Lessons to long life from a 256 year old & Demystifying Qi Gong

An excerpt of lessons to long life from a 256 year old... 

According to legend, Mr. Li Qing Yun (1677–1933) was a Chinese medicine physician, herbal expert, qigong master, and tactical consultant. He was said to have lived through nine emperors in the Qing Dynasty to be 256 years old.

His May 1933 obituary in Time Magazine, titled “Tortoise-Pigeon-Dog,” revealed Li’s secrets of longevity: “Keep a quiet heart, sit like a tortoise, walk sprightly like a pigeon and sleep like a dog.”

Mr. Li is said to have had quite unusual habits in his daily living. He did not drink hard liquor or smoke and ate his meals at regular times. He was a vegetarian and frequently drank wolfberry (also known as goji berry) tea.

He slept early and got up early. When he had time, he sat up straight with his eyes closed and hands in his lap, at times not moving at all for a few hours.

In his spare time, Li played cards, managing to lose enough money every time for his opponent’s meals for that day. Because of his generosity and levelheaded demeanor, everyone liked to be with him.

Mr. Li spent his whole life studying Chinese herbs and discovering the secrets of longevity, traveling through provinces of China and as far as Thailand to gather herbs and treat illnesses.

Dan Buettner, author of “The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who’ve Lived the Longest,” researches the science of longevity.

All of these groups—Californian Adventists, Okinawans, Sardinians, and Costa Ricans—live to be over 100 years of age at a far greater rate than most people, or they live a dozen years longer than average. He calls the places where these groups live “blue zones.”

According to Buettner’s research, all blue-zone groups eat a vegetable-based diet. The group of Adventists in Loma Linda, California, eat plenty of legumes and greens as mentioned in the Bible. Herders living the in the highlands of Sardinia eat an unleavened whole grain bread, cheese from grass-fed animals, and a special wine.

Researchers have also foud proven effects from meditation: 

They found that the meditators “showed a pronounced shift in activity to the left frontal lobe,” reads a 2003 Psychology Today article. “This mental shift decreases the negative effects of stress, mild depression, and anxiety. There is also less activity in the amygdala, where the brain processes fear.”

Meditation also reduces brain shrinkage due to aging and enhances mood.

Also, many cultures have no concept of sentient retirement and yet, remain healthy into their later years via lives that involve physical activity, social bonding, chore work and even neccisary gardening: 

Interestingly, none of these centenarians exercise purposely as we Westerners who go to the gym do. “They simply live active lives that warrant physical activity,” Buettner said. They all walk, cook, and do chores manually, and many of them garden.

Meanwhile Western civilization is still taking it's time on Qi Gong, a practice that has shown proven effects and is still mainly most popular in most eastern countries.  Qi Gong excells as a method of fostering basic awareness of body and breath, coordinated with simple movements, with the aim of cultivating smooth flow of qi to promote health. 

From J.Davis: 

Qi Gong practice has a long way to go before it becomes as mainstream as other traditional methods of health cultivation. It will have to adapt, just as yoga has, to meet some of the expectations of our fitness-oriented culture. I'm confident that if we can lead our students and patients to the gateway of feeling-awareness, we can preserve what is unique to these time-tested methods. As the baby-boomers age and the gym-going culture realizes that peak fitness is not a viable (or even desirable) goal, Qi Gong will become an increasingly attractive alternative.

Olive Oil and Lower Stroke Risk? New Study from France.

More evidence and content studies on the benefits of olive oil over other cooking oils / fats making news internationally. 

New Studies show a link between olive oil in a diet and decreased stroke risksNEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Older people who use olive oil in their cooking and on their salads may have a lower risk of suffering a stroke, researchers reported Wednesday.

In a study that followed older French adults for five years, researchers found that those who regularly used olive oil were 41 percent less likely to have a stroke than those who never used the oil.

The findings, reported in the journal Neurology, hint that the well-known connection between olive oil and heart disease might extend to stroke as well.

Olive oil is a key ingredient in the so-called Mediterranean diet. And some clinical trials have suggested that the diet helps control risk factors for heart disease, like high blood pressure, abdominal obesity and elevated levels of "bad" LDL cholesterol.

High olive oil intake is also linked to a lower risk of heart attack, and a longer lifespan among heart attack survivors.

These latest findings support the general advice that people replace dubious dietary fats -- namely, saturated fats and "trans" fats -- with olive oil and other unsaturated fats, according to an expert not involved in the study.

But he also stressed that the study does not prove that olive oil, per se, helps prevent strokes.

