The Okinawa Way: How to Improve Your Health and Longevity Dramatically [Paperback]

If ever there were a prescription for longevity, the people of Okinawa, a collection of islands strung between Japan and Taiwan, have found it. In The Okinawa Way, Bradley J Willcox, Craig Willcox and Makoto Suzuki reveal the islanders' age-defying secrets. Considered the world's healthiest people, residents of this tropical archipelago routinely live active, independent lives well into their 90s and 100s. Their rates of obesity, heart disease, osteoporosis, memory loss, menopause and breast, colon and prostate cancer rank far below the rates for these illnesses in the UK and other industrialised countries. In fact, researchers believe many Okinawans are physically younger than their chronological ages. In essence, the Okinawans have found a way to beat the clock.

How do they do it? Of course, there are really no surprises here: a low-fat diet, exercise, stress management, strong social and family ties and spiritual connectedness--the same things experts have been recommending for years--all play key roles in keeping the Okinawans youthful. But in this fascinating read, which is peppered with inspiring anecdotes about these remarkable people, the authors provide concrete evidence that adopting these healthy habits pays off significantly in terms of tacking more productive years onto our lives.

Based on the authors' 25-year Okinawa Centenarian Study, this extraordinarily well-written book demonstrates that genetics provide only so much protection against disease. Indeed, the authors often remind us that when younger Okinawans pick up Western habits, their rates of obesity, illness and life expectancy start to match ours as well. Clearly, when it comes to longevity, healthy lifestyle habits will out. That said, the major message of The Okinawa Wayis that we can easily adopt the life-lengthening strategies that have served the Okinawans so well for generations. To that end, the authors pack chapters with suggestions for following "The Way", from eating a low-fat, low-calorie diet packed with fibre and complex carbohydrates (cooking up the book's more than 80 recipes is a start) and learning tai chi to finding time to meditate and relax, developing one's spirituality, doing volunteer work and building a solid network of friends and family. Rounding out the book, the authors pull their key recommendations into a comprehensive yet doable four-week plan that's meant to get you started. Following "The Way" isn't a free shot at immortality but it certainly helps stack the deck in your favour. --Norine Dworkin

"The outcome of years of extensive medical research, this book offers a practical and optimistic vision of growing old."

"...the book is filled with inspiring glimpses of elderly men and women who are still gardening, working and walking into-and well beyond-their 90s."

Okinawa, in the East China sea, has the longest-lived population in the world and has relatively little incidence of the dieases that plague the Western world - heart diease, breast cancer, prostate cancer and Alzheimer's. This book is a result of a landmark 25-year study of the Okinawans. The authors (all doctors) have devised a method for retarding and even reversing the symptoms of ageing for Western readers. The Okinawa way is a four-week plan for diet, fitness and well-being.

Dr Bradley Willcox is a distinguished Mayo Clinic doctor and a Geriatrics Fellow at Harvard. Professor Craig Willcox is a cultural anthropologist and professor at Okinawa Prefectural University College of Nursing. Dr Makoto Suzuki is a leading Japanese scholar known for his lifelong research in the field of ageing and the principle investigator for the ground-breaking Okinawan Centenarian Study.

"Our choice of lifestyle gives us the power to alter our life course no matter how poor the cards Mother Nature has dealt us. It's not the cards we get but how we play them that determines the final outcome. Case in point is the Okinawans. When they follow the Okinawan lifestyle they break health and longevity records, but according to migration studies, when Okinawans are raised abroad or relocate and adopt the habits of their host countries-when they lose the traditional ways-they also lose the protection of their Shangri-la. They get the same diseases and die at the same rates as the people whose customs they embrace. It's living the Okinawa way-regardless of where they actually lie-that provides the safeguard against ill health and grants longevity. And there is plenty of medical and scientific evidence to back that up." (8)