Dan Buettner | How to Live a Long, Healthy & Happy Life From The Author of The Blue Zones

Written By Kristel Bauer

LISTEN ON APPLE PODCASTS HERE: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dan-buettner-how-to-live-a-long-healthy-happy-life/id1500457853?i=1000544199506

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Do you want to know the secrets to a long and healthy life? Tune in as Dan Buettner shares the kind of people you should surround yourself with and the 6 keys to building long-term and nurturing relationships.

Key Takeaways From This Episode

  • Common denominator between people that live the longest

  • 5 pillars of every longevity diet in the world

  • Are healthy behaviors contagious?

  • 6 tips for reconnecting with people coming out of Covid-19

  • 4 things that make a location a great place to live

Disclaimer: All information and views shared on the Live Greatly podcast & the Live greatly website are purely the opinions of the authors, and are not intended to provide medical advice or treatment recommendations. The contents of this podcast & website are intended for informational and educational purposes only. Always seek the guidance of your physician or other qualified health professional when you have any questions regarding your specific health, changes to diet and exercise, or any medical conditions.

Resources Mentioned In This Episode

 

About Dan Buettner

Dan Buettner is an explorer, National Geographic Fellow, award-winning journalist and producer, and New York Times, bestselling author. He discovered the five places in the world – dubbed blue zones hotspots – where people live the longest, healthiest lives. His articles about these places in The New York Times Magazine and National Geographic are two of the most popular for both publications.

His new book “The Blue Zones Challenge: A 4-Week Plan for a Longer Better Life” is a four-week guide and year-long sustainability program to jump-start your journey to better health, happiness, less stress, and longer life.

Connect with Dan

 

About Vegamour

Vegamour is the sponsor for this podcast episode. Vegamour is a holistic approach to hair wellness that incorporates clinically tested plant-based ingredients that work in tandem to promote healthy, beautiful hair naturally, without using harmful chemicals or short-term ‘fixes’ that can lead to long-term problems. They study the power of nature through the lens of science to bring you the ultimate in total hair wellness & beauty for a lifetime of happiness.

Vegamour simply models nature’s holistic approach to healthy growth & function by combining bioavailable plant-based actives, enzymes, and proteins in a 360, inside/out approach to create the optimal ecosystem for hair wellness.

Vegamour uses the world’s finest, hand-curated, natural ingredients to ensure quality and efficacy. They cared enough to set up their own sustainable supply chains to bring beautiful, natural ingredients into everything they formulate.

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Connect with Vegamour

To obtain 20% off from Vegamour, visit their website at www.vegamour.com and use promo code GREATLY20.

 

Kristel Bauer, the Founder of Live Greatly, is on a mission to help people thrive personally and professionally. She is a corporate wellness expert, Integrative Medicine Fellow, Keynote Speaker, TEDx speaker & Physician Assistant experienced in Integrative Psychiatry and Functional Medicine. 

Follow her on:

To Book Kristel as a speaker for your next event, click here.

Episode Transcript

Dan ( Teaser)

We evolved as a social species. And that in my opinion is hardwired in our genetic code, crave it and if we don't get it, we shriveled.

Kristel (TEDx Talk) 

What if I told you that you shouldn't be striving for work-life balance? This is something that I talked about in my TEDx talk, which was just released on redefining work-life balance in a COVID 19 world.

I am so excited to share this with you. There's going to be a link in the episode details. If you check it out and it resonates. I would greatly appreciate it if you shared it with your friends, family, and community. 

Kristel (Guest Intro)

Now let's jump into today's episode. If you're interested in learning the keys to living a healthy, vibrant, long life, you're going to absolutely love today's episode with Dan Buettner.

Dan is an Explorer on National Geographic. Award-winning journalist and producer and New York times bestselling author. Dan discovered the five places in the world, a blue zone hot spots where people live the longest healthiest lives. He did wrote about these places in the New York times magazine and National Geographic.

