Modern world doesn't acknowledge, but in our time many yearn to break free of a prison of flat secular materialism.

Wait, wrong podcast.

But if you aren't already listening to Lord of Spirits, you definitely should be.

The modern health paradigm is just as beholden though to materialism.

We're constantly bombarded with Wellness trends, diet fads, and self optimization strategies, but very few consider health through the lens of Orthodox Christianity.

This podcast, Here to Change that, will dive into topics like fasting, prayer, stress, nutrition, and even physical training, and while staying rooted in the timeless wisdom of the Church.

Each episode will break down key health topics from an Orthodox perspective, bringing in guests, whether they're priests, health professionals, or experts in traditional wisdom, to help us navigate the practical and spiritual aspects of true.

Well-being welcome to Orthodox health the podcast.

We explore the intersection of Orthodox Christianity, physical health, mental well-being and spiritual growth.

I'm Doctor Michael Christian, joined by my Co host John, and we're excited to take this journey with you.

So grab a cup of coffee, lots of cream, coconut for fasting and let's get started.

Blessed.

Is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked?

For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.

Welcome back to the Orthodox Health Podcast.

I'm your host, Doctor Michael Christian.

And I'm John, your friendly neighborhood ortho bro and Co host.

And don't worry if you get bitten by a radioactive one, they aren't going to sign you up for a debate immediately.

But if you've been travelling with us through the Sacred Diets arc, you know the road that we've walked in episode 30, the Gospel of the Grains.

We Met the Revivalist helped perform the 19th century Protestants preaching salvation through cereal clinics and pure diets, especially the 7th Day Adventist streams that still echo in modern guidelines.

Then in episode 32, we talked about the temperance table.

We watched Mormons and Methodists build dietary rules into a moral project they called clean living Stimulants, discouraged kitchens as little chapels of behavior, and then episode 33, Covenant Kitchen.

We looked at Jews and Muslims, food laws as identity and belonging, how covenant markers landed on the plate, guarding a people but also vulnerable to pride in episode 34.

Then and New Age, we saw Eastern techniques and mindfulness diets, how calm and presents can be detached from their native theology and resold as neutral Wellness.

In episode 35, the cold kitchen room named food as spell, when technique, timing and manifestation language can turn kitchens into ritual sites for control.

And finally, in episode 36, our Orthodox response, we said, but OK, how does the Church answer all of that?

Fasting, blessing, almsgiving and the Eucharist.

The rule of the Christian table.

So today is not a spin off episode, it's the capstone of that arc.

Same series, just the next layer.

We're turning the camera toward the celebrity guest in the Wellness world.

Longevity, especially the Blue Zones mythos.

Absolutely, because not every long life is a good life, and not every good life is long.

As us fellow New Yorkers would know, only the good die young, right?

That's right.

But the modern world talks about longevity in a way that sounds less like medicine and more like a rival of religion.

It has clergy in the form of algorithmic gurus and white coat profits.

It has vestiments in the form of wearables, rings, straps.

It has sacraments in the form of supplement stacks, biomarker panels, and lab descriptions, and it has a liturgical calendar and the former steps sleep scores, macros, HRV.

And I've already made my confession to you guys.

I do often times wear and monitor, especially when I'm exercising.

I like that data.

But the second that those numbers start making me feel like I'm saved, we have a whole new set of problems and a new creed on our hands.

Absolutely.

Christianity does not promise immortality by metric.

It promises communion, repentance, a good death, and ideally, a good defense for the dread judgement seat of Christ.

And to that point, as John said, it is OK to measure things.

But when you start to believe that measurement is your salvation, yeah, big deal.

So here's what we're doing tonight.

With respect and a sharp #2 pencil, we're going to audit the Blue Zone story in light of this whole Sacred Dietz arc.

What's real?

What's shaky, what's over interpreted?

And then set the keepers inside Orthodox rule life so our kitchens can stay Christian and not talismanic.

Translation.

We're bringing receipts, not just recipes.

No Goat on a Hill montage here.

We care about real people living real lives, not travel brochure vibes with a Halo filter.

So.

