 Well, hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of Dr. Jill Live. Today we have an absolute treat and an honor to be with a well-known blue zone expert, Dan Butner. I'll introduce him in just a moment, but just as a back information, you can find my podcast on YouTube, Stitcher iTunes, wherever you watch or listen to video or audio podcast. And you can go there, leave a review, let us know what you'd like to hear more of. Well, today, without further ado, I want to introduce my special guest, Dr. Dan Butner. You should have an honorary doctorate. He's an Explorer National Geographic Fellow, an award-winning journalist and producer, and New York Times bestselling author. He discovered the five places in the world dubbed blue zones where people live the longest, healthiest lives. His articles about these places have been featured in New York Times Magazine and National Geographic, and these issues were the most popular in that publication. Butner's work is now spread across the country in partnership with municipal governments, large employers and health insurance companies to implement blue zone projects and communities, workplaces and universities. Blue zone projects are being initiatives that apply lessons from these blue zones to the entire communities by focusing on changes to the local environment, public policy and social networks. And that's where health starts. So I love this. This program has dramatically improved the health of more than 5 million Americans today. Now as just a little backstory, Dan, I want to tell how we met. First, we were in Nikoya, which is one of the blue zones in Costa Rica, both speaking for YPO. And I'll never forget to my embarrassment. I've known about blue zones and somehow I didn't put your name to the blue zones. I went up to you shook your hand and said, Hi Dan, my name is Jill, what do you do. And then as soon as I realized your, your work and all the amazing stuff you brought to light. I was a little embarrassed, but you were kind and gracious and so humble. And I'll never forget that because that just allowed me to admire you even more in your humility. You could have said a lot of things about what the work that you've already done. And you were kind and gracious to me. And then recently we were both at Milken and with Jeff Bland, who gave you an honorary functional medicine degree. So that was really exciting because what we do in functional medicine is so attuned to what you've done with the blue zones and such. If anyone's heard me on this podcast, you've heard me mention Dan's name and the blue zones and his work because it's such a foundation of how to live well and prevent and reverse chronic disease. So with all of that Dan, welcome to the show. It's great to see you again. After a few months and to be fair, I didn't recognize you as the illustrious author of unexpected right away. So, you know, had I known that I would have, I would have been even more helpful. You are so kind. But it was just it's been such a pleasure and an honor and as luck would have it that we landed together for two incredible events. And now you've got a new book when this is being released you guys can all get a copy of your own and I want to be sure and show you because the book is worth a thousand it is a beautiful. I have some notes there but this book is so well done, so full of great information we're going to talk about that today but it's called the blue zones the blue zones are moving longer, and I want to be sure and encourage if you're listening to grab your copy right away this is something that you will. It's a coffee table kind of book and yet it's one of those that you want to just like look through and so it's one of those where you can read through cover to cover, or you can pop into the sections and the different continents and areas where you've discovered blue zones. I love that. I love the story. So Dan tell us a little bit about where did you grow up and how did you get into interested and introduced to national new graphic into this work how did it all start. Yeah, unlike a lot of health gurus which I'm not. And I'm an explorer. I would when you graduated from university and went off to do useful and productive things which led you into functional medicine. I was kind of a truant I, I bike from Alaska to Argentina I biked around the world and I bike the length and width of Africa took me eight years. And then I started getting records Guinness records along the way, but for the most part it taught me how to be sensitive to other cultures. I developed a deep interest in the wisdom of traditional peoples and great empathy as well. And then I moved to another on my first company called quest network. I developed a way method of exploration that let an online audience directed team of experts to solve a mystery which involved harnessing the wisdom of the crowd. I think we solved the mystery of why the Maya civilization collapsed and we took on another dozen or so mysteries. Most of our, our virtual explorers were students. And the last expedition of that series was one to Okinawa Japan. In 1999, the World Health Organization, I wish to study finding that Okinawa had the longest disability free life expectancy in the world. So that means they were living the most years in full health. They weren't getting diabetes or heart disease or cancer or, or dementia anywhere near the rates that we're suffering today. And I said, aha, that's a good mystery. And I applied my sort of sloping skills to trying to figure out what Okinawa was doing well. And that, that led to the initial interest of blue zones. Wow. And did you come up with a name blue zones or where did that come from? Well, yes and no. The no part of it is my colleague Dr. Gianni pass in Sardinia identified the blue zone there and he first used the term blue zone as it applied to one very special mountainous area in Sardinia. And I met him on assignment for National Geographic. And I borrowed his term, which was only used in one academic journal. And I applied it worldwide, which there are now five recognized blue zones around the world. And I'm responsible for the other four. And also I include, you know, the Sardinian blue zone