Danny has a new book that just came out called the Blue Zones challenge, a four week plan for a longer, better life. And I'm so excited to talk with Dan about what the common denominators are for living a long, healthy, vibrant life. We're going to be talking a lot about food, nutrition, connection, community, and so many different things that you're definitely not going to want to miss.

Let's jump right into it and welcome Dan to the show. 

Dan:

Delighted to be here, Kristel.

Kristel:

Amazing. So I'm trying to like figure out where to start, because there's so much that I want to jump into. I need to like pace myself. So I'm thinking Dan, that it would be great. If you could just start by giving a little bit of a background about yourself and what you're currently up to, what you're currently working on.

Dan:

Yeah. So I, when I graduated from college at the time that you were doing useful and productive things and integrative medicine, I set three records for biking across five continents, lasted Argentina around the world and across Africa. And those expeditions led me to National Geographic. And what I think what we'll talk most about today is what we learned for the world's longest lived people on how to live longer and better ourselves and  identified five blue zones around the world areas where people live statistically longest.

It was funded by the national institutes on aging, but it was at a national geographic project. And it took us two and a half years just to find these places. And I wrote three New York times best sellers, uh, Blue zones, blue zone kitchen, blue zone solution and then the Blue zones of happiness, which all take this idea of once, if you can find people, who've statistically achieve what the rest of us want, then all you have to do is reverse engineer it. 

So instead of trying to find the secret to longevity in a Petri dish or in a test tube, we found it in population. We found the longest live men in the world in Sardinia, Italy, the longest of women in Okinawa, Japan.

We found an island in Greece called Hetalia where people are living eight years longer, but almost nobody gets dementia. But one 10th, the rate of dementia that we suffer here in the United States, Nicoya peninsula, Costa Rica. People have about a twofold, better chance of reach to healthy age 90 than we do in the United States.

But they spend one 150 a month we do on healthcare. And then right here in the United States, the longest lived people are the seventh day advent conservative Methodists concentrated in and around Loma Linda, California. And these people are living up to 10 years longer than the rest of us. So my job at, at National Geographic and Blue Zones has been to distill their common denominators and offer some science backed lessons on how the rest of us can get that extra 10 years of good life.

Kristel:

That’s so incredible. And I know you're doing a lot of speaking as well, and you know, you have that a new book that's going to be released. Is it December 7th? Is that what you said? The blue zone challenge. 

Dan:

Yes, the blue zone challenge. 

Kristel:

Cool. Awesome. So. I would love to hear what common denominators you found. And is that something that you think is transferable to people outside of those locations?

Like, can we do that wherever we are? Even if it's like totally different place in the world? 

Dan:

You absolutely can, but there's a but. So first thing to realize is. These people don't have superior genes, so they don't have any, any advantage to making it a hundred over weed over what we do. In fact, only about 20% of how long you live as dictated by your genes.

The other 80% is it's up to you. So for the average person, it's mostly what we choose to do with our lives. So a few things you see in all blue zones, they're reading mostly a whole food plant-based diet, which means beans, nuts, green's tubers and whole grain. 

They eat meat, but only five times per month, maybe fish a couple times a week.Not nearly as much. No cow’s dairy by the way. You might see a little bit of a pecorino cheese or sheep's milk cheese, or goat's milk cheese fed up, but they're not into dairy. They are drinking about six glasses of water a day. They, most of them do have their version of wine, which so adults a little bit, every day. They have daily rituals that help them shed stress and the ensuing inflammation that comes with constantly being in a hurry or worry. 

They do that through ancestor, veneration, or taking a nap or prayer in some cases, or doing happy hour, they have vocabulary for purpose. You don't hear much about purpose in conversations about longevity, but if you could take the effect of purpose and put it in a capsule, it would be a blockbuster drug knowing your sense of purpose and living that purpose every day is worth about eight years of life expectancy of over being rudderless.

So they tend to keep their families nearby. They tend to have a faith and practice that. And then I would say the most important thing they do is they're very careful about who they hang out with. We know that if your three best friends are obese and unhealthy, that you're about 150% more likely to be overweight yourself.

