It has been a busy and successful year for MY Neighbors. As of December 2018 we have 62 Volunteers serving 71 Members with another 5 in process. Halfway through the year we became financially self-supporting through membership fees. Since opening to the public in March of 2017 we have logged over 985 requests for service. Our volunteer drivers have driven more than 18,000 miles.
Below is a summary of the most interesting book I read about aging this year. Happy holidays to all and thank you for your continued support of MY Neighbors.
Chip Poston
Board Chair
What I Learned from the Chinese Centenarians and Dr. John Day
I first learned about Dr. John Day by listening to the podcast on “The People’s Pharmacy” that Carole Spainhour recommended in her monthly newsletter. Day became interested in Chinese culture as a young man. He was fluent in Mandarin and was one of the only Western medical doctors who attended medical conferences in China. Day began to hear about a tiny remote village in the mountains bordering Vietnam that the Chinese referred to as “Longevity Village.” It had the highest proportion of residents over 100 years of age of anywhere we know of on the planet.
And there weren’t just more centenarians; there were a lot more. In the US the average ratio of centenarians is 1 in 5780, which is better than most of the planet. In the tiny village of Bapan it was 1 in 100! And it wasn’t that people simply lived longer. Illnesses that plague the Western world—heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity, and dementia, were virtually nonexistent there. The centenarians of Bapan didn’t just survive, they thrived—physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually, typically remaining active in their community until the very end of their lives.
While Dr. Day was a highly successful cardiologist, at forty-four he was overweight. He had insomnia, a degenerative joint disease, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. His wife Jane, who had extensive international experience, convinced him that they had to visit. Their time among the centenarians transformed Day’s life. Six months later he had lost thirty pounds. His cholesterol dropped by 100 points and he lowered his blood pressure by 25. His insomnia was gone. He was even cured of acid reflux. He and Jane wrote a book about their experiences, The Longevity Plan. By the time the podcast finished I thought, “I have got to read this book!”
What makes the centenarians of Bapan so different from us? It isn’t their genes. Studies have shown that their genes should predispose them to heart disease, Alzheimers, high cholesterol and diabetes. Yet they experience almost none of these. They thrive due to lifestyles and attitudes that positively influence their health and enable them to live long and active lives.
So how did they do it? Dr. Day highlights seven of what he calls “life lessons in health and happiness.”
1. They eat well. Since the Communist system allotted some land to each family, nearly everyone in the village is a manual farmer.Even those who aren’t farmers grow vegetables since the land can be repossessed by the government if it is not used.The elders also remember times in the not too distant past when food was scarce, so gardening also serves as a form of catastrophic insurance.
What do they eat? Mostly fresh fruits and vegetables they grow themselves—pumpkins, squash, onions, cabbage, peppers, sweet potatoes; plus moderate amounts of meat and small fish from the river. They consume every part of the meat and fish, “head to tail”. Since most Chinese are lactose intolerant they do not consume dairy products. Due to the remoteness of the village they have almost no access to processed foods or refined sugar, though this is changing as tourists visit. They eat an abundance of wild fruits, nuts, seeds and legumes, and a moderate amount of whole grains like brown rice and millet. The only unusual thing they eat is a staple they call “Longevity Soup”--raw shelled hemp seeds, pumpkin greens, water and salt blended together. (I located hemp seeds at Trader Joe’s and began putting them in my breakfast cereal.) They drink abundant spring water. About a third consume rice wine (which they make themselves) in moderation, though two-thirds do not use alcohol at all.
2. They maintain a positive mental attitude.Due to the dramatic political changes in China, every elder in the village has experienced turmoil, poverty and deprivation. Dr. Day asked a 107 year old, Mawen, how she had found the strength to endure through so much heartache.
“How does the river go on?” she replied.
There’s what life brings; and then there’s how we respond to it. Dr. Day became convinced that how we think about our lives may be the single largest factor in how our bodies respond to our living conditions. The centenarians are happy, optimistic and resilient. They laugh, smile and sing. They appear to have limited expectations and desires. They look decades younger than their age. Most of them say they are currently experiencing the best years of their lives. Unlike so many of us in the West they do not equate financial success with well-being. They sang and played as they worked in the fields. Dr. Day never saw anyone angry in the village. The villagers, who had known one another all of their lives, trusted one another. Even the centenarians said they couldn’t remember a time in which they’d seen the village elders angry. And the elders set the emotional tone for the entire village. When Dr. Day asked Mawen about dealing with irritation she said, “Breathe deeply and relax.”
