In his book The Blue Zones, Dan Buettner emphasizes the need to live a healthy l

In his book The Blue Zones, Dan Buettner emphasizes the need to live a healthy life that would enable one to live a longer life. Ideally, Buettner advocates that people should be physically, spiritually, and socially healthy by embracing healthy habits throughout their lives (Buettner, 2012). This paper explores the book The Blue Zones: 9 Lessons for Living Longer to reflect and answer various relevant questions. Reflecting on life, I have embraced walking naturally as one of the steps towards good living and health. The activity is one of the various steps Buettner enlists as essential for healthy living. Walking naturally entails deliberate involvement in activities such as gardening and actively doing house chores. I constantly use my free time to take walks around the compound and work in my garden throughout the day. Walking is a critical part of the Blue Zone activities that stimulate healthy living and eventually lengthen one′s lifespan. Apart from walking naturally, I have embraced an excellent diet as advocated by the Blue Zones. Blue Zones advocates for vegetables as the best diet to make the body healthy and robust, allowing for longer life. Blue zone categorizes leafy vegetables as the best of the best foods to keep the body strong and enhance lengthy living. Leafy greens like spinach, kale, beet and turnip tops, chard, and collards are the best foods for extending life. All year long, whole grains, beans, and seasonal fruits and vegetables are the main ingredients in blue zone meals. Plant-based oils are plentiful and are all preferred to fats derived from animals. While walking naturally is helpful in my health, I am considering embracing ′purpose′ as a lesson that can improve my life and health soon. The purpose here means starting a day knowing what I need and what I should accomplish. According to Buettner, waking up with a clear vision of what you want is good for one′s health. It assures oneself of focus and plans for the future. Ideally, having a purpose navigates the problem of poor planning or lacking focus in life, thus reducing some psychological distress associated with failure to focus or plan, thus living a healthy and longer life. Having a purpose in life is critically important. It adds value to life as one is able to monitor their progress, evaluate them and also manage themselves well. Living without a purpose is living unplanned life, which is associated with psychological uncertainties, stress, and worries. Wine @5 would be the hardest step for me in the Blue Zone steps of healthy living. Firstly, my religious affiliation does not condone drinking alcoholic drinks. Secondly, having never drunk before would also be a stabling block in embracing the step. While wine with friends is considered healthy, I do not believe that failing to take it would interfere with my health. Instead, taking much water is the best alternative for this blue zone step. Water is a critical component of the diet that is vital for the normal and best functioning of the body. Water is also essential for keeping average body temperatures, lubricating the body joints, and enhancing the removal of waste products from the body, thus keeping the body healthy. Discussion from other students that need response After reading ″Blue Zones: 9 Lessons for Living Longer″ by Dan Buettner, I realized there were a lot of healthy living practices I needed to engage in more. Of the nine lessons that are listed, the ones I personally practice are lessons one and eight. Lesson one is ″Move Naturally″ and encourages regular, low-intensity activity as part of one′s daily routine (Buettner, 2008). According to Buettner, an ideal routine consists of aerobics, muscle-strengthening, and balancing activities (2008). Balancing is especially important with the prevalence of falls in the elderly and can be achieved by engaging the correct muscle groups in activities that promote balance such as yoga (Buettner, 2008). Engaging in 60 minutes of activity five times a week is ideal, but 30 minutes is also sufficient (Buettner, 2008). I personally try to find creative ways to engage in physical activity when I can. Typically I try to find opportunities to walk more, whether it′s in my neighborhood or on campus. I also try to go to the gym a few times per week or engage in outdoor activities I enjoy such as hiking. Admittedly, I tend to engage less in these activities during winter and school when I have less motivation and it gets colder, but I still try to engage in at least one low-intensity physical activity daily. Lesson eight is ″Loved Ones First,″ which emphasizes themes of togetherness, familial duty, and ritual (Buettner, 2008). Elders who live with their children are less susceptible to stress or various diseases (Buettner, 2008). Longevity is promoted by reciprocity, which Buettner describes as children returning the love and care they received to their elders (2008). In my own life, I try to engage in these practices the best I can whether with family or friends. I keep in touch with my relatives overseas and aim to visit them every few years. I also try to give back to my parents the best I can by visiting them, giving them gifts, or doing favors for them. Something unique and challenging for some when it comes to family dynamics is setting boundaries. Not all individuals benefit from a ″Loved Ones First″ lifestyle if they grew up with a toxic family. For me, I benefit from maintaining little contact with family members who don′t enhance my well-being. However, for those who have shown me love and care, I plan to reciprocate their actions to the best of my ability. Of the nine lessons, I plan to likely engage more in lessons three and six, ″Plant Slant″ and ″Downshift.″ Lesson three ″Plant Slant,″ encourages people to limit meat intake, consume four to six servings of vegetables a day, and eat plentiful amounts of fruit, beans, and nuts (Buettner, 2008). People living in these regions haven′t been exposed to the same processed foods we have and instead consume small portion sizes of unprocessed foods (Buettner, 2008). They also didn′t have access to meat except for on rare occasions (Buettner, 2008). I know for myself that I have a tendency to consume a lot of unhealthy processed foods, especially when I′m stressed. Sometimes meal planning or cooking feels like a chore and I don′t take care of my body the way I′m supposed to. With cardiovascular disease and diabetes being prevalent in my family, I know I need to make more lifestyle changes. Realistically, I can make incremental changes to my diet and start incorporating more healthy foods or snacks while transitioning away from processed foods. I don′t think I can abstain completely from processed foods, but I can take more action toward reducing my consumption of them. Lesson six ″Downshift″ emphasizes taking time to be away from the stressors of life or reflect on them within rumination. Buettner states that the benefit of this in longevity may be reduced inflammation exacerbated by stress (2008). An example of this practice in Nicoyan culture is to take a break in the afternoon to relax or socialize with friends (Buettner, 2008). Lesson six recommends that people aim to be 15 minutes early to events and to meditate up to 30 minutes per day (Buettner, 2008). I can see this lesson being beneficial to me because of how easily I get stressed or overwhelmed with work and school. I struggle with punctuality sometimes as well due to my lack of time awareness and the dreaded Denver traffic. I believe that meditating daily, even for 10 minutes, can be a good way for me to assess my stress and take a break. Also, being early to places will ease my stress of having to rush or worrying about getting lost. Despite the stereotypes associated with my age group, the lesson I would find the most challenging to engage in would be lesson four ″Grapes Of Life.