Staying Healthy in the Fast Lane

staying healthy in the fast lane

goat/sheep herder is!). Therefore, we don’t need as much of the
calorie-dense food that can come from animals, especially mass-
produced, factory-farmed animals.
The Okinawan elders are probably the best-studied and docu-
mented group of centenarians (hundred-year-olds) in the world.^8
Thanks to the detailed and efficient Japanese government, excel-
lent family registries (koseki) on birth dates have been kept since
1879, allowing for true age confirmation of these centenarians.
The Japanese government sponsored the Okinawa Centenarian
Study established in 1976, which looked at diseases; risk factors;
biochemical parameters, including hormones and diet; lifestyle;
and social structure in this exceptional group of people. Combin-
ing this data with current data on aging, nutrition, and prevention
provides an excellent model for creating healthy and functionally
aging societies. The Okinawa Program (2001) is one of the great
health books of all time (as is The Okinawa Diet Plan, 2005). These
books really are a blueprint for real healthcare reform since they
document so many parameters of healthful and functional longev-
ity in the modern world.
The Okinawans are even more remarkable as a population that
can teach us how to live healthfully because in present-day Okina-
wa, there is a striking dichotomy in health and longevity between
the elders and their children and grandchildren. The Okinawan
elders still eat much of their traditional diet high in plant foods,
moderate amounts of fish, and smaller amounts of meat. Their diet
is rich in vegetables and soy foods, grains, beans, small amounts of
fruit, and minimal dairy products. The elders remain functionally
healthy into their eighties, nineties, and one hundreds. On the oth-
er hand, the younger generations of Okinawans in the same geo-
graphic locations with the same genes are experiencing dramatic
increases in obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases that can
be directly traced to their consumption of highly processed and
fast foods as a direct result of Western influence in the area. This
division of health is made so blatantly evident in a YouTube video
by Dr. Sanjay Gupta of CNN entitled, “Western Diet: A Killer in Oki-
nawa. Part II.”^9 I send this short clip to all my patients trying to get
the point across that good health is mostly lifestyle and not our