and my kind of meta analysis of longevity hotspots. Yes. So this is so fascinating because I hear your story. You were an explorer, but what you had that was unique that not everybody had was this detective mind, this ability to put puzzles together and put pieces together. And it's interesting because like Dr. Jeff Bland and myself and our own little world. It's really that curiosity that is the mark of a genius. And I think that fits you so well because you were curious enough to say, huh, there's something interesting here and then start to really look. How did you then start to find the zones? Did you first look at data from longevity and then go there or did you actually, how did that happen with the next blue zones that you found and discovered? Yeah. You know, I was very honored that Jeff honored me with that honorary functional medicine. I think, you know, we share a lot of the same sort of approaches. They're based in science, but they sort of go a little bit deeper than I would say medical. But I worked for National Geographic and they don't publish anything unless it's evidence based or at least an expert. So we had to start with population studies done by demographers. And there's a handful of demographers in the world who specialize in this process of identifying longevity hotspots. The expert I worked with was out of University of Belgium, his name is Michel Poulin. I hired him for two of the expeditions and worked with him on two of the other expeditions. But essentially what they do is they find a spot the birth records that go back about 100 years. They follow those people for 10 decades and they find out how many are left at the end. And then they adjust that number for immigration and immigration because people come and go. And then you get a number. You get a number of sentinarians. And this process can actually be done even going farther back. So for a blue zone, you want to know me sentinarians lived in an area saved for the last 150 years. And it's mathematically intensive. It takes the better part of a year. But when we say that people are living the longest here we have very, you know, indisputable mathematical mathematical demographic data to underpin that. Once you know that people there are living longer, then you engage a whole nother litany of experts to help use established processes to evaluate how, or why, or find the correlations and for that, we do use epidemiology. We use anthropology, we use medical research, I rely on studies that others have made. And I had a very good board of academic advisors that included jail Shansky, Tom Pearls, Bob Kane, even Ansel Keys, who first identified the Mediterranean diet was the first board who who sort of anointed this project and help me down a path of, I like to say scientific responsibility in distilling what I write about my books. Tremendous because again what you've brought what I love is right now, whether you're on social media or even at the local bookstore, you're going to see a million books that say the keto diet the paleo diet that you name at what diet vegetarian vegan, and they all disagree with all these camps. What I love that you have come to find out with your research is often it's not about even the type or the macronutrient of the food it's about how it's grown and the community so let's dive into actually some of the things actually about diet, but about the bigger issue which you bring about human connection, meaning and purpose in life, and start to give us the lay of the land as far as what creates a blue zone, and why you can have different food groups that are not very popular right now sometimes like the potatoes or the things like that talk a little bit about that. Yeah. Well let's start with diet and then we'll talk about the things that surround diet. Because a lot of people are interested diet and I'd say it's about half of the prescriptive but so if you want to know what 100 year old or a population of 100 year olds eight to live to be 100. You can't just ask them what they've been eating lately. Because they don't remember you know if I asked you what you had for lunch. Two weeks ago Tuesday, you probably couldn't tell me. So it's really unfair to ask 100 year old what they were eating when they were kids or when they were 20 or newly married or, or newly retired because diets change over time. To begin at that we found dietary surveys conducted by local, local national universities or the government, and we found 155 of them in all five blue zones, going back to about 1930 1920 in some cases, and then I had a Harvard scientists or well it helped me do what's called a meta analysis. And it's it's over simplified and sort of a worldwide average. And on average, traditionally speaking people blue zones were eating 90 to 100% whole food plant based the five foods that the five food groups you see. I'm actually going to add a sixth year, but they're all eating whole grains, greens, tubers like sweet potatoes and potatoes, nuts, beans, and whatever seasonal fruit or vegetable happens to be growing. Now, you know what's various time to time, but that's what they're eating they do eat meat, but it's a celebratory food, about five times per month, and a portion about the size of the deck of cards. They very little fish. Surprisingly, the blue zones tend to be inland. They often eat a little bit of cheese but not a lot. And they drink coffee, tea, water and wine, those are the five beverages you see. So it's not vegan. It's a keto. It's it's something in between it's a blue zone diet. And it doesn't focus on any micronutrient. You know you can break down the macro nutrients but I find that mostly confuses people if you get people eating a whole food plant based diet, you're 95% the way there to eating to 100. For most people, you know, I know there are people with dietary restrictions and I know there are outliers. But if Americans could eat that way, we'd probably add 10 years to our life expectancy over eating the standard American diet. Yeah, Dan, what I love and what I'm hearing I think deeper than what they're eating, which is like, not only good foods in the region, but they're connected to the earth, many of these people probably grow