 Well, I'm going to talk about some blue zones, which I discuss in a chapter of the new book Gut Check. And it's fun to visit some of these blue zones that Dan Butler, who coined the phrase blue zones, actually didn't mention and didn't study. And one of my favorite ones is Atchioroli, small town south of Naples that I've had the pleasure of visiting. Atchioroli is a town of about a thousand inhabitants. It's a small fishing village. And 300 of those thousand people are over the age of 100. In fact, of all the communities of all the towns in the world, they have the highest percentage of centenarians anywhere studied. Now why is that important? Well, this is a living actual community. It's a fishing village. A lot of the blue zones actually are not necessarily the longest living people or have a lot of super centenarians. I'll give you an example of Okinawa. Okinawan are long-lived people, maybe, but Okinawa was taken over by the United States in 1945, and almost all of the birth records were destroyed, of course, during World War II. And it was up to the U.S. Army to actually give people new birth certificates. And the U.S. Army doesn't exactly know Japanese. And what's interesting in looking at the Atchioroli birth records is that there were a ton of people that had consistently almost the same year of birth when these new things were filled out, therefore quite old, probably only because of a wrong birth certificate. Other places like Sardinia, which is a very poor area of Italy, pensioners actually get pensions in Italy and live on pensions. So there would be a reason not to say that somebody had died because you'd lose that pension from your mother or grandmother or grandfather. And so there is a lot of non-reporting of people dying. So all of these things have to be taken into concern. Now I've spoken with Dan Butner, he's a fine individual, and he is a vegan slash vegetarian and has looked at the data from the Blue Zones with an eye towards looking at, well, what are the important vegetables that contribute to longevity? In fact, Atchioroli throws everything up in the air. Sorry, Dan. The Atchiorolians do not eat bread or pasta. Sorry. They don't. They think it's too expensive. They do, interestingly, eat a lot of legumes, particularly lentils that have been cooked for a very long time. And as you know, soaking and then long-term cooking of lentils will actually diminish the lectin content. But what's fascinating about the Atchiorolis is two habits. Number one, they eat very tiny fish anchovies. Anchovies are those kind of smelly little things you eat in the cans, but fresh anchovies are very much like sardines. And because they're fishermen, anchovies are a huge part of their diet. And they eat the anchovy whole, which gives them actually a lot of prebiotic fiber in the gristle and the cartilages of these small fish. That's number one. Number two, what's unique about the Atchiorolis is their use of rosemary. There's a particularly pungent rosemary that grows in Atchioroli, and the Atchiorolians chew rosemary throughout the day. And they cook with it. They put rosemary in all their foods. Oh, and by the way, the Atchiorolians consume a lot of olive oil, and they drink a lot of wine. But back to the rosemary. So rosemary has two very interesting bioactive compounds that are rosemaryic acid in your solic acid. What's fascinating about both of these compounds, maybe rosemaryic acid more than your solic acid, is that these compounds activate GLP1 receptors. They are GLP1 agonists. Now anybody heard the word GLP1 agonists recently? Are any of you shooting yourselves up once a week with a GLP1 agonist, like Osempic or Wagobi? Yes, that's right. Those weight loss drugs are actually GLP1 agonists. And isn't it interesting that the longest-living people in the world are chewing GLP1 agonists every day, all day? And maybe, just maybe, that's one of their great secrets. Now here's the other great news. Not only are these guys GLP1 agonists, but they also change the gut microbiome into a microbiome that fosters longevity, leanness, and repair of the gut wall. And if those topics sound familiar, you're going to read all about it in my book Gut Check. So here's a community that doesn't eat grains, doesn't eat pasta, doesn't eat bread, eats fish as their primary source of protein, eats cheeses like pecorino cheese, which is a sheep cheese, but chews rosemary. And one of the really exciting things about blue zones is they're not blue at all. Finally one more thing that should be of interest to maybe all of us who are getting older. The men and women of Acheroli, these older individuals, apparently are really horny. They're really sexy. Now is it the rosemary that's doing it? Well, it turns out that as I talk about in Gut Check, that there is an entire microbiome that's dedicated to