Lessons for a Long Life From the Island of Ikaria, Greece

On the tiny island of Ikaria, off the coast of Greece, there is much to learn about living a long and healthy life, because a large percentage of the population of this island do so.

During the course of this series on Longevity, I have introduced you to various people who have lived a long and vital life, from the late Joe Rollino, to Jack Lalanne, yoga teacher Bette Calman, Dr. Shigeaki Hinohara, and Mimi Kirk (whose three-part exclusive interview with me ended yesterday), among others.

But with the above video, you can be introduced to an entire population of people, as opposed to individuals.

The above video is based on the work of Dan Buettner and the Blue Zones team, researchers who have identified certain regions of the world where people live longer.

They found that in Ikaria, and especially in the northeastern end of the island, that over one-third of everyone in the northeastern end reaches age 90. They suffer 20% less cancer and half the rate of heart disease. And there’s virtually no dementia.

In other words, they’re living the good years many people are missing. Years we could possibly have by just adjusting a few simple habits, including:

1. Wild Greens – Greens are abundant in fields and roadsides, Ikarians frequently eat wild green salads and pies. Some contain more antioxidants than green tea or wine.
2. Herbal Teas – The common herbal teas consumed here contain compounds that lower blood pressure and decrease the risk of heart disease and dementia.
3. Low sense of time urgency – Feeling less obligation to one’s schedule and day is shown to lower heart-harming stress hormones.
4. Daily naps – Taking a 30-minute nap at least five times a week can decrease the risk of heart attack by 35 percent.
5. Mountain living – Here, every trip out of the house occasions a mini workout. People get their daily exercise without thinking about it. Studies show the mountain people have lower cardio vascular disease.
6. Strong sense of community – Family and village support create strong social connections, which are proven to promote longevity.
7. Goat’s milk – 80 percent of all people over 90 have consumed goat’s milk many times per week throughout their life. It is rich in blood-pressure lowering tryptophan and antibacterial compounds.
8. Ikarian diet – The Ikarian variation of Mediterranean Diet is high in vegetables, beans, and low in meat and sugar. Uniquely, though, it’s lower in grains and fish, but high in potatoes.

In the U.S., cancer costs almost $250 billion per year, heart disease another approximately $500 billion and dementia yet another $175 billion. If people of the U.S. could live Ikaria’s lifestyle, rates could be cut in half and half a trillion dollars could be saved.

People of Ikaria are clearly living a Low Density Lifestyle, and living long and vital lives because of it. There’s a lot of life lessons for living a long life that we can learn from the people of Ikaria, Greece, if only we can heed the call.

One of the biggest lessons to be learned is that living a High Density Lifestyle will surely affect the quality of your life both in terms of health and your lifespan.

An Interview with Mimi Kirk, Part 3

Today is the last installment of the three-part exclusive interview I recently did with Mimi Kirk, the 71-year-old winner of PETA’s sexiest female vegetarian over 50 award.

Mimi has a lot of valid things to say about health and wellness, and she’s an incredible role model for anyone of any age. Just watching her in this and the previous two interviews can teach you a lot about being and becoming healthy.

Mimi’s interview fits in well with this series on Longevity, because, although Mimi is far younger than all of the other masters of longevity I have profiled in this series, what she discusses is clearly the secrets to living a long and vital life.

In case you missed the previous interviews I did with Mimi Kirk, you can click on the links below to see them:
An Interview with Mimi Kirk, Part 1
An Interview with Mimi Kirk, Part 2

As you watch the above video, you’ll hear Mimi talk about:

***why it’s not genes and family history that dictate whether you’ll be sick as you age

***why medications can be toxic to your health and why they’re not the answer to getting healthy

***why developing good health is simple

***why she loves eating a raw foods diet

***what her favorite creative pastimes are

***her upcoming book, “How to Be Healthy and Hot At Any Age.”

***why her sex drive is strong

***that she feels incredibly healthy and full of life

***what she does to keep her skin youthful and vital (hint: she’s never used botox or plastic surgery)

***how people can connect with her and find out what she’s up to. (here’s how to get to her Facebook page: Mimi Kirk’s Facebook page.)

