Ridiculously short one-sentence description of the book: A study of geographic pockets around the world with a high incidence of centenarians, and what we can learn from them.
I loved this book, largely because it doesn't try to be more definitive than it deserves. Rather--here are the areas where people live to be 100+, and here are a few observations about them. And while there are a number of recurring themes, here are a few snippets I found interesting:
- Nicoya, Costa Rica: "We notice that the most highly functioning people over 90 in Nicoya have a few common traits. One of them is that they feel a strong sense of service to others or care for their family. We see that as soon a they lose this, the switch goes off. They die very quickly if they don't feel needed."
- Sardinia: "People here possessed a reverence for family... All the centenarians I met told me la famiglia was the most important thing in their lives--their purpose in life."
- Loma Linda, California, land of the Seventh-Day Adventists: "About half of the Adventists were vegetarians, or rarely ate meat ... We learned that non-vegetarian Adventists had about twice the risk of heart disease as vegetarian Adventists." Also, the non-vegetarians had a 65% greater incidence of colon cancer. And Adventists who consumed nuts 5-6 times a week had half the risk of heart disease as those who didn't.
- Okinawa, Japan. The old people in Okinawa, before they eat, say hara hachi bu, which is a Confucian-inspired adage which means "Eat until you are 80 percent full."
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