for the past 10 years or so I've been working with National Geographic to
identify geographically defined demographically confirmed parts of the
area where people live measurably longer these are populations so not just
individual experience tens of thousands of people in most examples and then
working with other experts to find their common denominators I wrote this up in a
book called blue zones you don't have to buy the book because in the next 90
seconds I'm going to tell you all the essential secrets no matter where you go
in the world whether it's Okinawa Japan certainly Italy the highlands the Nicoya
Peninsula Costa Rica the cudi agrees i'm on the seventh day adventists you see
the same nine things happening over and over and over among the longest with
people a lot of these things are very intuitive eating a plant-based diet low
and simple carbohydrates high and things like beans and nuts the ever popular
prescriptive to have a couple glasses of wine a day and no you can't save up all
week long I'd have 14 on the weekends people actually ask me that but the
really cool findings come from the counterintuitive things you do you know
that people who have a strong sense of purpose and who can articulate it live
about seven years longer than people who don't people who belong to a faith-based
community and actually show up four times a month left 4 to 14 years longer
than people who don't and none of the longest live people in the world and I
interviewed 253 of them ever exercise in the way we think of exercise they did
however live in environments that constantly nudge them into physical
activity they burnt about five times as many calories as we do in non exercise
physical activity they lived anywhere from seven to eleven years longer than
we did with a fraction of the rate of chronic disease these are populations
one of them is even an American population that lives a decade longer
than the rest of us but as you know you can tell people all day long the things
they ought to do to live longer and to be healthier but how do you actually get
a population to do them we spend almost a trillion dollars a year in largely
preventable diseases cancer diabetes heart disease largely preventable
diseases but I assert we not only are spending too much but we're aiming at
the wrong target if you look at what really drives disease and cost in this
country about eighty percent of it is lifestyle and environment only about ten
percent is jeans this is on a population as a whole and healthcare accounts for
another ten percent of it but now look at the way we spend our money this
incidentally comes from the CDC we spend only about four percent of our our
healthcare dollars on on prevention and then we spend eighty eight percent of
them on cleaning up the problem after problem has happened we're aiming at the
wrong target instead of the downstream problems we should be aiming at what to
do before they happen I think most of us know that we do spend over a hundred
billion dollars a year on prevention so you may say Dan you know where are
overweight population here in America we don't move enough we knew this would be
focusing on diets and exercise and supplements the problem is by and large
they don't work when you think of things that are going to truly add to longevity
to truly lower your chances of getting a chronic disease you cannot think in
months or in yours you have to think in decades or a lifetime so you say well
diets pretty good idea but no diet in the history of the world has ever worked
for a significant proportion of people started we could come up right now we
could spend the next three days and come up with the TEDMED diet the best minds
on the planet when it comes to medicine come to and come to Ted come up with a
tedmed diet we get mark up here and Jay up here and we do a man hug and we get
people all pumped up about it but the reality of diets if a hundred people
start a diet today within seven to ten months you'll lose 90 of them and within
the next two years you'll lose all but about five percent of them so when it
comes to a long-term strategy diets don't work no died in the
history of the world exercise has a similar recidivism curve we were able to
find data on gym memberships on out of a hundred people who start a gym
membership today in three years you'll learn lose about ninety percent of all
this is a bit of a heresy I know but when it comes to public health exercise
just isn't working the average American only burns 100 calories per day engaged
in willful physical activity exercise supplements whether they're medicinal or
nutraceutical about the same thing we may say Stanton's and aspirin are really
good for people to take but you don't get a critical Matt you don't get enough
people taking them over time