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And that's the secret of living to 100.
Already?
Already. It is goat's milk.
Goat's milk?
Goat's milk from a specific island, drunk at aspecific time of day.
There was a whole article.
Can I tell you something about that article?
You are going to ruin this.
I am going to ruin this completely.
Welcome to your English Toolbox,
the podcast that trains your English while youlive your real life.
I am Martin.
And I am Julia.
For four episodes, we told you that relationshipsare the foundation of a good life.
And that is true, but you also live in a body.
So this is a bonus conversation, in two parts.
10 Habits of People Who Live to 100.
Today, the first five, the body.
Next time, the mind.
And before any of them, we have to talk about thegoat.
Go on then.
For 20 years, there has been a very famous idea
that there are certain places in the world wherepeople live far longer than anywhere else.
Sardinia, Okinawa, a place in Costa Rica, a Greekisland.
Those places became an industry.
Books, documentaries, cookbooks, supplements.
And you are about to tell me it is not thatsimple.
In 2024, a researcher at University College London
received an Iggy Nobel Prize for challenging thedata behind those places.
What prize?
The Ig Nobel.
The Ig Nobel. That is the funny one.
It is the funny one.
It is given for research that makes you laugh andthen makes you think.
His analysis was a pre-print, which means it hadnot yet been peer-reviewed.
And what did his analysis argue?
It argued that those regions had something incommon, but it was not diet.
What was it?
Poverty, low literacy, high crime, and mostimportantly, terrible birth records.
Say that last part again.
In the United States, more than 500 people hadbeen registered as being over 110 years old.
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And?
Newman's analysis said only seven had a birthcertificate.
Seven?
Seven.
Out of more than 500?
And there is a detail I find almost beautiful.
When he looked at the birthdays of the world'soldest people,
they clustered on dates divisible by five.
Because if you are inventing a date…
You invent a round one.
Oh, that is wonderful. That is terrible, but it iswonderful.
When he collected the prize, he joked that thereal secret to extreme old age
was to move somewhere with no birth certificates.
Teach your children pension fraud and start lying.
Now, to be fair…
To be completely fair…
The researchers who study those regions haveanswered him.
They have.
They say his work misunderstands how ages werevalidated.
They point to civil records, church archives,
and detailed family histories going back to the1800s and earlier.
So it is an argument, not a conclusion.
It is an argument!
And we are telling you about it because we wouldrather give you an honest debate
than a comfortable story.
So no goat's milk?
No goat's milk.
Then what do we actually know?
We know a lot, and it comes from studies that arenot glamorous at all.
Give me the best one.
Harvard, 123,219 people followed for up to 34years.
That is a lot of people.
They looked at five simple things.
Never smoking.
Half an hour of movement a day.
A healthy weight, a decent diet, and moderatealcohol intake.
Five things. Nothing exotic.
Nothing exotic. Nothing you cannot pronounce.
And what did the researchers estimate for thepeople who had all five?
At the age of 50, women with all five wereestimated to have
about 14 more years of life expectancy than womenwith none.
14 years.
And men about 12.
That is an estimate, not a guarantee.
Exactly. It is observational evidence, not apromise about any one person's life.
But the difference is still striking.
It is. The secret is not a secret.
The secret is boring.
The secret is so boring that nobody can sell it toyou.
And that is the good news because boring isrepeatable.
06:01
Right. Habit number one.
Ready?
Move all day, not only for an hour.
Explain the difference because I think this is oneof the most misunderstood ideas in health.
Most people think of exercise as a separateactivity.
You put on special clothes, you go to a specialplace,
you work hard for 40 minutes, you come home,
and then you sit down for 11 hours.
Which is what I do.
Structured exercise is useful.
But many people who stay active into older agenever separated movement from daily life.
Their life made them move.
Stairs, gardens, markets, children,
walking to places because there was no other wayto get there.
So it is not only about the gym.
The gym is useful.
But one active hour does not make the rest of theday irrelevant.
Your other waking hours matter too.
Give our listener something concrete.
Take the stairs when that is comfortable for you.
Get off the bus one stop early.
Stand up when you are on the phone.
Spend a little more time close to the floorinstead of always choosing the sofa.
Close to the floor?
Close to the floor.
Hold that thought because it is habit number two.
Habit two, keep your muscle.
This is the one nobody talks about enough.
And it is one of the things that can help you stayindependent as you grow older.
Tell them why.
From around 50, muscle mass and strength tend todecline if we do nothing to challenge them.
Quietly.
And you do not notice at first.
You do not notice until one day the shopping bagfeels heavy,
and then one day the stairs feel hard,
and then one day getting up from a low position isdifficult.
And that is when life can get smaller.
That is when life can get smaller.
So is there a simple movement our listener cannotice at home?
There is, but only try it if getting down to thefloor is safe for you.
Keep something stable nearby or ask someone to bethere.
Sit down on the floor, cross-legged if that iscomfortable,
and then stand up again, using your hands aslittle as you safely can.
Right now?
Only if it is safe.
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but extra costs often hide in bloated exchangerates.
Choose WISE.
09:00
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Get the exchange rate that you'd usually see onGoogle.
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Be smart. Get WISE.
Visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply.
Well?
I am down.
And?
Getting down was a success.
And getting up?