3. They live in a robust community.One of the elders, Masongmou, said, “Here we all take care of one another.” Dr. Day believes it is as important to pay attention to our community as it is to pay attention to what we eat.In Southern China there is a tradition that children build a coffin for their parents when they reach the age of sixty. If the parent outlives the coffin, after ten or twenty years they build another. This is one way the children communicate to elders that everything is taken care of, they will be cared for until the end of their lives.
Dr. Day realized that in Bapan no one gossiped about their neighbors in a hurtful way. Families are multi-generational. Families and friends eat together, work together and in the evenings they visit one another, frequently singing together.
4. They Keep Moving.One of the elders Dr. Day met, Makang, kept going to the fields until she was 103. After she “retired” Day said, “It must be nice to be able to relax.”
“Not at all!” she said. “I loved being in the fields . . . Every day I wish I could be back there, but my grandson asked me to help our family at home.”
While a few of the villagers walk along the river each morning, almost no one engages in regular exercise. They simply never stop moving. Many work in the fields from sunrise to sunset, then load a large basket full of the day’s harvest and hoist it onto their backs for the walk home. By contrast, in the US physical activity has declined by a third over the last two generations. Fewer than 20% of our jobs require moderate physical activity.
Dr. Day never saw a couch in Bapan. Some of the centenarians have a setee upon which they sit while greeting guests, and in homes there were a few small chairs around a dining table. Even at weddings and other celebrations most people stand. The Chinese have a saying, “Take one hundred steps after eating and live to ninety-nine.”
5. They live according to a natural rhythm. Most villagers rise with the sun and after a simple breakfast they head for the fields. They break for a simple midday meal, often from food they harvested that morning. In the evening they return home to have dinner with their families. Some visit neighbors in the evening to talk or sing together. Then they lay down to sleep.
Their lives are in harmony with the powerful Circadian rhythms of the sun, which we increasingly ignore due to electric lights and glowing screens. They drink tea, some with caffeine and some without. Some drink rice wine. No one has an alarm clock. No one multitasks. Everybody appears to do one thing at a time. “It’s the most efficient way to get things done,” said one of the elders.
6. They make the most of their environment. The chemicals and pollutants that surround us simply don’t exist in Bapan. The villagers grow and eat organic food, drink pure water and breathe clean air. While the village has a basic septic system, sanitary standards are minimal by US standards. But the rate of illness is so low that the village has never had a permanent doctor. As a result of his experiences in Bapan, Dr. Day came to believe that we need to strike a balance between basic sanitation and complete sterility. He advocates a natural but not obsessive state of cleanliness since regular exposure to some dirt and bacteria may actually be healthy for our immune systems. Due to their high fiber diets and consumption of fermented rice and soy, the villagers have robust gut bacteria. No one in the village had ever heard of or taken antibiotics.
7. They live with purpose. During their long lives the centenarians of Bapan have experienced repeated loss and suffering. Most were able to find purpose in each new challenge they faced. Dr. Day profiles 108 year-old Magan. As a young bride she was unable to have children.Eventually at Magan’s urging her husband took a second wife (this was in rural China eighty years ago!). Magan adopted the new wife as her sister and helped raise the two children who were born. When the children left home, she became a farmer and developed a business making rice wine.During the Cultural Revolution she lost her business and had to farm full time.When her husband fell ill she dedicated herself to caregiving. After he died she took care of her sister until she died.
As the only centenarian who spoke Mandarin instead of the local dialect, she reinvented herself again as the village’s unofficial ambassador to the many visitors who come to Bapan from all over China. As Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl famously documented in his writing, people who are able to find meaning in their lives are more likely to endure even in the most horrific circumstances. “There were many times in my life in which my purpose was challenged or changed,” said Magan. “I have always been able to find new purpose, though. I think this is why I have been able to stay alive for so long.”
As Bapan becomes a “wellness destination” in China, an influx of visitors threatens to erode the traditional lifestyle. With the visitors also come consumer products, television and junk food. Following the trend in the rest of China, many young people are leaving to work in factories and on construction crews. Still, even among the younger generation some have embraced the traditional life, happy to earn less money in order to live a healthier life.
Perhaps the greatest secret of the centenarians is that the keys to a long and health life are no secret at all. Eat well. Maintain a positive outlook. Engage in and work to strengthen your community. Keep moving. Attune your daily life to the natural world around you. Make the most of your environment, regardless of where you live. Seek meaning and purpose with the inevitable loss and change that aging brings.
Dr. Day writes, “I have yet to meet anyone who can’t improve their health and happiness simply by implying some, if not all, of the practices and principles of the village to their life.” Most cost little or nothing. Their reward is the potential for decades of happier and healthier living.
The book is The Longevity Plan: Seven Life-Transforming Lessons from Ancient China by Dr. John D. Day and Jane Ann Day. (Chip has a copy if you’d like to read it.)