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This is Later with Lee Matthews the
Lee Matthews Podcast. More of what you

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here Weekday Afternoon is on the Drive. You may have seen Dan Buetner's work

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on National Geographic Explorer. He is
he's done a study and has and has

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figured out how people are living longer
and healthier lives across the globe and he's

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trying to bring that now to the
United States. His new book out is

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called The Blue Zone Secrets for Living
Longer. Dan Mutner, Welcome. Let's

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start with where you started. What
brought this topic to your attention. Well,

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I was interested when I was a
reader of National Geographic and I read

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this story about large have you written
in nineteen seventy four, and when I

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found out a lot of those places
were debunked. So when I was a

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National Geographic writer myself, I teached
the story of trying to reverse in your

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longevity by actually finding the places where
people are living the longest and then distilling

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their common denominators and hence grew zones. And these blue zones are places like

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Sardinia, Italy, Ikaria, Greece, Okinawa, Costa Rica, and many

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more. Yeah, there's five of
them in total, and there's sub regions

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in those countries, and you know, only about twenty percent of how long

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we live is dedicated by our genes. So this is important because if your

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parents dig young, that doesn't mean
you have to the other eighty percent of

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something else. And by finding places
where people are living the longest and then

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looking for their common denominators, you
can distill out some pretty cool lessons for

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the rest of us to follow.
Because by the way, people living in

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blue zones, they don't have better
genes and they don't have any great secret

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elixer. They're just avoiding the diseases
that poor short in our lives and live

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in about ten years longer. The
Blue Zone Secrets for Living Longer. That's

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the book and it's from the creator
of National Geographics popular Blue Zone franchise,

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Dan Buner is with us. So
what are some of these common denominators that

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Americans need to know about? Well, if you look at what a centenarian

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or a hundred year own eight to
live to be a hundred throughout their life.

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As I get one hundred and fifty
five Guy Toy surveys, you find

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you're eating mostly a whole food plant
based diet. Beans and sleep. Potatoes

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are cornerstones. They don't make me
but only about five times per month lo

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cous dairy, which is kind of
an inconvenient message. And when it comes

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to what we're drinking, water,
coffee, teas and a little bit of

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wine. Actually, contrary to all
that sort of research we're hearing at the

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contrary but the billion site is that
if you long to live longer, you're

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much better off trying to change your
environment, change your surroundings. Then you

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are trying to change your behavior.
People lose olds aren't on diets, they're

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not on exercise programs, they're not
on supplement regiments. They're they're just optimized.

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They just live in environments where the
healthy choice is the easy choice.

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You know. That's one of the
things I decided when I was in my

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mid forties, stan Butner. I
got tired of going on diets and then

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getting off of them and going back
on them, and I finally decided,

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all, look, okay, look
each and every day, think about what

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you're eating, and if you find
yourself gaining weight over a couple of weeks,

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then start cutting back. I mean, to me, it's a simple

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equation. You're gaining weight you're eating
too much and you're not moving enough.

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Yeah. Yeah, it's very hard
to do that because you know, we

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are genetically hardwired to create sugar,
flat and salt. Yeah, and the

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number of fast food restaurants and our
lifetime has gone up by a factor of

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thirty over fifty percent of places where
we buy things from where we get our

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tires changed to where we buy our
diabetes Edison pempt us with the gauntlet of

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sugar sweeting beverages and chips and sodas, and you know, our genes are

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going to win out over our disappointment. But things that that that work when

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it comes to living morty, and
that's living in a city that's walkable.

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We know that people live in walkable
cities get about twenty percent more physical activity

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than people who live saying in suburbs. So the big idea here, if

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a miracle wants you know, three
fourths of us O beasts or overweight,

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the sequen is to take a cue
from blue zones and start making our cities

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more walkable and bikeable, and make
our food environment where it's easier to get

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more mole plant based foods than it
is to get you know, a happy

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meal. Well, that's the thing
too, Dan petn are the Blue Zone

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Secrets for Living Longer. You don't
have to go on an all vegan diet,

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do you. No, you don't
have to go on an all vegan

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diet. And even it's a little
misleading because a lot of you know,

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vegan foods like you know, potato
chips are vegan. Yeah, gritos are

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vegan. It's not so much about
vegan, it's about eating a whole food,

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plant based. It's food our grandmother's
aid. One of the things you

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know, if you want of the
one that your grandmother tea box the recipe

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book and ranches down the meat,
and you pretty much have a Blue Zone

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diet. The Blue Zone Secrets for
Living Longer. It's the new book out

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by Dan Buner. You know him
from National Geographic and National Geographic Explorer.