″ This lesson recommends that adults should consume high-quality red wine often, about one to two servings, and engage in ″Happy Hour″ with their inner circle (Buettner, 2008). I personally don′t enjoy the taste of alcohol much and don′t consume it very often. Additionally, most of my friends and family don′t really consume alcohol except for special occasions. Because of this, it would be challenging for me to engage in this lesson as a daily practice. I have a sensitivity to bitter flavors, which is why I rarely consume wine. Although I can see the merit for others in moderation, I would personally prefer to engage in other activities that promote longevity. the second one Hello everyone! Reflect: In this book 9 lessons are discussed in terms of steps learned from the blue zone citizens. Which of these do you personally already practice? This book was a great read. Not only did I enjoy learning about other cultures around the world that do things very differently from me and probably from most of today’s modern Americans, but I now am determined to practice some of the lessons presented in this book. It was almost anxiolytic in which, as I was reading, I was realizing how fast I was living and how little I have been taking care of myself at only 22 years old, and now I am a little scared for what kind of longevity and health I have already set myself up for. Personally, one of the lessons that I already practice is lesson eight, Loved Ones First. I had to really think hard if this was the lesson that I was considering answering for this question because compared to the traditions in certain blue zones, I felt that I was not doing enough to put loved one’s first. For example, the way that Sardinians pull together such a large family so often and that the grandchildren meet with their grandparent daily. While I don’t see my extended family often, the family that is close by, I am with often. I made it a priority to not go far for my undergraduate in order to stay closer to my family because I didn’t ever want to miss out on our weekly dinners. As my sister and I have gotten older and gained a strong sense of independence, it became vividly apparent that having our strong family connections is essential to everyone’s well-being and for ours to be successful while continuing to grow up, but not apart. I was once interviewing my grandfather for a life history paper, and one of the questions I asked him was about anything he regrets in his 72 years of life and he said that the only regret he had has not spending enough time with family. He found it absurd that we all still live relatively close, within the same state and somehow cannot always find the time to spend together. I took that to heart, and now make the time to always see my grandparents’ multiple times a week. Predict: Of the 9 lessons listed in the book, will you in the future make any changes in your own life to improve your health or longevity, and if so, what are these? I genuinely really wanted to make a joke about make improvements regarding lesson four, Grapes of Life, and say that I will just (moderately) drink more red wine to improve my health and longevity, but in all seriousness, one thing that I have been striving to improve for a long time is a sense of belonging (lesson seven). Maybe not in a religious way however, but more socially. I never struggled socially until a couple of years ago when I went through a really dark period and I cut myself off from just about everybody and ruined many relationships. Since then it has been an adjustment, my social circle is very small, and I almost forgot how to initiate friendships, always cutting myself off before any true relationship can be formed. The relationships that I have held are great, practically indestructible, but not quite enough. I want to branch out and belong to a group of individuals who share my passions and want to explore life. Ways that I plan to do this, is almost straight out of the book: join organizations and become involved and explore a new tradition and “just go” for a couple of weeks with an open mind. I believe that expanding my social circle and finding a place where I feel I belong would greatly improve my well-being and hopefully my health and longevity for the long run. 3. State your opinion: Which of the lessons would be the most difficult for you to perform and why? This was the easiest question for me to answer. Lesson six: Down Shift. Taking time to destress sounds stressful to me. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always had an “impending doom” feeling looming over me and I have never figured out why. I’ve worked really hard as an adult to figure it out and try the best ways I know how to destress, and they work… if I do them a lot and often. One of my favorite ones, it the “Take 5”, I read it in a de-stressing book a couple of years ago, and it is a way to bring you back to the present when you are overwhelmed. You list 5 things you see, hear, feel. It wasn’t until I read about Raffaella and her advice of “Life is short. Don’t run so fast you miss it,” (Buettner, p.246), that I realized how fast I have always lived my life and have never really took the time to slow down to enjoy it. When I was a child, I couldn′t wait to be a teenager, when I was a teenage, I couldn’t wait to go to college and move out, and in college I find myself excited to be done and move on to a career, so on and so on. I have always been forcing myself to grow up faster than need be because I always felt like the “next thing” was going to be better or more fun, until now when I find myself reminiscing about being too young to make my own bed and required to take 2 naps a day and being mad about it. At 18, I threw myself into the medical field and that has added a lot of stress, but also has provided me with a strong sense of purpose and I think the most challenging thing is trying to find the balance between running and walking through life, when life forces me to speed up versus when I tell myself to stop and smell the roses. One paragraph for each is enough