-
Here's an intriguing fact.
-
In the developed world,
-
everywhere, women live an average
of six to eight years longer than men do.
-
Six to eight years longer.
-
That's, like, a huge gap.
-
In 2015, the "Lancet" published an article
-
showing that men in rich countries
-
are twice as likely to die as women are
-
at any age.
-
But there is one place in the world
-
where men live as long as women.
-
It's a remote, mountainous zone,
-
a blue zone,
-
where super longevity
-
is common to both sexes.
-
This is the blue zone in Sardinia,
-
an Italian island in the Mediterranean,
-
between Corsica and Tunisia,
-
where there are six times
as many centenarians
-
as on the Italian mainland,
-
less than 200 miles away.
-
There are 10 times as many centenarians
-
as there are in North America.
-
It's the only place
where men live as long as women.
-
But why?
-
My curiosity was piqued.
-
I decided to research the sights
and the habits of the place,
-
and I started with the genetic profile.
-
I discovered soon enough
-
that genes account for just
25 percent of their longevity.
-
The other 75 percent is lifestyle.
-
So what does it take
to live to 100 or beyond?
-
What are they doing right?
-
What you're looking at
is an aerial view of Villagrande.
-
It's a village at the epicenter
of the blue zone
-
where I went to investigate this,
-
and as you can see, architectural beauty
is not its main virtue,
-
density is:
-
tightly spaced houses,
-
interwoven alleys and streets.
-
It means that the villagers' lives
constantly intersect.
-
And as I walked through the village,
-
I could feel hundreds
of pairs of eyes watching me
-
from behind doorways and curtains,
-
from behind shutters.
-
Because like all ancient villages,
-
Villagrande couldn't have survived
-
without this structure,
without its walls, without its cathedral,
-
without its village square,
-
because defense and social cohesion
defined its design.
-
Urban priorities changed as we moved
towards the industrial revolution
-
because infectious disease
became the risk of the day.
-
But what about now?
-
Now, social isolation
is the public health risk of our time.
-
Now, a third of the population says
-
they have two or fewer people to lean on.
-
But let's go to Villagrande
now as a contrast
-
to meet some centenarians.
-
Meet Giuseppe Marino.
He's 102, a supercentenarian
-
and a lifelong resident
of the village of Villagrande.
-
He was a gregarious man.
-
He loved to recount stories
-
such as how he lived like a bird
-
from what he could find
on the forest floor
-
during not one but two world wars,
-
how he and his wife,
who also lived past 100,
-
raised six children
in a small, homey kitchen
-
where I interviewed him.
-
Here he is with his sons
Angelo and Domenico,
-
both in their 70s
and looking after their father,
-
and who were quite frankly
very suspicious of me and my daughter
-
who came along with me
on this research trip,
-
because the flip side of social cohesion
-
is a wariness of strangers and outsiders.
-
But Giuseppe, he wasn't suspicious at all.
-
He was a happy-go-lucky guy,
-
very outgoing with a positive outlook.
-
And I wondered: so is that what it takes
to live to be 100 or beyond,
-
thinking positively?
-
Actually, no.
-
(Laughter)
-
Meet Giovanni Coreas. He's 101,
-
the grumpiest person I have ever met.
-
(Laughter)
-
And he put a lie to the notion
-
that you have to be positive
to live a long life.
-
And there is evidence for this.
-
When I asked him why he lived so long,
-
he kind of looked at me
under hooded eyelids and he growled,
-
"Nobody has to know my secrets."
-
(Laughter)
-
But despite being a sourpuss,
-
the niece who lived with him
and looked after him
-
called him "Il Tesoro," "my treasure."
-
And she respected him and loved him,
-
and she told me, when I questioned
this obvious loss of her freedom,
-
"You just don't understand, do you?
-
Looking after this man is a pleasure.
-
It's a huge privilege for me.
-
This is my heritage."
-
And indeed, wherever I went
to interview these centenarians,
-
I found a kitchen party.
-
Here's Giovanni with his two nieces,
-
Maria above him
-
and beside him his great-niece Sara,
-
who came when I was there
to bring fresh fruits and vegetables.
-
And I quickly discovered by being there
-
that in the blue zone, as people age,
-
and indeed across their lifespans,
-
they're always surrounded
by extended family, by friends,
-
by neighbors, the priest,
the barkeeper, the grocer.
-
People are always there or dropping by.
-
They are never left
to live solitary lives.
-
This is unlike the rest
of the developed world,
-
where as George Burns quipped,
-
"Happiness is having a large,
loving, caring family in another city."