So, I hope you enjoyed the interview I did with Mimi Kirk, and got a lot out of it. I surely did.

I’ll be back tomorrow with another article in this series on Longevity, so see you then.

An Interview with Mimi Kirk, Part 2

Today I continue with the second part of a three-part exclusive interview I recently did with Mimi Kirk, who is no ordinary 71 year old. In 2009, when she was 70, Mimi was voted by PETA as the sexiest vegetarian female over 50.

If you didn’t see the first part of the interview with Mimi Kirk, don’t forget to review it by clicking on this link:
An Interview with Mimi Kirk, Part 1

The interview was conducted over skype with only one technical snafu – about halfway through today’s interview Mimi’s screen froze, so you’ll see me wait about 10 seconds until Mimi’s screen unfroze. After that the interview continued without a hitch.

As you watch the above video, you’ll hear Mimi talk about:

***why to become healthy you need to become empowered and take responsibility for your health

***how she manages to wear out her boyfriend, who’s 19 years younger than she is

***why the way you think, your attitude about life, your happiness, and your ability to laugh are also crucial to health, along with diet

***what holds people back from changing their diet and making healthy lifestyle choices

***how she manages to live a stress-free life

***what the common threads are amongst people who live long lives

***how to start living a healthier lifestyle

***why eating meat and dairy is unhealthy

***that she takes no medications, and also takes no supplements

***why she shops primarily at farmer’s markets

Mimi Kirk has a lot to say, and all of it is valid. I think you’ll agree with me, as you watch this video, that Mimi is an incredible inspiration to all of us.

Tomorrow I’ll be back with the last installment of this three-part interview, so don’t forget to tune in tomorrow…

An Interview With Mimi Kirk, Part 1

A few months ago, I wrote an article on the Low Density Lifestyle site about Mimi Kirk, and today I present the first part of an exclusive three-part interview I did with her.

Mimi was voted in 2009 by PETA as the sexiest vegetarian female over 50, which is an honor of and by itself. What makes it even more amazing is that Mimi was 70 years old at the time! (She’s now 71.)

You may want to read the article again before watching the above video on Mimi Kirk, the sexiest vegetarian over 50.

Mimi and I conducted the interview over skype, and I recorded the video. I will give you the three-part interview one installment at a time, in order to give it to you in bite size chunks.

As you watch the above video, you’ll hear Mimi talk about:

***how she won the award

***why she became a vegetarian

***why she’s now a raw food vegan and how eating that way has made a dramatic improvement in her health

***a typical food day for her

***what she does if she goes out to dinner or travels

***her 52-year-old boyfriend’s eating habits and how she got him to change his ways

***her personal nutritional philosophy

Mimi is truly an inspiration, not only because she won the award, but because she is so healthy and vibrant. She’s a true model of longevity, and a model of someone living a Low Density Lifestyle.

Don’t forget to tune in next time for installment number two…

The 98-Year-Old Massage Therapist Grandmother

In today’s article on Longevity, meet Evelyn Blackburn: She’s a 98-year-old grandmother who is Britain’s oldest massage therapist, with 60 years in the profession.

Evelyn Blackburn was first granted her license to operate in 1949 and recently renewed it.

Mrs. Blackburn, of Pinner, north London, has treated tens of thousands of people since a friend’s sore neck prompted her to learn the techniques of massage six decades ago.

But she has kept abreast of developments, embracing alternative treatments such as cupping – made famous by celebrity enthusiast Gwyneth Paltrow – and radiesthesia, which treats people’s energy or auras.

Mrs Blackburn said, “I have massaged thousands of people over the years – from mothers and grandmothers to builders and scientists. Back when I started, I used iodine-based oil called Dragon’s Blood. Nowadays, I use the modern substitutes. You have to move with the times.

“I still maintain the best treatment is a pair of hands.

“I don’t think anything can replace massage. I have used lots of therapies and machines, but nothing is quite as effective.

“A massage is much better than all these advertised creams to put on your face and body, although the companies making the cream wouldn’t like to hear that – but it’s the truth.”

