How to Live to Be 100 Years Young...

Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who've Lived the Longest

Interview with "Blue Zones" Author Dan Buettner

Wouldn't it be great if you could actually talk to the people in the world who have lived the longest, healthiest lives? If you could find out where they actually live and then sit them down and ask, "How do you manage to stay healthy for 100 years?" Wouldn't that be something we could all learn from?

Well, guess what. Somebody did it.

That somebody is Dan Buettner, and he's an explorer. Dan took on an amazing project to locate the places on the planet where people live the longest. He sought out remote places where folks typically live to 100 or beyond. But don't misunderstand-- these folks aren't just being kept alive in assisted living homes.

Listen to this:

"It was only 7:30 AM but Panchita was ready for her midmorning break. She'd been up since four and had already knelt next to her bed to say her morning prayers, fetched two eggs from the chicken coop, ground corn by hand, brewed coffee from well water drawn from the limestone bedrock beneath her house, made herself a breakfast of beans, eggs and tortillas, split wood and, using a machete almost as tall as her five-foot frame, cleared the encroaching bush around her house. She asked if she could prepare breakfast for us."

Did you get that this was all by 7:30 AM? (Just checking.)

Panchita also fussed over her son Tommy because a few days earlier he had scraped his leg. "I'm fine mama!", he said! Tommy is 80. Panchita herself recently celebrated her 100th birthday. Did that get your attention? It did mine!

I recently had the opportunity and pleasure to interview Dan Buttener about his experiences and findings. I'd like to share that interview with you. It's free and my gift to you! Just go here and download it or stream it. I think you'll find it fascinating: Listen to the Interview

The people who live in the four "Blue Zones" Buttener discovered had a lot in common.

• Sardania, Italy


• Okinawa, Japan


• Loma Linda, California


• Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica

Buettner asked them about the secret of a long, healthy energetic life. Here are some of my favorite answers from the folks he interviewed:

• "Eat your vegetables, have a positive outlook, be kind to people and smile"


• "I never pray for a long life, but I just express my gratitude for another day. It reminds me that every day is important"


• Loma Linda, California


• "It's about loving and being loved"

You can read about these people in Buettner's book, The Blue Zones but I'll give you the executive summary. Here the biggest things we can learn from all these wonderful folks:

1. Eat a ton of plants and plant foods, (even those of us who also eat meat)


2. Push away from the table before you're full


3. Get enough sunlight to make plenty of vitamin D (all the Blue Zones are sunny areas)


4. Stay active every single day


5. Don't smoke. (No kidding.)


6. Develop, maintain and cherish strong connections to family and community

I hope you'll enjoy the interview did with Buettner and be inspired by it. In a world of plenty bad news, this is really a breath of fresh air.

As always, let me know what you think!

Yet Another Reason to Avoid Trans-Fats Like the Plague

If you needed yet another reason to avoid trans-fats like the plague, here it is: A new study from Harvard shows that increased intakes of trans-fatty acids may increase the risk of prostate tumors by a stunning 100 percent. The study followed almost 15,000 men over 13 years and found significant increased risk for prostate cancer among the men who were eating higher levels of the dangerous fat. This adds to previous research linking trans-fats to cardiovascular disease.

Trans-fats are man-made fats found in any product that contains hydrogenized or partially-hydrogenized oil in the ingredients.

Through a particularly sleazy loophole in the regulations, manufacturers are allowed to include up to half a gram of trans fats per serving and still claim "Zero Trans Fats" on the label. If they make the "serving size" small enough (however unrealistic that "serving size" may be), you can wind up consuming a couple of grams of trans-fats in an average serving. So forget the "Zero Trans Fats" claims and look a little deeper. Read the ingredients. If it says hydrogenized or partially-hydrogenized oil, it's got trans fats- don't buy it.

And don't buy into those apologist statements by "spokespeople" from the American Dietetic Association who tell you to "reduce" trans-fats. The recommended intake for hydrogenated oils (trans-fats) in the human diet is zero.

More on "Eat Drink or Die"

Many of you have checked out the videos I've been doing on Eat Drink or Die. My brilliant webmaster (Christopher Loch) has figured out a way to feed them directly onto my home page. So if you go to the bottom of the left hand side of the home page where it says "Get more Jonny in your Diet" and look at the listings under "WATCH" you'll see the daily video feeds from Eat Drink or Die with me talking about various foods, supplements and issues in nutrition and health. Each video is about 2 minutes.


Let me know any topics you'd like me to cover, and if you like a video then be sure to mark it as DELICIOUS at the end of the video

Vitamin D and Breast Cancer

I've been singing the praises for vitamin D for a long time now, and even made it the feature subject in a recent newsletter. I even made a high quality vitamin D product the free giveaway for the month of April. Now it's back in the news again, this time for it's connection to breast cancer.