We know that unhappiness is contagious. Drug use has contagious. Uh, alcohol abuse is contagious. Even loneliness is contagious. So curating that immediate circle of friends at three or four people who you're spending the most face time with is arguably the most important lasting thing you can do to add good years to your life.

Kristel:

Wow. Okay. So. Let's start with the food piece. And then I want to get into all this other stuff, the purpose and the connection, because all this is so incredibly valuable, but let's talk about food first. So add more plants. That's kind of what I'm getting beans and then knots and fruits veggies. But it's interesting because there's all these different fad diets, and this was something I saw a lot in practice.

People would be doing some Keto. Now, Akido is a big thing, but that I never really bought into that personally, but I know for some people they swear by it for their blood sugar control, et cetera, et cetera. How do you make sense of that. I think that all these differing opinions around diet and like, I know there's another expert who recommends avoiding lectins and avoiding beans and avoiding and, you know, for the listener, they're probably like, I hear all these different opinions.

How do I know what's right for me? So I would love just your take on all of those different views about diet. 

Dan:

All right. So a little bit of background America spends about $150 billion a year on diets and the related products. So they sell no diet in the history of the world. And I defy anybody listening right now to find me a diet that works for more than 3% of the people after 2 year.

Keto and paleo that might be useful to quickly shed 10 or 20 pounds to get into a dress or be a best man at a wedding, but they don't last and I've done a thorough literature review on this, but they sell hope and every year, you know, as America gets more unhealthy and gains weight, that urgency to do something about a growth.

Marketers are ready with the quick fix, which we all like in the United States. Unfortunately, when it comes to longevity, if there's almost nothing you can do this week, this month, or this year, other than not die, that's going to add years to your life. There's no pill, there's no supplement. There's no super food.

When it comes to longevity, you need to think in decades. What am I going to do now that I'll also be doing that I've planned to do almost every day for the next 10 years. So the general approach for blue zones is we don't try to convince you to change your mind. Because we know that we'll fail in the long run.

We get you to change your surroundings. My company has been hired by 60 cities in America to shape the environments in cities. So the healthy choices, the easy choice of the book, you mentioned, the blue zones challenge is a four week program to not try to convince you. What to eat, but rather to convince you how to set up your social life, your kitchen, your house, your work life.

So the healthy choices, the easy choice we make about 220 food decisions. Every single day, 90% of those decisions are unconscious. So the big opportunity is helping you engineer your life. So those unconscious decisions are better decisions and that's how you set up your environment. So my take on diet is I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt, we did a meta analysis of 155 dietary surveys, all five blue zones, 80 years.

I can tell you exactly what centenarians ate to live. To be a hundred it's 90 to a hundred percent, whole food. Plant-based. Now trying to achieve that in America's food environment. That's another challenge altogether, but one that's that is surmountable. So that actually resonates really deeply with me because that's how I like to eat.

And that is what I recommend you getting more plant-based foods. And I was trained in the anti-inflammatory diet. So that's like eat a lot of different colors, spices, and herbs and nuts and legumes and whole grains. And, and then, you know, a little bit on the top, we've got, you know, potentially meat here or there, and you got fish, which you said like wild salmon and, and a little bit of dark chocolate here and there for the sweets, you know, the occasional glass of red wine.

So I personally, that's how I like to live and how I like to eat. I'm wondering what you would recommend as far as like the food categories that you saw, where people who are eating them lived longer lives. I know nuts is definitely in there, but if you could just, if you have a list, like on the top of your head, I would love to hear it.

Dan:

Well, the five pillars of every longevity diet in the world, our whole grains that includes wheat, rice, and corn. It, uh, greens of all kinds. We don't eat many greens, but in some of these blue zones, you're seeing there 80 different kinds of greens and a lot of them, by the way, growing our backyard, we're weed whacking them.

