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S3.E2 - Blue Zones - Okinawa
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This week, Thomas leads our discussion of Chapter 3: The Okinawa Blue Zone from Blue Zones, Second Edition: 9 Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who’ve Lived the Longest by Dan Buettner.
- Which aspects of the Okinawa culture / lifestyle can you see yourself adopting? (1:04 - 17:58)
- What is your individual “Ikigai” (one’s sense of purpose in life) and “Moai” (a group of friends who support and encourage one another)? (17:59 - 33:29)
- Final thoughts on the chapter (33:30 - 34:04)
Resources referenced or discussed in today’s episode
- Happiness and Age graphs - click here
- Study related to the amount of time it takes to develop deep relationships: “How many hours does it take to make a friend?”. Correction: In the episode, it was commented that the study found that men take 200 hours and women take 50 hours to develop deep friendships. Upon further review, the study did not evaluate gender specific timelines; thus, that comment from this episode was inaccurate.
- Article related to discussion on soy consumption and testosterone: “How Much Soy Can You Really Eat Before It Affects Your Testosterone?”
- Video related to discussion of younger generations pushing against the smartphone and social media norms: “Gen Z and millennials turning to flip phones for mental health l GMA”
- Studies related to increased rates of anxiety and depression
- World Health Organization (WHO): “COVID-19 pandemic triggers 25% increase in prevalence of anxiety and depression worldwide”
- Gallup: “U.S. Depression Rates Reach New Highs”
- National Institutes of Health (NIH): “Child and Adolescent Anxiety and Depression Prior to and During the COVID-19 Pandemic in the United States”
Next week we’ll discuss chapter 4: “An American Blue Zone” (pages 123 - 165)
You can buy the book on Amazon by clicking here.
You can also borrow it at your local library. Don’t have a library card, or unsure where your local library is? Search on Google Maps, or find your local library by clicking here.
Follow us on Instagram @booksbrotherspodcast
Connect with us at connect@booksbrotherspodcast.com
Please subscribe and give us a review! We would really appreciate it.
See you next week! Until then - read, reflect, and connect.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Books Brothers Podcast
00:00:05
Speaker
Welcome to the Books Brothers podcast, a book club turned podcast where each week we read books, reflect on them as they relate to our life, and connect with each other by sharing our experiences. I'm Thomas. I'm Rob. I'm Phelez. I'm Stalyn. I'm Matt. I'm Garrett.
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00:00:22
Speaker
In today's episode, we will be discussing chapter three, the Okinawan Blue Zone.
00:00:30
Speaker
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Speaker
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Exploring Okinawa's Blue Zone
00:01:03
Speaker
So in chapter 3 we learn of the second blue zone mentioned in the book, the blue zone in Okinawa. Okinawa is an island in the Ryukyu chain which stretches south of Japan. Even though Okinawa is part of Japan, it has a slower paced, more laid back culture and a warmer subtropical climate. Some might describe it as the Hawaii of Japan.
00:01:27
Speaker
This chapter focuses on the lifestyle of traditional Okinawan people who have one of the lowest rates of illness from heart disease, cancer, and stroke. We tend to lump Okinawans in with the Japanese, but they're actually a distinct race, largely peasants of the Taiyuku Kingdom, subjugated by the Japanese in the late 19th century. From dealing with starvation to being forced to fight in World War II by their Japanese rulers, the Okinawans who are now centenarians
00:01:55
Speaker
and their ancestors endured many hardships over the last couple hundred years. Despite this, or maybe because of it, they are some of the longest-living people on Earth. So I had a couple categories that I sort of lumped the Okinawan lifestyle into. We don't necessarily have to talk about these in order, but I feel like a majority of the chapter was spent talking about the lifestyle that kind of surrounded Okinawan's diet.
00:02:24
Speaker
And one of the big things that a lot of these folks had in common that they were interviewed during the book was that they had a house with a big garden behind it. And gardening was a huge part of the daily routine for a lot of these folks. So I feel like gardening was one of those things that gave you a sense of purpose, forced you to be active every day, and supplied a lot of really good healthy foods with a lot of nutrients.