In this study, conducted by Pamela Goodwin, MD, professor of medicine at the University of Toronto and her associates, women with vitamin D deficiency at the time of breast cancer diagnosis were 94% more likely to experience cancer spread and 73% more likely to die over the next 10 years compared to women with adequate vitamin D levels.

Of course, the usual predictable cautions come from the researchers- "it's too early to recommend vitamin D supplements", "more research is needed" and all the other stuff you could probably write in your sleep. (These people would probably tell you "More research is needed" to determine if water truly puts out fire.) But I digress.

Current research, according to the vitamin D council, indicates that vitamin D deficiency plays a role in causing seventeen varieties of cancer as well as heart disease, stroke, hypertension, autoimmune diseases, diabetes, depression, chronic pain, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, muscle weakness, muscle wasting, birth defects, and periodontal disease

And vitamin D deficiency is absolutely rampant. The current "RDI" level of 400 IU's per day is ridiculously low and out of date. My friends in clinical practice who measure these things tell me it's rare to not see a patient who is vitamin D deficient. And if you're trying to prevent osteoporosis by taking a ton of calcium, remember that the calcium isn't going to get into the bone without vitamin D. So add a vitamin D supplement to your regimine. It's cheap, tiny, and good insurance against a host of things you don't want to have. I recommend 1000 IU's every day.

You've Read This, Right?

Last week I sent out an e-blast about the Health Coach program course offered through Hilton Johnson Productions. In case you didn't see it, here it is again.

I've gotten a lot of e mail asking what they offer, so let me just tell you what I know: It's not a nutrition course, but it is a course in how to do peer counseling in the area of health. Holding people accountable, helping to be their support system and building a business around coaching. If you're interested, you can read more about it here. They're offering a free class for people who want to learn more.

Eat Drink or Die

Some of you probably saw that Will Ferrell video with adorable three year old kid who plays the part of "Pearl", Will's "landlord" in this hysterical homemade comic video. The video got over 80 million hits and counting, and now lives on a very funny website called Funny or Die. Well, "Or Die" has become a franchise, and the latest version is about to launch big time. It's called "Eat Drink or Die" and it's all about food, nutrition, health and humor.

Eat Drink or Die is produced in a great studio in Santa Monica, with a first rate staff of Emmy award-winning directors and editors and the terrific producer of Last Comic Standing, Brittney Lovett, together with her associate, Talia Lesak.

It features a celebrity chef- Tom Colicchio from Top Chef- and a celebrity nutritionist who is- well, none other than yours truly. I'm committed to making 250 short videos for them over the course of the coming year. The first 75 are done, and we keep making more. You can see yours truly in little video tidbits about food and health. You'll also be able to pick up a lot of really interesting food tips and recipes.


"The Healthiest Meals on Earth"

Speaking of recipes, my new book "The Healthiest Meals on Earth" will be out in July. I've just seen an advance copy, and I have to say it's gorgeous (I can't take credit- it's the same amazing design team that gave us "Most Effective Natural Cures on Earth" and "The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth"). If there's enough interest, I may start posting recipes from the book on the website on a rotating basis. Let me know what you think! And feel free to pre-order the book on Amazon here.

Sugar Addiction

Nutritionists have debated for a while whether there's such a thing as "sugar addiction". (I have a name for this kind of debate- I call it "ridiculous". I put it in the same class as the "debate" among conventional doctors over whether there's such a disease as chronic fatigue or fibromyalgia. How clueless are these people?)

So, yes, I've long since made up my mind that sugar addiction "exists", and so have plenty of people who have experienced it themselves. But it's always nice when science backs up our own intuitions. A recent study by graduate student Maglie Lenoir and her colleagues at the Unvierstiy of Bordeaux in France showed that rats given a choice between highly sweetened water and intravenous cocaine overwhelmingly picked- you guessed it- the sugar water!

And their preference was just as intense regardless of whether the liquid was sweetened with saccahrin or sugar (diet soda drinkers note well).

As Rachel Dvoskin explains in this month's issue of Scientific American: Mind, hypersensitivity to sugar and the taste of sweetness probably evolved when sugar was scarce in the diet and it's presence indicated a high-calorie (and therefore nutritious) meal. But the excessive sugar and sugar-substitutes in our modern diet may just overstimulate the sweet receptors in the brain, leading to a loss of self-control mechanisms and the risk of addiction.

Remember, even the sweet tooth had an evolutionary purpose. We humans are unable to manufacture our own vitamin C. And vitamin C is normally found in sweet things like fruits. Add this to the fact that many bitter plants are poisonous, and you can see a sound evolutionary reason for the Genome Organizing Device (GOD) to give us a nice strong sweet tooth- it kept us away from poison and made us seek out vitamin C containing foods.

But the modern diet has sent these normal control mechanisms into overdrive and driven us literally crazy. Remember, drugs and food both activate reward pathways in the brain, and sometimes these reward pathways get "hijacked". When they do, it takes more and more of the craved substance to get the same "high", and "regular" pleasures don't even register on our inner pleasure meter. We're addicted. Like the rats to sugar water.

