BLUE ZONE - OKINAWA
Okinawa, Japan, Ryukyu Islands
Area 1,201 km2 Population 1.2 million
Number of Okinawans aged 100 or older: 704, number of supercentenarians: 35
Life expectancy: men 78 years, women 84 years
30 years ago, we wouldn't have had a chance to get the ingredients consumed by Okinawan people on a daily basis, but thanks to globalization, this is no longer a problem. However, what is a joy for us is a sorrow for Okinawa, for example, because while the Okinawan lifestyle easily reaches us, the reverse is also true, only unfortunately Western trash foods are flowing towards Okinawa, as a result of which life expectancy is already sharply declining even in Okinawa.
I wrote this down only because it's popular to believe in genetic factors when life expectancy is brought up, even though life expectancy, and especially quality life expectancy, is due not to genetics but to the lifestyle we regularly follow. The existence of the Blue Zones is perhaps the best proof of this. The number of years lived in Okinawa is steeply declining, and this is happening due to the influx of unhealthy, processed foods that came with globalization, and not because the genetic predisposition of the Okinawan people suddenly collapsed. However, I wanted to examine the true, untouched times before the appearance of the West, where people lived isolated from the world, but lived the longest in the world.
The ancient Okinawans' diet consisted of 60% sweet potatoes. Not because they were so addicted to their taste, but because typhoons regularly ravaged Okinawa, and only what grew underground remained intact. I wrote this down just as an interesting fact, but mainly to support the idea that we don't need to eat many different foods to have a healthy diet. Sweet potatoes are still an important food for Okinawans today, but by far not to the same extent as, say, in 1650.
FOXO3. The FOXO3 gene is responsible for cell regeneration, reducing inflammation, and detecting faulty cell function, which would make FOXO3 a supergene in itself, as faulty cell function is the very first step in the development of cancer. According to some research, the active functioning of FOXO3 in the body can also affect lifespan, if only because of its role in cell renewal. And here's the point. FOXO3 is activated by seaweed, turmeric, green tea, and tofu, which are the four most important pillars of the Okinawan diet.
Okinawan cuisine is naturally vegetable-based, which doesn't mean that they serve vegetables alongside meat on the plate, but that vegetables are the meal, supplemented with excellent ingredients such as tofu, the already mentioned sweet potato, and various seaweeds. If they eat meat, they do so rarely and only on special occasions.
Consumption of herbs in the form of tea and spices. The 4 most important herbs consumed every day are turmeric, black mugwort, goya and ginger, and as a wildcard, there is also jasmine and the divine green tea, which they drink regularly every day.
And these are eaten regularly. The ingredients listed here form the framework of the Okinawan diet, and these ingredients will also be used to create the Tiian Okinawa diet.
Tofu, carrots, garlic, spinach, kale, bean sprouts, sweet potatoes, spring onions, kombu seaweed, porcini mushrooms, oyster mushrooms, radishes, Chinese cabbage, miso, green onions, pumpkin, leeks, shiitake, tomatoes, peppers, rice, beans, beetroot, chives, bananas, apples, bitter melon, coconut, pineapple, cashews, hazelnuts, macadamia nuts, cinnamon, soy sauce, sesame oil, vegetable oil, and of course turmeric.
The Okinawan lifestyle is not only about diet, but also about following a daily way of life.
Ikigai - Elderly Okinawans define every morning the reason they get up that day. They set goals for themselves for that day, and they accomplish them by evening. These primarily involve helping the lives of younger family members, not financially, of course, but functioning as a strong and stable base to whom every family member can turn with confidence for good advice, comforting words, and some guidance. In Okinawa, respect for the elderly is extremely strong, and their role in society is held in high esteem. This strength and respect do not come by themselves, so it's not simply that in Okinawa a person becomes over 70 and suddenly sits on the family throne; rather, this kind of appreciation is an earned status. It's about how they lived their lives, how they handled problems, how they supported their family no matter the difficulties. These earned respects are the greatest recognition of a person's life. Respect for how they lived, setting an example with their own lives, decisions, self-sacrifice, stability, and care.
I don't believe that a person can get up after a certain age without any life goals. Homeless people die on the streets at 53 because they no longer have anything to live for; in the blue zones of the world, people live to 107 because they still have something, and especially someone, to do it for.
Maintaining daily activity, which is not the same as exercise. For anyone who has been to a Japanese restaurant, it will be no surprise that the Japanese way of life at home primarily takes place on the floor. Connecting to the ground is an important aspect in Japan, resulting in a Japanese person sitting down and getting up from the floor 70-80 times a day. Now, as an interesting fact, try standing up from the floor even just ten times in a row, and people aged 95-100 in Okinawa do this too. They do serious core muscle strengthening every day without even realizing it, and they do it every day, for decades. If we add to this that everyone in Okinawa has a garden, which they regularly cultivate, so it's not like the story at home where you put up a shed and it gets overgrown with weeds, but Okinawan residents cherish their gardens, not least because of the ingredients grown there for their own consumption. + walking everywhere is basic.
Moai - A traditional secure social network that the community can rely on emotionally and, if necessary, financially. I don't know how much chance there is for this at home, especially recently. I say recently because I still have fragmented memories from my childhood that our neighbor, Uncle Bölcskei, who was a painter, painted our apartment every 3 years and never accepted anything for it, Aunt Ali below us watered our flowers while we were away, and now that I think about it, 3-4 residents definitely had a key to our apartment. Cake baking, visits, just popping over to each other in the afternoon, good spirits at residents' meetings in each other's apartments. We lived in such a block of flats back on Bajcsy Zsilinszky Road in the 90s. I don't know what remained of that, whether such blocks of flats even exist anymore, though in Okinawa it wasn't 7-apartment blocks, but entire villages that could rely on each other. And the result is there, if one knows they are not alone. In Okinawa, this result means a solid 100 years.
What else can mean a lot is spending time in the sun wisely. The emphasis is on "wisely", and on the sun of course, which is very important for vitamin D supplementation for the body. This vitamin supplementation always reminds me of a film clip where the guy is eating an orange, and the other asks him why he's eating it? The doctor told me to eat more vitamin C.
Then why aren't you eating that?
And finally, what I believe is the most important point. Life is not easy, often unbearably difficult and challenging, full of obstacles and unexpected blows, which we either manage to handle while remaining human, or life consumes us.
A long life requires a certain way of thinking, with which we can leave the painful memories of the past behind, but in such a way that we must enjoy the joys of the present while living in the now. Someone who has fought their way through life and remained human, facing difficulties and processing their traumas in such a way that they could live on as a stronger person, represents honor, lovability, and attractive company in the eyes of the younger generation. This is one of the reasons why the elderly are so valued in Okinawa, because they know it. Reaching 100 years is not enough by just eating turmeric with carrots; one must also live, think, and approach daily life in such a way that life cannot consume them prematurely. Beyond an obvious healthy lifestyle, perhaps this is the quite evident secret of the 100-year-olds in the Blue Zones.
