Dr. Day is a renowned heart cardiologist who received his medical degree from Johns Hopkins and who completed his residency and fellowships in cardiovascular medicine and cardiac electrophysiology at Standford University. Dr. Day was schooled in and was of a mind that as the body ages, deterioration and disease were a part of the natural aging process. He prescribed his patients medicine for heart ailments that in the scheme of things were all actually preventable. He too suffered from overweight, insomnia, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and degenerative joint disease. It left him with a tinge of melancholia knowing as a doctor and particularly as a heart surgeon he should be living and eating differently than he was but he told himself given his schedule it was just easier to grab whatever was at hand to eat – the sugary goodies always available at the hospital or the pizza or other junk food on the way to or from work. Exercise was as non-existent in his routine as was eating a healthy meal. Family time didn’t fare much better as he was always tired when he was at home. While delivering a lecture at a medical conference in China he heard about a village where Diabetes, Cancer, Heart Disease, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, High Blood Pressure etc. were non-existent. Not only that but that many of the residents in this remote mountain village were over the age of 100 years old! He couldn’t believe it could be true but he was curious to find out. He made the trek to Bama what many Chinese people called Longevity Village. A place high in the mountains in north eastern China about 20 miles from the border of Viet Nam. The doctor spoke Mandarin which enabled him to communicate with the people there. He was introduced to several inhabitants that looked to be elderly who were either out working in the fields, some were practicing Kung Fu, or lifting things and moving with such agility he couldn’t believe they were doing it. He was really floored when he learned that many were 100 years old or older and had living children in their 80s! These people were clear minded and great storytellers. He offered to help one woman who was lifting furniture onto a cart and she told him, ‘oh no, doctor, you might hurt yourself! I’m used to this. Another time he had been helping a centenarian work in her field harvesting crops. She had filled a bag very full and hoisted it onto her back and started to walk back to the village. He insisted on carrying it for her but when she sat it down he couldn’t pick it up! It took all he had to hoist it up on his shoulder and struggle to get it back. The lady offerered to take it back from him and he asked her how could she carry such a heavy load and at her age? She said she was used to it she had been doing it all her life, why would she stop now? He met this answer with all of the hard chores and work the centenarians did there. They always answered I’ve been doing it all my life why should I stop now? On one of his visits one of the 100+ ladies had taken a fall and was in a wheelchair for a year. The next time he was back she was up walking and working in the field. He asked her how she felt and she answered “Like I could fight an army!’ And proceeded to skip away like a young girl and do a Kung Fu routine down the road kicking her legs up and throwing punches. The doctor thought there must be some special something that made these folks this way like superhumans able to carry on long beyond what the rest of the world could. He found no disease, no hypertension and observed their diet which consisted of all they wanted to eat at every meal but he noted they ate no dairy though they had water buffalo and could have drank that milk or used it in recipes. When he asked if they ever drank it or used it in cooking they said, “No, why would we? It would make us sick!” Somebody knew something there that the rest of the world didn’t. He said they ate meat but only a couple of times a week. They ate pigs and chickens and fish. One man quoted an old Chinese proverb saying, “the Chinese eat anything with 2 legs except people and anything with 4 legs except a chair.” They used spices and herbs, ate a lot of legumes, nuts and seeds, particularly pumpkin seeds, vegetables, fruit and meat as they had available the thing missing from their diets was dairy and processed foods that are so prevalent in the Standard American Diet (SAD). They also used no oil in their cooking and didn’t know why anyone would. The village at the time the doctor began visiting was rural with no electricity so no t.v. People got about 12 hours of sleep per night because without electricity they found no reason to stay up much beyond sundown. They had no gastric problems and no insomnia and went to sleep soon after laying down. The doctor was so amazed by all he observed that when home he tried to follow the villagers’ precepts. It was a marvel! The doctor dropped 40 pounds following the eating pattern he learned from the villagers – no processed food, no dairy, by going to bed earlier and getting 12 hours of sleep instead of the 5 or less hours he had been sleeping each night if he were lucky, he found himself changing for the good. He felt better, he lost weight, he wasn’t pushing himself on a caffeine based diet – the villagers only drank water from the river so the doctor stopped drinking anything but water and with the diet change, no chocolate nor caffeine drinks hyping him up and a more restful schedule he began to transform into a healthier man even getting in exercise at last and making time for his family by not pushing a go-go-go schedule of work only. He felt better, he looked better, he was better health-wise. He asked some of his patients if they would like to try the new plan and 92% of those who began it are still on it. He calls it the Longevity Plan rather than a diet because diet has such negativity of denial attached to it and on this food plan you can eat as much as you want just avoid dairy, caffeine and processed food (Oh man! That’s almost everything in the American menu! Sorry Vegans, but, we are bombarded with processed everything and fed to bursting on hidden corn [starches that turn into sugars] and wheat [whey that more people than realize it are allergic to]. Really good book. I loved the doctor’s and his family’s visits to the village and the wisdom of the elders when they told their stories or reacted to things the doctor asked them about. A worthy read for anyone wishing to do their body good.
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