Video Transcription
Hello and welcome to Soflow Health. I’m Hunter Frankie, and today we’re at the Paramount Miami WorldCenter, and I want to talk to you about blue zones. First of all, what the heck are blue zones? The short version of what blue zones are is different parts of the world where people live extraordinarily long lives, and it’s largely due to their lifestyle. And today we’re going to meet some individuals that are turning Miami into a blue zone, creating blue zone centers right here. And I’ll share with you some of the power nine principles to live a long, healthy life, which go along with blue zones. The first blue zone power nine principle is to move naturally. So, if you want to live a long life, here’s some good news. You don’t have to grind yourself to death in the gym, run a marathon, or anything else like that. All you have to do is move naturally in your everyday life. So, if you like going for walks, gardening, or working on a farm, that’s moving naturally, just doing things that you need to do. But moving a lot, that means not staying sedentary. Now, whether you’re moving like Martin just was or going for a walk, you’re going to be in pretty good shape. Let’s learn more about what blue zones are, and the Blue Zone Center is coming here to Miami.
Hunter: What’s Stephen, what’s a blue zone?
Stephen: It was started by a grant from National Geographic and Dan Buettner, a researcher who went around the world to find out what communities around the world had a concentration of centurions people living over 100 years old.
Hunter: Right.
Stephen: And looked at their quality of life, their happiness, all the different markets that really, truly make for a blessed existence on this earth.
Hunter: Yes.
Stephen: And they found five blue zones. There’s one in Greece, there’s one in Italy, there’s one in Japan and Costa Rica, and actually one here in the United States. So what they did is they looked at all the qualities of those communities, vastly different communities, different cultures, different languages, different food, and they found believed on some really core fundamental similarities. And those similarities drive what they call blue zones called the Power Nine, which is a way of living to understand the components that are truly lifestyle changing, that can make you live a longer, happier, and healthier life.
Hunter: Right.
Stephen: So lifestyle is the number one thing you can do to improve your health. So, what the Blue Zone Center really is it’s a hospital that doesn’t treat sick patients, but only helps healthy patients stay healthier and live healthier, longer and better lives.
Hunter: Right.
Stephen: So, we do that through we have about 220,000 well-being programming. Part of that programming is an intense evaluation of who you are as an individual, your goals, your stage in life, your DNA background. And we create what we call a digital dashboard. But in addition, we have some of the best and the brightest practitioner partners. Tomorrow is the start of the Global Wellness Summit. So we’re here, and this is actually announcing Blue Zone Center to the world and telling them a little bit of our story of what we’re going to do. Susie is a tremendous asset. She helps us really understand what is going on in the world of wellness. Well being, health care, she’s kind of like a guiding light to whatever I do here is really based on what she puts out to the world and saying, this is really what’s happening. This is what’s needed.
Hunter: Well, Steve, thank you so much. We’ll continue our conversation in just a minute. I actually got a chance to sit down with Susie as well, so let’s take a listen in to how that went.
Susie: I’m chairman and CEO of the Global Wellness Summit and the Global Wellness Institute. So my whole life is all about health and wellness.
Hunter: Well, we love that here on SoFlo Health.
Susie: Yes.
Hunter: Tell us, what is the Institute about?
Susie: Well, the Institute has done the research on wellness for the last 16 years. So the wellness economy globally is a $4.4 trillion. Yes, it’s a huge number. And so we’ve been tracking the trends, and there’s such a trend for people getting involved in wellness. And then we have the Global Wellness Summit, which is a gathering happening tomorrow in Tel Aviv, where we’re kind of the Davos of wellness. C suite Executives from all over the world gather and we talk about and look at globally the whole wellness, healthcare, self care industry.
Hunter: If you’re just joining us today, we’ve been talking about the Power Nine principles of Blue Zones. And if you haven’t heard what a Blue Zone is just yet, it’s areas of the world where people live to be 100 years of age or older, more so than the average. We call those people centurions.