And it turns out that these, some of them have 10 times the antioxidants of red wine. Tubers, especially sweet potatoes on the longest of women in the world in Okinawa, a full 65% of all the calories they consumed. Until about 1980 came from sweet potatoes. So we know that's a longevity food, not if you're eating a handful of nuts a day, it's associated with two extra years of life expectancy.

So very easy tip hack. If you will make sure there's a can of nuts in your home. Or your kitchen or your office space. And that should be your go-to snack as opposed to salty chips or sweets or something like that. And then beans beyond a shadow of a doubt that most convincing longevity, superfood is the humble being.

And I like to make them from scratch, soak them overnight, use an Instapot and you know, the big secret and blue zone is eating a cup of beans a day, but unlike us in America, they know how to make beans taste delicious. And, um, you know, I wrote another book called the blue zone kitchen, a hundred recipes, load, a hundred that I collected firsthand from people living in these blue zones and what I noticed the most important longevity ingredient in the world.

You want to guess what it is? 

Kristel:

Beans?

Dan:

Even more important than beans is because I could tell you beans are full of fiber. They're full, full whey, full proteins. There's no bad fats in there, but if you don't like beans, you ain't going to eat them. And again, if you want to get the health benefit from any food, you got to think about eating it for a decade, not just for a couple of weeks or a few months.

I, you know, this is a bit of a trick question, but I think the most important ingredient in the longevity diet is taste. If I can show you how to take simple peasant food and make it taste delicious, I don't have to convince you. I don't have to give you a, I don't have to ask you to measure your food.

I don't have to ask you to walk away from the meal or your meal hungry. The whole food plant-based is very local or density. You could eat a compost pile of food, be absolutely full. And it has fewer calories than a burger, but just so it's delicious. So making that peasant food tastes delicious. And that's the key, I believe.

Kristel:

That's the key ingredient. Yeah. And backtracking for a moment. You said whole grains and wheat. This is a big topic, especially when I was in functional medicine. Here a lot of talk and a lot of people who are going gluten-free. And what are your thoughts about the different types of wheat out there? Based on like, if you're in America versus maybe if you're in Europe or Italy and now there's talk about GMO and all that stuff.

What do you think about that? 

Dan:

Where there's a bit of a point. I mean, the new genetically modified. We tend to have a larger endogerm and that's that sack of carbohydrates, simple carbohydrates around the germ, inside the husk. But if you're drinking, if you're eating a whole food, if you're eating the whole grain, I don't believe it's a problem.

I know there are people who are gluten intolerant. Celiac and so forth. So let's just put those, those people aside for a moment, but we see very clearly. Uh, Sardinia, uh, the glues on insert Didia produced the longest live men in the history of the world. We have the demographic data on that, and I can tell you for the first, third or half of their lives, 65% of their dietary intake came from bread, but it was sourdough bread.

And when you go through the process of lebanese bread from a starter, it's a one or two day process, but the active ingredient that's rising, that bread is not yeast as much as it is lactobacillius, which is a bacteria that metabolizes most of the, of the gluten. So true sourdough bread has maybe a 50th of the gluten as a junky piece of white bread.

And it also lowers the glycemic load of a meal. So here's the fact chain I follow world's longest of people ate bread every day. We know it lowers your glycemic load as low as gluten tastes. I'll eat it. I do eat it. You know, I look good for 104

Kristel:

In sourdough. Sourdough bread is so amazing. I have some friends who make their own and that's been on my list of like, I want to try it.

I want to, you have to get the starter. I mean, it sounds like it's a lot of work, but then once you figure out how to do it, I think it would be so worthwhile. 

Dan:

I have no connection to this website, but there's a website called Breadtopia and they have a great recipe for part, whole wheat part, regular wheat sourdough bread.

I use all the time and it's not nearly as hard as people think you can't do it in one sitting. It just takes a  few minutes over the course of a couple of days, but the product is really remarkable. 