the manipulation of sex hormones. And it could just be that rosemary is the aphrodisiac that maybe all of us should be munching a little bit more of. Many of you have probably heard that the island of Sardinia off the Italian coast is a blue zone where people live really long lives. Well, not so fast. It turns out that Sardinia is a blue zone in name only. Why is that? Well, it turns out that Sardinia, most people either live down by the Mediterranean Sea or live up in the mountains. The people down by the sea eat fish, they're fishermen. But the people live up in the mountains are sheep and goat herders. Now a lot of the fable of the blue zones is that the reason blue zones live a long time is that they eat lots of grains and beans. Now it's true that the Sardinians do eat a buckwheat bread. But interestingly enough, Sardinians have some of the highest degrees of autoimmune disease that there are in Italy. So much for whole grains being good for you. But what's unique about the Sardinians is that only the people who live in the mountains have extended lifespan. The folks who live down by the water don't. All right, what's up with that? Let's take a look. What turns out is most of us know that men live shorter lives than females. In fact, average male life expectancy is about seven years shorter than female life expectancy. Sorry, guys. In Sardinia, it's reversed that men live much longer than the women, which brings their average age up, their life expectancy up. Now as you know, we, along with a few other animals, do not manufacture our own vitamin C, and we have to acquire it from our diet. What's interesting is that the Mediterranean diet is very rich in vitamin C, and one of the surprising places is studies show that people who consume olive oil have doubled the vitamin C in their blood than people who don't consume olive oil. Plus, the Mediterranean diet in general is rich in vitamin C and other antioxidant vegetables and fruits. In fact, one of the most unique polyphenols that the Sardinians drink is a red wine from the Canaanal grape, which is a black grape that has two to three times higher levels of polyphenols than other grape study, and they drink a lot of red wine. What's the other thing that differentiates these mountainous Sardinians who live a long life from the coast? Well, again, these are sheep and goat herders, and strangely enough, they eat a lot of sheep and goat products, sheep and goat yogurt and sheep and goat cheeses. In fact, there's a very famous pecorino cheese from Sardinia that is from sheep grazing on mountain fields. Studies in Switzerland show that the higher the elevation that these herding animals eat the vegetation, the higher the polyphenol content and the higher the antioxidant content of their cheeses. Sardinia, quite frankly, is not a blue zone. It's a white zone. In fact, my good friend Mark Hyman recently visited Sardinia, and he came back and he told me, you're not going to believe all the yogurt and cheese these guys eat. And I said, what do you mean? That's what makes them a long-living zone, white food like yogurt and cheeses. So that's what's so unique about Sardinia, and that's one of the ways we're going to continue to bust the blue zone mythology. Lastly, there's another interesting compound that I talk about in gut check that should be front and center with our embracement of cheeses and culture in milk products. Milk products have a fat globule that's called fat membrane globule protein that surrounds fat globules and makes them soluble. It turns out that this fat globule membrane protein is really a cool mitochondrial uncoupler in its own right. Now, it's not present in skim milk, it's not present in low fat milk, but it's present in full fat yogurts. It's present in full fat cheeses. And it's one of the factors that is implicated in the health benefits of aged cheeses. Now what else is interesting about goat and sheep cheese is the goat and sheep milk and water buffalo milk is 30% medium chain triglycerides, 30% MCTs. And if you've read my other books and learn the gut check, MCTs are in fact converted into ketones instantaneously and ketones are signaling molecules for telling mitochondria to uncouple. And I won't beat a dead horse, but the more your mitochondrial uncouple, the healthier you are, the thinner you are, and most importantly, the longer you live. So these clever mountainous sardinians seem to have the perfect white recipe for success. And I think the more we learn about these alternative explanations for longevity, the better off we're all going to be. Thanks so much for watching this episode, but don't go anywhere. I think you're going to love this next one. That healthy whole wheat sandwich has eight teaspoons of sugar and it's not on the label. So these sorts of foods really should not be in your diet.