Let's stitch this all back together very clearly, because the continuity matters.

In episodes 30 to 33, they help to show us how theology and ideologies landed on the plate with the Protestants, the Mormon, the Adventist, the Jews, the Muslims, each turning food into a kind of lived confession.

There's episode 34 shows us how technique without theology still ends up functioning like religion with the Zen, the mindfulness and the new Age rituals.

At 35, we named the whole drift with food as spell and diet as ritual for control, and that did lead us into the Orthodox counter liturgy.

Now we had planned on dropping this Blue Zones episode before, but we obviously wanted to get the Orthodox practical episode to you right at the beginning of the Nativity fast.

So we're going to circle back here.

So with tonight's episode, we're still in that same story though, where we're going to ask how does the Blue Zones and longevity conversation intersect with all of this?

Where does repeat old health religion patterns?

And where does it accidentally confirm things the church already gives us?

Where are the times we can be to be?

Right, we're going to say the quiet part out loud, as we often do.

Super centenarian stats can get wobbly clerical errors, late registrations, family lore, even pension shenanigans.

Real life is messy.

Numbers tell the truth when they're clean.

When they're not, they do become talismans.

Absolutely.

And to be clear, when we say clerical, we're not talking about the priesthood, we're talking about the collection of data as if by clerks, not clergy.

So the plan for this hour is simple and honest, What the blue zones are and what they aren't, and a little light sanity check with enough methods to separate story from evidence without turning this into a stats lecture, because that was never my favorite class either.

Sorry, math nerds.

We're also going to touch on the different regions that are incorporated in that Blue Zones, so Okinawa, Sardinia, Ikaria, Nikoya and Loma Linda, and what to keep and what to question on each of those.

So we have our keepers versus the idols, the habits we can adopt without worshiping them.

And then a respectful word on the Human Longevity project, because I've worked with the producers of that project and it was a big focus on the Blue Zones because I've worked with the producers of that documentary on numbers from projects.

And so we'll talk talk about what that film does beautifully and where can over promise if we forget everything we've learned in this arc, because a big focus of that human longevity project was on these Blue Zones.

So there's a lot of crossover.

Absolutely, Mike.

And for the record, as I've already said, we're not anti data, we're not anti film and we're certainly not anti hope.

We are anti canonizing things that don't belong on the altar.

Exactly because some of those Blue Zone signals are real, but some are record team artifacts and unfortunately many are over interpreted by the marketers and their fans.

However, what survives serious scrutiny are very ordinary habits.

Modest meals, daily movement, thick social ties, weekly time disciplines.

And those habits don't need a shrine.

They need a calendar.

They need fasting and feasting.

They need prayer, alms, giving, hospitality, but most importantly and centrally, the Eucharist.

Absolutely.

So if your favorite claim that comes out of this space is one that can't survive true hospitality, such as eating with your parish or with your children, then it's not a keeper.

That claim is an idol.

Absolutely.

So let's also be direct about the longevity at any cost religion.

It has a creed that I believe in, life extension, maker of metrics and models.

It has sacraments, blood work, and devices.

It has tides, time, money and attention.

And mostly paid to the South.

But it also has an eschatology.

If I hit the numbers, then death blinks first.

Meanwhile, real Christianity says repent, forgive, feed your neighbor, and prepare to die.

Well, because we're all going to die.

Which ironically tends to make people live better and sometimes even longer without worshipping that clock.

Absolutely.

At the end of the day, there's no guarantee in either case because it's either random or it's in God's will that something you're going through is for your betterment in the long term.

That suffering is meant to be for your salvation.

But to that point, if you're new here, I want you to hear this with peace.

We are not mocking the desire to live a long life.

We are naming the counterfeit, the drift from health into salvation by technique.

So the church doesn't erase numbers.

It helps to baptize them and put them under love in time with people.

And because this is still the Sacred Diet's arc, we're going to keep dropping callbacks to what we've already worked on.

When we say things like magic, think what we talked about during the Occult Kitchen Control by technique to force those outcomes.

When we say mystery, think of our Orthodox response video gift received from Holy Communion.

