Longevity Secrets: 6 Reasons Okinawans Live to Be Older than 100
Did you know that only 20-30% of our life expectancy can be determined through our genes? If you want to live to be 100, you may need more than just a sound set of X and Y chromosomes passed down from your parents. Lifestyle is the most important factor in determining not only how long you live, but the quality of your long life. It turns out the people from a small island off the coast of Japan, Okinawa, have figured out a secret recipe for living to be more than 100 years old.
Scientists researching for the U.S. National Institutes of Health and Japan’s Ministry of Health have been following Okinawan’s who are older than 100 since 1976 in the Okinawa Centenarian Study (OCS) and they’ve learned that there are some very typical traits for all those who live to be so vital at such an advanced age.
Read: People Over 99 Offer Secrets of Longevity
Want to know the Okinawan secret to living a long, productive life? Here it is broken down into easily digestible bits:
6 Longevity Secrets
- 1. Elderly Okinawans often exercise both physically and mentally.
- 2. Their diets are low in salt, high in fruits and vegetables, and contain plenty of fiber and antioxidants that protect against the major diseases of the West, including heart attack and cancer.
- 3. Although they consume more soy (60-120 grams daily) than almost any other population on earth, it is not GMO soy as grown in the US. Soy is high in flavanoids and is healthful when not genetically modified.
- 4. Okinawans don’t overeat. They have a practice called hara hachi bu, which means “8 parts out of 10, full.” They never eat so that they are stuffed, but just mostly sated. This means their daily caloric intake is far lower than ours – around 1800 calories. We westerners sometimes scarf down twice that much in a day.
- 5. Okinawans don’t suffer from dementia or senility as often, either, due to a diet high in vitamin E which helps keep the brain vital.
- 6. Elderly Okinawans are respected and kept as an integral aspect of their overall communities. They feel valued as individuals even as their age progresses, and this can only benefit their mental and physiological health. Elderly members of this society express a high satisfaction level with their lives.
It isn’t just something in the water in Okinawa, but when Okinawans move away from their island and take up the western diet and lifestyle, they no longer enjoy longer lives. Within one generation of taking on our bad habits, their lifespans shorten considerably. Cancer and heart-attack rates practically double.
So basically, they eat natural healthy (non GMO/processed) foods, and the elderly are not warehoused? Sounds like the complete opposite of our society. Hopefully we’ll make necessary changes.
To add, Okinawa due to strong Pacific winds have almost none of air pollution. The healthy living environment is maxed.
Unfortunately Okinawa is extremely close to Fukushima, so this may change.
Soy is good and salt is bad? Interesting…….
wow, big misinformation going on here: beneficial soy consumption has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with eating non-GMO soy products. all Soy is toxic to humans unless it is fermented for at least 2 years. they ferment their soy.
Gmo bad non-gmo not bad any questions
Pull the other leg, it has bells on it! Currently the average age of death for those on Western diets is increasing and has passed the 80 mark and the number of centenarians is increasing annually so which scientists are researching into this feature?
Perhaps the question is more about quality of life? Whilst it is true that life expectancy is increasing for those on Western diets it is often accompanied by intrusive operations, strong medicines etc following diseases and illnesses that used to prove fatal. Surviving these miserable conditions Alzheimers is on the increase. In Okinawa the people are simply growing older naturally and actively. It is not unheard of there for octogenarians and even centenarians to be living totally independent lives – some even working!
So well said.
Tai Chi is an exercise that will soon overtake Yoga as the premier global health exercise. Tai Chi is a moving meditation, an exercise for the body and mind as well as a martial art for which no special gym or equipment is needed. It is a complete holistic exercise that gives us longevity and a healthy body with which to enjoy it. Many who practice it live well into their 90’s and 100’s.
There are many forms of yoga that require meditation and movement and nearly every yoga being taught in the U.S. and other western countries are highly watered down because it is too difficult in the true form. Tia Chi will also be watered down in the U.S. and other western countries and unfortunately many are already teaching watered down versions. Take a look at Kundalini Yoga, most westerners want nothing to do with it because it is extremely difficult and it takes a high level of dedication to perform properly.
you forgot to mention that they drink water naturally filtered and mineralized with Coral, which makes that water with pH of 8,5-9, with lower surface tension, negative Redox potential and natural structure, it is naturally ionized water which makes it more assimible by our body, I am drinking that water for over two years and it is amaizng:) wish you health