All posts by Dr. Sam

Optimal Health

Finding the Blue Zones

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Blue Zones are made up of specific people in this world who have discovered a worthwhile formula for healthy aging.  Blue Zones are comprised of five areas in the world where people live the longest.

Man and woman embracing on the back deck of a boat with water and mountains in the background.
Francesca and I enjoying our time in Capri, getting ready for a “Blue Zone” style dinner on the island.

The archipelago of Okinawa, Japan, known as the “Land of Immortals” is a Blue Zone. The small island of Ikaria, Greece, is another, as is Sardinia in the Mediterranean nicknamed “Place Where People Live the Longest in the World.” The Nicoya Peninsula of Costa Rica and the Southern California city of Loma Linda, which is home to a high number of Seventh Day Adventists, also made the Blue Zones list.

Blue Zones and the healthy communities that come with them shouldn’t be a secret. It’s a sustainable approach to living that should be spreading across the world. But instead, data is showing that people spend more time alone as they age, not getting enough of the social interaction that can bring meaning to our lives.

Spending time alone

This is certainly true in the United States where a recent report showed a spike upward in time spent alone after the age of 40, the age where we generally seem to be most engaged with our partners, family, friends, and colleagues. The data shows that when people reach the age of 80 the balance of their time spent alone in minutes per day far outstrips their time spent with others.

This has me thinking about how we might bridge this gap and circumvent the loneliness and despair that many world citizens encounter each day. It’s too easy in our 21st century cultures for people to zap their lives and miss out on the meaningful human interaction that we need to sustain us as we rush around trying to experience as much as possible. This takes a toll, and it can lead to more time spent alone, simply because we probably aren’t creating enough of the social bonds that can make a life truly worth living.

So what can you do?

You don’t have to live in the Blue Zones to lead a lifestyle inspired by them. In fact, it’s the elegant simplicity of Blue Zone living that we should be adopting. And you don’t have to go “all in” to get started. Because you might already be living in ways that coincide with this philosophy without realizing it.

For instance, exercise does not have to be an intense pursuit of constantly pushing yourself to get stronger, faster, or better. Instead, tending to your backyard garden coupled with extended walks and other simple activities is how you can move naturally and reap the benefits. Adopting a Blue Zones exercise regime is quite simple and rewarding. It’s why the daily walks I take with Francesca literally keep me on my toes and thinking about how to live healthier with every step I take. It comes naturally.

Here are more simple steps you can take to lead a lifestyle inspired by the Blue Zones:

Know your Purpose

Man playing golf with ocean shoreline in the background.
Enjoying the fresh air while playing a round of golf in Corsica.

Having purpose in your life has been shown to help you live longer. Find what you are passionate about and lean into becoming a better you each day. Maybe it’s a hobby, or a spiritual commitment that brings meaning into your life? Whatever it might be, don’t be apathetic. Find your why for living a healthy life. 

Eat healthy meals with family and friends

Make mealtime not only about the healthy food, but also about connecting with those you care about. This is your daily opportunity to support those around you simply by being present. Listen to your loved ones and share your wisdom and advice with them when they need your counsel. 

Get enough sleep

Your life will run more smoothly if you get at least eight hours of sleep each night. Those who sleep six hours or less are also less happy. It stands to reason. Create rituals before bed to prepare you for rest. And enjoy your wake up time, and the coffee that comes with it, if you like to enjoy a morning cup.

Get out every day

Get outside and be active every day. If the sun is shining, it can brighten your outlook. And even if it’s raining, you can find beauty and peacefulness in the drops falling from the sky. So grab your umbrella and go.  

Get involved in your community

Join like-minded people in your community. Volunteer for a cause you believe in or simply look for your tribe of people who are working to make positive impact. By improving the community, you are making the whole world a better place for everyone. What could be more enriching than that?

Cheers!

 

 

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Optimal Health

Heart Health: 3 Simple Steps to Healthy Living

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Family hiking with dogs in the mountains
Enjoying a walk in the fresh mountain air with Francesca and our daughter Koral along with her two dogs Cosmos and Nala. Simple steps towards healthy living, such as these regular walks, allow us to be ready whenever the next adventure calls. Telluride, Colorado. 2019

 

Heart health is about taking simple steps to live healthy. And living healthier doesn’t have to be complicated. Besides, being in good health is the best form of prevention. The dividends it pays forward can keep you living a meaningful life even beyond 100 years.

And, speaking of the heart, it’s truly one of the most important organs in the body. Each day your heart beats around 100,000 times. So, it works around the clock, pumping blood through your cardiovascular system, carrying oxygen and nutrients to tissues while carrying away unwanted carbon dioxide and waste. It just keeps everything flowing.