some of their own food. And I think the thing that might be missing is actually what's absent, which is soda process foods, all the things the chemical laden and the environmental toxic load as I hear you talk about this. It sounds like they're really eliminating or in areas where they're not getting all these added as preservatives that the process foods that because if there's quite a variety. And there's some commonalities for sure but it's almost like it's it's more like the absence of all of this garbage that is in the standard American diet. And not since the garbage and I would say the addition of a lot more fiber than we eat and many different strains of fiber. And I think that's largely overlooked as a, as a, you know, a nutrient. But, and also, you know, bacteria, there's, there's not going to be as sterile as the food. And the other thing after, like you pointed out, the people blue zones all have gardens and they work the gardens into their eight 90s and 100. So it's hard to say our people healthy because they're eating out of their garden or because they're working in their garden, you know, it all kind of, it kind of clusters together as a set of behaviors, but it's so clear that no matter if you're looking for populations successful ages in Asia or Latin America or Europe or the United States, the same patterns you see over and over again. Hey everybody, I just stopped by to let you know that my new book, unexpected finding resilience through functional medicine, science and faith is now available for order wherever you purchase books. In this book, I share my own journey of overcoming life threatening illness, and the tools and tips and tricks and hope and resilience I found along the way. This book includes practical advice for things like cancer and Crohn's disease and other autoimmune conditions, infections like Lyme or Epstein bar and mold and biotoxin related illness. What I really hope is that as you read this book, you find transformational wisdom for health and healing. If you want to get your own copy stop by read unexpected.com. There you can also collect your free bonuses. So grab your copy today and begin your own transformational journey through functional medicine in finding resilience. So much sense and from a gut experts perspective, the microbiome diversity is king with longevity. And what you're describing is a diet that will create a diverse microbiome people think it's probiotics and all these things they take. It's not it's the food that we the diversity that in season food, fresh from the soil whenever possible versus trucked across for two weeks on a refrigerated, you know, semi trailer so really exciting to hear that and to encourage people. One of the thought that I just learned recently is nitric oxide allows our blood vessels to dilate so as we age I think at the age of 40 we have about 50% production. At the age of 65 we have about 15% production. This is our heart our lungs our sexual function all the good things that happen and that decline as we age. Well, guess what, all these plants from the soils whether it's tubers beats turnips potatoes and leafy greens which are a huge part of what you just said are so rich in nitric oxide. And you would think okay organic produce is great well guess what organic produce actually has very little nitrates because organically they can't add the nitrates to the soil. And if one other little piece of the puzzle is they're growing foods they're able to add the fertilizer and the kind of normal stuff that farmers do to the soils and they're producing nitrate rich crops that are actually, you know plant based I love that who knows but just a thought. What are some of the other things so obviously there's a lot of things that I resonate with lifestyle that you taught us and related to meaning and purpose and and some sort of a belief in higher power although they're very different tell us about these other things. Well, you know, if you're listening right now to us you might be leaning in and say, Oh, my God, I like what this damn beauty are saying about this longevity diet. I'm going to start eating a whole food plant based diet now and eat more beans, more tubers. But we know from the literature that people who get on diets they fail almost all the time. So about 97% of people with start diets have failed within two years and when it comes to longevity those no short term fix you have to think about things you're going to do for decades or a lifetime not just for a number of months or a couple years. So, the big insight that blue zones offer us is how to keep doing the right thing and avoiding the wrong thing for long enough. So we don't develop our disease type type two diabetes, several types of cancers and dementia, most of which by the way you probably know this Joe are avoidable. So what they do. First of all, they, they're the people they surround themselves with an Okinawa it's called a more I put a group of four or five people. They tend to be people who share these values, people whose idea of recreation is gardening or walking of friends who are also eating a whole food plant based diet they don't have some friend who's, you know, barbecuing wieners they're, you know, meeting for the happy meal at McDonald's. They care about you on a bad day. So they have a social circle that helps their lives tend to be underpinned by purpose. So they're not waking up with existential angst, they're more likely to take their medicines and keep on a healthy lifestyle. They live in places where every time they go to work or friends house, or out to eat and occasions to walk. They have gardens out back, they don't have mechanical conveniences to do their work. So they're mindlessly doing physical activity, all day long, not having to go to the gym to, you know, furiously try to make up for their day, sitting at their office. So the, so they're eating wisely, mostly a whole food plant based diet. They're moving naturally, because their life is underpinned with purpose. They're surrounded by a small group of people that help keep them doing the right things. And they live in places where the healthy choices the easy choice. And it's that cluster of factors that helps