Recently, a BBC documentary "How to Slow Down Aging" went viral online.
How to Slow Down Aging
The protagonist of the film is a plastic surgeon named Rodina, whose daily work is related to the skin, and what has always made her curious is how the skin gets older? How can people prevent it? So she left the treatment room to enter advanced dermatology, and the results far exceeded her expectations!
How to slow down aging? To sum up: pay attention to sun protection, anti-glycation (reduce starch intake, quit sugar), eat brightly colored foods, fatty fish, and foods with a bitter taste.
I have to say that in the fast-paced, stressful modern society, people are paying more and more attention to health and wellness.
In Japan, office workers are known as workaholics, and overtime is the norm. However, Japan, which is the most stressed, is the longest-lived country in the world, and the average life expectancy of its citizens ranks first in the world for many years. Their average life expectancy is 87 years for women and 81 years for men. For more than two decades, the average life expectancy of Japanese people has ranked first in the world, and the proportion of centenarians in the southern Japanese island of Okinawa is the highest in the world.
Why is that?
The secret behind it may all lie in the word "ikigai." "The Secret of Japanese Happiness and Longevity" (ikigai) reveals this unique Japanese concept of life for you, through finding the meaning of life, developing good daily activities and eating habits, cultivating hobbies, actively socializing, relieving stress, so that we can concentrate and live every day with enthusiasm and obtain a happy and long life.
Let's unlock more longevity poses in the book
ikigai is the meaning of everyone's life, how to know what your ikigai is?
Let's think carefully about a question: what you love, what you are good at, what the world needs, what can be paid, is there any overlap between these four things? In fact, where these four factors overlap, it is your ikigai.
Of course, some people may be able to find their own ikigai soon, and some people may find out slowly. If you fall into the latter category, the most important thing is perseverance, after all, the goal you are looking for is the source of strength that supports daily action.
Because of this, Okinawans tend to maintain a high degree of professionalism in their daily work, and pay special attention to detail. For example, the author of the book met a skilled craftsman in a brush factory in Okinawa whose job was to make brushes from hair to hair, and she had been perfecting this craft all her life, which can now be described as fascinating.
For happiness and longevity, ikigai is essential. If work gives you meaning, don't retire. In Japan, although the government stipulates that you can retire at the age of 60, many elderly people will choose to continue working. If a hobby can fill your life with joy and meaning, don't give up on it.
The elderly in Okinawa have followed this philosophy and have maintained a vibrant life. If they have to retire, they will not be idle, and they will still maintain their positive state in other ways, such as gardening or participating in other work in the community. The benefits of an active engagement mindset are obvious, and studies have shown that centenarians in Okinawa have very low rates of heart disease and Alzheimer's disease.
We all know that physical and mental health are essential to living a high quality of life. But in reality, we tend to lose sight of our own hearts. In fact, a strong mind, like a strong body, is the key to longevity.
Let me ask you, do you usually sit at work, and when you get home from work, do you still sit? In fact, modern people's long-term sedentary lifestyle has a negative impact on the body and mood, and in the same way, the lack of exercise in the brain will weaken the neural connection and is not conducive to health. Therefore, it is very important to use your brain regularly. Neuroscientist Szlomo Bresnitz even believes that older people lose their brains because they are stuck in immutable thought patterns and lifestyles and are reluctant to try new activities.
So how do we exercise our brains? Quite simply, any game of thinking can be done, such as playing chess or playing cards. If you're not satisfied with that, you can also get out of the house, participate in some group activities, and deal with others more. Socializing is a great exercise for the brain.
In addition to this, another secret to longevity is to avoid stress. Some studies have found that stress is closely linked to premature aging, as stress can cause excessive physical and psychological wear and tear. For example, researchers at the University of Heidelberg in Germany conducted an experiment in which an aspiring young doctor was interviewed for a series of laborious job interviews in which he solved a complex set of mathematical equations.