Blue Zones, at its worst, slides from the mystery into magic.

Absolutely.

So you'll hear us push back gently on the travelogue effect with the beautiful places with beautiful elders, which will make for a beautiful film.

But a camera cannot show wisdom.

Only population patterns can show survival curves.

So we want to honor what the documentaries and the research articles reveal, that purpose, kinship, low toxin environments and unprocessed food waste.

But then anchor those insights into what we already know without losing the bigger picture.

We already have a calendar, a people and a table.

Also for the inbox, yes we know there are Adventist cohorts with real signal.

Yes, we know Okinawa before Western Drift was a different plate.

Yes, there's Sardinia with those upland villages.

None of it needs a Halo.

Keep the habits, lose the myth making.

So tonight we will hold the map in our hands and say where does longevity story fit and how do we keep what is good without letting a new civic religion hijack our kitchens?

And so Brando book with a little humility as well, because if your pet headline gets dinged, it's not personal.

We promise.

We're building lives that are good and often longer, because they are shared and worshipped through, not because we micromanaged our mitochondria like little tyrants.

We want to be little Christs.

That's the difference.

Exactly.

Little Christ, not little Nephilim.

No demonosis.

Right.

Or, as I've heard Doctor David Patrick Harry say, demonic henosis all.

Right, so definitions first.

What are the Blue Zones and where do they come from?

And why do we need at least a little sanity?

Check.

No goats, no sunsets, Just the origin story, the demographers with blue ink, and the moment a map turned into doctrine.

Absolutely.

So what exactly are are those blue zones?

Because the origin story is not a cookbook, it is about the demographics.

And it was 2 researchers mapping unusual longevity in Sardinia, and they drew circles on a map with blue pen to mark villages that had striking concentrations of older adults, especially older men.

And that blue ink became shorthand the blue zones.

Right.

And later, journalists and authors expanded the idea to five commonly listed places, Okinawa in Japan, Sardinia in Italy, Icaria in Greece and Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica and Loma Linda in California among Seventh Day Adventists who, if you've been with us since Episode 30, you know, are not strangers to the diet as gospel story.

So not a prophecy, just some blue sharpie circles that kind of went viral, right?

And that distinction matters for our sacred diets arc.

The demographic lens asks what do records and population patterns say about who lives, how long, and where?

The branding lens says, well, what story can we tell that turns that into lifestyle advice and maybe a product line?

Both have their place, but we're not going to confuse them.

And that's the key here.

We have our branding lens in Orthodox health, right?

We are trying to explain to you the ways in which the Orthodox way of living is going to improve your life.

The difference, though, is that we are not putting the dietary and lifestyle aspects as the sole and primary focus.

Yes, those are important, but they are important in the service of your life in Christ.

Absolutely.

And once you confuse those things, that map does become doctrine and a headline can be perceived as your way to salvation, right?

So here are our working definitions for tonight.

Blue Zones and the narrowest sense are geographic clusters where reasonably good records suggest unusual survival at older populations for a meaningful slice of the population.

So basically that you're going to live a long life in these regions if you live a long according to their lifestyle.

On the broader aspects of it, we have a popular lifestyle brand that extracts common denominators from those places, beans, walking, social ties, purpose and then presents them as a template that anyone could adopt not because Dan Butner went and formed Blue Zones LLC and then that was eventually bought out by Adventist health.

So the Loma Linda community that is 7th Day Adventists, the gospel of the grains that we talked about now owns the rights to the trademark and branding behind the Blue Zones.

So it's all tied together there the.

More, you know, and as Doctor Mike showed, our lane, and all of this is the audit lane, we keep the parts that survive scrutiny and we release the parts that are just aesthetic vibes with a marketing budget.

Absolutely.

So within that narrow definition, there are really only two honest questions that we need to hold.

One, do the records really say what the headline say?

And two, if there is an advantage, what seems to explain it?

Diet, movement, social structure, geography, or just the fact that we notice certain places more than others.

Before we get into the specific regions, we should also name why Blue Zones became so powerful in the 1st place.

Because the story is one that people do want to believe.