Kristel:

So I'm going to challenge you listening. If you have some time over the holidays, maybe this could be kind of a fun thing to do with your kids or just on your own, because I'm thinking this is something that I want to try and do with my kids over, over the Christmas holiday.

And I think they'd have a lot of fun with it and it would taste really good too. 

Dan:

Great challenge. 

Kristel:

Yes. Okay. Awesome. I saw on your Instagram page too, I think yesterday or the day before I shared it, it was the purple sweet potato. And I haven't tried it and I like put on there, like I got to try this purple sweet potato.

Is that a common thing that you can find all over the place or is it pretty like a specialty food? 

Dan:

You can find it in whole foods, these foods, and you can for sure get it online too, you know, Okinawans call it emo. And by the way, that purple is the same. anti-oxidant in blueberries got 150% more of that antioxidant than blueberries do.

So it's just a wonderful complex carbohydrates full way. It's. B vitamins, such a healthy food and so easy to make an here's an easy Thanksgiving recipe for you. All you do is you steam or boil those sweet potatoes, PLM, the purple sweet potatoes, and then you mash it up with coconut milk cans and coconut milk.

And it's sweet. And it's rich two ingredients. You know, there's a little bit of fat in the coconut milk, but heck it's Thanksgiving. So, uh, it'll probably be the healthiest thing on your table. And I guarantee people eat it up. It's just absolutely magically delicious. 

Kristel (Sponsor A

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Kristel:

Oh, that sounds so good. Okay. So my mother-in-law normally makes a sweet potatoes. I'm going to share that and I want to give it a try so I will let you know. It sounds amazing. 

So, okay. We've talked about beans. We've talked about sweet potatoes. We've talked about whole grains and all this food.

Now I'm getting hungry. Now let's move on to talking about connection because you shared that is a really big piece. And not only connection, but like who you're connected to. 

So I would love to hear a little bit more about that. What people should be thinking about as far as optimizing their health and potentially like, if you are in a situation right now where maybe you are not in the best of health and a lot of your friends are not in the best of health. What, like, where should people start to navigate to have, I guess, new connections or new friendships or new relationships with people who are potentially have healthier habits?

Dan:

Yeah, I think you turn to your own social network first. I mean the blue zones website, we actually have a tool, a check that that helps you sort of assess your friends. So we know that health behaviors are as contagious as catching a cold and measurably contagious. So your friend's idea of recreation is sitting around watching TV.

You're more likely to watch sit around, watch more TV. If you're friends are barbecuing and wieners and burgers in the backyard and getting together around the barbecue. You're probably gonna eat a lot more meat. So choosing friends whose idea of recreation is playing tennis or walking or gardening, or stand up, paddle surfing, whatever the act of.

Having a, I argue at least one friend who is vegan or vegetarian, because they're going to teach you how to eat so many chefs in America who, you know, they'll add a vegan or vegetarian entree on the menu and they're big mediators. They don't want to make plant-based food tastes good vegan or vegetarian.

Every time you go out with them to eat, they're going to show you the vegan restaurants in your community that produce delicious food. When you go to their house. They're going to serve you their favorite plant-based food. And when they come over to your house, they're going to make sure that you've taken the effort to learn a couple of recipes.

And this is more important than you think because standard American diet shaves about six years off your life expectancy. So if you're eating the typical, the average American eats about. 220 pounds of meat a year, about 400 pounds of dairy and its various forms. I mean, it's such a observably unhealthy diet that somebody to teach you whole food plant based.

And then it's really important to have friends who care about you, who you can call on a bad day and they'll listen to you cry or they'll loan you a little bit of money if you need. Friends who you can have a meaningful conversation with, these are actually protocol questions use to determine loneliness. If you don't have these three friends, you can count on, on a bad day shakes, six or seven years off your life expectancy.

So turning your immediate social network, identifying those two or three friends and you know, friends, they don't come for free. They require our effort to call them and invite them out. Be generous. I have the first idea. It's so counterintuitive because marketers can't make a lot of money off of it, but I will tell you when it comes to longevity, there's probably nothing you can do that has a more measurable or long-term impact on your behavior than setting up the right social circle.

