Okinawa, Japan
The legendary longevity island has caught many attentions from medical streamed experts and researchers. As the result, books entitled "The Okinawa Way: How to Improve Your Health and Longevity Dramatically" (2001) by Drs. Bradley and Craig Willcox, as well as "The Okinawa Diet Plan: Get Leaner, Live Longer and Never Feel Hungry" (2005) by Dr. Makoto Suzuki were published.
Related article entitled, "Super Centenarians: A Long Live on Island" by Erica Angyal published in The Japan Times expounded on the live of islanders through their simple lifestyle and healthy diets. The summary of this article is as followed:
Kamato Hongo hailed from one of the island next to Okinawa, Amami Island had seven children, 27 grandchildren, 57 great-grandchildren and 11 great-great-grandchildren when she passed way at age 116. She lived her days healthily with diets of fish, soy products, vegetables and green tea and practiced a traditional slow dance called Teodori.
The article also highlighted an issue of hazardous impact on Okinawa's residents as the west entered their food market. It was stated in a Time magazine on Aug. 30, 2004 that, "Okinawan male life expectancy used to be No. 1 in Japan. It started to decline at least 10 years ago and hit 26th out of 47 prefectures in the 2000 census. I expect it to decline even further in the next census." said Dr. Makoto Suzuki, a leader of research in Okinawan elderly and coauthor of "The Okinawa Way."
For instance, local residents consumed an average of 97.1 grams of seafood daily, which is higher than the national average of 92 grams. The seafood are made up by salmon(the famous one), mackerel and sardines. As mentioned beforehand, these are rich in omega 3 fatty acids helps in preventing heart disease, diabetics, stroke, asthma, cancer and rheumatoid arthritis.
In general, vegetables especially strong coloured ones are rich in antioxidants.
Antioxidants helps in functions that might sound trivial but it sums up to a major effect, such as improved breathing, eating and digesting could reduce aging process. How wonderful is that?
We can choose to adopt the same diets and lifestyle like Okinawa's residents as we have easy access to their choices of food in this mass-producing era.
The only draw back is, shipping unpolluted water, enrich with high minerals from Okinawa could be a problem.
Feel free to comment.
Thank you for reading.
2 comments:
Imported water... if that is not scraping the bottom of the capitalist bucket, I don't know what is :P Yeah, that is not feasible.
Living long in Malaysia would be a problem because the government can't (won't) afford the cost of caring for really old folks.
What is life in Okinawa like? Is it a fishing/agricultural town? Do people walk around much? I think we could reap some of the benefits because you don't need to fly to Okinawa to move like one.
Yeah, definitely.
We can adopt the core habits of their lifestyle and "Malaysian-ise" [adapt] them. :)
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