Growing Young
Page 26
Tea ceremony, just like the Japanese art of flower arrangement (ikebana) or cherry tree viewing (hanami), is all about mindfulness: attention to the present, clearing the mind. Japanese culture abounds in traditions that centre on the appreciation of nature and beauty, promoting moment-to-moment awareness. There is shodo, Japanese calligraphy, which treasures harmony, simplicity, and aesthetic pleasures. There is bonsai, growing dwarf trees in earthenware pots, a time-consuming, patience-requiring art. Hanami, or cherry tree viewing, is also, in a way, about mindfulness, since the stunning glory of the pink blooms is very fleeting, lasting only a couple of days. And then there is haiku, poetry that is so simple that it can feel like meditation. The idea is to capture a moment in a mere seventeen syllables. Here is probably the most famous haiku, a seventeenth-century verse called the frog haiku:
An old pond
a frog jumps
the sound of water
It’s so Zen, I can almost feel my telomeres extending from reading this. As you probably suspect, Zen is another keyword here. Zen, a school of Buddhism that originated in China, lies at the heart of Japanese culture, promoting self-control, meditation, and self-discovery. One old story I’ve read recently in a BBC article by Steve John Powell (and originally coming from Paul Reps’ 1957 anthology of Zen texts, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones), is particularly good at explaining what Zen is about:
After studying to be a Zen teacher for many years, Teno went to visit Nan-in, an old Zen master. It was raining heavily and, as is customary, Teno left his clogs and umbrella in the entrance before entering Nan-in’s house. After greeting each other, Nan-in asked Teno: “Did you leave your umbrella to the left or right of your clogs?” Unable to answer, Teno realized he was still a long way from attaining Zen, and went away to study for six more years.
If you are anything like me and sometimes have no idea how you got home from work, even though you obviously did drive and did not crash the car, perfect Zen is far more than six years away. Yet it’s still worth pursuing it—Zen meditation experts have longer telomeres than those who don’t follow the practice. Zen meditation also increases heart rate variability and helps with pain. Just like mindfulness meditation, Zen and its cousin traditions such as chado tea ceremony, ikebana flower arranging, or haiku poetry act against stress and anxiety, calming the mind and hence, in all likelihood, promoting physical health (although, admittedly, no one seems to have studied the telomere length of ikebana or haiku practitioners).
Yet just as Japanese traditions of tea drinking are changing—Chiaki-san tells me most people simply use teabags on an everyday basis and do chado only once a year or so—so does the society itself, with potential longevity consequences. First, there are the physical issues. Remember Okinawa and how everyone used to obsess about the health-boosting lifestyle of its inhabitants? Well, it’s all over now: these inhabitants are no longer the longevity champions of Japan. They’ve developed a penchant for Western-style fast foods and their well-being has nosedived. But there are other threats to Japanese longevity besides burgers. Social inequalities are increasing and people are overworked and under-slept, so much so that they have no time for romantic relationships—or even for sex. Among those who are not married, roughly 40 percent are still virgins at the age of thirty-four. In one admittedly smallish poll—it involved six hundred men in their forties—well over a half reported having “zero sex.” Just like sex, marriage is often not happening, either. Loneliness is rampant. In every other developed country, the number of teenagers who claim to be lonely hovers somewhere in the single digits. In Japan, it’s 30 percent. That’s not good for anyone’s telomeres.
Meanwhile, some researchers claim that the famed Japanese collectivism may be also on the decline, as the young, influenced by the West, get more and more individualistic. The Gini index has been climbing steadily as income inequalities deepen, too. No one knows, of course, how exactly these changes may impact Japanese longevity. In twenty or fifty years, will Japan still be the longest-living nation on the planet? It’s important to remember that the people who are now reaching their hundredth birthdays have lived in a Japan that was more collectivistic, more egalitarian, and less fast-paced than it is today. Will their great-grandchildren have similar chances of becoming centenarians?
Despite these potential anti-longevity trends, there are still many health-related lessons we can learn from the Japanese. We can eat less meat—or none at all—more vegetables, and more soy, and we can walk often and do yearly dry dock checkups. Most importantly, though, we can take to heart the Japanese saying, “sickness and health start with the mind.”
It might be tempting to look at the Japanese mindset and try to replicate it at home. But culture is not a book we can just borrow. Some things simply won’t work if transplanted wholesale from one country to another. We can try all we might, but the UK, Canada, or the US won’t suddenly become collectivist cultures. Yet what we can do is change our focus a bit from inward to outward, from an “I” mentality to a “we” one. We could think a little less about our own individual achievements and status and more about social harmony and finding a place for ourselves in the community. We could try to temper the “me, me, me culture” and concentrate more on the group.
You don’t need to move to Nagano to extend your life, and without revising your values and attitudes, it might have not worked anyway. But you can commit yourself to making your current home a bit more like the longevity village, Matsukawa, with its gleaming public spaces designed to include everyone, where even kindergarteners are safe to walk on their own. Why not set up an informal neighbourhood association, for example? Have regular meetings to discuss the needs of the community and to organize clean-ups, block parties, and sporting events. Exercising together at the break of dawn to the radio may feel quite weird, but a jogging group might work, or driveway basketball meet-ups. Following the Japanese five-house rule is a good idea, too—so if you don’t know the names of your neighbours in three houses in front of yours and in those to the sides, go out and introduce yourself.