By the way, in Okinawa, they call it a MOAI, M O A I, which are your three or four best.

Kristel:

I love that. And having a sense of community, I would think would be another type of connection outside of just like your three really, really close friends. So you had mentioned like, wasn't sure was it religious practices or spiritual practices, but even outside of that is just having feeling like you belong to a community. Is that another thing that you would put on that list? 

Dan:

Absolutely. We know. Belonging to a church, temple or mosque is kind of a homemade community or a ready-made community for you. We know that people who belong to religious communities and show up four times a month lived between four and 14 extra years and people who don't.

We also know that a bigger predictor than diet and exercise for longevity. Are these sort of low grade interactions we have throughout the day. So people who are getting five or six hours of just talking to the mailman or the barista or the neighbor or somebody at your front door, we evolved as a social species.

And in my opinion is wired is hard wired in our genetic code to crave it. And if we don't get it, we shrivel. And it's very clear in the blue zones, it's clear in the data, but then you start asking yourself, well, I live by myself and, you know, I don't really have that many friends. I argue the best thing you can do if you want to be more socially connected is move to a community where there are good sidewalks, good public spaces, good arts places, where you can serendipitously bump into people and relationships combust.

Relationships other than your immediate social network or join a club or church. The number of people you have connected as a function of how often you're bumping into people. 

Kristel:

That's so true. And it's been a challenge for people the past, probably don't even know how long it's been now with COVID and, you know, loneliness and isolation, and that lack of connection because, you know, people weren't able to really see each other now kind of hopefully coming out of that. Do you feel like people can kind of bounce back? Is there like a resiliency with that? Like even if you've been deprived of that for a period of time, can you kind of recharge the tank as far as the connection and community?

Dan:

I think a lot of people are slingshotting out of COVID. They're craving that social interaction. So they're willing to take more risks, put themselves out there more than, than, than in the past. And also, I mean, I guess I'm just speaking from personal experience though, but during COVID where I couldn't just rely on the old, the day-to-day social connections I had, I had to dig deeper.

So I actually got on zoom. Like we are right now and connect it with old high school friends and friends I'd met when I lived in Europe. And in a way I'm coming out of COVID with more possibility of, for social connection, but again, like everything else in life, you're only going to get out of it as much as you put into it.

So, you know, remembering birthdays and being interested and interesting, not just yammering all the time. I think generosity is a really important thing. Being a caring and calling people out of the blue and, you know, really, really kind of, for lack of a better, for lack of a better metaphor, water emails, those social connectivity plan.

Kristel:

So true. And let's talk briefly about movement and then we're going to come to the end. And I, I like to do like a fun, quick wellness lightning round at the end, Dan. So get ready for that. Before we get to that, let's talk about movement and exercise. Cause I know just from having follows you and reading about all of your work, that these blue zones exercises, not kind of what we might think it's supposed to look like.

So I would love for you to share a little bit about. 

Dan:

I hate to say it, but exercise has been an unmitigated public health failure. Yeah. I mean, we spend hundreds of billions of dollars on the exercise industry and the fitness industry and gyms and so forth, but yet obesity continues to rise. A BMI of average  american goes up the amount of the number of percentage of people who get the minimum amount of physical activity is somewhere on 15%.

So this exercise strategy just isn't working and it's kind of a fall. If you think about humans evolved, we were hunters and gatherers. We were moved all day long. We weren't necessarily running sprints or pumping iron or doing yoga, but we are moving all day long. That's how our bodies are designed. So the notion that we could sit at our office for eight hours and then go make it up at the gym for two hours a week is folly. 

We see very clearly in the blue zone. People are nudged into movement every 20 minutes or  so.  Every time they go to work or a friend's house or out to eat, or their kids go to school at occasions, they walkl, they have gardens out back and they rely on those gardens for food.