What you eat can have a big impact on heart health. Tweaking your diet to be more heart healthy doesn’t mean you have to lose out on flavor. You can still enjoy delicious meals. Changing your diet isn’t the only thing you can do to support your heart health, but it sure is a good place to start. Here are three simple steps you can take.

Don’t smoke.

Smoking is tough on your heart. It chokes your entire body of life-sustaining oxygen. More than 7,000 chemicals are inhaled with each puff, damaging your heart and blood vessels and increasing the risk of coronary heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke and more.

If you are a smoker, one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself is to become a non-smoker. You may need a few attempts to finally quit, but the reward is huge.

You don’t need to go it alone: join a group or team up with a friend and figure out a good plan to get it done. You’ll make your heart (and your loved ones) happy.

Exercise

Just like any other muscle, the heart will weaken and atrophy with little use. “Use it or lose it,” as the saying goes. It’s a big reason why exercise is so important for heart health. Plus, exercise helps lower blood pressure, decreases artery-clogging “bad” LDL-cholesterol and raises “good” HDL-cholesterol.

Regular exercise also helps you stay independent as you age so you can enjoy an active, vigorous lifestyle well into your senior years. I know it works for me!

And, let’s not overlook the simple joy of movement, and how effects of a good workout carry over into the rest of your day.

How much? Health experts suggest that getting at least 30 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity on most, preferably all, days of the week is an appropriate long-term fitness goal for just about anyone interested in a healthier heart. Choose something that you enjoy and can do regularly. Perhaps have a friend or spouse join you?

Pay closer attention to your diet.

Enjoying healthy, delicious foods doesn’t have to be a burden. Instead, it’s an opportunity to experience new worlds of flavor and texture that you may not have tasted before.

When it comes to heart health, there are a few foods that I especially like. You may want to add one or more to your menu. Here’s the breakdown:

Assortment of nuts on a white background
A handful of nuts makes for a heart-healthy snack.

Nuts and seeds contain heart healthy fats such as mono, poly and omega-3 fatty acids that can help support cholesterol already in the normal range.

 Salmon and other fatty fish such as mackerel, herring, sardines, albacore tuna and lake trout are a rich source of omega-3 fatty acids, which help support the health and structure of arteries and other blood vessels. If you’re not a fish eater, you could consider supplementing with Nutrilite™ Heart Health Omega to fill the gaps in your diet.*

 Dried beans are a rich source of fiber, particularly water-soluble fiber. This type of fiber not only helps support healthy cholesterol but helps balance blood sugar as well.

 Berries (particularly blueberries and strawberries) are rich in anthocyanins, a type of phytonutrient that provides antioxidant protection.

 Garlic has been shown to have heart-health benefits. Nutrilite™ Garlic Heart Care is an excellent option if you are concerned about garlic breath.*

Leafy Spinach
Leafy green spinach is good for the heart.

Dark leafy green veggies like spinach, kale, and broccoli are rich in phytonutrients, vitamins and minerals, especially folate. This B vitamin has been shown to help support a healthy heart.

Don’t forget: To really enjoy your meals, be sure to include lively conversation, good cheer, and perhaps a little indulgence now and again. After all, a little red wine, and dark chocolate—in moderation—have been shown to have benefits, too!

In the end, having a healthy heart, and a healthier life, shouldn’t be difficult. The simple steps you take each day will get you there. Stick with it!

Cheers!

* This statement has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.  This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. 

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Optimal Health

Living Beyond 100 Years

Living beyond 100 years is becoming much more commonplace, despite the global challenges we’ve faced recently. In fact, according to a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the average life expectancy in the United States reached an all-time high of 78 years.

The global pandemic will cause this number to decline in the short term, but it still means that more people are facing the reality of living much longer lives. The startling truth is that of the babies born in the United States today, as many as half can expect to celebrate their 100th birthday.[i]

Baby who may live beyond 100 years laying on a blanket with mother in the background.
As many as half of the babies born today will live to see their 100th birthday.

That’s why I was excited to learn about an intriguing new initiative that was launched late last year by The Stanford Center on Longevity called The New Map of Life. It outlines how our societies need to change to account for our ever-increasing lifespans.

A new way of living

I’ve been a lifelong champion of prevention and if we’re going to be around longer while staying healthier, we need to be preparing ourselves for a new way of living, living that isn’t only about our life span, but also about our health span.