They find a village with spry grandmothers and silver haired shepherds, bottle their secrets and then live forever.

Sounds amazing.

It hit the same part of the heart that the Revivalist, Serial and Temperance rules, as well as Zen Calm did in earlier episodes.

Absolutely.

There is something beautiful there, honoring the elders and ordinary life, right?

How many times have we said, right, we have Athos, and then we have the Yayas who are holding the world together, their prayers are upholding the world.

We absolutely are appreciative of that impetus, but it just directed the wrong way.

And there is the risk that we've tracked all ARC long, turning longing into technique, and technique into liturgy.

Right.

And so in other words, the occult kitchen without the crystals.

Just lab work and I suppose some legumes as well.

That's right, and probably a little gas along the way.

Here's what we'll do and won't do this episode.

We will treat sober demographic work as the spine of any claim, and not just postcards.

That's just how great it looked over there.

We're also going to distinguish population patterns from individual anecdotes, and then we'll extract transferable habits without sacralizing them.

But we won't do is preach from extreme age tallies that we can't reasonably trust, so no guarantees the person's 115 years old.

We're also going to confuse a documentary montage with causal proof.

Nor are we going to turn means into baptism or steps into salvation, although 30 Steps to Heaven is an excellent book as a shorter, modern abridged version of the latter divine ascent.

Having said that, those are different steps that we're talking about here, so we'll keep everything under our standing test from this whole arc.

If a claim cannot survive hospitality that parish meal, your kids at the table or a Sunday feast, it does not belong anywhere on your calendar.

Right.

And which means you don't need to be the weird guy at coffee hour whose Blue Zones template collapses every time that Yaya offers you her Stew.

Like we mentioned with the grandma, when she brings the steak or whatever it is, just accept it with Thanksgiving.

It's probably delicious anyway.

Exactly.

Whether she's Italian, Russian, or in this case maybe Okinawan.

But today we're going to stand at that same table and say let's audit longevity claims so our Christian rule of the kitchen isn't hijacked by a new religion of longevity at any cost.

Meaning we'll keep the ordinary things the Blue Zone Zones point to, such as modest meals, daily movement, thick social ties, weekly time disciplines.

And we'll put them where they belong, under prayer, inside fasting and feasting, and toward the love of God and of neighbor.

Absolutely.

So one last clarity line before we pivot.

We are not against storytelling.

Film and narrative are very powerful.

The symbolic world with Jonathan Bajo, right?

We're both big fans.

Lord of Spirits and all the Father Andrew, Stephen Damic stuff with the token world and to the idea of the health documentary space.

I've worked with a lot of people in that field and there's much to appreciate, especially when the cameras actually honor elders and recover wisdom.

But tonight our first loyalty is to truth in charity.

What do we actually know, What don't we know?

And where does the church already give us a better architecture than brand driven Wellness?

Absolutely, Mike.

And so there's not going to be much embellishment here, just the definitions.

Then we're bringing the receipts, a brief, brief sanity check on the method, and then we're going into the real kitchens.

Absolutely.

So before we let any region preach to us, we're going to do a gentle examination.

Not a grad school seminar, but just enough clarity to keep us from preaching from postcards.

So three questions.

One, are the ages believable, 2 are the comparisons fair?

And three, are the stories bigger than the data?

Right, so on that first one, the paperwork is going to matter here.

If the 115 year old goat herder turns out to be a mix up in a family registry then the whole story on this changes quite a bit.

Exactly because very extreme ages are fragile to error.

Typos, late registrations, mismatched names, families repeating a story they've heard with a single birthday party decades ago.

So instead of asking this person really 112, we ask does this place, this province actually show better survival in older age overall?

That is a much more honest question because I remember growing up doing Japanese jujitsu and my instructor talked of his Yogi master who was 130 years old.

And I kind of had a little bit of questions about that.

And I was young and very inquisitive and Internet was burgeoning at that point and there were a couple of dubious websites that confirmed it.

But because I trusted him, I said, I guess that's how old the dude is.

But you can definitely go back and look now.

There's no other further documentation of it.

So it's real easy though, even without any kind of maliciousness to it, that particular guy would have been born theoretically in 1870s in India.

