If you want to stay young, as Alphaville sings in their song, you must stick to the formulas of those who have succeeded.
That beautiful song by Alphaville always gives me chills: “I want to be forever young.” Man has never stopped his quest for eternal youth and the questions still remain…Is there really a Fountain of Youth? Is it possible to stay forever young? The goal is not only to live long, but to live healthy and to stay young. If your wish is to be water skiing at the age of 120, it means that you want to live 120 years young. Whatever your age is, your goal should be starting the day with the same youth, quality of health, happy energy and ending it in calm tranquility.
When asked their secrets for having a healthy and long life, people from the world’s most remarkable longevity hotspots, (Okinawa‐Japan, Campodimele‐Italy, Bama‐China, Hunza‐Pakistan), each revealed their personal regime: Drinking Oolong green tea every morning and night, using only uncooked extra‐virgin olive oil (most ideal oil), consuming plenty of kefir each day (a probiotic source of beneficial flora), consuming plenty of blueberries, (highly antioxidant), from an early age on… However, upon further research, it was found that these habits were not common to the areas these people live. For instance, due the lack of olive oil in one region, the population of one village uses coconut oil instead (also healthy oil), another village has never consumed green tea, kefir is unknown to another and blueberries didn’t grow in the region of another, etc. Researchers then investigated other possible common denominators and concluded the following four:
1. Not eating after sunset: After sunset, the sensors on our skin send a signal to our internal organs to stop digesting and to move on to functions such as detox and repair. Because the sun sets earlier in winter and our digestion naturally slows once its dark, we tend to gain more weight if we continue eating during the same hours as we do in the longer days of summer. In addition to weight gain, late night eating overloads the digestion system and wastes the energy required for functions such as repair, detox, and replenishment. If you think about it, nature doesn’t make it very easy to prepare and eat food in the dark and eating late has become an unhealthy habit of modern western society. Today, the places where people have longevity, is where tables are cleared before sunset.
2. Never consuming packaged food: Another commonality about these places is that people tend to eat pretty much everything, but in their world, everything around them is natural. They have never opened a bag of chips or any other processed food with a 6‐month shelf life. Their yogurt is from the milk of their own animals, eggs from the neighbor’s hen and basically
everything they eat are seasonal, fresh, daily products. They consume what is needed, not in excess.
3. Leading a regularly active life: In places where people live longer, everyone is active every single day, yet they’ve never even heard of gyms. Instead, they hoe the earth, they go fishing, they walk 2 kilometers every day to a spring to carry water to their homes and they do the house cleaning themselves. The people of one village even climb 400 stairs to a hilltop temple to pray each morning, from the time they are adolescents and for the rest of their adult lives. Contrary to western society, nobody drives to the office in automobiles, nor do they spend the entire days sedentary, in front of a computer.
4. Living in a community, large families and believing in a higher power: A support network of a large family and living a collective, communal life allows a more supportive environment where everyone shares each other’s happiness and sorrow. In other words, life in these villages is much more fulfilling than what has become typical in our society; returning from a long day at the office to an apartment flat to spend the entire night alone on the Internet.
Not only do these communities have a rich family life, they all have faith in one form or another. Doing everything they can, where they can and submitting to a higher power for the rest, thus allowing a healthier state of mind. Unlike many of us in developed societies, they don’t have the obsession to control everything, thus avoiding the resulting stress and its
damaging effects to the body.
Many cultures also believe that 30 days of fasting, (in one form or another), is the most imperative secret for a healthy, long life. In today’s society overconsumption is the norm, technology keeps us away from nature, and everything is done in haste. Detox centers are perhaps the best opportunity for us to preserve our health, as they offer the ideal environment to dedicate an entire month to our bodies, to escape from our daily stress, to slow down and be one with the nature, to wake up and sleep with the sun, to consume minimally and to taste from the Fountain of Youth. You too can take this opportunity for yourself, so why not take the first step?
Today, our unhealthy life‐style choices and artificial, unnatural way of life has resulted in a growing epidemic of diseases developing at younger and younger ages. The good news is that you can change the current trend by making a simple decision for yourself. Like Alphaville sings, “Let us die young, or let us live forever”…