Authors: John Robbins
2. Alexander Leaf,
Youth in Old Age
(McGraw-Hill, 1975), pp. 51–52.
3. Eugene H. Payne, “Islands of Immunity: Medicine’s Most Amazing Mystery,”
Reader’s Digest
Nov. 1954.
4. “90, 100, 130…who’s counting?”
The Guardian
Feb. 15, 2003.
5. Michael James,
New York Times
Sept. 28, 1956.
6. Grace Halsell,
Los Viejos: Secrets of Long Life from the Sacred Valley
(Rodale Books, 1976), p. 13. See also Alexander Leaf, op. cit., p. 217.
7. David Davies,
The Centenarians of the Andes
(Anchor Press / Doubleday, 1975), and “A Shangri-La in Ecuador,”
New Scientist
1973, 57:226–38.
8.
Vilcabamba: The Sacred Valley of the Centenarians
(CIS Publishing, 2004), pp. 25–26.
9. N. Okudaira et al., “Sleep Apnea and Nocturnal Myoclonus in Elderly Persons in Vilcabamba, Ecuador,”
Journals of Gerontology
1983, 38:436–38.
10. Steve Silk, “In the Valley of the Ancient Ones in the Southern Ecuador Village of Vilcabamba, Centenarians Are Common, Thanks to a Fertile Climate, Peaceful Setting and the Mineral-Rich Agua d’Oro,”
Los Angeles Times
Dec. 12, 1993, p. 13.
11. Steven N. Austad,
Why We Age: What Science Is Discovering About the Body’s Journey Through Life
(John Wiley & Sons, 1997), p. 24.
12. R. Mazess and S. Forman, “Longevity and Age Exaggeration in Vilcabamba, Ecuador,”
Journals of Gerontology
1979, 34(1):94–98. See also R. Mazess and R. Mathisen, “Lack of Unusual Longevity in Vilcabamba, Ecuador,”
Human Biology
1982, 54(3):517–24, and R. Mazess, “Health and Longevity in Vil-cabamba, Ecuador,”
Journal of the American Medical Association
1978, 240(10):1781 (letter).
13. Guillermo Vela Chiriboga,
The Secrets of Vilcabamba
(
Secretos de Vilcabamba para vivir siempre joven
) (Corporación de Estudios y Publicaciones, 1989).
14. Ibid.
15. Grace Halsell,
Los Viejos.
16. Grace Halsell,
Soul Sister
(Crossroads International Publishing, 1999).
17. Grace Halsell,
Bessie Yellowhair
(Morrow, 1973).
18. Grace Halsell,
The Illegals
(Stein and Day, 1978).
19. Grace Halsell,
In Their Shoes
(Texas Christian University Press, 1996).
20. Grace Halsell,
Los Viejos
, pp. 16, 20.
21. Ibid. pp. 7–8.
22. Ibid. p. 154.
23. Ibid. p. 66.
24. Ibid. p. 157.
25. Ibid. p. 157.
26. Ibid. p. 144.
27. Ibid. p. 142.
28. Ibid. pp. 150–51.
29. Ibid. p. 151.
30. Ibid. p. 25.
31. Dale Turner,
Different Seasons
(High Tide Press, 1997), p. 136.
32. Grace Halsell,
Los Viejos
, p. 41.
33. Ibid. p. 45.
34. Ibid. p. 99.
35. Ibid. p. 98.
36. Barrie Robinson,
Ageism
(University of California at Berkeley School of Social Welfare, 1994).
1. For a graphic portrayal of the difficulty involved in reaching Hunza, see the video
Health Secrets of the Shangri-La
—
Hunza
, produced by Renee Taylor.
2. Alexander Leaf,
Youth in Old Age
(McGraw-Hill, 1975), p. 35.
3. Ibid. p. 39.
4. Robert McCarrison,
Studies in Deficiency Diseases
(Henry Frowde and Hodder & Stoughton, 1921), and Robert McCarrison and H. M. Sinclair,
Nutrition and Health
(Faber and Faber, 1961). See also Robert McCarrison, “Faulty Food in Relation to Gastro-Intestinal Disorder,” Sixth Mellon Lecture delivered to the Society for Biological Research, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Nov. 18, 1921, and “The Relationship of Diet to the Physical Efficiency of Indian Races,”
The Practitioner
Jan. 1925, pp. 90–100.
5.
American Heart Journal
Dec. 1964. See also Brian Goodwin,
How the Leopard Changed Its Spots: The Evolution of Complexity
(Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 207.
6. Jay M. Hoffman,
Hunza: Secrets of the World’s Healthiest and Oldest Living People
(New Win Publishing, 1968), pp. 1–2.
7. Eric Shipton,
Mountains of Tartary
(Hodder & Stoughton, 1951).
8. J. I. Rodale,
The Healthy Hunzas
(Rodale Press, 1948), p. 123.