The researchers took a sample of the doctor's blood and found that the stress of the interview made his body produce antibodies, as if he had been infected with some kind of virus or bacteria. If there is a real pathogen, this immune response can protect the body from harm. But the problem is that he is not really infected, in this case, the antibodies brought by the pressure will attack healthy cells and accelerate the aging of the body.
But most people living in cities are not under pressure, what can we do to reduce stress? Try practicing mindfulness, such as doing yoga and taking the time to exercise, which allows us to calm down and observe and appreciate our bodies and mental states more closely.
Imagine if your greatest hobby was skiing, and now you're sliding down a beautiful pistes, immersed in a state of joy and concentration, as if you could keep sliding like this. In fact, immersing ourselves in one thing can make us live longer. Why?
In the 1970s, psychologist Mikhari Zikson Mihali proposed the flow theory, "flow" refers to a state of complete concentration and enjoyment, in which the person immersed in it blocks out everything else and does not even feel the passage of time.
No matter what you're doing, just actively focusing on a purposeful activity can allow us to experience a state of flow. Flow can bring people a feeling of excitement and fulfillment, reduce feelings of worry, greatly benefit mental health, and make us enjoy life more.
If your job just happens to get you into a flow state, that's ideal, and if you can't, make sure you have one or two hobbies that bring flow.
But then again, it's important to choose the right difficulty level when we're pursuing flow. After all, if the task you choose is too simple, you may soon get bored and unable to concentrate, resulting in the inability to enter the state. Conversely, if the task you choose is too difficult, there is a chance that you will be too stressed and eventually choose to give up.
It's like saying you want to learn a new language, and you just need to make yourself feel a little challenging at the beginning. For example, you may be a master programmer, but you already feel that it is not interesting, at this time, you can try to expand your knowledge and learn a new programming language. In this way, by investing in hobbies in a whole new way, you can regain the experience of flow again.
For many years, the average life expectancy of Japanese people has been the highest in the world, which has also made the way Japanese people eat and drink the focus of attention. Okinawans live longer than japan as a whole. What is the reason behind this? In order to solve this puzzle, since the 1970s, Makoto Suzuki, a cardiologist at the University of the Ryukyu Islands, has been studying the diet of Okinawans. Here are some of his findings:
First of all, okinawans have a very rich recipe and a variety of foods. Locals can eat as many as 206 kinds of food, including many herbs and spices. For example, they eat five servings of fruits and vegetables a day. In order to ensure that the food is sufficiently diverse, they will also try to choose different colors of food.
Compared with the rich vegetables and fruits, their staple food is very simple, basically rice and noodles. Not only that, but seasonings such as salt and sugar are also used very little. By the world's average, Japanese eating habits are already relatively healthy, while Okinawans eat even lighter diets — they consume half as much salt as other Japanese and only 40 percent sugar.
In addition to the variety of foods, it is also important to eat less. Okinawans have a habit of eating only eight minutes full. That is, when there is still a little bit of hunger, it is no longer eaten. How? It's as simple as skipping dessert after eating, or reducing the portion size of food. In order to achieve small portions, the plates and bowls used by Okinawans for meals are generally relatively small, containing a certain amount of rice, vegetables, miso soup, and a small dish such as edamame.
For Okinawans, eating less has become an instinct to stay healthy. And modern science has confirmed that reducing calories does have benefits. We have a growth-promoting protein called insulin-like growth factor 1, and if we have too much of this protein, cells will age faster. By reducing calorie intake, the amount of this protein is also reduced. Therefore, there can be a direct connection between eating less and longevity.
All in all, if you want to get a healthy, long and happy life, you must not only eat well, exercise more, cultivate hobbies, and actively socialize, but also know how to relieve stress and fight anxiety.
However, in these years, anyone who does not have a little anxiety tendency is embarrassed to admit that they are modern people.
If you're feeling stressed and suffering from insomnia and anxiety, try to find solutions from books. Here, I recommend you a book list column "Selected 40 High-Scoring Books for Anxiety Healing".
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Edited | Liangshan
Typography | Liangshan
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