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H and are some of the people
who live in these areas? Are they

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as you say? They don't have
a lot of mass transit, They don't

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have a lot of super highways,
so they have to walk, walk,

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or bike everywhere anytime they go to
work or a friend's house, or out

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to eat. In the cages of
walk they still grow gardens themselves. They

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still gardens themselves, and their houses
aren't full of the mechanical conveniences that have

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engineered physical activity out of their life. The idea here is to move naturally,

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and people in blue zones are moving
about once every twenty minutes or so.

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They're getting up to do something,
and that keeps our metabol metabolisms burnie

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at a higher rate all day long, and they're burning more calories than they

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would if they sat at their desk
or at around their house all day and

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expected to make it up at the
gym, which never works, by the

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way, it's just not working.
Exercise is an unmitigated public health failure in

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this country, failure in that we
don't do it enough or that it's overrated.

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Well, only twenty three percent of
Americans get the minimum amount of exercise

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for a week, which is about
ninety minutes, and people in blue zones

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get that in a day just by
doing their own housework and their own yard

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work and walk into their friend's house
and having a garden out back. That's

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the shift I think we need to
make if we want to see a healthier

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America. But mainly are our cities
that making our cities more walkable and vikable.

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Probably the best thing we could do
to get people moving more because we

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do it mindlessly. Dan Buetner,
The Blue Zone Secrets for living Longer.

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The other thing about modern conveniences is
that it seems like more of these foods

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that you describe are accessible to us
than they've ever been, and our means

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of preserving them at home are much
better than they used to be. I,

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for one, love my vacuum sealer, so I love getting fresh vegetables,

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part cooking them and then vacuum sealing
them. Let me give you the

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biggest Blue Zone secret. It's beans. If you're eating a couple of beans

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a day, you probably live about
four years longer. It's associated with living

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four years longer. And if you
can you know I've written there's a cookbooks,

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but there's a bunch of books if
you can learn how to make bes

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taste delicious. A fantastic source of
proteins that are then meat, fantastic source

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of fiber. Eighty percent of us
don't get enough fiber in our diet.

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We're dirt cheap, and believe it
or not, you can make them taste

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as delicious as you can't Hamburger.
It just takes a little a little bit

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of that group and making that effort
best thing to do for your family.

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Well again, I must brag a
little bit, Dan Buttner. That's where

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my instapot has been become a staple, a staple in my kitchen. I

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have two size instapots. Yes,
and and and beans freeze fantastically. They'll

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really do, especially the big beans. Yeah. You know, you know,

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people say I don't have time to
cook healthy anybody on instapot. I've

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nothing to do it inst the pot, but I own one. Yeah,

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you can make a Sardinian ministrony or
a beautiful beans and rice, and it

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takes you about ten minutes to assemble
it. You put a lit on,

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hit hit a bottom, and twenty
minutes later you come back and you have

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ten meals, all of which cost
less than a dollar piece. Tell me

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I'll eat faster than that. I
make my own refried beans, I make

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my own baked beans. I make
my own black eyed peas, which,

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by the way, I never thought
I could ever make black eyed piece taste

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good until I started cooking him in
the insta pot. Yeah, you get

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him the right. Yes, you
don't even have to circle with an instapot.

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No, no, anyway, I
didn't want to turn this into an

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instapot add I just Van Butner.
We are into your book, The Blue

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Zone Secrets for Living Longer. It's
available everywhere you get books. Thanks for

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the information and for joining us today. Any other questions I'm asking on beater

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on Instagram and I will answer the
personal. Thanks for listening to Later with

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Lee Matthews, the Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember to listen to The Drive

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Live weekday afternoon from five to seven
and iHeartMedia presentation