 Nagoyan Peninsula of Costa Rica is another one of Dan Buttner's blue zones. But I'm going to try to convince you in this series that these blue zones aren't blue at all. In fact, as you'll read in gut check, the term blue zone came from a researcher at a meeting on longevity in Montpellier, France a few years ago, taking a map of the world and circling five regions, five small areas where he thought, but did not prove, that people had extended longevity. And he used a blue tip magic marker, a felt tip pen, hence the term blue zone. Now, Dan Buttner, who I've spoken to and I have a lot of respect for, is primarily a vegan slash vegetarian. And so he wanted to look at what features of these five magic marker zones might explain their longevity. And of course, he looked through the lens of someone who's interested in the health benefits of grains and beans, among other things. But in fact, when you look at the blue zones, nothing could be further from the truth. That's part of what this series is about. Now, why am I so adamant about this? I'm actually the only nutritionist who spent most of my career living and working in a blue zone, Loma Linda, California, where I was professor and chairman of cardiothoracic surgery and pediatrics at Loma Linda University School of Medicine. And I learned a great deal about the Loma Linda diet and lifestyle. But today we're going to talk about the Nagoyan Peninsula of Costa Rica. Now, what's interesting about the Nagoyan Peninsula of Costa Rica is that they do have extended lifespan. Don't doubt that for a second. But like the rest of Costa Rica, the Nagoyans actually do eat quite a bit of beans and corn. Those are their staples. But research shows that Nagoyans think that beans and corn are a negative aspect of their diet. I'll say it again. A negative aspect of their diet. What's unique about the Nagoyan Peninsula, as opposed to the rest of Costa Rica that doesn't have longevity, is what they do for a living. And not surprisingly, if you watched episode two of the Longevity series, these guys are sheep and goat herders, unlike the rest of Costa Rica. And they eat, like Sardinia, a lot of goat and sheep, cheeses and goat and sheep, yogurts. What's so unique about that? Well, two things. Number one, goat and sheep milk contain 30% of their fats, medium chain triglycerides, MCT oil. And if you've read my books, if you follow these podcasts, you know that MCT oil is directly converted into ketones. And ketones are not an important fuel. They're actually an important signaling molecule that tell your mitochondria to uncouple, to make more of themselves, to protect themselves, to foster mitochondrial health. And if you read Gutschack or some of my previous books, you realize that the health of our mitochondria, particularly in the wall of our gut, is one of the real signifying differences of people who live a long time, long lives versus short lives. And oh, by the way, I know you hear me trashing grains and beans. There are very, very good studies that show that grains and beans change our microbiome, change microbiome from a diverse beneficial microbiome to a dysbiotic microbiome. Not exactly what we want. So these guys are using two white substances, milk in the forms of aged milk like yogurts or cheeses, unlike other parts of Costa Rica. That's what makes this so unique. Everybody eats grains and beans, but what happens in the Nagoya Peninsula is the white stuff that they're using. Now, there's one other factor that was identified recently as a really important milk factor, and that's milk globule fat membrane protein. Milk fat is enclosed in a protein to make it fat soluble. And it turns out that this protein is also a superb mitochondrial uncoupler. It's not present in skim milk. It's almost nothing in low fat milk. But this molecule as well, that explains in my book, The Gut Check, you notice that there's a Swedish study of looking at angina, chest pain in people, comparing the amount of angina they had with butter, with milk, and with cheese. Now, the headlines from that study was that the more butter you ate, the worse your chest pain got. Okay, I'll buy that. The more milk you drank, the worse your chest pain got. Okay, I'll buy that. But what didn't really get everybody's attention was the more cheese you ate, the less your angina got. Why? Because cheese is a fermented food and as you'll learn in Gut Check, it contains all these incredible compounds that actually improve inflammation and it has these milk globule membrane proteins that actually uncouple mitochondria. Cheese also contains polyamines, which really improve our gut microbiome and also our anti-aging compounds in their own aspect. So again, the Nagoyan Peninsula was almost gerrymandered as a district of longevity, not because they ate corn and beans like everybody else in Costa Rica did, but because they were sheep and goat herders and ate all those beneficial products of fermenting goat and sheep milk. And that's why they have longevity. The other thing that I haven't mentioned in our other longevity series is that one of the interesting things about all of these long-lived communities is that they live outside, for the most part. Almost all of these communities are either goat or sheep herders, which is fascinating, and or they're active fishermen like Anatchiroli. They all live in hilly towns, believe it or not. Lomalinda means beautiful hill in Spanish, and they walk a lot in the hills. Achiroli is built on the side of a hill, a sardinia. Only the mountainous regions of sardinia have longevity. So anytime you increase your exercise, particularly walking against gravity or with gravity, you're going to improve your lifespan. Why? There's an exciting set of hormones that are called myokines. Myo means muscle. And these hormones are activated, obviously, during activity. And the exciting thing is myokines not only improve your gut biodiversity, and believe me, when you read gut check, you're going to want to realize that a diverse microbiome is one of the best things for your long-term fate. But myokines also stimulate nerve cells to grow. So that may be one of the principles of all of these blue zones, or like I say, white zones, that explains a piece of their longevity that most of us have long since abandoned as part of our daily routine. More amazing episodes just like this one. Watch now! People who eat curry at least once a week have a 90% reduction in Alzheimer's compared to people who don't eat curry.