Learning longevity lessons from the cherry blossom land does not mean you need to work till you drop at 105, either. What it does mean is that finding something larger than yourself to fill your days once you retire is a good idea. Don’t just mope around the house with the TV as your companion—volunteer, get a hobby (and one that benefits others would be best), and involve yourself more with your family and friends. That said, discovering your ikigai, your purpose in life, is probably the top advice you should take from the Japanese—and it may be easier to do so if you calm your mind first with Zen-related practices. That’s something you can transplant from Japan directly—meditate, try ikebana, or write a haiku. And if a tea ceremony does not sound appealing, develop your own food-related traditions—a coffee ceremony, perhaps?—making sure they are slow and mindful. Even replacing your coffee-to-go with a European-style pause at a café could make a difference: after all, the idea here it to be present in the moment, noting the feel of the cup, the taste and smell of the liquid, the sounds around you.
One health-boosting and life-extending lesson that will certainly not be easy to follow is making our societies more egalitarian. Unless you are the current president of the United States or someone with similar power, you can’t, of course, transform your country with a few simple decisions. You can, however, try to open yourself up to those outside of your social class. Talk to them and respect them. Think how your decisions may affect their lives. Donate money and time. And, of course, there is also your vote. Use it wisely—it can impact your centenarian potential and that of your children.
As for policy makers, Shiro Horiuchi believes that they should strive to make disadvantaged people belong in the society. “I feel that in the US the thinking behind health care policy is relatively mechanical: more money, more materials, people will be happy. But more thought should be given to making underprivileged people feel mor
e integrated in the society,” he says. In other words: it’s not enough to throw cash around on drugs or new scanners. If you want to extend longevity in a country, you need to trim the cultural barriers between the poor and the rich, and help the former develop stronger feelings of belonging. Admittedly, buying medical equipment is far easier than pushing for social equality—just as taking wonder-diet supplements is easier than improving relationships. Yet if longevity is truly the goal, it’s all worth it.
A FEW SUGGESTIONS TO BOOST YOUR LONGEVITY
Focus outward rather than inward—try to think about the needs of other people around you more often. Participate in your neighbourhood associations. Follow the five-house rule—keep a close relationship with people in the three houses opposite yours and those who live in the house to your left and the one to your right. Find your ikigai—purpose in life. Value your work, and if you are retired, make sure to find yourself something to keep you busy and useful to society. Try to find zen—meditate or do haiku or ikebana. Like the Japanese, enjoy simple things.
EPILOGUE
WHAT TO DO TO LIVE LONG? From fountain-searching Ponce de Léon to pill-popping techies from Silicon Valley, humanity has been trying to pinpoint the answer for centuries, often fixating on all the wrong things: miracle diets, miracle foods, miracle supplements. We skip gluten and invest in exercise gadgets. We swallow vitamins. We obsess about BMI. Yet even though healthy nutrition and physical activity are indeed important for health—within reason—there are things that can affect your centenarian potential even more, things that we all too often sacrifice while we chase fad diets and the newest cardio workouts. Friendships. Purpose in life. Empathy. Kindness. Science shows that these “soft” health drivers are often more powerful than diet and exercise. Admittedly, without the right genetic makeup you are unlikely to beat the longevity record of Jeanne Calment, no matter how much you volunteer or how great your marriage is, but if you focus on your relationships and your mind, you may still considerably slow down your epigenetic clock and add many years to your life.
We humans are social apes. Over the course of evolution, we’ve developed several intertwined systems that regulate our social lives on one hand and our physiology on the other. The amygdala, the insula, the social hormones, the vagus nerve, the HPA axis—all of these link our bodies and our minds, contributing to our centenarian potential. We feel safe when we are surrounded by friendly others. The nervous system, the gastrointestinal system, the immune system—all of these function properly when the tribe is there for us and when we are there for the tribe. Involved in a group, we flourish.
What’s more, focusing your longevity effort on growing as a person could not just add years to your life but also make that life more worth living. Caring for others, contributing to the community, and living meaningfully help us reach old age, stave off disease, and make us happy all at the same time. One could argue, of course, that volunteering or community-making in order to get healthier is egoistic and untoward. I don’t agree with that view. Even if that first impulse to lead a kinder life is indeed egoistic, I believe that for most people, taking a deeper look at how they spend their time and participate in their society can help them change for the better. And as a result, we could all end up living in a place that’s worth living in.
Think about it—do you want to spend a hundred years in a society where everyone cares about nothing but themselves? Do you want to live on a planet that’s in the throes of climate change, bashed with extreme weather and conflicts over resources? Boosting empathy can both make us healthier and make our planet healthier, too—studies show, for example, that high empathy motivates people to fight climate change. Conscientiousness also often means environmental engagement. If we invest more in being kind, mindful, and conscientious we are more likely to improve the conditions in which we all live. Besides, if we ruin the earth, we may never make it as centenarians anyway. Hurricanes and wildfires don’t care about your diet. Wars kill people with low cholesterol, too.
