In his book Healthy at 100, author and activist John Robbins presents a compelling case on how we can be -- you guessed it -- healthy and vitally alive at 100. He takes a look at the scientific research done on the healthiest and longest-lived peoples on the planet — from Abkhasia to the Hunza to Vilcabamba to the Okinawans. Extrapolating from that data, he offers principles for living long and healthy
lives.
The book is comprehensive -- it touches on everything from nutrition and exercise to purpose and love. There are great insights and reminders for us men in the Renewed Man Program. Here are a few highlights:
1. WE ALL HAVE TWO DOCTORS: THE LEFT LEG & THE RIGHT LEG
“In the modern world, when people are feeling down they are often told to “take it easy,” to simply lie in bed and relax. In both Vilcabamba and Abkhasia, however, people experiencing “the blues” typically respond by becoming active and involved with others. Rather than withdrawing and becoming sedentary, they will walk great distances for the joy of visiting one another.
"So great is the recognition of the healing power of walking to visit a friend that there is a saying in Vilcabamba that each of us has two “doctors”—the left and the right leg.”
Sonja Lyubomirsky, the renowned Positive Psychology researcher tells us this in her book The How of Happiness:
“An impressive study of physical activity was published in the Archives of Internal Medicine in 1999. The researchers recruited men and women fifty years old and over, all of them suffering from clinical depression, and divided them randomly into three groups. The first group was assigned to four months of aerobic exercise, the second group to four months of
antidepressant medication (Zoloft), and the third group to both.
"The assigned exercise involved three supervised forty-five-minute sessions per week of cycling or walking/jogging at moderate to high intensity. Remarkably, by the end of the four-month
intervention period, all three groups had experienced their depressions lift and reported fewer dysfunctional attitudes and increased happiness and self-esteem.
"Aerobic exercise was just as effective at treating depression as was Zoloft, or as a combination
of exercise and Zoloft. Yet exercise is a lot less expensive, usually with no side effects apart from soreness. Perhaps even more remarkably, six months later, participants who had “remitted” (recovered) from their depressions were less likely to relapse if they had been in the exercise group (six months ago!) than if they had been in the medication group.”
She follows that up with this:
“No one in our society needs to be told that exercise is good for us. Whether you are overweight or have a chronic illness or are a slim couch potato, you’ve probably heard or read this dictum
countless times throughout your life. But has anyone told you—indeed, guaranteed you—that regular physical activity will make you happier? I swear by it.”
2. MOVEMENT/EXERCISE: THE MAGIC
PILL
“What if there was a pill that would keep you fit and lean as you aged, while protecting your heart and bones? What if it was as good for your brain as for your body, if it made you stronger, more confident, less susceptible to depression? What if it
improved your sleep, mood, and memory and reduced your risk of cancer, all while adding life to your years and years to your life?
"A great number of studies have found that exercise can provide all these benefits and more, even for people who begin late in life.
We are learning that much of the physical decline that older people suffer stems not from age but from simple disuse.”
In another place in the book, Robbins points to the research of Dr. Ralph Paffenbarger on the effect of movement and longevity.
"Dr. Paffenbarger and his associates tracked their subjects’ health and activity levels for four decades and found that participants death rates fell in direct proportion to the number of calories they burned each week. Almost invariably, the more active they were, the longer they
lived."
3. RESOLVE: DEVELOP RESISTANCE TO TODAY'S UNHEALTHY ADS
For better or worse -- mostly for worse -- the media landscape today is dominated by the marketing of mega-corporations. And the mega-food corporations are all pushing the products that are the most profitable for them -- which also turn out to be the least healthy for us: highly processed, essentially artificial food-like-substances. It's so bad in America that this advertising is even funding health care
media.
“If you go to a doctor in the United States for health tips, you may find in the waiting room a glossy 243-page magazine titled Family Doctor: Your Essential Guide to Health and Wellbeing. Published by the American Academy of Family Physicians and sent free to the offices of all
fifty thousand family doctors in the United States in 2004, it’s full of glossy full-page color ads for McDonald’s, Dr Pepper, chocolate pudding, and Oreo cookies.
"Meanwhile, kids in U.S. schools are learning arithmetic by counting M&M’s, using lesson plans
supplied by candy companies. When they walk through the hallways of their high schools, they may see a series of brightly colored mini-billboards, cheerfully telling them that “M&M’s are better than straight A’s” and instructing them to “satisfy your hunger for higher education with a Snickers.”
4. STOP BEING SO NARCISSISTIC
This final point is really fascinating. It makes sense from a spiritual perspective: Our sinful, egoic nature is self-absorbed. Our new Nature -- the Spirit of God dwelling
in us -- is what enables an outward orientation of love.
Did you realize that this has physical implications too? Listen to Robbins, in his chapter "What's Love Got to Do With It":
“There are also medical implications to whether we think of others or only of ourselves, as Larry Scherwitz found out when he conducted a most unusual study… Dr. Scherwitz taped the conversations of nearly six hundred men. About a third of these men were suffering from heart disease; the rest were healthy.
"Listening to the tapes, he counted how often each man used the words I, me and mine. Comparing his results with the frequency of heart disease, he found that the men who used the first-person pronouns the most often had the highest risk of heart trouble. What’s more, by following his subjects for several years thereafter, he
found that the more a man habitually talked about himself, the greater the chance he would actually have a heart attack.”