Mrs. Blackburn used to treat up to eight people a day at the clinic where she worked in Nower Hill, Harrow, but for the past 24 years has worked from home in a room adapted into a studio.

She stated that, “I started in 1949 and now I’m 98. It has been a long time but I enjoy my work because I help people feel better. I love the contact with people and sharing their problems.

“Now I take on work as it comes. I’m available seven days a week.”

Explaining how she has kept so active, she said: “While you cannot determine how long you live, I have been a vegetarian since I was 20 and never get angry and depressed. When you feel down in the dumps, you must pick yourself up.”

Evelyn Blackburn, the 98-year-old massage therapist grandmother, is another model of longevity, and a model of someone living a Low Density Lifestyle.

One of the common threads you may have noticed amongst all the people featured so far in these articles on longevity is diet: they have all either proclaimed that they are (or in the case of Joe Rollino, was) a vegetarian, or that they ate very little animal foods.

That really is a very important part of it, as eating an animal-food based diet will shorten your life, as the article I wrote not too long ago on The China Study pointed out.

Another thing all of these people have is a sense of purpose, and having a sense of purpose is something that has been shown to help contribute to longevity.

For Evelyn Blackburn, her sense of purpose is in helping people feel better, and she truly loves to be able to do so. As she said above, she’s available seven days a week.

So next time you find yourself in Pinner, in north London, give Evelyn Blackburn a call and make an appointment for a massage from her. You’ll learn a thing or two about longevity along the way.

Jack LaLanne – The Master of Longevity

In the previous article in this series on Longevity, I told you about the amazing Joe Rollino, an incredible master of longevity, who died far too soon at age 104.

If you read the article, you will recall that Joe was hit by a car on Jan. 11, 2010, and passed away shortly thereafter. Otherwise, Joe would still be going strong. His daily routine was to get up very early, walk 5 miles, and then possibly go for a swim in the icy, frigid Atlantic ocean by Coney Island, in Brooklyn, NY.

Today I want to tell you about another amazing master of longevity, one that is still going strong - Jack LaLanne.

Jack Lalanne, born in 1914, is now 95. He is considered the “godfather of fitness,” and is well-known for the many books he has written, the fitness television show he hosted from 1951-1985, and for the juicer that bears his name that he sells on TV.

But Jack LaLanne is no hawker of questionable goods. He is the real deal – a model for how to live a healthy, vital and long life, a Low Density Lifestyle life.

His passion is living a healthy and fit life, and he is recognized for his success as a bodybuilder and for his prodigious feats of strength.

But it wasn’t always that way for Jack – he was a sickly child who was addicted to sugar and junk food. At age 15 he heard a lecture on health and nutrition that had a profound impact on him, and from there decided to focus on his health.

He changed his diet and started exercising regularly. He made these lifelong habits, and he blames overly processed foods for many of today’s health problems. He advocates an organic, vegetarian diet as the best type of diet to eat, and his simple rules of nutrition are, “if man made it, don’t eat it”; and “if it tastes good, spit it out.”

His interest in health led Jack to take pre-med courses in college, and to attend and graduate from a chiropractic college. Yet his newfound interest in personal health steered him away from the idea of treating disease for a living, and instead, his focus became helping people to avoid disease by achieving optimal health and fitness.

In 1936 in Oakland, CA, he opened up the first health spa/gym way before it was fashionable, and at the gym he preached the benefits of weightlifting. Meat and potatoes was the standard fare back then, yet LaLanne, far ahead of his time, opened a combination gym, juice bar and health-food store.

In the 1950s, on his TV show, LaLanne suggested that daily calisthenics rather than girdles would keep housewives trim. “My whole career, doctors and so-called experts called me a crackpot and charlatan,” he says. “But I was right.”

He celebrated his recent 95th birthday with the publication of his new book, Live Young Forever. In the book, Jack teaches you how to achieve a vibrant, motivated, stress-free, sexually active life that will make waking up a joy for decades to come.

That sounds to me just like a Low Density Lifestyle life.

