Do Ya Really Want to Live to 100?
My granny was 90 when I was born. She lived alone in a small home on her son’s land, tended a sprawling kitchen garden (where her daughter-in-law had wanted flower beds), and presided over weekly, multi-generational meals at a table so over-flowing with family that we smallest children perched on step ladders. Until shortly before her death at 103, she enjoyed the freedom and wisdom she’d earned from old-time, back-country ways.
Despite sharing her good genes, each generation of her descendants has lived more modern, more debilitated, and shorter lives. Most relatives who’ve survived beyond 80 have spent over a decade disabled, many too frail to feed or bathe themselves. As hundreds of millions of dollars per year are lavished on gaining longevity, are those the years people expect to purchase?
When I envision myself at 100, active with meaningful work, surrounded by family, I’m not fantasizing about an elusive ideal. I’m anticipating an old age like my granny’s, like I also saw in two countries I’ve been blessed to inhabit. Spain and Japan, particularly Okinawa, top the longevity lists. There, people don’t just rack up the years but enjoy an impressive quality of life beyond their 80s. Though Okinawa, Japan is known for its devastating WWII battles, it boasts the world’s largest per capita population of centenarians. By 2040, Spain is projected to top world life expectancy at 85.8 years. With America’s life expectancy ranking in decline (even before COVID19), let’s see what Spain and Okinawa do differently.
Cherish Life
Living in Spain and Okinawa, witnessing how family life interweaves with community, I shifted away from my individualistic values. In both places, the prevailing attitudes towards time challenged my habits. Before studying abroad in Spain, I carried 18 hours a semester in college while working 30+ hours a week, averaged 4 hours of sleep a night, and filled nearly every waking hour with some productive activity. To say the least, my schedule forgave nothing. To my friends in Spain, the clock was a Dali-like suggestion. Okinawa time shrugged at punctuality. After a while, I realized people there were driven not as much by obligations as by their devotion to loved ones and to purposeful work.
In Spain and Okinawa, it is not normal to go it alone. Younger adults cherish the elderly and share with them the responsibilities of child-rearing. Okinawans traditionally form social groups, maoi, in childhood. Maoi provide emotional support, motivation, and financial stability throughout a person’s life. Spaniards and Okinawans actively relax and value naps. They choose their food carefully and commune with nature in a spirit of reverence. Young to very old, their skin glows, and they’re energetic and easy with a smile, savoring the experience of living. An Okinawan proverb goes something like this: At 70, you are a child, at 80 in your youth. If at 90 your ancestors invite you to heaven, ask them to wait until you’re 100, and you’ll think about it.
Medicinal Food
Food represents a gateway into any culture, and the food of Spain and Okinawa meets the gold standard for health-giving nutrition. Spaniards eat a Mediterranean diet packed with locally-grown, inexpensive fruits and vegetables as well as whole grains, legumes, olive oil, fish, eggs, and wine. They eat less than a serving a week of meat from four-legged animals. Their most bountiful meal of the day, lunch, features enormous variety. It is eaten with as many in the family as possible during a two-hour break from school and work. The midday meals I enjoyed with my host family when I was a student there included the Spanish tortilla and at least 4 home-cooked, vegetable-centered dishes, lingered over in good company. (I still regret my reaction to squid-ink soup, though.)
Want to try it? Track your progress using the log linked below.
In Okinawa, a large weekly meal brings many generations together, reinforcing family bonds around the treasured elderly. A wide array of plant foods dominate the traditional Okinawan diet, especially the sweet potato. More than two-thirds of their meals are vegetables and herbs, usually grown in kitchen gardens or bought at roadside stands. Fish and pork flavor dishes but are eaten in tiny portions. For protein, the diet is rich in soy, in the form of edamame, natto, and tofu.
Okinawans also forage for food and herbs. On the Pacific side of the island at low tide, we admired how local groups playfully poked rods into the sand and dug up tiny clams that they rinsed in a bucket of water, popped open, and ate raw as a salty snack. (We should have overcome our shyness and tried it.) Okinawans raise and forage a variety of medicinal plants, flavoring their dishes with them or steeping them for their seven daily cups of tea. In fact, they rely on foods they call kusuimun, or medicinal food, featuring goya, mugwort, wild turmeric, seaweed and, my favorite, the Okinawan purple sweet potato. Okinawans also have an eating rule, Hara Hachi Bu, which translates to eat until 80% full. As we know, obesity is no friend to longevity.
Want to try it? Track your progress using the log linked below.