Other research has also shown that rats can become quite dependent on sugar and act exactly like addicts when it's taken away- shivering and shaking and exhibiting typical symptoms of addiction and withdrawl.

So no, if you think you might be addicted to sugar, it's not necessarily "all in your head". The good news is that you can kick it. The bad news is that it's not the easiest thing in the world to do. But the best news of all is how great you'll feel once you're off the roller coaster of blood sugar hell.

Note: A good way to start your crave-busting program is with heaping tablespoons of L-glutamine. The brain uses it for fuel, and it seems to calm cravings. A second thing you can do is make a deal with yourself that you can have whatever it is you're craving if you just wait 15 minutes and do something else first (like walk around the block, do 50 push-ups or take a warm bath). Cravings- even the worst of them- tend to die out after 15 minutes. You just need to learn to outsmart them.

The Bar I've Been Waiting For!

As you know, I'm a huge fan of the vitamin company Designs for Health and I carry a lot of their products in the vitamin store. Well, they've just come out with a new bar and it's amazing. While I won't go so far as to say it tastes exactly like a Mounds bar, it's close enough for rock and roll!

The bar is called Cocommune Bar and it's a sugar free blend of rich dark chocolate with a creamy coconut filling. It's kosher, and it also includes 500mg of Designs for Health special colostrums formula, Tegricel, which was designed to enhance general immune function.

The fat in the bar comes from coconut and coconut oil, which are among my favorite super-foods, rich in the medium chain triglycerides that possess anti-bacterial and anti-microbal properties. As readers of my book "The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth" know, the fat in coconut is preferentially burned by the body for energy rather than stored as fat.

It gets better. The whole bar only has 160 calories, and only one gram of sugar. (It does have sugar alcohols, but is still considered a pretty low carb bar!) And it has a nice 4 grams of fiber, not bad for a snack or mini-meal treat.

The bar will be in the store as of today under bars and shakes. I expect it to sell out quickly. I'm pretty sure you're going to love this bar as much as I do, so I'm going to add two bars to every vitamin store order over $50 that comes in over the next seven days (offer valid until May 19th).

More on Weight and The Brain

It never rains but it pours.

Within a week of writing the article on the association between a pot belly and Alzheimers, yet another study was published on a similar topic, this one in the May 2008 issue of Obesity Reviews. And this one confirms the first- weight makes a major difference when it comes to warding off dementia.

In this study, researchers with John Hopkins reviewed and analyzed ten different international studies from countries ranging from the US to Finland to Japan, over the course of 12 years. The studies included people with various types of dementia, and followed the subjects from anywhere from three to 36 years.

Obesity increased the risk of dementia- for both men and women- by an average of 42 percent. It increased the risk of Alzheimers by 80%.

Interestingly being very underweight also increased the risk of cognitive disorders- by 36% in fact. (This kind of inverse relationship happens a lot- as in where when cholesterol gets too low, risk for dying goes up. So "more" is not always better. But I digress.)

So you have a lot of reasons for taking on the challenge of maintaining a "healthy" weight. Less risk of losing your mind, for one. Not to mention less risk for heart disease, diabetes, cancer and depression.

Does a Pot Belly Increase the Risk for Alzheimer's?

Sorry, but yes. In fact, it triples the risk.

A new study by Rachel Whitmer, a researcher with Kaiser Permanente, has found that a potbelly in middle age increases the risk of senility by more than 300 percent. "The take-home message is that it's not only what you weigh, but it's where you carry your weight in midlife," said Dr. Whitmer.

We already know that where you carry your excess weight is important. Weight around the middle is far more metabolically active than excess fat in the thighs and butt, which may be unsightly and annoying, but isn't as dangerous. A big belly is a sure sign of insulin resistance, a major factor in diabetes and metabolic syndrome. The rule of thumb: if you're a woman with a 35" waist ( 40" for men) there's a good chance you've got insulin resistance.

In the new study, published in the March 26 online issue of Neurology, researchers measured the abdominal fat of over 6,000 health-care plan members between the ages of 40 and 45 back in the 1960's and 70's. Then they looked to see what happened to them between 1994-2006, when they reached their 70's and beyond.

The researchers found that obese people who had the most abdominal fat were 3.6 times more likely to develop dementia than those with the least amount of abdominal fat. Even being "merely" overweight with a large belly was a risk- those who were overweight and had large bellies while in their 40's were over twice as likely to develop dementia decades later.

Every baby boomer I know worries to some extent about memory loss; most will tell you that Alzheimers or dementia is one of the worst fates they can imagine.

The good news is that you can lose weight and reduce the risk not only for dementia, but for a host of other conditions you don't want to live with either.

Is it difficult? Sure. It can be.

But consider the alternative.

And if you are overweight, consider how great- and how empowered- you'll feel once you do lose weight.