Even at age 95, Jack LaLanne continues to work out daily, exercising for two hours every morning. He spends an hour and a half in the weight room, and then a half hour either swimming or walking.

And for various prior birthdays, he has done all kinds of prolific activities to show off his fitness. For example:

***in 1976, at age 62: To commemorate the “Spirit of ‘76″, United States Bicentennial, he swam one mile in Long Beach Harbor in Southern California. He was handcuffed and shackled, and he towed 13 boats (representing the 13 original colonies) containing 76 people.

***in 1979, at age 65: Towed 65 boats in Lake Ashinoko, near Tokyo, Japan. He was handcuffed and shackled, and the boats were filled with 6,500 pounds of Louisiana Pacific wood pulp.

***in 1980, at age 66: Towed 10 boats in North Miami, Florida. The boats carried 77 people, and he towed them for over one mile in less than one hour.

***in 1984, at age 70: Once again handcuffed and shackled, he fought strong winds and currents as he swam 1.5 miles while towing 70 boats with 70 people from the Queensway Bay Bridge in the Long Beach Harbor to the Queen Mary.

And what is the key to longevity, according to Jack Lalanne, the master of longevity? Let’s hear it from Jack, in his own words:

“You have to work at longevity. Exercise is king and nutrition is queen: together, you have a kingdom. My ‘secret’ is that you have to plan for your life. Some older people are now starting to exercise, but there are too many fat people. They spend time watching TV and drinking at the bar, then they say they don’t have time to exercise. People need to get their priorities straight.

“To live a long life, you have to work at living. Most Americans work at dying. You wouldn’t give your dog a donut and coffee for breakfast. Yet people fill their bodies with junk and then wonder where their physical health has gone.

“Life is like planting seeds. Put junk in, junk comes out. Exercise is also essential. Exercise increases your life expectancy and gives you a reason to get up in the morning. With a sound program of physical fitness, everyone can lead healthy and productive lives in their golden years.

“You control your life. My dad died at 50, but your genetics don’t control your longevity. Do the things that are under your control. Man can live to be 150. Common diseases like diabetes can be controlled by diet and exercise. Stay away from animal fats and processed foods. Read every food label, and if you can’t pronounce the ingredients, don’t buy it. Buying nutrient-empty foods is like putting water in the gas tank of your car. But good food by itself is not enough. You need a healthy lifestyle as well.

“Nutrition and exercise should be an important part of everyone’s life. Life should be a happy adventure, and to be happy you need to be healthy. Just take things one step at a time, and remember that everything you do takes energy to achieve. You need to plant the seeds and cultivate them well. Then you will reap the bountiful harvest of health and longevity!”

Thank you Jack LaLanne. You are a true visionary and pioneer. Listen to his words well, and you too can live a long and vital life.

Top Ten Ways to Start Living a Low Density Lifestyle Now

In yesterday’s article I explained What the Heck a Low Density Lifestyle Is.

When you read the article, you should be able to wrap your mind around the concept pretty quickly, and I think you’ll agree with me that it makes a lot of sense.

Tomorrow I will begin the first series of the year, and it will be on Longevity. As you probably know, once I begin a series, I spend a few weeks looking at the theme of the series at an in-depth level. So in a couple of weeks, you’ll know more about Longevity than you ever thought you did.

But before I begin the series on Longevity, let’s examine the top ten ways you can start living a Low Density Lifestyle right now.

Yes, right now. Not tomorrow. Now. So let’s begin…

1) Open your mind. When you talk to someone, do you have a knee-jerk negative reaction to what they say? Open your mind to the possibilities that are out there, because it could cause you to change your thinking and expand the way you see the world. When you are closed minded, you shut off 99% of the world.

2) Listen to others. Don’t just be the one talking…listen to what others have to say – you will learn a lot that way.

3) Watch your expectations. It’s easy to expect others to do what you think they should do, or what you think is the proper way for them to behave and act. But everyone is different, and you should never impose your beliefs and standards on others. If you think someone is acting improperly, be aware if your perception is clouded by the way you expect them to act.