Getting up involved a sound I have never madebefore.
Was it a word?
It was not a word.
So what is the principle?
Use your muscles in ordinary life.
Carry your own shopping when the weight isappropriate for you.
Take the stairs when you feel steady.
If getting to the floor is safe for you, practicethe movement gradually.
If you enjoy the gym, include resistance trainingat a level that is appropriate for you.
And if you are 65 and you have never done this?
Start gradually and get professional advice if youhave health, pain, or balance concerns.
But yes, you can still get stronger because musclecan respond at any age.
That is one of the kindest facts in all of this.
Habit 3.
Eat mostly plants and stop a little early.
I am going to ask you not to give anybody a diet.
I am not going to give anybody a diet.
We are not doctors and your body is not the sameas anybody else's.
So what is the broad pattern?
In many populations that age well, food patternsare simple and repetitive.
Beans, lentils, vegetables, whole grains, somefish, a little meat, not much sugar.
Food your grandmother would recognize.
That is a useful question.
Even if it is not a perfect rule.
If your grandmother would not recognize it, it maybe highly processed.
And the second half, stop a little early.
In Okinawa, there is an old phrase that people saybefore eating.
It means, more or less, eat until you are 8 partsfull.
8 out of 10?
8 out of 10.
Then you pause.
Fullness signals take time to build.
So slowing down can help you notice when you havehad enough.
So the habit is not a strict diet.
It is paying attention before you reach the pointwhere you wish you had stopped.
Habit 4.
Protect your sleep.
And here is where everybody says 7 to 9 hours.
And everybody feels guilty.
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7 to 9 is a useful general range for many adults.
But there is something people talk about less.
And it matters too.
What?
Regularity.
Going to bed and getting up at roughly the sametime.
Even at the weekend?
As much as real life allows, yes.
A body with a stable rhythm is less confused thana body whose schedule changes constantly.
And what is happening while we sleep?
A lot of maintenance.
Some systems involved in clearing metabolic wastefrom the brain become more active during sleep.
Researchers are still learning exactly how thatprocess works in humans.
So sleep is not doing nothing.
Sleep is the maintenance shift.
And nobody who is good at their job skips themaintenance shift for 30 years.
And Habit 5.
Habit 5 is two subtractions.
Things to remove.
The first one is not controversial at all.
Do not smoke.
Nobody argues with that one.
In the Harvard study, smoking was one of thestrongest individual risk factors.
And the second subtraction.
The second one is the one people do not want tohear.
Alcohol.
For years, the story was that a glass of wine aday was part of the secret.
It appeared in many longevity books.
And now?
That idea has weakened a lot.
The World Health Organization's position is thatno form of alcohol consumption is risk-free.
That is quite a change.
It is a big change.
And I am not here to tell you what to drink.
But we are here to tell you what the currentevidence says.
And the evidence no longer supports presentingwine as a health habit.
Can I introduce somebody?
Please.
Genaro is 79.
And he was a caretaker in a building in Valenciafor 34 years.
He has never been inside a gym.
Not once.
He climbs eight floors on foot because he did itevery day for 34 years.
And now his legs are confused if he takes thelift.
He walks to the market because it is the market,not because it is exercise.
He eats the same six meals he has eaten since1974.
He goes to bed at 11 and gets up at 7.
And he has done that for 50 years.
And he can stand up from the floor without usinghis hands because he plays on it with his
grandchildren twice a week.
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So he follows the spirit of all five habits.
And if you asked him, he would tell you he has nohabits at all.
He would say, this is just my life.
And that is the target.
Not a program.
A life that happens to include these things.
Write three sentences about habits.
Listen and repeat in the pause.
Sentence 1.
For something you are starting.
I'm trying to get into the habit of walking afterdinner.
Sentence 2.
For something you are reducing.
I have cut down on it, but I have not given it up.
Sentence 3.
The principle.
Small changes every day beat big changes once.
All three again.
I am trying to get into the habit of walking afterdinner.
I have cut down on it, but I have not given it up.
Small changes every day beat big changes once.
To get into the habit of doing something.
And notice it is doing, not do.
To cut down on something is to do less of it.
To give something up is to stop completely.
And most real life happens in between the two.
And our sentence of the day.
Ready?
You do not need a new life.
You need a better Tuesday.
You do not need a new life.
You need a better Tuesday.
One more time with us.
You do not need a new life.
You need a better Tuesday.
So, five habits.
Move all day, not only for an hour.
Keep your muscle.
Eat mostly plants and stop a little early.
Protect your sleep.
And two subtractions.
And your task this week is not all five.
Choose one.
Choose one and make it so small that it would beembarrassing to fail.
One flight of stairs, if stairs are right for you.
One more regular bedtime.
One simple meal built mostly from plants.
Next time, the other five.
Purpose, rest, learning, belonging.
The habits that live in your mind.
And one of them, we can tell you now.
You are already doing right this second.
You just do not know it is on the list.
18:00
Everything from today, the transcript, thevocabulary, and the three sentences
is waiting for you at yourenglishtoolbox.com.
You can listen and read without registering.
And a free student account gives you thedownloadable PDFs, flashcards, and progress tools.
Thank you for spending this time with us.
Take the stairs if the stairs are right for you.
See you in the next one.