00:02:49
Speaker
One of the researchers quoted in the book mentioned something about how to a normal person that just looks like a grocery store in someone's backyard, but to him, based on what he's seeing and how old some of these folks are living, to him it looks more like a pharmacy or something of that nature because of how this food was really acting as a medicine to keep these people going.
00:03:12
Speaker
So thinking about the Okinawan lifestyle, do you guys see yourself being able to do any of the things that you read about in this chapter? Is gardening one of those things that you could do if you had the opportunity?
Western Influence and Health in Okinawa
00:03:25
Speaker
Yeah, I think this chapter I could relate to more than the Sardinian chapter, maybe because I'm half Asian and they are also Asian. Represent.
00:03:40
Speaker
I think I could get into gardening and this lifestyle that they have. I found it very intriguing. Maybe it's the climate. You know, it's the Hawaii of Japan. That sounds amazing to me. Their diet seems easily doable, eating a lot of soy and plant-based things, having a garden, a medicinal garden, things like that. My grandpa, who definitely is Asian, he loved to garden.
00:04:10
Speaker
And when he had his house, he had this beautiful backyard with five different types of fruit trees and just loved to garden. He was in charge of the Rose Society in his city in Naples. And he just found a lot of joy and gave him happiness just to take care of plants and watch them grow. And I found that very inspiring.
00:04:39
Speaker
the way he put his time and energy into it and got a lot out of it as well. It reminds me, I need to water my plants tonight. Thanks, man. I need to water my cacti once a blue moon. Rob, on that note, I think throughout high school and college, I always thought I would want to have a garden. And I recall growing up, my dad had a garden and
00:05:05
Speaker
We would do simple stuff. We would do like berries and green peppers and tomatoes and kind of like the typical staples that you hear about. But now that I live in Arizona, people do garden here, which does surprise me, but it just seems like the ground is not very friendly to it. Pretty much everyone who I know that has a garden, they have like
00:05:29
Speaker
a very intricate watering system set up for it. And you definitely can do it, but it's something that I've always thought I would like to garden in the future, but probably not if I'm living in Arizona.
00:05:43
Speaker
Get Daphne out there to start growing you some prickly pear. There you go. We do have some prickly pears. I've never tried to produce fruit from them to eat them and such, but... I think you can eat that prickly pear itself. I think, yeah, people do. Without the prickles, obviously. Now that you say that, I do recall I've had that before and it does taste like... It tastes like the stalk of a broccoli. You take the spines out and then you steam it and it's not that flavorful.
00:06:11
Speaker
I think a lot of the takeaways for me were from the social cultural, but I did find it it's almost sad how much like
00:06:21
Speaker
Okay, there was a blue zone, Okinawa ones, they live this way and then bam, McDonald's and fast food infiltrates the culture. And now it's quickly eating away at like all the healthiness of Okinawa and like the stats are going the wrong way. And it's just amazing how quickly something like fast food can affect the culture.
00:06:46
Speaker
Yeah, good point, Rob. I was going to mention in this book, they did mention throughout the chapter Okinawans who don't subscribe to the traditional culture of Okinawa, don't reap the same benefits from like a lifespan perspective as those who do.
Soy and Health: Benefits and Misconceptions
00:07:02
Speaker
They mentioned that after World War II, a lot of Western influences like fast food popped up and that showed a pretty marked change in life expectancies compared to like the old school way of doing things versus modern diets and lifestyles.
00:07:20
Speaker
So yeah, I mean, if that's not a great scientific marker, though, I don't know what it is. I mean, that one event, World War II, really is a great way for scientists, at least, to look at, OK, pre-World War II, here are the life expectancies. Here's how people live. Post-World War II, here's how people live. So I feel like even though that's kind of sad, it also gives a lot of, I guess it kind of gives this data a lot more legitimacy.