-
(Laughter)
-
Now, so far we've only met men,
-
long-living men, but I met women too,
-
and here you see Tzia Teresa.
-
She, at over 100, taught me
how to make the local specialty,
-
which is called culorjones,
-
which are these large pasta pockets
-
like ravioli about this size,
-
this size,
-
and they're filled
with high-fat ricotta and mint
-
and drenched in tomato sauce.
-
And she showed me
how to make just the right crimp
-
so they wouldn't open,
-
and she makes them
with her daughters every Sunday
-
and distributes them
by the dozens to neighbors and friends.
-
And that's when I discovered
a low-fat, gluten-free diet
-
is not what it takes
to live to 100 in the blue zone.
-
(Applause)
-
Now, these centenarians' stories
along with the science that underpins them
-
prompted me to ask myself
some questions too,
-
such as, when am I going to die
and how can I put that day off?
-
And as you will see,
the answer is not what we expect.
-
Julianne Holt-Lunstad is a researcher
at Brigham Young University
-
and she addressed this very question
-
in a series of studies
-
of tens of thousands of middle aged people
-
much like this audience here.
-
And she looked at every
aspect of their lifestyle:
-
their diet, their exercise,
-
their marital status,
-
how often they went to the doctor,
-
whether they smoked or drank, etc.
-
She recorded all of this
-
and then she and her colleagues
sat tight and waited for seven years
-
to see who would still be breathing.
-
And of the people left standing,
-
what reduced their chances
of dying the most?
-
That was her question.
-
So let's now look at her data in summary,
-
going from the least powerful
predictor to the strongest.
-
OK?
-
So clean air, which is great,
-
it doesn't predict how long you will live.
-
Whether you have your hypertension treated
-
is good.
-
Still not a strong predictor.
-
Whether you're lean or overweight,
you can stop feeling guilty about this,
-
because it's only in third place.
-
How much exercise you get is next,
-
still only a moderate predictor.
-
Whether you've had a cardiac event
and you're in rehab and exercising,
-
getting higher now.
-
Whether you've had a flu vaccine.
-
Did anybody here know
-
that having a flu vaccine
protects you more than doing exercise?
-
Whether you were drinking and quit,
-
or whether you're a moderate drinker,
-
whether you don't smoke,
or if you did, whether you quit,
-
and getting towards the top predictors
-
are two features of your social life.
-
First, your close relationships.
-
These are the people
that you can call on for a loan
-
if you need money suddenly,
-
who will call the doctor
if you're not feeling well
-
or who will take you to the hospital,
-
or who will sit with you
if you're having an existential crisis,
-
if you're in despair.
-
Those people, that little clutch of people
-
are a strong predictor, if you have them,
of how long you'll live.
-
And then something that surprised me,
-
something that's called
social integration.
-
This means how much
you interact with people
-
as you move through your day.
-
How many people do you talk to?
-
And these mean both
your weak and your strong bonds,
-
so not just the people
you're really close to,
-
who mean a lot to you,
-
but, like, do you talk to the guy
who every day makes you your coffee?
-
Do you talk to the postman?
-
Do you talk to the woman who walks
by your house every day with her dog?
-
Do you play bridge or poker,
have a book club?
-
Those interactions
are one of the strongest predictors
-
of how long you'll live.
-
Now, this leads me to the next question:
-
if we now spend more time online
than on any other activity,
-
including sleeping,
-
we're now up to 11 hours a day,
-
one hour more than last year, by the way,
-
does it make a difference?
-
Why distinguish
between interacting in person
-
and interacting via social media?
-
Is it the same thing as being there
-
if you're in contact constantly
with your kids through text, for example?
-
Well, the short answer
to the question is no,
-
it's not the same thing.
-
Face-to-face contact releases
a whole cascade of neurotransmitters,
-
and like a vaccine,
they protect you now in the present
-
and well into the future.
-
So simply making
eye contact with somebody,
-
shaking hands, giving somebody a high-five
-
is enough to release oxytocin,
-
which increases your level of trust
-
and it lowers your cortisol levels.
-
So it lowers your stress.
-
And dopamine is generated,
which gives us a little high
-
and it kills pain.
-
It's like a naturally produced morphine.
-
Now, all of this passes
under our conscious radar,
-
which is why we conflate
online activity with the real thing.
-
But we do have evidence now,
fresh evidence,
-
that there is a difference.
-
So let's look at some of the neuroscience.
