little challenge, learn a skill that you never knew before.
Don't think this is too difficult, I have an elder in his 60s who used to be a mechanic who repaired TVs. Because his son was a computer engineer, he thought computers were amazing and decided to start learning programming.
As an old man in his 60s, he bought a lot of books on the subject, watched tutorials on the Internet, and then he really learned to code, and also made some small games, and also helped people write ** in the technical community, and made money.
Medical studies have found that learning new skills can effectively activate human brain cells and even prevent Alzheimer's disease.
Learn to deal with loneliness.
Loneliness is not just a feeling, it also has a subtle impact on physical health. This conclusion has also been confirmed by many scientific studies.
For example, a study by Brigham Young University in the United States found that loneliness is as harmful as alcohol abuse or smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
Loneliness increases the level of cortisol in the human body, cortisol is a stress hormone in the human body, which will control our mood, health, immune cells and inflammatory response, if cortisol is high for a long time, the immune system will be weakened, and people will be more likely to get sick.
A lonely person often has much higher blood pressure than normal, and the prevalence of heart disease and stroke is 3 times that of ordinary people.
Inside the Blue Zone, the residents of these five districts, they really like to be together very much. People in a community often meet together, often go to church together, interact together, and have fun together. They value family very much and really enjoy being together with their families. It is precisely because of such long-term gatherings that they are not lonely in their lives, and they can live more happily, so they can live longer.
How can you not be alone? Here are three practical suggestions.
First, engage in active recreation, not passive recreation.
Active entertainment is an activity in which you can participate wholeheartedly, and you can use both hands and brains to interact with others is called active entertainment.
For example, square dancing, which is very popular nowadays, is an active entertainment because it requires learning, using your body and brain flexibly, and working with many people.
For example, when you go to karaoke and sing, you have to learn to sing, you have to sing it, and someone applauds you, and you applaud others. This is called active entertainment.
Passive entertainment is the process of passively receiving information without the need for active feedback.
For example, watching TV, sitting there and not doing anything, just passively receiving information. Or watching the news on the Internet, watching**, watching**, also mostly belongs to passive entertainment.
Passive entertainment only adds emptiness and boredom to a large extent, and does not do much to relieve loneliness. So to really reduce loneliness, you need to engage in active recreation.
The second suggestion is to get out of the room, go outside and communicate with others, keep a curious heart, learn more and ask more questions. If you are more willing to ask others for advice and communicate with others, the circle of life will become bigger and bigger.
The third suggestion, if you don't particularly hate animals, I recommend getting a pet, whether it's a cat or a dog or a bird.
Our neighbor Japan has one of the highest pet ownership rates in the world. This also has something to do with Japan's longevity, because animals are man's best friend, and the elderly are not alone, so they live longer.
There was a study in the United States, in a nursing home for the elderly, there was a geriatrician named Thomas, who was a doctor. Before he came to this nursing home, the elderly people living here were very miserable, very lonely, and took many, many medicines, including antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs.
When Dr. Thomas came to the sanatorium, he decided that this would not work, because he had grown up on a farm and had a good relationship with animals, so he introduced a lot of animals to the sanatorium. There are cats and dogs on every floor, and there are a lot of birds in the yard, and the old people take care of these animals.
Two years later, the rate of medication for the elderly in the nursing home had dropped by a third, and the mortality rate of the elderly had dropped dramatically.
So now there is medical evidence that having a pet is actually good for health, as long as you don't particularly hate animals, and there is no disease that you can't keep a pet, it is recommended to try to raise one. This will make your life more fun and companionship. Hotspot Engine Program