9. Captain C. Y. Morris,
Journal of the Royal Geographical Society
June 1928.
10. R.C.F. Schomberg,
Between the Oxus and the Indus
(Martin Hopkinson, 1935).
11. J. I. Rodale, op. cit., p. 188.
12. R.C.F. Schomberg, op. cit.
13. Allen E. Banik and Renee Taylor,
Hunza Land: The Fabulous Health and Youth Wonderland of the World
(Whitehorn Publishing, 1960), p. 146.
14. Ibid. pp. 102, 142–43, 173, inside front cover.
15. Ibid. p. 140.
16. Senator Charles Percy, “You Live to Be 100 in Hunza,”
San Francisco Chronicle
(n.d.).
17. Jay M. Hoffman, op. cit., pp. 51–52.
18. J. I. Rodale, op. cit.
19. Jay M. Hoffman, op. cit., p. 35.
20. J. I. Rodale, op. cit., pp. 44, 93.
21. Ibid. p. 80.
22. Vernon Gill Carter and Tom Dale,
Topsoil and Civilization
(University of Oklahoma Press, 1975).
23. Data for Abkhasia are derived from Sula Benet,
Abkhasians: The Long-Living People of the Caucasus
(Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1974), pp. 21–26, and other sources. Data for Vilcabamba are derived from an analysis by Dr. Guil-lermo Vela Chiriboga, a nutritionist from Quito, Ecuador, cited in Leaf,
Youth in Old Age
, p. 74, and from Grace Halsell,
Los Viejos: Secrets of Long Life from the Sacred Valley
(Rodale Press, 1976), p. 13, and other sources. Data for Hunza are derived from a nutritional survey of the diets of male adults in Hunza by Dr. Maqsood Ali, cited in Leaf,
Youth in Old Age
, p. 74. Leaf also provided data (p. 73) demonstrating the well-known fact that the diets of women and the elderly are much lower in calories than those of men and younger adults. Ali’s survey was of adult males in Hunza of all ages. Vela Chiriboga, studying only the elderly and including women, found the average daily diet in Vilcabamba yielded 1,200 calories. In order for the table to show the caloric consumption of adult males of all ages in each culture, I have adjusted Vela Chiriboga’s daily caloric consumption figures upward in accord with well-established ratios.
24. Jay M. Hoffman, op. cit., p. 54.
25. John Clark, a geologist and author of the 1957 book
Hunza: Lost Kingdom of the Himalayas
, says he lived in Hunza for thirty-five months in the late 1940s and saw rickets, scurvy, pneumonia, and malaria. He says further that eye problems such as trachoma, conjunctivitis, and blindness were common. I find it hard to credit Clark’s claims, however, because I don’t see how an optometrist such as Banik could possibly have missed the eye problems Clark asserts were common. Nor can I understand how Clark could claim that the Hunzan diet “has no vitamin A” when he knew the major role apricots and carrots play. Carrots and apricots are excellent sources of beta-carotene, which the human body readily converts into vitamin A. And most important, there is the testimony of Lieutenant Colonel D.L.R. Lorimer, who lived in Hunza for more than five years and who, unlike Clark, spoke the native language. His 1935 book
The Burushaski Language
is the classic description of the Hunzan language and culture of that period.
J. I. Rodale’s book
The Healthy Hunzas
begins with the words “This book must immediately express, as it reveals on many a page, the immeasurable debt of gratitude which I owe to Lieutenant Colonel D.L.R. Lorimer for having read its manuscript and for having furnished me with more than forty closely typewritten pages of comment thereon, a critical exposition that could easily have been a slender volume in itself. Inasmuch as I adopted a large majority of his technical suggestions, I can safely present
The Healthy Hunzas
with the conviction that it is an authoritative piece of work.” Rodale and Lorimer speak of “the phenomenally unique good health of the Hunzas. They do not number in their midst isolated or sporadic cases of physical perfection, nor are they a select school of a few hundred laboratory specimens. They are a group of 20,000 people, none of whom dies of cancer or drops dead with heart disease. In fact, heart trouble is completely unknown in that country. Feeblemindedness and mental debilitations which are dangerously rampant in the United States are likewise alien to the vigorous Hunzas” (Rodale,
The Healthy Hunzas
, pp. 31–32).
There are still many unanswered and perhaps unanswerable questions about Hunza. The culture and its people have regrettably not been studied with the rigor necessary to form definitive conclusions, and recent developments have altered the traditional culture irretrievably. However, even the ultimate Hunza skeptic, John Clark, wrote that the people of Hunza “did not suffer from many of the diseases common to our civilization.” He said there was no cancer, no mental illness, no stomach ulcers, appendicitis, or gout, and that heart disease was extremely rare. (John Clark, “Hunza in the Himalayas: Storied Shangri-La undergoes scrutiny,”
Vegetarian Voice
April/June 1979.)