Movement is Medicine
Beyond food, Spaniards and Okinawans share values that shape their daily habits. Okinawans balance their well-being upon four pillars: food as medicine, physical activity in nature, spiritual engagement, and rich social networks. In both Spain and Okinawa, people engage in moderate intensity physical activity all through each day. In Okinawa, as I ran my daily 5K in the oceanside public park, I passed gardening clubs of elderly women chatting and tending the flower beds. Men and women practiced Tai Chi together or played gateball, a game similar to croquet. One day, I joined a military volunteer group to clear a few acres to expand an elder-home garden. After approving our work, the resident nonagenarians performed traditional dance accompanied by sanjin, showing off the agility, playfulness, creativity, and energy that I aspire to maintain. I suspect they hadn’t needed our help, but were wise enough to let us do the plowing.
In Okinawa and in Spain, people stroll broad sidewalks to accomplish their daily errands. Parks and plazas dot Spain’s towns and cities. Small shops and open-air markets offer baked goods, fresh produce, cheeses, olive oil and wine within walking distance of home. Bars and outdoor cafes feature live music, and dancing is a nightly pleasure. On holidays, the Spanish are avid campers and hikers and dive into an abundance of water sports. For a small fee, elderly Spaniards also enjoy senior playgrounds! These innovative exercise parks feature social workouts and brain games guided by therapists. The low fee is due, in part, to Spain’s universal health care system. Though set up differently, Okinawans also enjoy low-cost access to healthcare through Japan’s National Health Insurance plan.
Something to Live For: Social Bonds and Spirituality
Okinawans and Spaniards strengthen social bonds through religious practice as well as family time and physical activity. In Okinawa, daily religious practices honor ancestors. Through rituals, they show a reverence for nature, blending indigenous ancestor worship with Confucian and Taoist beliefs. Obon, Okinawa’s celebration of ancestors, unites communities with music and Eisa dances and family picnics at tomb sites.
Religious identity in each country fosters a sense of community through spiritual activities. In Spain, nearly 90% of the elderly identify as practicing Catholics. Nearly every week of the year, a city in Spain celebrates a patron saint or historical event with parades, dancing, and music. Semana Santa (Easter Week) shuts down non-essential businesses, reroutes traffic, and brings together hundreds of church-based brotherhoods who have practiced the processions through the winter.
Public religious practice merely hints at the inner spiritual lives cultivated in both of these countries. The most profound spiritual lesson I learned in my travels came from the father of one of my Okinawan students. After explaining to me ikigai, the Japanese sense of having a challenging purpose that you’re excited to pursue each day, I began to wonder why my ikigai had become a Plan B. Then, he shared his life philosophy.
“First, I spend my energy to do no harm,” he said. “I pay close attention and I often fail, but I try very hard to do harm to nothing and no one. If I have energy left after that, I do good.” He lived moment-to-moment mindful of this goal.
Americans deserve better
In the U.S. nearly half of people aged 75 and over live with limited physical functioning. COVID lockdowns amplified the isolation in which many elderly pass their days. What changes can we implement to gain the good health, vitality, and strong social bonds that make a long life worth living?
Trade processed treats bolted down after a rough day for plant-based slow-food meals with family (maybe commit to the Mediterranean or Okinawan diet). We don’t have to live in an agrihood to have a kitchen garden. We can grow pots of nutrient-rich herbs or, even better, go in with neighbors on a shared plot. Let’s make a habit of walking where we can and maintaining a daily exercise routine. We can build meaningful social bonds through religious or community activities rather than centering our lives around earning money. As we work each day, let’s find our purpose, our ikigai, to accomplish. As one Spanish friend chided, “Americans live to work. The Spanish work to live!”
By modifying our daily habits in small ways, we find even more opportunities to truly enjoy a longer life. Taking these small steps doesn’t just pay off decades from now. Once you get started, I bet you’ll find yourself making room for a revolution of health and joy. If you really want to live to 100, reap the benefits of low stress, life-enhancing relationships, and nourishing foods through all of those years. What are you doing to relish 10 decades of living?
Learn More:
You can take a deep dive into the incredible research on Okinawan longevity by reading The Okinawa Program : How the World’s Longest-Lived People Achieve Everlasting Health–And How You Can Too.
Or put on your science readers and read the results of the incredible PREDIMED study, the largest study on the preventative effects of diet on health conditions.
If you just want to learn more about implementing these diets, check out the olivetomato website, a very thorough resource on the Mediterranean diet.
For the Okinawa diet, the doctors who conducted the Okinawa Centenarian Study have published The Okinawa Diet Plan: Get Leaner, Live Longer, and Never Feel Hungry
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