For all the above reasons, it’s vital that we recognize the role the human psyche plays in longevity. Policymakers are beginning to focus their attention on issues such as loneliness and divorce rates—yet they still mostly see them as social problems, not public health issues. That should change. Loneliness is a mortality risk as much as poor nutrition, if not more so. We should identify populations of concern and aim our efforts at prevention. We could, for instance, help isolated seniors find their way back into society by encouraging volunteering or setting up hobby clubs. We could offer paid maternity and paternity leaves to support early family bonding. We could draft guidelines recommending regular social activity (“at least 150 minutes of fun with friends every week”?). And maybe our schools should teach children empathy as much as they should teach them about nutrition.
We invest so much money in expensive clinical trials that promise extravagant therapies to reverse aging. We put our hopes in young blood transfusions and rejuvenating mitochondria. But maybe we should just do things that are already known to work, such as volunteering, making friends, and learning optimism. Over the years I have been guilty of many dietary and fitness obsessions myself, but I’m trying to change. I have stopped worrying that most of what I eat is not organic, and I don’t scour the internet for new recipes that would hike our family’s turmeric intake. Instead of running several miles a fourth time in a week, I may now plop down on the couch beside my husband and pull out a card game. I invest more time into my marriage. I stop to chat with neighbours. I try to be kinder. In all fairness, I have no idea whether my telomeres are shrinking more slowly, but let me tell you: no amount of spinach has ever made me feel this good.
It’s time we recognize that improving our social lives and cultivating our minds can be at least as important for health and longevity as are diet and exercise. When you grow as a person, chances are, you will also grow young. To Michael Pollan’s famous statement, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants,” I would add: “Be social, care for others, enjoy life.”
NOTES
INTRODUCTION
A recent review of almost a hundred studies showed that people who have a BMI (body mass index) of 30 to 35…—A word on mortality risk. Throughout this book, you will see me referring to “lower mortality risk.” What that essentially means (without going too much into mathematical subtleties) is that within the follow-up period of a particular study—say, 5 years or 10 years or 25—particular people were less likely to die. If, for example, mortality risk in some study was 20 percent lower for people who did X, this means that people who did X were estimated to be approximately 20 percent less likely to die than they normally would in the period in which the scientists followed up on them.
Studies show that building a strong support network of family and friends lowers mortality risk by about 45 percent. —Julianne Holt-Lunstad, David A. Sbarra and Theodore F. Robles, “Advancing Social Connection as a Public Health Priority in the United States,” American Psychologist 72 (2017).
Exercise, on the other hand, can lower mortality risk by 23 to 33 percent. —Ralph S. Paffenbarger et al., “The Association of Changes in Physical-Activity Level and Other Lifestyle Characteristics with Mortality among Men,” 328 (1993): 538-545 AND Marc Nocon et al., “Association of physical activity with all-cause and cardiovascular mortality: a systematic review and meta-analysis,” European Journal of Preventive Cardiology 15 (2008).
Eating six or more servings of vegetables and fruits per day, which is admittedly quite a lot, can cut mortality risk by 26 percent. —Xia Wang et al., “Fruit and vegetable consumption and mortality from all causes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer: systematic review and dose-response meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies,” BMJ 349 (2014).
…following the Mediterranean diet—eating lots of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, replacing butter with olive oil, etc.—21 percent. —Panagiota N. Mitrou et al., “Mediterranea
n Dietary Pattern and Prediction of All-Cause Mortality in a US Population,” JAMA Internal Medicine 167 (2007): 2461-2468.
Among the French, 61 percent of those in their thirties and forties eat dinner with their family, at the table, each and every day. —“Les Repas Traditionnel Fait de la Resistance!” BVA, accessed November 29, 2017, http://www.bva.fr/fr/sondages/le_repas_traditionnel_fait_de_la_resistance.html
Now compare that to the mere 24 percent of Americans that age who do so…—“Are Americans Still Serving Up Family Dinners?,” The Harris Poll, accessed November 29, 2017, https://theharrispoll.com/new-york-n-y-november-13-2013-with-americas-most-visible-family-meal-thanksgiving-just-around-the-corner-the-tradition-of-the-family-dinner-appears-alive-and-well-though-some-report-th/
A committed romantic relationship, which according to some studies can lower your mortality risk by a staggering 49 percent. —Julianne Holt-Lunstad, David A. Sbarra and Theodore F. Robles, “Advancing Social Connection as a Public Health Priority in the United States,” American Psychologist 72 (2017).
…having a conscientious personality (44 percent). —Eileen K. Graham et al., “Personality Predicts Mortality Risk: An Integrative Data Analysis of 15 International Longitudinal Studies,” Journal of Research in Personality (2017).
…volunteering—about 22 to 44 percent…—Doug Oman, Carl Thoresen and Kay Mcmahon, “Volunteerism and Mortality among the Community-dwelling Elderly,” Journal of Health Psychology 4 (1999).