So every day, they're spending some time watering or weeding or planting or harvesting a low intensity physical activity. They haven't engineered all the physical activity out of their lives. With mechanical convenience. It's there. Their houses are full power tools. They lift up their garage by hand.

They do housework by hand. They do yard work by hand they grind corn by hand. Um, and all of this sort of non-exercise physical activity counts and it counts hugely for two reasons. 

One, when you add up all the bursts of, of caloric expenditure, it's way more than the two times a week than average American goes to a gym, but also they're keeping their metabolism high all day long.

So even when they're at rest, they're burning off more calories and. And if America wants to get healthier, we have to think about how we can engineer our lives. So we're nudged into gentle, regular physical activity and not thinking, you know, we're going to weekend warrior it, or run a marathon or a triathlon or, and make up for our slot dumb.

Kristel:

Right. So I'm thinking what would be some ways people could do that? I mean, what are your thoughts of like a standing desk? 

Dan:

I think that’s a good idea.

Kristel:

Yeah. I feel like there's little things, you know, that I have potential to make a big difference, even just like not, you know, not sitting for the extended periods. And I'm a huge proponent of taking micro breaks throughout the day.

You know, ideally every 30 minutes, if you can. But most people, they feel like that's a little bit too much, but to move your body, to just get a change of scenery, to go outside, to do something outside of work. But what would you, um, any suggestions for those who do have careers, where they potentially have to be in front of a computer? A lot of the day. 

Dan:

A big opportunity is the commute to work. We know that people who take even public transportation to work have about 20% lower rate of cardiovascular disease than people who drive every day because they have to walk from home to the bus, stop the bus, stop to work, and then do it in reverse at night or walking or biking to work.

So living close to your job is really important over time. And people don't often think about these things when they're making home decisions, but what's more important than your life and your health and how long you're around, but other things make a difference, too. This goes back to your social network, making friends who's, we're going to socialize, but taking a walk. In Minneapolis, I used to live around. It took 50 minutes to walk around that lake. Instead of sitting around at a coffee shop, we're going in the office. We did 50 minute walking meetings, making sure you have a comfortable pair of tennis shoes or walking shoes, something as simple as that can be a barrier, or if you're a cyclist. Buying a nice bike and having it ready to go.

Another very important thing, probably the easiest hack, easiest trick. If you want to engineer mindless physical activity into your life is adopt a dog. Dogs need to be walked every day and therefore who else gets walked everyday?

Kristel:

Yes. I know. Yes. Yes we have. Um, oh, how old is bear now? I think he's like 10 months now, a small puppy, total puppy.

So active. And we've had dogs for I've had dogs my whole life, but we have two dogs now. So that is something we do have an outdoor area, so I don't walk them as much as I probably should, but like I'm working on it, but that is something where that motivates. Yes, totally. And they're so fun and they're so sweet.

I love that recommendation. So I want to jump to the wellness lightning round. But before I do that, there's one question that popped into my head. You talked about that you used to walk around the lake and I saw something you shared recently about some of the best things that make up a location for where you live.

And I remember like being close to water, I'm hoping you can just share that really briefly. And then we'll go to that lightning round. 

Dan:

Yes. Well, if you live at a community where streets are optimized for walkability, bikeability and public transportation, parks are cleaned up and you have easy access to recreation, people will live in that community get between 20 and 25% more physical activity than people who live in a cul-de-sac in the suburbs or something itself. That's a really important that you look for. 

There's something called the bike's score, which you can look up on the internet and see how your community is doing. But moving to a city with a higher bike score also means moving the community with a lower BMI.

But in general, you want a healthy food environment, obviously not a food desert, but you want to make sure there are restaurants that serve good whole food plant based entrees that are delicious and a good grocery store. I'm a big fan of whole foods, but, uh, grocery stores where you can get high quality produce easy.

And I mean, those are, and then place where you have neighbors, you're likely going to be interested and friendly. So you realtor often tell you to buy the cheapest house in the block because it has the most potential for, but you actually want to buy an average house in the block. You want to be in a place where there are people like you it's called homofeely.

