Archived News of the Week

The Longevity Chronicles: Part III

The Jungle Effect by Daphne Miller, M.D.

What might people eat to stave off depression? Or, heart disease? Or diabetes? Or bowel trouble? Or prostate and breast cancers? Or maybe, just live longer? Dr. Daphne Miller, a physician in San Francisco was wondering the same thing but instead of scratching her head and turning on Entertainment Tonight to hear the latest on Charlie Sheen, she visited all five "cold spots" (her word for little or none of the particular disease she was researching appearing in a geographical place) around the world. I thought it was a very interesting book and if I suffered from any of the issues or even thought I had a predisposition towards them, I would be eating the preventive foods she found.

Depression? Iceland. Well, of course, all the omega 3's. Makes perfect sense. In fact, Dr. Miller asked her Icelandic guide how much fish he ate in a week and she got a blank stare back. It was as if she had asked him how many breaths he took in a day. Because they eat 225 pounds of fish per year per person. (Americans may eat 40 lbs of fish per year.) So, Icelanders eat lots of very good fats which makes our mostly lipid humanoid brain matter extremely happy and sharp. She even took SAD into consideration since their sunlight is pretty much nil for months out of the year, but it seems that the oils take care of that. Natives also eat lots of antioxidants in the form of black tea and bilberries (blueberries). Bilberries are not even sold in the stores because of their abundance but are picked fresh every day from the bushes that apparently grow everywhere.

What about heart disease? I've already written about Crete in a newsletter entitled "Eat like the Greeks" but here is the bottom line: Olive oil. Fresh fruits and veggies. Slow release carbohydrates. Limited red meat. Use cheese as a condiment. Engage in daily aerobic exercise. Eat Greek yogurt, legumes and garlic. She has included recipes in the book, and the recipes for the Greeks are things like wild green salad, tomato and feta sandwich, fish stewed with wild greens and leeks, lentil stew.

Bowel Health? Africa, of course, specifically Cameroon, West Africa. Here, Dr. Miller discovered the "5F's": 1) Fiber. They eat way more than the 30 grams of fiber we should all be eating. Just FYI, here is how you can get 30 grams of fiber per day: ¾ C. cooked beans, ¼ C. mashed avocado, 1 C. cooked greens, ½ C. cooked okra, ½ C. cooked brown rice, 1 medium sweet potato and 1 oz. of peanuts Very doable. 2) (less) Flesh 3) Fermented foods. 4) Foraged foods. I guess we should "forage" through the vegetable aisle at Whole Foods and buy the wildest greens that we can! 5) (select) Fats: And, here we go with the Olive Oil and the Omega 3's again. A recent study at the NCI of almost 400,000 people has found a strong link between a high-fiber diet and a longer life and the participants who ate more fiber were generally healthier, better educated more physically active plus not only did they have less cancer, but they had less heart disease, infectious disease and respiratory disease. The high fiber group  22% more of whom were alive after 9 years than the low fiber group - ate about 29 grams of fiber per day while the low fiber group ate around 11-12. Log onto www.globalrph.com/fiber and check out how much fiber you are getting.

Diabetes? Apparently the Tarahumara Indians in Copper Canyon, Mexico fit this bill. Here they eat the Three Sisters Way with an emphasis on corn, squash and beans. The Three Sisters are accompanied by wild greens like cilantro, peppers, tomatoes, nopales and onions. In addition to this, since they are very isolated, everything is cooked from scratch, nothing is processed, meat is a spice and there are no sodas or sweets. And the Tarahumarans walk many miles a day. Translate this amount of exercise to us? Impossible, but we could commit to at least 30 minutes 4 days a week. Researchers from the National Academy of Sciences recently discovered that just a 20-30 minute walk a few times a week will increase the volume of the hippocampus which is the part of our brain that you don't want to mess around with: It stores memories. Remember that regular walking equals NO DEMENTIA! No expensive gym membership necessary. Just shoes. It's a no brainer.

Reducing the risk of breast and Prostate Cancers? Let's go to Okinawa, that Japanese bastion of long life. They eat lots of lycopene containing food, usually red in hue, like pink grapefruit, tomatoes, guava, and watermelon; tea for the antioxidant EGCG; antioxidant rich foods like garlic, onions, crucifers, bitter melon, yams and green teas. Okinawans also eat a lot of fermented soy products like tempeh, miso, natto but not much of the unfermented soy like those big white jiggely blocks swimming in ill-defined liquid that Americans think is so healthy, but really isn't. They don't stuff themselves either but practice Hara Hachi Bu, or eat until 80% full.

Although I don't consider myself even mildly depressed, I seemed to gravitate more towards the Icelandic way of eating. Perhaps my Northern European genes are slightly perfused with an Icelandic gene somewhere, but, whatever the reason, the menus of Iceland were by and large appealing to me. Start the day with that cup of strong black tea followed by a big whole grain cereal covered with blueberries and skyr. Lunch or dinner could be dark rye bread with smoked salmon or we could have pickled herring with sliced cucumbers and hard-boiled eggs, sweet and sour cabbage, split pea soup. I will of course avoid the hakarl which is putrefied shark that is buried for months before being served, the svio or halved singed sheep's head, the hrutspungar or the pressed and pickled lamb testicle and of course the bloOmor (sic) or blood pudding.

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