00:07:48
Speaker
Fles, they talked about soy. Yeah, I was curious what you thought on this, dude. Yeah, because I remember in college, we would talk about proteins and how, oh, as a dude, you shouldn't eat a lot of soy because it has the phytoestrogens and everything. But I mean, in this chapter, they talk pretty highly of its ability to help you live longer.
00:08:13
Speaker
Yeah, all the bros right now are like, get out of here. Come on, yeah. And soy, really? Come on, bro.
00:08:24
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. I haven't I haven't kept up on any a lot of that research. I'm sure some of it's been like not debunked, but you moderated in a way. You know, let's correct me here with this, though. So from my understanding, Sully would contribute to like lower levels of testosterone. That's what I'm saying is good for heart disease. Right. Because like high testosterone increases likelihood of heart disease. Is that
00:08:52
Speaker
It's like, it's a blanket statement. That's hard to say. Like it's like, okay. Yeah. I thought I've heard that, but yeah, I mean, there's like, you know, I remember when we were younger that people were saying soy rages raises estrogen levels more so than what coach could, you know, cause you to have gynecomastia and all that kind of stuff. That's what all the bro bro talk was back then. And the large man of the breast, by the way, it's kind of just one.
00:09:20
Speaker
Just the left one. Just the left one, yeah. But I think if you're having a moderate amount of soy in your diet, you're probably fine, obviously. The book said it helped lower cholesterol, which in turn helped, well, the bad cholesterol, which in turn helped prevent stroke. It's kind of the way it tied soy to life expectancy in the book, at
Eating Habits: The 80% Full Rule
00:09:44
Speaker
least. Yeah.
00:09:45
Speaker
For me, the biggest takeaway on the diet side was eating until you're 80% full. That's something that you can implement immediately. It doesn't take planning of your weekly meals. It doesn't take finding a recipe and buying the ingredients, especially with my job. One of the great things that we do culturally is we share a meal every day.
00:10:11
Speaker
One of the natural consequences of that is they order out, which my wife is extremely jealous of, and it is great. But like yesterday, it was Costco pizza. That's like the low end of the bar. We have very high-end meals as well.
00:10:30
Speaker
But it's not uncommon in a week to have some sort of chicken tender type cater. So Chick-fil-A or Raising Cane's. And then like a pizza provider. And then there's like, like on Thursday we're having a basil Mediterranean, cannot wait. Oh nice. And it's gonna be incredible. But I've been trying to A, look at the meals and yes, even though they're provided and it's great,
00:10:59
Speaker
on days where it's Costco, pizza, let me bring my own lunch. And then regardless of what the meal is, yeah, stopping before I'm full, when I'm 80% full. And that's been something I've started actually since I've read this chapter. And it's a little bit of an adjustment, but it's really not that much. A lot of this also overlaps for me from the scarcity brain.
00:11:26
Speaker
And some of the, the comfort crisis discussion of how we have a constant innate desire to consume and consume because historically there was scarce resources, but now there's plentiful. So it kind of overlapped for me reading scarcity brain and thinking of
00:11:50
Speaker
As a society, yeah, we can talk about soy or what insert certain food or sake with mugwort.
00:12:01
Speaker
Yeah, but I think a lot of it ultimately can come down to, and this is a fairly ignorant statement, but I don't think it is, comes down to moderation. Oh, for sure. And we did talk about that in scarcity. We're in the food chapter where a lot of it can just come down to like
00:12:22
Speaker
We have all these diets, there's dozens of diets that people can do and yet as a society, we're becoming more and more unhealthy. There's not a lack of information, it's a lack of.
00:12:36
Speaker
self-control or a lack of just understanding some of our body's limitations or tendencies, perhaps. So eating to 80% full was pretty striking to me, and it's been something that I've tried to be intentional about, which is hard when you're served really good food every day at lunch.
00:12:59
Speaker
Yeah, I found myself saying Hara Hachibu before meals after reading this chapter. Really? There you go. Not allowed, just to myself. Last night I was eating and I was, I wasn't done, but I was like, I'm 80% of the way done right now. Yeah. And I put, and I pushed myself over a hundred percent, which I constantly
Social Structures Supporting Longevity
00:13:23
Speaker
do with many meals. It's like, I'm always going over a hundred percent, it feels like.
