Change environment, live longer, Blue Zone team promises beach city residents
Vitality City team member Mike King talks about longevity with Body Glove co-founder Bob Meistrell, who celebrated his 81st birthday last August by diving to a depth of 162 feet off of Torrance Beach. Photo
The Beach Cities Health District hopes to reverse that projection, not just locally, but nationally by partnering with the Healthways Blue Zones Vitality City project.
Vitality City is the brainchild of Dan Buettner, author of the 2009 New York Times bestseller The Blue Zones: Lessons for living longer from the people who’ve lived the longest.
Ten years ago, Buettner, with backing from National Geographic, began visiting communities with high life expectancies. On average residents of these communities live a decade longer than the average American.
“National exercise programs, the food pyramid, special diets – none of those have been shown to increase life expectancy,” Buettner told a gathering of BCHD administrators and business and community leaders from the three beach cities during a meeting last Thursday at the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center.
Buettner was accompanied by Vitality City partners Justin Smith of Healthways, a national provider of healthcare services to 180 million people, and Roy Spence of the Purpose Institute.
“Our approach, instead of plumbing academia, was to find geographic areas where long life expectancies had been confirmed,” Buettner said in describing the research that led to the writing of Blue Zones. The term “Blue Zone” came from a longevity researcher’s practice of using a blue marker on maps to identify communities with high life expectancies.
Three of the communities he writes about in Blue Zones – in Sardinia, Costa Rica and Okinawa – are in primitive, rural areas. The fourth, just 75 miles east on the 91 Freeway, was Loma Linda, home to 9,000 Seventh Day Adventists, whose religion emphasizes good health.
Over a period of six years, Buettner and his team of medical doctors and anthropologists identified nine practices common to the four communities that they believe contribute to long lives.
The purpose of Thursday’s meeting was to allow the health district and local leaders the opportunity to convince Buettner and other members the Vitality City team to introduce those nine practices to beach city residents.
The BCHD proposal is one of three finalists. The other two are Asheville, North Carolina, and a cluster of Central Florida cities that include Maitland, Winter Park and College Park.
If the beach cities are selected and the project is successful here, Buettner, Smith and Spence hope to spread the Vitality City concept across the country.
Vitality Team members and local civic leaders taking a break at the Manhattan Pier, after bicycling along the bike path are Healthways Blue Zone co-leader Joel Spoonheim, BCHD Grow Well coordinator Thuy Kudsi, BCHD board member Dr. Robert Grossman, Manhattan Beach assistant to the city manager Lindy Coe-Juell, Healthways senior vice president Mike King, Healthways team leader Janet Calhoun, Healthways designer Amy Moore, BCHD chief medical officer Dr. Lisa Santora, Healthways Blue Zone co-director Justin Smith, Manhattan councilman Richard Montgomery, Redondo councilman Pat Aust, Healthways senior vice president Vicki Shepard, and BCHD communications manager Michael Shaw.
Pitching for a longer life
BCHD CEO Susan Burden, in her presentation, argued that Vitality City could build on the health district’s already extensive health and disease prevention programs.
A group of Madison School elementary school children demonstrated the district’s Live Well Kids program by leading the visitors in calisthenics. All 4,000 of Redondo’s elementary school students perform eight minutes of calisthenics at the start of each school day.
Lisa Santora, the district’s chief medical officer, told the visitors that 10 years ago the district switched its emphasis from promoting medical services to promoting health and preventing disease.
But the district has been unable to afford surveys to measure the results of its programs.
“Now we need to make the transition from good intentions to evidence-based programs,” she said. “We need to measure the improvement our programs make so they can be replicated.”
If the Vitality City team selects the beach cities, it will conduct a Gallup-Healthways Well-Being survey at the start and finish of the two-year program. The survey measures not only physical health, but also emotional health, healthy behavior, and work environment health.
Last year’s Well-Being survey of all 435 Congressional Districts found that the 36th Congressional District, which includes the beach cities, ranked 85th overall, but 361st in “work environment.”
Following the presentations, Healthways’ Smith expressed his appreciation by saying, “I’ve never seen anything like the Beach Cities Health District.”
He added that the goal of Vitality City is not simply to increase life expectancy, but to “improve economic and social vitality.” He said Vitality City’s goal is to replicate the program in large cities throughout the country.
“In 10 years I’d like to see Los Angeles become a Vitality City,” he said.
Proof’s in the pilot
A Vitality City pilot program was conducted last year in Albert Lea, Minnesota, a city of 18,000 residents.
In just 10 months, the 2,300 residents who participated in the program lost an average of 2.6 pounds and increased their life expectancy by 3.1 years. Absenteeism among city and school employees dropped 20 percent.
Buettner stressed that Albert Lea’s success wasn’t brought about by citizens individually deciding to change their lifestyles.
“What works is permanent changes in the environment. That is the principal behind this project,” he said.
In Albert Lea, school buses began dropping kids one-quarter mile from school to encourage them to both walk and socialize. Perhaps the most important of the nine practices for a long life Buettner writes in Blue Zones, is to socialize with others who share healthy values.
“American teenagers consume a gallon of soda a week, which amounts to four cups of sugar a week,” Buettner told local leaders.
To discourage junk food consumption, Albert Lea schools prohibited eating in school hallways and classrooms and banned candy sale fundraisers, he said.
Parents were encouraged to “plate food” in the kitchen. Serving it family style allows kids to pick only what they like and encourages overeating.
Albert Lea markets were enlisted to promote vegetables and fruit and deemphasize soda and other unhealthy foods. Restaurants were encouraged to redesign their menus to encourage diners to select healthy entrees.
“Label something on the menu ‘healthy choice’ and people won’t order it,” he said.
Albert Lea civic and business leaders were convinced to shelve plans to improve traffic flow through the downtown and, instead, allocate funds for a walking path around the city’s lake.
At the end of his talk, Buettner recalled fondly the two years he lived in Redondo Beach and commuted along the bike path to his office on Rosecrans Avenue in El Segundo.
In an effort to freshen those memories, BCHD officials ended their presentation to the Vitality City team by taking the team on a bike ride along the beach bike path.
Nine Blue Zone practices for longer lives
(From Blue Zones: Lessons for living longer from the people who’ve lived the longest by Dan Buettner, published by National Geographic)
1. Move naturally. Engage in regular, low impact physical activity.
2. Stop eating when your stomach is 80 percent full. “While most Americans keep eating until their stomachs feel full, Okinawans stop as soon as they no longer feel hungry,” Buettner writes in Blue Zones.
3. Plant slant. Eat fruit, vegetables and nuts. Avoid meat and processed foods.
4. Drink red wine, in moderation.
5. Have a sense of purpose. People with a clear goal live longer.
6. Take time to relieve stress. Seventh Day Adventist avoid work, including school work, from Friday sundown until Saturday sunset.
7. Participate in a spiritual community.
8. Put loved ones first.
9. Right tribe: Surround yourself with others who share healthy values.
To calculate your life expectancy visit www.bluezones.com. ER