Welcome back to Soflow Health. I’m Hunter Frankie at the Paramount Miami World Center. And one of the reasons people live such a long time is their sense of purpose. Okinawa is a Blue Zone, and there they call it Ikigai. It’s their reason for getting up in the morning and living their life. It’s its purpose. And let’s talk about two more of the Power Nine principles according to Blue Zones, to live a healthier, longer life. The first one is to downshift or to destress. It’s not that people that live a long time or have long lives don’t have stressful lives. In fact, often it’s more stressful. But what they do is decompress. They find a way almost every day, or very often, to decompress, be grateful for what they have, and release that stress. Another principle is Hara Ha Chi Bu, and that means to eat only until you’re 80% full. In Okinawa, that’s what they say before they eat. As a reminder, hara ha chi boo. It means eat until you’re 80% full, which makes it so that you have less calories in you, which wil help you lose weight and maintain a healthy weight. Earlier, we met with Steve and Susie to learn about Miami becoming a healthier place. Let’s listen to Susie on what trends are on the health horizon. What sort of trends are you seeing in your research in health and wellness?
Hunter: What sort of trends are you seeing in your research in health and wellness? I mean, we see what I call know, one week it’s high-intensity interval training. The next week it’s, oh, it’s all about juices and the Juicing diets and smoothies. What sort of trends are you seeing now?
Susie: One trend, for example, is wellness real estate, where people want to live in places where their health and wellness is a priority. So that and of course, with Blue Zones and this particular center, that’s an example of it where you can live and you have all of that right there. So that’s a trend. And another trend we’re seeing is mental wellness because there’s a lot more talk, of course, about all the stress everyone has gone through. So people care more about their mental wellness. I’m really excited about what they’re doing here with the Blue Zone Center. I mean, this is a flagship that is going to be known around the world because what they’ve done or what they’re doing is they’re putting together the whole medical and wellness together in one place, plus the fact that Miami will be a Blue Zone footprint. Everyone will benefit from that.
Hunter: Well, Susie, thank you so much for your time and for the wonderful work you’re doing. We certainly appreciate it here on SoFlo Health.
Let’s turn our attention back to our conversation with Steve.
Hunter: How exciting is it that we had Susie with us?
Stephen: To get that kind of insight and knowledge right from the source is really amazing.
Hunter: So, Steve, what’s the vision for the Blue zone here in Miami?
Stephen: Well, the Blue Zone Center is connected to an incredible hotel called the Legacy Hotel. So what we’re also doing is we’re merging hospitality with healthcare. So we’re creating a whole environment that really changes everything about a healthcare experience. We have taken all those aggravating, annoying barriers of accessing your doctor on the phone or getting an appointment or rescheduling an appointment that isn’t six months out. We’re really looking at everything and changing it all from the ground up.
Hunter: Well, that’s extremely exciting for everyone here in Miami that has a health focus, which is a lot of people here, fortunately. If people want to learn more, how can they?
Stephen: Well, if you want to learn more about the Blue Zone Center, you can go to www.bluezonescenter.com and there you can learn all about the facility, its services, what we expect to do and stay on top of when it’s going to open.
Hunter: Excellent. Well, we’re excited for it. Steve, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it.
Stephen: Pleasure.
The American Heart Association and this local artist team up to educate us about strokes when Soflow Health returns. I have two ways that you can live a longer, healthier, happier life according to Blue Zone’s Power Nine principles. One you might like. The other one maybe not so much. Let’s start with that one. But first, welcome back to SoFlo Health. I’m Hunter Frankie. We’re at the Paramount Miami World Center. All right, here we go. First one is to be more plant-focused. So have a plant-based diet. That doesn’t mean you can’t eat meat, cheese, or other things that you like. Just means to mostly have plants, beans, oats, whole foods, and things like that. This one you might like. And that’s to have wine at. Five. People that live those long, happy, healthy lives also drink fairly regularly, but moderately. They usually have about one to two drinks a day, but you can’t just save them all up for Saturday and have 14 drinks on Saturday and still expect to be healthy. Just doesn’t work like that.