4. Beware the Curse of Knowledge. Don’t act like an expert, even if you know everything about the subject at hand. This ties in with the first point, to open your mind. The Zen master Shunryu Suzuki said, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few.” You may know a lot about a subject, and may be the go-to person on the subject, but at the same time, it’s best to be humble about your knowledge, because there is never an end to what can be added onto the subject. For instance, the Nobel-prize winning physicist Richard Feynman once said, “I was born not knowing and have only had a little time to change that here and there.” And if anyone had the right to claim firm knowledge on a subject matter, it was Richard Feynman.

5. Laugh. A lot. We all have a tendency to take ourselves too seriously. When you laugh you start feeling lighter of body, mind and spirit. You can just feel yourself open up.

6. Move. As often as possible. Especially in ways that accentuate flow. Try this: when you’re home, turn some music on that has a good beat to it, and start moving to it. In whatever way feels right. It doesn’t matter if you have two left feet, just visualize you’re channeling your inner Fred Astaire. Or inner Michael Jackson. Or better yet, inner you.

7. Dream. Dream big. Or even dream small. But just dream. John Lennon once said, “The dreamer lives forever.” And Mick Jagger, in Ruby Tuesday, said, “Lose your dreams and you will lose your mind.” We all have great dreaming capabilities, but it gets suppressed. You can dream at night during sleep, or during the day, in what gets misnamed daydreaming. It’s not daydreaming you’re doing when your mind wanders during the day. Instead you’re doing what we all have as an innate quality: seeing ourselves in a greater capacity, seeing ourselves in the life we were meant to live.

8. Think abundantly. It’s easy to think from a scarcity perspective, in which you see a world in which it’s every person for themselves, and you have to get yours before someone takes it from you. But what if you perceived a world in which it was ok to share and be generous and be compassionate with others? Remember the popular best-seller called “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten,” by Robert Fulghum? That was the gist of the book, that what we all learned in kindergarten – to share, to play, to have fun, to enjoy each others company – are really the true lessons of life.

9. Live and practice a healthy lifestyle. Eat a whole foods oriented diet. Breathe deeply and relax. See a health provider who helps you to cultivate and enhance wellness. Don’t take drugs, or take as bare minimum as possible, and see them as a temporary bridge that you take only until your health is much better. Instead of drugs, take herbs and supplements.

10. Sign up for the free email course on this site. See the sign-up box on the upper right, below the video, or you can put your name in the pop-up box that shows up when you first come on the site. The course will help reinforce everything written about in the above list. And keep coming back to the site to read the articles. There are new articles on this site four days a week – Tuesday through Friday – on different aspects of living a Low Density Lifestyle. The different aspects are covered in a series format, and each series is written about for a few weeks. You’ll be glad you did.

The Obesity Apocalypse is Nearing

Today is the last article for this series on obesity, and the last article for this week -  Thanksgiving is upon us, and with it I am taking a few day hiatus.

And what better time than Thanksgiving to talk about the dangers of eating too much food and the wrong types of food?

Because as a nation, here in the U.S., statistics show that obesity is rapidly reaching epidemic proportions.  Already the U.S. is the most obese nation on the planet.

I’ve talked about all the different causes of obesity – diet, sugar/high fructose corn syrup, chemicals, cars and stress – but no matter how you cut the mustard, the truth is that if we continue the path we’re on, there is something ugly looming on the horizon.

And that is the obesity apocalypse.

Forget 2012 and the Mayan Long Count calendar.  That just makes for a thriller of a Hollywood movie.

The real apocalypse will occur in 2030. That’s the year, according to a study that came out in the August 2008 edition of the medical journal Obesity, that nearly every American will be overweight or obese.

The study, led by Dr. Youfa Wang of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, says that if current overweight and obesity trends continue, 86 percent of Americans could be overweight or obese by the year 2030.

And even more troubling, the authors note, is the fact that “by 2048, all American adults would become overweight or obese.”

Shades of the Pixar film Wall-E.  In that film, 700 years in the future, the inhabitants of earth are forced to evacuate the planet, because due to mass consumerism the entire planet is covered with trash. The people of earth are now living in space on starliners, and are grossly obese and no longer able to walk. They have to rely on motorized hovercrafts to get them around.