We tend to be friends people like us who share our political beliefs or religious beliefs who common interests, common schedule. Because again, one of the best things you can do for longevity and happiness. Is build that strong, healthy social circle around yourself, and then you can put it on autopilot.

Kristel:

Love it. Well, this has been so informative. I've learned a lot and let's jump into it now, but before we do that, Dan, anything you want to share before we go to that last wellness lightning round? 

Dan:

Well, I w couldn't nearly get to all the questions. If anybody has questions. I'm at Danbuettner.com. That's B U E T T N E R.

And I'm very happy to, uh, I'm very good at responding. And if you like this idea of shaping your surrounding, so the healthy choice is mindless. I have a book coming out December 9th called The Blue Zone challenge and that's kind of self serving.

Kristel:

But no, please do. I mean, this is what it's all about. You have all these great tips, so, you know, we can benefit from it.

I'm going to put links to all that in the episode details. So you want to learn more, you can go there, you can click and access that book. I'm guessing it'll either be out or available for pre-order by the time this episode airs. 

Dan:

It's available now for preorder. 

Kristel:

Oh, perfect. Perfect. Yeah. And I definitely recommend following Dan on Instagram.

I follow him and I learn stuff all the time. So highly, highly recommended. And you have really entertaining posts too. You did one the other day where you were like talking about bacon and it was just, I enjoyed it. It was a fun. Okay. It's fun. Yeah. It's definitely you guys will be entertained. So follow Dan.

All right. Let's jump into the lightning round. So my first question for you, Dan you're on that you're stranded on a desert island and you have to bring your own food. You can bring three foods, which ones would you bring? 

Dan:

Sweet potatoes for sure. Beans. And corn tortillas, beans and corn tortillas together.

The three of those things make up, what's known as the Mesoamerican three sisters, and they have all the rich and complex carbohydrates, but all the amino acids necessary for human systemics when you bring those three together. So I love three foods. 

Kristel:

That makes you want to go out and get some corn tortillas and get some like good Mexican food.

All right. Second question. What is a self care practice that you have? That is something you do on a daily basis? 

Dan:

I do 10 minutes of meditation. It's called the wakey nap because it's 10 new meditations every day. I take that apart from that, I also take a nap for self care and this is a big one I believe, I start my day with the savory breakfast.

I think people make the mistake of eating cereal, which tends to be really sugary or ACE and bacon, which is high in saturated fat. It kind of bogs you down, but I'll start my day with the Sardinian minestrone. I've just got three beans and vegetables and I make it really delicious. You want the recipe?

I'll send it to you. Then I start my day with that and am not hungry, but be on full of energy for the first four hours a day. 

Kristel:

Amazing. So that's a soup. 

Dan:

Yeah, it's a soup, but it's not like the minestrone you get in the grow in a restaurant. It's a recipe I got from the longest lived family in the history of the world.

And, uh, it's kind of, it's chunkier than a soup. Very satisfying. I'm going to have to look up that recipe. I'm going to have to make it last question for you, Dan, knowing what you know now, what advice would you have given to yourself from 10 years? 

Dan:

Keep doing what you're doing. Really. I mean, I took a very, I haven't worked a day in my life.

I could argue. I mean, I've never really had a job. And I was surrounded by people who were doing useful and productive things at right after college. And I decided to be an Explorer and, you know, I never made any money till I was like 40, and now I have a bunch of money. There's all kinds of doubt and self esteem, things that come up when everybody else is driving a BMW a little bit at a big house that I'm riding around on my bike, but I'm glad I did it the way I did it.

And, um, it's been a very good road and led to a good place.

Kristel:

Amazing and helping so many people. So this has been incredible, Dan. I absolutely loved it. Thank you so much for taking some time with me today. 

Dan:

I'm sending you a big telephonic hug. 

Kristel:

Oh, sending goes right back.

Dan:

Thank you very much. It's been a lot of fun.

Kristel Bauer
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