00:13:28
Speaker
I just love the visual of thinking about a petite, 102 or 103-year-old Japanese woman sitting at a meal saying, I will only eat until I'm 80% full. That image is very powerful, I think. Because it's like two peanuts. I was just going to ask, how many of you guys with kids have said, clean your plate, make sure you eat everything on your plate?
00:13:58
Speaker
Be a plate cleaner be part of the clean plate club guys. Come on. I mean I haven't said in those terms Having kids makes it Makes Hara Hachibu eight out of ten or eighty percent so much harder because when they don't finish their food I Want to eat it for them?
00:14:24
Speaker
It's delicious food. It's on the table. You come to the table with nothing on your plate, Matt, and then you just wait and see what they don't eat. That could work, but it would take like an hour for them to finish up.
00:14:38
Speaker
Matt, I actually do that, Matt. I take a smaller serving than I otherwise would because I give my kids, I know they can't eat as much as we put on their plate, but sometimes they're starving. Like sometimes they will crush some spaghetti. It's shocking. And at the age they're at, it's pretty common where they'll eat a lot at one of the three meals, but not on the others.
00:15:06
Speaker
So I don't push the finish your plate. It's more of like, can I have dessert? It's like, no, you haven't had the main course. You know, that's where I'm like, you got it. Or like our kids, I laugh. We actually have some like positive problems. My kids only want to eat edamame. And it's like, dude, you got to have like the main course. Like they all like, I only want to eat grapes. It's like, okay, you got to have some other food. You can't just have grapes tonight.
00:15:32
Speaker
So those are good problems to have, but yeah, I'll, I'll intentionally Matt take a smaller serving because I know they won't finish. Like, so tonight there was soup and I didn't have a full bowl. And then I just cleaned up their bowls when they were done. That's a good idea. My girls also love it a mommy. So yes, I am protein. I learned soy soy. Oh, full circle.
00:16:01
Speaker
I was just kind of mentioning the way I grew up hearing that because I do feel like it was the
00:16:09
Speaker
It was my grandparents' generation that really pushed that the hardest. And I think they learned that from their parents who came from a place of scarcity going through the Great Depression and everything else. And so it's funny how something that's meant to help people grow big and strong and be building habits that they need to survive, two generations later, is pushed
00:16:36
Speaker
on a generation that does not need to think like that and rather they should think only eat until you're 80% full and i just feel like maybe it's the next generation that will learn that lesson finally after this big lag that we've had in you know watching people eat too much in america the obesity rates everything else i mean it all starts with like you know what are the habits that you kind of grow up with
00:16:58
Speaker
How much eating is okay versus too much, you know, and hopefully, you know, at the end of the day, we all do land on this 80% full because everybody knows once you're 100% full, you've offered eaten. I think that's a good rule. Let's take a quick break for a word from our sponsors. Mothers, are you tired of always having to be that one that your child clings to? Do you just need a day off but want to ensure that your child is comforted and cared for?
00:17:27
Speaker
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00:17:58
Speaker
I enjoyed like some of the other social and cultural ones as well, like the IKEA guy, which is like, what's your reason for waking up? I attributed that to like a word that I'm more familiar with, which is like, what is your vocation? What's your purpose bigger than what you do for work? You know, like I'm a husband, for example.
00:18:22
Speaker
And then like the Moai, I know I texted you guys when I was reading, but the Moai, if I'm saying that correctly, just like the support system, the friend group, that was really more of like a economic type of support system. With Marianne surgery, we had a meal train set up for us and we had meals for like two weeks straight, almost to the point where it was like, Oh my gosh, like we can't eat it all. Um, which goes against the Hara Hachi Bu rule, but, um,
00:18:52
Speaker
Just feeling that love and support and then also like looking at this book club in that way.