-
Elizabeth Redcay, a neuroscientist
at the University of Maryland,
-
tried to map the difference
-
between what goes on in our brains
when we interact in person
-
versus when we're watching
something that's static.
-
And what she did was
she compared the brain function
-
of two groups of people,
-
those interacting live with her
-
or with one of her research associates
-
in a dynamic conversation,
-
and she compared that
to the brain activity of people
-
who were watching her talk
about the same subject
-
but in a canned video, like on YouTube.
-
And by the way, if you want to know
-
how she fit two people
in an MRI scanner at the same time,
-
talk to me later.
-
So what's the difference?
-
This is your brain
on real social interaction.
-
What you're seeing
is the difference in brain activity
-
between interacting in person
and taking in static content.
-
In orange, you see the brain areas
that are associated with attention,
-
social intelligence --
-
that means anticipating
what somebody else is thinking
-
and feeling and planning --
-
and emotional reward.
-
And these areas become much more engaged
-
when we're interacting
with a live partner.
-
Now, these richer brain signatures
-
might be why recruiters
from Fortune 500 companies
-
evaluating candidates
-
thought that the candidates were smarter
-
when they heard their voices
-
compared to when they just
read their pitches in a text, for example,
-
or an email or a letter.
-
Now, our voices and body language
convey a rich signal.
-
It shows that we're thinking, feeling,
-
sentient human beings
-
who are much more than an algorithm.
-
Now, this research by Nicholas Epley
-
at the University of Chicago
Business School
-
is quite amazing because
it tells us a simple thing.
-
If somebody hears your voice,
-
they think you're smarter.
-
I mean, that's quite a simple thing.
-
Now, to return to the beginning,
-
why do women live longer than men?
-
And one major reason
is that women are more likely
-
to prioritize and groom
their face-to-face relationships
-
over their lifespans.
-
Fresh evidence shows
-
that these in-person friendships
-
create a biological force field
against disease and decline.
-
And it's not just true of humans
-
but their primate relations,
our primate relations as well.
-
Anthropologist Joan Silk's work
shows that female baboons
-
who have a core of female friends
-
show lower levels of stress
via their cortisol levels,
-
they live longer and they have
more surviving offspring.
-
At least three stable relationships.
-
That was the magic number.
-
Think about it.
-
I hope you guys have three.
-
The power of such face-to-face contact
-
is really why there are
the lowest rates of dementia
-
among people who are socially engaged.
-
It's why women who have breast cancer
-
are four times more likely
to survive their disease than loners are.
-
Why men who've had a stroke
who meet regularly to play poker
-
or to have coffee
-
or to play old-timer's hockey --
-
I'm Canadian, after all --
-
(Laughter)
-
are better protected
by that social contact
-
than they are by medication.
-
Why men who've had a stroke
who meet regularly --
-
this is something very
powerful they can do.
-
This face-to-face contact
provides stunning benefits,
-
yet now almost a quarter of the population
says they have no one to talk to.
-
We can do something about this.
-
Like Sardinian villagers,
-
it's a biological imperative
to know we belong,
-
and not just the women among us.
-
Building in-person interaction
into our cities, into our workplaces,
-
into our agendas
-
bolsters the immune system,
-
sends feel-good hormones
surging through the bloodstream and brain
-
and helps us live longer.
-
I call this building your village,
-
and building it and sustaining it
is a matter of life and death.
-
Thank you.
-
(Applause)
-
Moderator: Susan, come back.
I have a question for you.
-
I'm wondering if there's a middle path.
-
So you talk about the neurotransmitters
connecting when in face-to-face,
-
but what about digital technology?
-
We've seen enormous improvements
in digital technology
-
like FaceTime, things like that.
-
Does that work too?
-
I mean, I see my nephew.
-
He plays Minecraft
and he's yelling at his friends.
-
It seems like he's connecting pretty well.
-
Is that useful? Is that helpful?
-
Susan Pinker: Some of the data
are just emerging.
-
The data are so fresh
that the digital revolution happened
-
and the health data trailed behind.
-
So we're just learning,
-
but I would say
there are some improvements
-
that we could make in the technology.
-
For example, the camera on your laptop
is at the top of the screen,
-
so for example, when you're
looking into the screen,
-
you're not actually making eye contact.
-
So something as simple
as even just looking into the camera
-
can increase those neurotransmitters,
-
or maybe changing
the position of the camera.
-
So it's not identical, but I think
we are getting closer with the technology.
-
Moderator: Great. Thank you so much.
-
SP: Thank you.
-
(Applause)