Dr. Wang of John Hopkins also said that the increase in metabolic disease and other weight-related conditions could have a catastrophic toll on public health — and on the public pocket. If these predictions come to bear, Wang and his colleagues estimate that the additional overweight and obesity burden could add up to an extra $860 billion to $956 billion per year in health expenditures to treat these conditions.

All told, this would mean that $1 in every $6 spent on health care would be spent as a result of the overweight and obesity.

The reality is that if those dollar figures quoted above are spent on the health demands of obesity, it will bankrupt this nation. We can reform health care until we’re blue in the face, we can create a single payer system that is compassionate, caring and exceeds expectations, but if we have that level of burden to pay on health care, the only way to rescue the U.S. economy will be if every person in the country is allowed to have a printing press in their home in order to print up money.

Obviously, we are in dire need of reversing course, and doing it soon…or else.

Dr. David Katz, co-founder of the Yale University Prevention Research Center says, “We are terribly, ominously off-course. To close the gap, we need to fix everything that’s broken — from neighborhoods without sidewalks, to the high price of produce, to food marketing to children, to misleading health claims on food packages, to school days devoid of physical activity and school cafeterias devoid of healthful offerings. The list goes on and on.”

Others state that the path to reversing course lie in individuals taking responsibility for diet and lifestyle habits. Dr. Neal Barnard, founder and president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) and a staunch supporter of a vegetarian diet, says dietary modification could be a crucial step in solving the problem.

“U.S. eating habits are nowhere near where they should be,” he says. “The average American eats 50 pounds more meat and 20 pounds more cheese per year, compared to the 1960s. … I would strongly encourage Americans to adopt more vegetarian meals.”

Soon we will be at a crossroads. On one path is the road to a Low Density Lifestyle, while the other is the trail to a High Density Lifestyle.

The choice is ours.

And so with that, I leave you to have a happy Thanksgiving.  I wish you well, and I hope you remember all I’ve written on this important subject.

Stress: A Major Cause of Obesity

I’ve been writing on the theme of obesity for the last few weeks, and will wrap this series up tomorrow. (It’s a short week, what with the Thanksgiving holiday, and so tomorrow’s article will be the last for this week.)

I’ve written about many causes of obesity – diet, chemicals in foods, sugar/high fructose corn syrup, cars.

Another cause of obesity, and a major cause at that, is stress.

Stress is a major cause of living a High Density Lifestyle, and a major cause of obesity – that’s why I’ve said throughout this series that being obese can get you trapped in the treadmill of a High Density Lifestyle.

What is it about stress that leads to obesity?

There’s two main reasons: behavioral and physiological.

Behaviorally, stressed-out people will often eat even when they’re not hungry – this is known as stress eating or emotional eating, and the food choices made are usually not the wisest.

Physiologically, there’s a few factors that lead to obesity. One factor is cortisol and cortisol-induced insulin.

When faced with a stressful situation, the body triggers the stress response, the fight-or-flight response. This leads to the secretion of cortisol, adrenaline and other stress hormones along with an increase of blood pressure, breathing and heart rate.

The natural stress response is usually short-term and self-regulating. When the threat is gone, the body returns to normal. As cortisol and adrenaline levels drop, heart rate, respiratory rate and blood pressure, as well as energy levels return to their baseline levels. Other systems inhibited by the stress response return to their regular activities.

The natural stress response goes awry when stress is constant and excessive. In today’s society, most people are inundated with overwhelming stress. For those constantly dealing with excessive and chronic stress, the body’s fight-or-flight response is constantly on. In turn, the resulting stress hormones released are chronically high.

Chronically high levels of cortisol plays a big role in the development of obesity.

Cortisol helps the body handle stress, so when stress goes up, cortisol also goes up. Cortisol stimulates fat and carbohydrate metabolism during stressful situations. This leads to increased blood sugar levels required for fast energy. In turn, this stimulates insulin release which can lead to an increase in appetite.