Aging and Happiness: Cultural Comparisons
00:18:58
Speaker
I know we're want to prioritize the Brotherhood component as well, but just made me reflect and I know I shared with you guys, but like made me reflect more on like how we'd be there for each other rather than constantly pressing record. So it's something that really stuck with me in this chapter. So I guess I want to make sure people know like how this was described in the book.
00:19:22
Speaker
But Ikigai was something that it seemed like everybody kind of talked about on a pretty regular basis. It's a term that, like Rob said, kind of is like your reason for waking up in the morning, your purpose, what gives you meaning in your life. And I don't know how often we really talk about that to people, whether it's friends, family or otherwise, you know, or even think about it or kind of ruminate on that.
00:19:49
Speaker
Well, it goes back to also like what I said in previous book, when people ask you, what do you do? So many people are like, tell you where they work. Right. That's the default. That's like part of your purpose. But that's like, don't wake up every day trying to, you know, I know my purpose is bigger than transporting chocolate. Right. I don't know.
00:20:16
Speaker
But yeah, no, I totally agree. And it's just funny because I feel like we really don't look at things like that a lot of times. If someone asks you your purpose, I think, okay, you kind of roll your eyes. Why are you trying to get all philosophical, you know? And people don't really want to talk about it, even though it is pretty dang important in terms of kind of having your life together in a way where you're happy with what's going on. You're happy with those steps you're making.
00:20:40
Speaker
And then Moai, I think is how you pronounce it, maybe, that lifeline group of friends, that was something that in the book was described as these centenarians having people that was, I mean, about any time that they'd go to visit these folks, they'd be with other people, they'd be with their crew, if you will, homies, and they would have intentional meetings like every day or a couple days or whatever to hang out. And again, like,
00:21:10
Speaker
with you guys pretty much we hang out once a week virtually but i don't have a lot of folks that physically i have plans to hang out with on a regular basis you know yeah i think one thing about the moi moi we're not gonna say it right m-o-a-s-a with the japanese accent moi moi you just said in a deep voice have you heard japanese men talk oh i guess yeah
00:21:39
Speaker
These are Okinawan. Matt, you didn't get the Okinawan dialect right there. But then it's that structured scheduled time every week. And I remember one of the really formative things that I remember listening to or I think it was in a podcast or maybe something I was reading and this was probably like four or five years ago before we started doing this.
00:21:59
Speaker
And it was a guy who studied, he was a researcher of relationships and he had done a lot of research on male friendships in particular. And he talked about some things like how for men it takes something like 200 hours of time together to truly develop a relationship for women, but it takes them like 50 hours.
00:22:20
Speaker
In college, we're all became friends in college. It's pretty easy to get 200 hours together. You're basically living together. But post-college, obviously, it's a lot harder. That could be years. Women, 50 hours, wouldn't take quite as long and that kind of thing. But I remember one thing that he talked about was the importance of scheduling routine times for friendship. And I remember it just really stuck with me. And it was something that, for me, it was an impetus of why I wanted to start doing this more regularly.
00:22:48
Speaker
And I remember the researcher saying that to schedule something might make you think that you're not going to enjoy it as much because it's like kind of like boring. Spontaneity is supposed to be really what's like, you know, makes things fun and exciting, but he's like on the counter, the longer you do something like this, you get to enjoy the activity both before, during, and after. So you're like looking forward to it and excited before you enjoy it during and then like afterwards the reflection, whereas like more spontaneous activities obviously can
00:23:21
Speaker
I think we often think are more fun, but usually with those, you don't have that pre-excitement as much as the excitement during and the excitement after. It's just something I wanted to share because I think in the context of thinking about a bunch of elderly women hanging out,
00:23:38
Speaker
I feel like we saw on the Sardinian Blue Group, it's the men, the older men that are hanging out routinely. And I think it's just super important. It's been something that's been really helpful for me personally. Even in the chapter two, one of the ladies was like, yeah, when we don't meet, it's like it throws me off and it affects me and just shows like their dependence upon it too, because they know that it's life giving as well. So that's great insight.
00:24:08
Speaker
On the social cultural category, I had something about the way that our culture views aging versus the Okinawan culture does. In the book, it mentioned that in Japan and Okinawa, they measure age more using kind of the social and environmental measures.