"We need to remember that this is an observational study," said Dr. Nikolaos Scarmeas, a neurologist at Columbia University Medical Center in New York who wrote an editorial published with the study.

The study found a correlation between people's olive oil use and their stroke risk, he told Reuters Health -- but that doesn't necessarily translate into cause-and-effect.

"People who use a lot of olive oil may be very different from people who don't," Scarmeas said.

Olive oil users may, for example, have higher incomes, eat better overall orexercise more often than people who never use the oil.

The researchers on the new study, led by C�cilia Samieri of the French national research institute INSERM, tried to account for those differences. And after they did, olive oil was still linked to a lower stroke risk.

But it's impossible to fully account for all those variables, Scarmeas noted. What's needed, he said, are clinical trials where people are randomly assigned to use olive oil or not, then followed over time to see who suffers a stroke.

Such clinical trials are considered the "gold standard" of medical evidence.

The current study included 7,625 French adults age 65 and older who reported on their diets and other lifestyle factors. People who said they used olive oil for both cooking and as a dressing were considered "intensive users."

Over the next five to six years, those intensive users suffered strokes at a rate of 0.3 percent per year. That compared with just over 0.5 percent among non-users, and 0.4 percent among moderate users.

When the researchers factored in other diet habits, exercise levels and major risk factors for stroke -- like high blood pressure and diabetes -- heavy olive oil use was tied to 41 percent reduction in the odds of stroke.

Samieri's team also took blood samples from another 1,245 older adults, measuring their levels of oleic acid -- a monounsaturated fat that accounts for most of the fatty acids in olive oil. The one-third of participants with the highest oleic acid levels were 73 percent less likely to suffer a stroke than the one-third with the lowest levels.

The findings, according to Scarmeas, argue for more research into olive oil's potential benefits against not only heart disease, but stroke and other neurological diseases as well.

For now, he suggested that people choose olive oil and other unsaturated fats over saturated fats (found largely in meat and dairy) and trans fats (found in some processed foods, like crackers, cookies and chips).

"It's better to rely on this type of fat for your overall health," Scarmeas said.

That said, no single food is consumed in isolation, he points out in his editorial.

Olive oil is one part of the Mediterranean diet that has been tied to heart benefits. The diet also boasts plenty of fruits and vegetables, legumes, whole grains, fish and moderate amounts of red wine.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/SUxCM Neurology, online June 15, 2011.

Mediterranean Diet: helps keep cognitive decline in check in older adults.

The “Mediterranean diet” has long been known to have great benefits, and reduce the risk of a number of ailments.

Now via a recent study you can add to those benefits a link to slower rates of cognitive decline in older adults.

The diet encourages a rich intake of vegetables, fish, and olive oil and a moderate consumption of wine and alcohol. While the specific nutritional values have not yet been released, the overall conclusion of the study shows that there are great benefits for cognitive ability when abiding by the diet.

In the study, Rush University Medical Center scientists surveyed nearly 3,800 older residents of the South Side of Chicago.

The Chicago residents are part of the Chicago Healthy Aging Project, an ongoing evaluation of cognitive health in adults over the age of 65.

A discussion of the survey results is found in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Every three years, the study participants, age 65 and older, underwent a cognitive assessment that tested such things as memory and basic math skills.

Participants also filled out a questionnaire on the frequency with which they consumed 139 food items ranging from cereals and olive oil to red meat and alcohol.

The researchers then analyzed how closely each of the study participants adhered to a Mediterranean diet, which includes daily consumption of such foods as fruit, vegetables, legumes, olive oil, fish, potatoes and nonrefined cereals, as well as wine.

Out of a maximum score of 55, which would indicate complete adherence to the Mediterranean diet, the average study participant scored 28.

Those with the higher scores were also the individuals whose cognitive tests showed a slower rate of decline, even when other factors that might account for the result, such as education level, were considered.

The researchers also analyzed how closely study participants adhered to the Healthy Eating Index—2005, which is based on the recommendations from the 2005 Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

Higher scores indicating closer adherence to this index, which gives less weight to fish, legumes and moderate alcohol intake, did not correspond with differences in rates of cognitive decline.

Christy Tangney, Ph.D., lead author of the study and associate professor of clinical nutrition at Rush University, said that the results add to other studies showing that a Mediterranean diet can reduce the risk of heart disease, certain cancers and diabetes.

“The more we can incorporate vegetables, olive oil, and fish into our diets and moderate wine consumption, the better for our aging brains and bodies,” Tangney said.