Why People in Okinawa Live Longer Than Everyone Else | Joe Rogan & David Sinclair

What populations as a whole, you know, when you look at the world, where are the people living the longest and why? Well, it's debatable. There are these blue zones, I think many of your listeners will have heard about those. But there are pockets that have great genes, but they also have great diets and lifestyles. And so the best one that I'm familiar with is the island of Okinawa in Japan. And by the way, I used to follow the Okinawa diet. A couple of my good friends wrote a book about it. So I was on tofu and some fish felt really great. Couldn't keep it up. But those... Why couldn't you keep it up? I had kids and our meals turned into pizzas and pasta. Yeah, unfortunately. But I'm getting back there now that my kids are teenagers. But the Okinawans, they live into their hundreds fairly frequently. It's not one in a million. It's more like one in, I think, a hundred thousand or something. So it's ten times higher. They work most of their lives. They're physically active. They fast a lot and they have a lot of green leafy vegetables. And that seems to be the secret. And there's a... There were selling... There was something about their mineral rich diet. Remember they were selling... It was like a big thing for a while, coral calcium. And they were using that as an example of why the Okinawans were living so long. Do you remember that? I do remember it. Yeah, but in scientific circles we weren't really bothered with it. Yeah. Like there's calcium. It's calcium, right? Yeah, I don't know much about it. Better calcium from coral or something. I might even be wrong about that. But I just remember reading about the Okinawans and the speculation. They eat seaweed as well, right? They do. Which is very healthy. Probably the best thing that they do is they don't overeat. Stop at 70%. Yeah, I'm a glutton. That's my number one problem. I just love to eat. Yeah, me too. And I keep going. Once I'm in it, I just want to keep shoving it in my face. But I've done a good job over the last few years of tapering that off. And the intermittent fasting I think is probably one of the best things I've ever done. In terms of just maintaining energy levels, maintaining body weight, that kind of stuff. Yeah, you look good. So I think that that's one of the best things that people can do. What we've known for 70 or more years actually is if you calorie restrict animals, actually even yeast cells and worms, they live longer. And this is the most robust way to prevent cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's and a mouse. And so the intermittent fasting is just a way of mimicking this calorie restricted diet. So what is calorie restriction? It's reducing what your doctor would recommend for your body, but reducing it back to about 20 to 30 percent. So it's quite extreme. That's not pleasant. I tried that for a week. Gave up too hard. But intermittent fasting, like yourself, it's doable. It's not always pleasant. But I think that's the best way to do it. And with the mice, it works just as well as calorie restriction, which is pretty much always being a bit hungry. Now, what other things are you looking at in terms of mitigating stress or what other factors are there that you have to keep an eye on? Yeah, stress is a bad one. I try to take life in my stride, not get too worried about it. Remember what's important. So my heart rate rarely goes up even under a really extreme circumstance.