00:24:27
Speaker
rather than the biological measures. I feel like that probably lends itself to having people age a lot more gracefully, accept it as something that's a good thing rather than just a bad thing, and probably live a lot longer because they're more likely to be incorporated into different, like more parts of the community or the culture rather than our culture, which kind of seems, it feels like it pushes older people out
00:24:54
Speaker
as they're less relevant in like a popular culture productivity kind of way.
Generational Struggles and Community Lessons
00:25:00
Speaker
I was trying to find this graph and I just found it. If you just search in Google happiness by age graph, there's a result that shows six different countries, I guess five and then one graph groups in Latin American countries. And it's very consistent other than Russia.
00:25:22
Speaker
where the US, the UK, Germany, China, and Latin American countries, there's a U-shaped curve where people report getting progressively unhappy. It bottoms out in the 40s. Your fourth decade, I guess in Germany, it bottoms out in your fifth decade, it looks like. But then it's happiness up until death.
00:25:47
Speaker
I think for American men, it's in the thirties is cause I've heard this kind of research. And so yeah, I think we're in that right now. Right. Thank God. Finally, I turned 33 and I'm a month and a half, seven more years. And so I'm happy you got this brother. Well, not according to Garrett's research though.
00:26:14
Speaker
Oh, shoot. You got to wait till you're according to Reddit. No, but I mean. No, I just think it's like thinking about purpose, thinking about friendships, happiness.
00:26:31
Speaker
There's natural challenges that are going to happen in life that across countries, across cultures, again, other than Russia, where they get progressively unhappy and it doesn't, it doesn't rebound, which is sad. Um, you know, aside from laughing, no, no, I mean, we can laugh, but it is also just sad, right? Like to not rebound, but.
00:26:56
Speaker
There are things that it's like, yeah, there's just going to be challenges in life, but that doesn't mean that's the end. And then thinking about some of the practices that we implemented specifically during
00:27:09
Speaker
really tragic times like the pandemic, where we're now seeing further fruit of those decisions and consequences of those decisions to isolate and separate from other people and separate from community, where depression is going up, suicide is going up. I mean, yeah, I could talk at length, but my wife's least favorite patient population
00:27:37
Speaker
of like the 18 years is like the teenage years because I don't know how factual it is, but I asked her to
00:27:47
Speaker
gauge it, and she's like, yeah, it's probably a safe bet to say nine out of 10 teenagers that she sees are depressed, anxious, overweight, and struggle at some level with suicide ideation. It's just an insanely high number. It's a very specific patient population that's not representative of the whole, but it's still terrible.
00:28:13
Speaker
There are a lot of things that are contributing towards not having moai, not having ikagi that we could learn from the Okinawans. It's also TikTok. Yeah. I'm serious. All the facial changes you can make on your phone, then you look in the mirror and it's not the same. I've talked about suicide as it relates to men, but for female girls that are in their teenage years,
00:28:41
Speaker
That's gone up an insane amount. It's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. There's more cyber bullying and stuff with girls than boys and your own social more. And yeah, it's a problem. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know, Thomas, I guess it's the pessimist in me. But when you said earlier, like, yeah, you know, as time goes on and we're getting more educated about this, like maybe the next generation will change. It's
00:29:07
Speaker
It's hard for me to believe that sometimes, being pessimistic because I feel like there's more chips that are stacking against us that we're going to have to fight upstream against to push away from the comfort lifestyle, to just get on my phone and endlessly scroll some of the things that don't promote health.
00:29:32
Speaker
are a lot easier, right? It's a lot tastier and easier to eat a $2 bag of Doritos than it is to buy a $2 head of lettuce and make a salad. You know what I mean? Absolutely. I do think generationally, people learn from the biggest mistakes of the previous generations and do make some sort of a change. They might drop the ball in some other areas where the previous generation was good at, but
00:30:00
Speaker
I feel like you can already see with social media at least. A lot of the things we got used to social media wise are just totally been dropped by the youngest at this point. Instagram, Facebook, they don't use that. And then TikTok is the new one. But I've also heard of a lot of younger kids that don't use anything because they're just tired of it. They don't like it. They watch their friends kind of get wrapped up in things.
