for longevity. The isolated, poor, rural population also has a genetic inheritance of low (bad) cholesterol and live in a spectacularly beautiful, green place with pristine water and air.
From the article: (The doctor, below, has been studying the village):
Living a long life, Bama-style, according to those who have managed it:
Huang Puxin, 113: Be a good person. Have a good heart.
Huang Makan, 108: Eat green, organic, simple foods. I eat sweetcorn congee a lot. I don't have many demands.
Huang Meijian, 99: Work and walk around every day.
Dr Yang Ze's (strinkingly similar) advice
1. Treat yourself and others well, be more tolerant to yourself and others, be optimistic. Love life, love your family, have love to offer to people and be open-minded.
2. Have a healthy lifestyle. Neither eat too much nor stay hungry. Keep your diet bland. Eat more vegetables and fruits, and less protein and carbohydrates.
3. Do more exercise. All centenarians help themselves and do everything by themselves … They go farming in the mountains, they cook for themselves.
4. Bama women have children late: they give birth to their first baby at 27 and the last baby is usually around 42 or 43.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/30/chinese-village-secret-long-life-bama-guangxi
(my emphasis)
(Not sure what having children at a later age has to do with living long. I've read of emotional and educational impacts of having children too young, but not that it shortens your lifespan.)
Another interesting quote:
When Yang first arrived, they ate "rice porridge with a bit of salt, and hemp oil", and seldom consumed meat. Old people were surrounded by relatives. "They were not lonely and were happy. They were calm, had fewer desires, did not compete, and were more optimistic," Yang said.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/30/chinese-village-secret-long-life-bama-guangxi
(my emphasis)
I wonder if hemp oil is not key to it all--that wonderful plant!
Anyway, good advice, eh? Love other people rather than competing with them; eat a simple, "green" diet; stay active (walking, farming, doing for yourself).
The "hippies" had it right!
But also, consider the environment. In this case, the environment is not only beautiful and unspoiled, it has provided everything that the local people have needed--the right combination of flora and fauna, climate, water availability and other factors, that have made food production without the horrors of industrial food production (pesticides, chemical fertilizers, etc.) possible.
The article stresses the "ambience" of the place but it would be good to know more specifics about the ecology--microclimates, watersheds, forest, soils, wildlife and more--that the village people are integrated into (and how they are integrated, i.e., their ecological practices, their ancient knowledge of how to BE in that environment for the environment to sustain them).
Not everybody has such a natural environment--in fact, it's rare and getting rarer. We may end up having to
duplicate it by artificial, "terraforming" technologies. Industrialization has spoiled many places. Indeed, it is literally killing Planet Earth. And, personally, I think that the planet is in such dire straits, due to industrialization, that the only way back to planet health may be technology. (And the other part of that may be space travel--finding other potentially-habitable places and "terraforming" them--because of the pressure of overpopulation--the other factor in the human death blows to Planet Earth.)
Longevity isn't everything (as some of these elders express--they rather like the new availability of more meat, for instance). But longevity certainly is an indicator of optimal life conditions. Ordinary people (the health tourists, as opposed to scientists/doctors) sense that it is the PLACE that produces health. While attitude, diet and activity combine with the place to produce both health and longevity, the place is the hardest of all factors to reproduce. We don't have many places like this any more in our world--green, unpolluted, beautiful, bountiful. How do we create not just healthier individual lives, but RE-create the "gardens of eden" in which our species, and all of our plant and animal companions, evolved?
There ARE new technologies, based on "Gaia" science, that can re-green polluted, despoiled environments. Indeed, just pull up a patch of lawn and plant some vegies, or native plants, and you are taking the first step toward re-greening wherever you are. And there is MUCH MORE that can be done, with both science and intuition. (Intuition is important--what kind of environment do you feel good in?)
Why are we not doing this, rather than pouring all of our resources into oil wars and other horrors? Well, some people ARE doing "greening"--more and more people are, in truth. And every little bit helps! Think of China's Bama county--in its unspoiled, remote condition--as a sort of template. WHAT environment do we need to thrive? WHAT makes us happy? WHAT makes life worth living? HOW do we find or re-create, and protect, the matrix of life?
= new reply since forum marked as read