26. Dale Turner,
Different Seasons
(High Tide Press, 1997), p. 112.
1. Bradley J. Willcox, D. Craig Willcox, and Makoto Suzuki,
The Okinawa Program: Learn the Secrets to Health and Longevity
(Three Rivers Press, 2001).
2. Ibid. p. 5.
3. B. J. Willcox, D. C. Willcox, and M. Suzuki, “Evidence-based Extreme Longevity: The Case of Okinawa, Japan,”
Journal of the American Geriatrics Society
2001, 49(4):397. See also their “Built to last? Past Medical History of Okinawan-Japanese Centenarians,”
Journal of the American Geriatrics Society
2002, 50(4):394.
4. Thomas T. Perls, “Centenarians: The older you get the healthier you have been,”
Lancet
1999, 354:652.
5. Thomas T. Perls and Margery Hutter Silver,
Living to 100: Lessons in Living to Your Maximum Potential at Any Age
(Basic Books, 1999), p. 47.
6. Bradley J. Willcox, D. Craig Willcox, and Makoto Suzuki,
The Okinawa Diet Plan
(Clarkson Potter, 2004), p. 2.
7. Bradley J. Willcox et al.,
The Okinawa Program
, p. 12.
8. Ibid. p. 1.
9. N. Ogawa, “Japan’s limits to growth and welfare,” in T. Kuroda, ed., “Population Aging in Japan: Problems and Policy Issues in the 21st Century,” International Symposium on an Aging Society: Strategies for 21st Century Japan, Jihon University, Population Research Institute, 1982, cited in Bradley J. Willcox et al.,
The Okinawa Program
, p. 2.
10. Bradley J. Willcox et al.,
The Okinawa Program
, p. 1.
11. Ibid. p. 9.
12. Ibid. p. 6.
13. Ibid. p. 14.
14. R. Bonita, “Cardiovascular disease in Okinawa,”
Lancet
1993, 341:1185.
15. Bradley J. Willcox et al.,
The Okinawa Program
, op. cit., pp. 18, 19.
16. K. Y. Kinjo et al., “An epidemiological analysis of cardiovascular diseases in Okinawa, Japan,”
Hypertension Review
1992, 15(2):111–19. Cited in Willcox and Suzuki,
The Okinawa Program
, pp. 427–28.
17. Bradley J. Willcox et al.,
The Okinawa Program
, p. 38.
18. Ibid. p. 35.
19.
Okinawa: Cold War Island
, edited by Chalmers Johnson (Japan Policy Research Institute, 1999), p. 274.
20. P. Ross et al., “A comparison of hip fracture incidence among native Japanese,
Japanese-Americans, and American Caucasians,”
American Journal of Epidemiology
1991, 133:801–9. See also Bradley J. Willcox et al.,
The Okinawa Program
, p. 43.
21. M. Suzuki and N. Hirose, “Endocrine Function of Centenarians,” in H. Tauchi et al., eds.,
Japanese Centenarians: Medical Research for the Final Stages of Human Aging
(Aichi, Japan: Aichi Medical University, 1997) cited in Bradley J. Willcox et al.,
The Okinawa Program
, pp. 436–37.
22. M. Shores et al., “Low testosterone is associated with decreased function and increased mortality risk: A preliminary study of men in a geriatric rehabilitation unit,”
Journal of the American Geriatrics Society
2004, 52(12):2077–81.
23. S. Moffat et al., “Free testosterone and risk for Alzheimer’s disease in older men,”
Neurology
2004, 62(1):188–93; V. Henderson et al., “Testosterone and Alzheimer’s disease: Is it men’s turn now?”
Neurology
2004, 62(1):170–71.
24. Bradley J. Willcox et al.,
The Okinawa Program
, p. 43. See also p. 59.
25. Ibid. p. 43. See also p. 86.
26. Richard Weindruch and Rajinder Sohal, “Caloric Intake and Aging,”
New England Journal of Medicine
1997, 337(14):986–94.
27. Kagawa’s work is cited in Roy Walford,
Beyond the 120–Year Diet: How to Double Your Vital Years
(Four Walls Eight Windows, 2000), p. 89.
28. Roy Walford, op. cit., pp. 13, 45.
29. T. E. Meyer et al., “Long-term caloric restriction ameliorates the decline in di-astolic function in humans,”
Journal of the American College of Cardiology
2006, 47(2):398–402.
30. Jim Salter, “Study: Low-Calorie Diet Keeps Heart Young,” Associated Press, Jan. 12, 2006.
31. Roy Walford, op. cit., p. 17.
1. Bradley J. Willcox, D. Craig Willcox, and Makoto Suzuki,
The Okinawa Program: Learn the Secrets to Health and Longevity
(Three Rivers Press, 2001), pp. 43, 71.