people make it to 100. And by notice I didn't say anything about superfoods. Yeah, you know, if I can help it, they'll never be a blue zone super food because my opinion all super food is bullshit. And it's marketing and it's, it's not going to save you. We have no supplements. I'm not a believer in supplements for the vast majority of people. There's not the blue zone diet plan, because these things make money. But there's no documented instance where they actually help you make longer help you live longer. And so blue zones is very much taking many cases the wisdom of your great grandmother and applying it back into a modern context. I love this and I love how you say they almost make it easy to do because number one you're surrounded. We've always known this are our, you know, top five friends were most likely to eat like them and was like the way similar to them and we're most likely to do the kind of things they do so all of our top friends, you know, go out and binge drink every weekend. It's more likely that we're, we're going to do that as well. Correct. You talk about that. What was the most surprising thing that you found in your study of the blue zones with or something that kind of surprised you in any way. Because none of these people try to live longer. They don't not have one of them pursue health. They're not mustering presence of mind or calling an 800 number or working out or none of the things we do to stay healthy. The big insight is, instead of trying to change your and it change your behavior. The secret is changing your environment, because in every one of these blue zones, it's their environment. It's the hundred or so unconscious micro decisions they're making every day throughout the day that is adding up to an extra 10 years of life expectancy, as opposed to, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to get up. I'm going to join CrossFit and I will work on every day. Or, you know, I'm going to get on the keto diet. I'm going to scan the keto diet, which never works. It's our unconscious decisions that we have make a far bigger difference in our health than our conscious decisions. I love that because that makes it easier to when we start to change our mindset and our friends and our environment and gosh, BJ Fogg and James Clear, there's been some great books there about keeping healthy habits and most of them are incorporating it into our identity of who we are and what you're really describing is this is just who they are. They're the what their great grandparents taught them to do and how to live. Yes, perhaps. I would argue, though, that if you took a very unhealthy American and whose parents, eight McDonald's and Burger King and Doritos and put that person in a caria or Nicoya, not where we stayed but inland. They would start shedding pounds. They would get metabolically healthy. Again, I don't think it's about consciously changing habits or consciously changing lifestyle in any case. All they do is live their, they live their life the way their grandparents did. It doesn't require sacrifice. It doesn't require assessing your food or measuring your food or, or limiting what you take. But it's all about shaping your environment. I'll give you the best example. You take certain counties in Kentucky, America, where the life expectancy is 20 years less than say Boulder, Colorado, or Ogden, Utah or Santa Barbara, California. Is it because people in those three cities are better, better Americans or more disciplined or their parents love them more than people in Kentucky. It's because in, in Boulder, Colorado, it's easier to walk or bike across town than it is to drive. It's very, you have very easy access to healthy food. You have very easy access to outdoor recreation and the people around you are way more apt to call you up and say, let's go do a hike. Let's go to the wiener roads or to the ballgame and sit around and drink beer and eat potato chips. So my, the big revelation, and I'm kind of a contrarian or a disruptor on this point. Until America starts figuring out we need to shape our environment to make it easier to move more, eat less, eat better, more plant based, socialize more, and know and live our purpose. We're not going to see a big change in the 4.4 trillion dollar health care bill that we're shelling out every year to, you know, today. Yeah, that makes so much sense and of course I'm right near Boulder, Colorado and you're right anyone who comes into town or if I meet a friend we're usually, hey let's me for a hike versus dinner or versus. It's the most common option for us to meet to talk businesses. Let's go on a hike. I love it. I love it. That's exactly right. So if you're just joining us we are talking about Dan butoners new book blue zone secrets to living longer and this is a must get this is one of those books you will come back to again and again it's just very fun and beautifully done. Like I said it's one of those that you could have on your coffee table and flip through or you could recover to cover and get tips every single time you pick it up so really really worth it. The last thing I want to end with Dan is your last, I don't know second to last chapter your rules to live by, and you've got a lot of different rules to live by but maybe just share with our audience a few of your top. We've talked about diet we've talked about the environment connection but what's some practical things that people could do in your rules to live by that would make a difference in their life and their health. The first one, instead of going on a diet is get your hands on a good book that a plant based cookbook. I've written blue zone kitchen but there's lots of other good ones out there, and take a few Sunday afternoons, sit down with your family identify a handful of recipes every Sunday that you could cook as a family, learn how to cook them and taste them at the end of the day. When it comes to longevity the most important, the most important ingredient is taste. So, if you cook your way through enough recipes until you find it half a dozen you love, my job is over. Taste is going to drive you back to that recipe. So that's a rule to live by a number to curate your immediate social circle