#67 The Secret to a Long and Happy life with Dan Buettner

The one most dependable thing you can do to add years to your life is to curate a circle friends, four or five friends, who A) you can count on. But that also means you have to be willing to be counted on on their bad days. People whose idea of recreation is walking or golfing or playing tennis. People, quite honestly, who eat a plant-based diet. You should have one or two vegetarians in your immediate social network. And people who will keep your mind challenged.

The mistake we make with health in this country, in the United States, is we pursue health. The reality is health ensues. Longevity ensues from the right environment.

There's just no question that the longest-lived people, probably 15 meals out of 16 are 100% plant-based.

If you live in a neighborhood where there are more than six fast food restaurants within a half-kilometer of your home, you're about 40% more likely to be obese than you are if you live in a neighborhood where there are fewer than three fast food restaurants.

The most important ingredient in the happiness recipe is where you live ... In other words, if you're unhappy, the most statistically powerful thing you can do is move.

If you don't have at least three good friends you can count on on a bad day, people with whom you can have a meaningful conversation, your life expectancy is about eight years lower than if you have four or five good mates who you can borrow money from, who are there when times are tough.

My branch of longevity is not about extending the limit of the human body, which, on average is about 93 by the way; it is about avoiding the diseases that shorten our lives ... About 85% of the diseases that most of us are grappling with are avoidable if we do the right things.

The cornerstone of every longevity diet in the world is beans—great source of protein, great source of fiber. We don't know how to make beans taste good in our country.

There's good evidence, too, that people who are taking naps have significantly lower rates of cardiovascular disease.

40% of your happiness, or lack thereof, is genetically driven. 15% is luck. But about 40% is how you play that chess game with your life to optimize the satisfaction you get out of it.

The longest-lived women in the world live in Okinawa. The longest-lived men live in the highlands of Sardinia, an area called the Norrell Province, 6 villages, 40,000 people. And you have about 8-10 times more male centenarians there than you would expect to see in London, for example.

England and America are pretty parallel on this: In the 1980s, there was one-third the rate of obesity and one-seventh the rate of diabetes than there is now.

In every one of these blue zones, people are living a long time and staying sharp until the very end not because they have better discipline, not because they're better people than us, longevity happened to them.

So, unless we shift the focus from trying to change individual behavior to modifying the environments we live in, we're not going to see the major health improvements that everybody wants and that we see in blue zones.