If you want to extend your health span, simple habits are the shortest path to doing so. Your health span is about living more of your years in good health. To me, it’s a big deal because good health is where we get our energy and vitality to fully enjoy life’s adventures. It’s also where we find strength and resilience—both mental and physical—to overcome life’s challenges.

If we are going to be living longer lives, past 100 years, how we experience them becomes even more important. Especially if we want to improve our quality of life. What will we do with all that extra time? Luckily, The New Map of Life initiative provides guidance on how we might reshape our longer lives.  

Here are some highlights from the report that I think you will appreciate:

Stay curious and keep learning

Instead of only focusing on education early on in your first couple decades, look for learning opportunities beyond formal education. Be curious at every stage of your life and have a growth mindset.

Embrace life transitions

If you are living a 100-year-life, you should be resetting your direction often. There are multiple intersections throughout the decades of life that provide more opportunity for meaningful interactions across generations. Interactions where knowledge and wisdom will flow, improving everyone’s quality of life, no matter the age.  

Exercise regularly

Healthy older man standing on a snowy road with mountains in the background.
Hiking on a gorgeous winter day in Telluride, Colorado. Photo: Francesca Rehnborg, 2021

Americans over 30 years of age gain about a pound a year on average, and by 40 years they begin to lose muscle mass. Many health changes that we experience throughout life that were thought to be inevitable signs of aging can, instead, be attributed to disuse. Staying active – such as 30-minute walks five times per week and muscle-strengthening exercises twice a week – can help mitigate aging effects.   

Build a strong community of friends

Make an effort to emphasize friendship even during the busiest years of your life when it might seem harder to make time for relationships. A healthy social life with a handful of close friends is a strong predictor of health, and even the length of our life. 

See yourself living a good long life

Although we’ve added 30 years to our life expectancy, we shouldn’t just add them onto the end. Take advantage of those extra years throughout your life by thinking holistically about all 100 years. Find a new sport, go back to school, or even start a new career later in life. 

The human body is an amazing machine. Given the right nutrition and maintenance, it can keep going strong for a very long time. Well past 100 years. Healthy eating and taking Nutrilite™ products to fill gaps in my diet have been like extra insurance for me.

For starters, I consume enough high-quality protein every day because it is an essential building block to help regain muscle mass. Nutrilite™ All Plant Protein Powder can be a good protein supplement. And studies have found that supplementation of plant-based multivitamin supplements, like Nutrilite™ Double X multivitamin, provide antioxidant benefits on oxidative stress that are essential to support optimal health.* 

Making the most of our lives and improving the way we think about each stage of our growth will maximize our health spans. And a healthier world is a better place for everyone.

Cheers!

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[i] https://longevity.stanford.edu/ 100 Years to Thrive

*This statement has not been reviewed by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

Farming

Farming in the Future

A person smiling for the camera
Nutrilite Scientist, Susannah Cooper, Ph.D.

Talk to Susannah Cooper, Ph.D., about innovation in farming and you’ll soon find yourself discussing the ins-and-outs of regenerative agriculture. It’s a newer approach to farming that could make a big difference in how we cultivate the soil and grow crops.

Dr. Cooper works in the Innovation Sciences Department at Nutrilite managing a team of scientists and agronomists who are experimenting with the future of farming.

A long history of sustainable farming

There’s a long history of farming innovation at Nutrilite. It started with my father growing alfalfa in the 1930s before we even knew to call it organic. He was looking for the purest, most nutritious botanicals, and he already knew that they needed to be grown sustainably and naturally, without any synthetic fertilizers or chemicals.

A picture containing outdoor, person, grass, field
Nutrilite Founder Carl Rehnborg in a field of alfalfa.

From our beginning, we’ve believed in the power of plants to deliver the best products to our customers and Amway Business Owners. But it was an “a-ha” moment my father had about happy, healthy cows that helped pave the way for our sustainable farming techniques that we practice up to this day, albeit on a much larger scale. It was the seed of an idea that has blossomed into a movement to help improve the nutrition of people all over the world.

Dr. Cooper’s Ph.D. is in plant breeding and genetics. She also has a master’s degree in entomology, so she understands insects and how they might interact with plants. I spoke with her recently about current Nutrilite farming practices.

The right plant in the right place

Dr. Cooper has a saying. “The right plant in the right place.” It’s a simple phrase, yet it captures the complexity of what she and the team do. The idea is to cultivate the best crops based on geography and type of farming. Hydroponic farming may make sense for certain crops, while other crops will grow better in one of the climates where our organic farms are located. In addition, the large variety of plants Nutrilite grows increases the biodiversity in our farming. Biodiversity, and using cover crops strategically to increase the health of the soil, is not only good farming practice, but it is also good for the planet.