When the immediate stress is over, cortisol lingers to help bring the body back into balance after stress. One of the ways it gets things back to balance is by increasing appetite to replace the carbohydrate and fat used for the flight or fight response.

The problem is that in today’s society, stress-causing situations — such as traffic jams or computer malfunctions — don’t require the body to use up a lot of energy. So, cortisol ends up causing the body to refuel after stress even when it doesn’t really need to refuel. This excess fuel or glucose is converted into fat, resulting in increased storage of fat.

What makes matters worse is that cortisol-induced high levels of insulin also leads to increased production and storage of fat. This means that exposure to chronically high levels of cortisol and cortisol-induced insulin are major main reasons why stress can lead to increase in body fat and obesity.

Another physiological reason that was found recently for why stress leads to obesity is a molecule that the body releases when stressed called NPY (neuropeptide Y). NPY appears to unlock certain receptors in fat cells, causing them to grow in both size and number.

NPY was discovered by researchers during an experiment in which stressed and unstressed mice were fed either a standard diet or a high-fat, high-sugar, “comfort food” diet.

As expected, the mice on the high-fat, high-sugar diet gained fat while those on the standard diet did not. But researchers found the stressed mice on the high-fat, high-sugar diet developed more body fat than the unstressed mice fed the same diet.

The good news of all this is that stress-induced obesity can be overturned by the learning of simple stress management techniques.

And for that matter, diet-induced obesity can be overturned by the learning of better food habits.

So there is hope!

Cars Are Making Us Obese

I’ve pointed out during this series on obesity that the obesity rates are steadily increasing at alarming numbers in adults and children, and that the number one cause is the prevalence of junk foods and sugar drinks.

Now you can add another thing to the list, and it’s something that most people use on an everyday and regular basis: cars.

There’s a direct correlation between the obesity rate in a nation, and the amount of driving as a primary means of transportation.

The more walking and biking a nation does, the lower its obesity rate. The more driving, the higher.

Which is why Americans are on average some 15% more obese than residents of European countries like Spain, Germany, Denmark, and Sweden. Only 5% of Americans regularly bike or walk as a form of transit, while over 50% of people in those countries do. And not all of this is purely from the exercise that you get by walking or biking, either.

If you live in a dense, urban, walkable city, you can consume less energy per person than any other kind of environment. It turns out that all that walking keeps you skinny too.

One person wrote in to the Atlantic magazine saying, “Car culture is terrible for public health. Again, I’m significantly overweight. Always trying new exercise and diet programs that never result in sustained weight loss. What has? Spent two months in London without car, relying on public transit and walking, no attempt at dieting or exercising. Weight loss: 22 lbs. Six weeks in NYC without car, relying on public transit and walking, no attempt… Weight loss: 19 lbs.”

This also means that there’s a correlation between living in suburban sprawl, or sprawling cities, and being obese, because of the amount of driving that has to be done. Researchers are finding that suburban dwellers are significantly fatter than their urban counterparts, primarily because they drive everywhere, even to the fitness club.

If you recall in the article a few days ago, I stated that Miami is the most obese city in the U.S. If you’ve ever been to Miami, you know that it is not a walk-centric city – it is one sprawling megalopolis.

Speaking of sprawling cities, L.A. is another one. Which makes the above music video, The Ride, by the rock band 30 Seconds to Mars really cool, as it’s an ode to L.A. bicycle culture.

It must have taken a lot of work to make the video, because there’s barely a car in sight in the video. Even if you don’t like the video, it’s worth watching with the sound off just for the visuals of the bikers taking over in one of the most car-centric cities in the world.

Call it a fantasy, but we need it to become a reality.

And so, if you’re a conspiracy theorist, you may wonder: the automobile created suburban sprawl, bigger and fuller fridges, the proliferation of fast food restaurants and the decline in the use of bikes.

Could it be that the system is rigged to put people in cars and take them to Wal-Mart and to McDonalds for cheap, fast high-fat food?

No wonder obesity rates are sky-high! And no wonder we’re becoming a world of people stuck in a High Density Lifestyle.

Join the conversation – I invite you to join my Facebook page and follow me on Twitter!

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