very carefully. As you alluded to earlier. If your three best friends are obese and healthy there's 150% better chance that you'll be overweight. Finding, I'm not telling you to dump your old unhealthy friends, but I will say proactively adding a couple friends, people whose idea of these days of recreation is plain pickleball. You know, just a big pickleball player and or gardening or biking something at them. Not a bad idea to have a vegan or vegetarian in your media social network because they're going to show you where and how to make or find delicious plant based food. That's completely contagious. And also I would say the other big rule live by is take the time to know your sense of purpose. And what I mean by purpose is knowing what your values and I actually advocate to sit down and write them out. I'm Christian or I'm a Republican or I'm a Democrat or I care about women or I care about animals, write them out. Then a separate column. What do you love to do. Well I love to get involved in in activism or I love to fix things or I love to solve arguments whatever it is write those down. Third column, what am I good at. Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm really good at taking care of older people, whatever it is, then look for the commonality in those three columns, and then write a fourth column is where can you put those gifts to work. Because some people a minority it's their job, I would argue what you do Jill, what I do are we live our purpose, but that's only about 30% of Americans, the other 70% have to put their purpose to work and purpose means nothing. Unless you're putting it to work. You have to do it either through a hobby, or through volunteerism, far more powerful than you think. I'm not talking about purpose, because we know, and this comes from a National Institutes on Indian study. We know that people who are living their purpose, live about eight years longer than people are with their life. I can't make anybody off of that. Stephen Gundry can't make anybody off of your purpose, but there's better research there's better evidence that living a purpose driven life will make you live longer than just about anything else. And so those are three roles. That's tremendous and if you want more there in the book, please get your copy because this is such a worthwhile read and like I said it's one that you're going to come back to again and again. Last thing Dan is what it sounds like this is obviously your work, how long first of all quick question how long ago did you start working on blue zones how many years have you been studying this. 20 years. Wow, 20 years this year. Okay. I was going to write a cover story for National Geographic and move on to something but it becomes first of all it unfolds into this beautiful my work over the past. You know, 11 years I've been worked with 72 American cities that have adopted blue zones principles and I've actually been able to lower the BMI and raise the life expectancy of the entire cities. So I just find new ways to apply that I have a whole line of whole plant based frozen foods blue zones frozen foods coming out in November at Whole Foods. So there's different ways to sort of evangelize this way of living. Yeah and what I love is it's clearly part of your passion and purpose in life. What changed the most for you in the 20 years of you studying blue zones like your personal habits your activities your connections. What was the biggest change for you and as you learned the blue zone data. I'm plant based. I don't eat meat anymore. And I very little process foods every once in a while in a week moment. I know that being social is better for me than working a few more hours so you're very hard to get me to do any work after 5pm or even after for I live in walkable communities very consciously I live in Miami, very walkable part of Miami. I've lived in Santa Barbara before and my friends I've let my kind of unhealthy friends go a little bit, not that I dump them but I really proactive of finding cool healthy friends, because I know they're going to my life in my mood. So a lot of the wisdom I discovered I put to work in my life. Amazing what we see it we see it reflected and again I think that's what makes you such a incredible really icon in this work and bringing it to it because you walk the walk. And you, you live what you talk about and that means a lot because not everybody's out there doing that and doing the work and then transforming. So, I cannot say enough thank you for what you brought to the world. This new book, like I said last thing last time I'll show it here grab your copy blue zones secret to living longer to be out when you hear this podcast. And if you're ever in Boulder in the winter, I'll take you skiing in the summer I'll take you hiking. So we'll do. That's a good deal. I'll take you up on that. And by the way, if anybody has other questions I always answer my own. Instagram, I'm at Dan butener. And if you said that if you have a question I'll be happy to answer it. And it was really a delight. And that's all meeting you in person twice and now meeting you over over the airwaves here so I hope we get to see each other more often Joe you're doing fantastic work and, and you're very articulate and you are a great evangelist for functional medicine and glad to be part of your tribe. Thank you Dan. And last thing is where can people find your book your website instead Dan butener for Instagram I'll just repeat that we'll have the links wherever you're watching you're seeing this. What about the website for the book and for finding more about you. Dan butener.com and butener is BUETT NER. And we have a free newsletter that free of advertisement, and you can get that at Dan butener.com. You know, I always prefer people buy books and bookstores but you can also get it on Amazon. I have four New York Times bestsellers and, and this book is meant to be a easy to use guide to harnessing the wisdom of the longest of people to help you live longer. And yeah, Instagram, probably do more than Instagram. Yeah, so get on there and follow Dan. Thanks again, Dan. What a pleasure to talk to you again. Absolutely delight. I'm sending you a telephonic hug.