According to Dr. Cooper, it all comes back to focusing on the soil as the most important component of our farming philosophy. The undisturbed soil that regenerative agriculture relies upon can increase carbon sequestration and keep healthy microbes working in the dirt to increase the nutrient density of the plants growing on the land. And healthier soils mean better climate resilience and drought tolerance.

High-tech, earth-friendly techniques

Nutrilite is harnessing the best of emerging technology and combining it with simple, effective, and earth-friendly techniques. For example, the biggest challenge for sustainable farming is weed control. Conventional farms often use synthetic chemicals to control weeds. We don’t. That means we rely on simple weeding along with innovate techniques to keep weeds from germinating. We use flaming early in the season to keep weeds from going to seed and we continue to experiment with lasers that zap weeds before they can even appear.

Trout Lake Farms Agricultural practices. Weeding the field.

Using advanced technology to keep the soil healthy and the crops filled with healthy nutrients is not only the present, but the future of farming. We’ve been relying on GPS tractors for years, but there’s even more innovative technology we can lean on to supply healthy plants for Nutrilite products.

Keeping the soil rich for future generations is the type of stewardship that’s ingrained in our work.

We wouldn’t want it any other way!

Cheers,

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Optimal Health

Blink for 6-Seconds to Reduce Eye Strain – And See the World More Clearly

Francesca and I recently enjoyed a beautiful day hiking on Carmel Beach where we could see all the colors more clearly.

There’s no debate that too much screen time can be hard on your eyes, leaving them tired, often irritated, and too dry. I talked about several ways to help protect your vision health and reduce this digital eye strain in a previous post . Things like adding more leafy greens to your menu, including a vision supplement in your daily routine, or resting your eyes using the 20-20-20 rule.

To me, these are the best kinds of tips. Why? They’re simple to do yet deliver serious benefits.

Because you really shouldn’t take the importance of vision health for granted. Investing in your eye health can help unlock your potential and wellbeing. Simply being able to see the world we live in more clearly can have significant impact on our overall wellness. Plus, we should think about the things that we’re not seeing.

For instance, a 2020 Dartmouth College studyi of nearly 180 volunteers found that most people can’t tell when color is removed from their peripheral vision.

Although humans have a field of vision that spans about 210 degrees (like stretching out both of your arms), 83 percent of the participants couldn’t tell when they were only seeing 32 degrees of color. Nearly a third of the study couldn’t tell when 95 percent of their vision lost color.

Researchers said participants were shocked to find out how much of the world they weren’t focusing on could be changed without them noticing it. The way we perceive the world around us is likely “incorrect” and mostly constructed by what’s in our minds. If our minds routinely fill the gaps in our vision, then we need to make sure that our brain is healthy, and our outlook is positive. Don’t you agree?

Another new research study adds a simple habit to help protect your vision health. Researchers call it blink exercises. You can call it soothing relief for tired eyes. It’s ideally suited for combatting the strain that too much screen time can have on your eyes.

For this study,ii researchers at the University of Auckland in New Zealand followed more than 40 men and women, ranging from 18 to 44 years of age. The study participants were asked to complete a 6-second blink exercise every 20 minutes during their waking hours for 4 weeks.

Alleviate your tired eyes with blink exercises and make sure you are getting the right nutrition to support your vision health.*

One blink session consisted of closing both eyes normally for two seconds and then open. Close both eyes again for two seconds, then squeeze eyelids together tightly for two more seconds before opening both eyes. The participants reported that they completed about 25 of these blink exercises, on average, every day.

The results were both surprising and expected. Not only did this 6-second blink exercise improve the participants blinking patterns, it also significantly improved their dry eye symptoms and the quality of protective tear film needed for eyes to feel comfortable.

If you’re feeling the strain of tired, dry eyes from too much screen time, I encourage you to add blink exercises to your daily routine and build on your healthy diet and supplement habits.

It could be the 6-second solution you need to take your vision health to the next level so you can enjoy more comfortable eyes no matter where you’re looking.

And when you think about it, healthy vision will move you one step closer to seeing your future more clearly.

Cheers!

Dr. Sam Signature

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i Cohen M, Botch T, Robertson C. The limits of color awareness during active, real-world vision. PNAS. 2020:117 (24) 13821-13827. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1922294117

ii Kim AD, Muntz A, Lee J, Wang MTM, Craig JP. Therapeutic benefits of blinking exercises in dry eye disease. Cont Lens Anterior Eye. 2021;44(3):101329. doi:10.1016/j.clae.2020.04.014

* This statement has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.