Category: Books

In Healthy at 100, John Robbins explores the lifestyles of four of the world’s longest living cultures: the Abkhasians of Southern Russia, the Vilcabambans of Ecuador, the Hunza of Northern Pakistan, and the Okinawans of Japan. The cultures all share an extraordinarily high number of centenarians, and a low incidence of most of the chronic diseases of Western culture.

The essence of the book is an effort to discover what these four long-living cultures have in common. While the discoveries may not be entirely surprising, they way they’re delivered is inspiring nonetheless – this was an insightful read.

Some of the common traits among the cultures that Robbins uncovered during his research include:

Plenty of Moderate Exercise

These are active people, in terms of their lifestyle. Three of the four cultures, in fact, live in mountainous terrain. The daily exercise that they get simply from going about their lives is very high.

High Vegetable Diet

Robbins is a big proponent of the vegan lifestyle, so he may be showing his bias, but all of the cultures ate a diet extremely high in vegetables. Many added dairy or small amounts of meat or fish, but their diet was predominantly plant-based, and in most cases seemed to be moderately low in overall calories.

Love and Connection

Each culture fostered strong familial and communal bonds, with multi-generational homes, and close interaction among people. Even as the elders of society age, they stay engaged with their communities through these close connections. That engagement keeps the older members of society mentally and physically healthy even into their advanced years.

Healthy Attitude Toward Aging and the Aged

This is clearly Robbins’ core message, that our attitude towards the elderly in our culture, and towards our own aging, plays a dramatic role in how well we age physically. By marginalizing the older members of our society and viewing our own aging as a curse, rather than an increase in wisdom and life experience, we reduce our expectations of the elderly, and in doing so speed up their decline.

I listened to the audio version of this book early this year, and the simplicity of the “secrets” of aging well resonated with me. The biggest downside? It’s a little sad that many of these happy, healthy cultures are losing their simple, natural edge as the world changes.

-Tara

PS If you’re interested in other cultures, you might want to join Amanda and Terry from the clinic as they share stories, photos and videos from their mission trip to Senegal, Africa. The presentation will be at The Collingwood Public Library on Wednesday, February 24, 6-8:30 PM. Admission is free, and so are the snacks!

If you’re a resolution maker, you know that it can be painful to make a commitment and not keep it. In fact, those with a trail of unkept resolutions behind them often find that they now resolve to…well, to never resolve again.

The problem, though, isn’t with the idea of making changes for the better in your life. The problem lies in how the changes are made.

Enter Leo Babauta of ZenHabits.net. In his Definitive Guide to Sticking to Your New Year’s Resolutions, he sums up the problems with resolutions:

New Year’s Resolutions usually fail because of a combination of some of these reasons:

• We try to do too many resolutions at once, and that spreads our focus and energies too thin. It’s much less effective to do many habits at once (read more).
• We only have a certain amount of enthusiasm and motivation, and it runs out because we try to do too much, too soon. We spend all that energy in the beginning and then run out of steam.
• We try to do really tough habits right away, which means it’s difficult and we become overwhelmed or intimidated by the difficulty and quit.
• We try to be “disciplined” and do very unpleasant habits, but our nature won’t allow that to last for long. If we really don’t want to do something, we won’t be able to force ourselves to do it for long.
• Life gets in the way. Things come up unexpectedly that get in the way of us sticking with a habit.
• Resolutions are often vague – I’m going to exercise! – but don’t contain a concrete action plan and don’t use proven habit techniques. That’s a recipe for failure.

Leo’s solution? Leo’s 6 Changes Method, which involves choosing one thing at a time to change, and making the changes very slowly. It’s about finding success by building habits in small steps, as opposed to one giant quit-smoking-lose-weight-eat-better-start-exercising-on-the-same-day plan that has a high risk of failure.

This approach of gradual, sustainable success is a great one that we’ve seen work time and time again for patients trying to make challenging lifestyle shifts. If resolutions are your thing, a quick look at Leo’s strategy, or his book The Power of Less, is time well spent.

And if your resolution is just to be happier? Pay a visit to Gretchen Rubin’s blog The Happiness Project for help. Her book by the same name hits the shelves this week – just in time to kick off 2010 the right way!