00:30:25
Speaker
have all those kind of symptoms or experiences, like you mentioned, that are negative. And that's pretty cool. It kind of comes from full circle where they're like, okay, I guess I'll be the weird one and try to get out of this, just see what it's like on the outside world instead of in my phone. But I'm keeping a little bit of hope. We'll see. I appreciate that. I really did. I respect that. I need to be more optimistic and hopeful, just in life in general. Well, I don't know.
00:30:54
Speaker
I guess you could also tie this back, the optimism back to this chapter, honestly, because I feel like they did talk about all the hardships that these Okinawans went through that are 100 years old now. And it seemed like they had an attitude about it like, yeah,
00:31:12
Speaker
That really tough, what we would call trauma today really affected me at the time, but I don't identify with it anymore. And I don't really want to talk about it either. I just want to be happy now. And I just want to talk about now. And I just want to live in the moment with the people I like, right? And there's something to be said for that. I think in today's culture, we do hang on to a lot of things and identify with them. And I don't know if it's a defense mechanism for a lot of people.
00:31:42
Speaker
Or if it's just something that it's like kind of misery loves company kind of deal. But I think there's definitely a lot to learn from that more optimistic outlook of, you know, how much energy and time you need to spend thinking about certain negative parts of your life.
Resilience and Optimism in Okinawan Culture
00:32:00
Speaker
Post-traumatic growth? Yeah. Or just, you know, one of the headings in the chapter was the power of now.
00:32:07
Speaker
And anybody who's read that book will know exactly the power that just living in the moment and trying not to be too wrapped up in things past or future can give you.
00:32:19
Speaker
It feels like there's also probably some truth in that through those kind of dealings that, you know, suffering a lot of times can really produce a lot of resilience. And, you know, maybe it's not quite as obvious in like, so in this chapter, like when, you know, he talked about it with someone like the elderly folks, they didn't really want to talk about that experience, but, you know, in a lot of ways it probably did and helped them produce a lot of mental toughness and just ability to endure.
00:32:47
Speaker
Yeah I mean you go through a situation like a lot of these folks did in Okinawa where you're pretty much fighting for your life during World War II or you're starving or whatever and then the rest of your life you have that to look back on and think you know that's my baseline kind of rock bottom.
00:33:03
Speaker
And this, what I'm dealing with now in the present, is so much better than that. I mean, there's almost nothing worse than that. So it's kind of like, if they don't dwell on it too much, I guess they are in a better place because they went through that, because they can look back and be more grateful in the present. Oh yeah, they talked about vitamin D too. I thought that was kind of interesting, because we kind of demonized the sun, talk about how it causes cancer, but they were talking about how it could, to an extent.
00:33:30
Speaker
Does anybody else have anything to say about the Okinawan chapter, at least? Yeah, I mean, I think as we go back to just that first Blue Zone, like the personal takeaways, and I think the Moai, as Rob had mentioned, we've already talked about a lot, was a big takeaway of the importance of having that group. I think even for those who are listening, just the encouragement to find that group, be the one to initiate that and make it a regular commitment to tang out with folks. It's something that we all started doing
00:33:58
Speaker
two years ago, and it's been good for us.
Closing Remarks and Listener Engagement
00:34:03
Speaker
Thank you for listening to this week's episode of the Books Brothers podcast. Join us next week as we discuss chapter four, the American Blue Zone. If you haven't yet, go out and get the book, The Blue Zones by Dan Butner, so you can better follow along with us. If you have enjoyed listening or benefited from our conversation, please subscribe, give us a review, and share with a friend
00:34:26
Speaker
that you want to connect deeper with. Lastly, we would love to hear your thoughts. You can reach us by email at connect at booksbrotherspodcast.com or on Instagram at booksbrotherspodcast. Until next week, read, reflect, and connect.