So the record keeping probably wasn't as great as it is today.

Everything is tracked tracing database today so a lot harder to make that scam right now.

Absolutely, Mike.

And so the pictures are really for postcards.

Patterns are what we're looking for when we're talking about scientific claims.

Absolutely.

So then we're going to zoom out and say, are we comparing like with like?

Some places have more elders simply because younger folks have moved away from work.

Other regions might get more attention just because they've already been branded as one of the Blue Zones.

And finally, we need to remember that these documentaries are narrative machines most because again, humans are narrative creatures.

We like that story.

We need to have something that explains the meaning, the purpose, the teals.

What is it that's driving us?

So.

They're supposed to feel casual, though.

That is their job.

Our job, however, in this episode, is to say beautiful.

Now, which parts of that beauty are actually repeatable, and which parts are just some context?

Or to put it within our sacred diet's ARC language, film like this can give you a sort of icon of human life right now, not the icons that we have in the Church that give us a glimpse into the eternal life, but it does not give you sacraments.

Absolutely SO2 quick land mines that show up in every single region.

1 is the survivorship bias.

The ones that you can interview at 95 are by definition the survivors.

Their current habits may not match the patterns that carried them through their midlife and on to that age.

And #2 is the measurement drift.

Traditional diets mutate with imports, oil, supermarkets.

Citing a 1940 food pattern as though it's identical to 2025 is like assuming Kellogg's clinic still runs your hospital, although he might.

Yes, and my favorite confounding by virtue.

The same people who say eat simple food also tend to belong to communities, get outside rest, and of course they're taking care of grandma.

Was it the beans or the whole package bundle?

Absolutely.

It's usually the bundle.

And another term for that is the healthy user bias where someone makes a change in their life.

Maybe they removed sugar and processed seed oils, but they all start exercising and they improve their son habits and usually those are bundled together.

When you decide to be more proactive on your health, you're going to start incorporating lifestyle habits as well as your dietary habits.

It's usually not one thing in isolation, which makes things hard to pick apart in terms of what was the causal factor.

So that though is why in this episode you'll be hearing us continually saying calendars over hacks.

When a behavior is embedded in time and people, it will tend to stick because it's part of that lifestyle.

So with that two encouragement so that we don't become cynics, clusters really do show signal when you look carefully, especially where family structures, work patterns and simple food waste line up over decades.

And then qualitative work.

We have film with ethnography.

Those will add textures that numbers can't.

The pace of the meals, the way the elders are treated, and the sound of a village at night.

We those will all be beneficial information to have.

We just refuse to canonize the montage that clips it all together.

Right.

And so the crux of what you're getting at here is to honor the elders.

But we're going to put the story behind the claims, then ask how any of this can live inside an Orthodox calendar.

I like that you said the crux, which also means cross beautiful.

So with that light sanity check in place, we can enter these regions and briefly discuss without being hypnotized by the sunsets or spooked by the skepticism.

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All right, So we're going to bring the receipts.

As we said, first stop on that trip is Okinawa, what the traditional plate looked like before Western drift and why that signal has faded.

Absolutely.

So let's start where the modern longevity conversation loves to start.

Okinawa.

And if you only know the Instagram filtered version, you know the spry grandmas and sun hats.

A purple sweet potato, which, by the way, are phenomenal and tastes like pancakes with Maple syrup.

Without any Maple syrup, you end up missing the actual pattern.

Yeah, I this imagery honestly makes me think of Mr.

Miyagi.

And while he did catch flies with chopsticks, I assure you he would not be OK with us eating the bugs.

That's right.

We're not going to eat Z bugs.

So there really are two frames.

There's traditional Okinawa, which is roughly pre 1960s.

That's very much Mr.

Miyagi time.

And then there's modern Okinawa after Americanization and globalized food economies, which has tended to be a major detriment to the world's health.

Traditionally the Okinawan table was stark dominant with low energy density.

Not rice, but sweet potato.

A while in Japan there's a lot of rice, and Okinawa specifically sweet potatoes were absolutely the king for a long stretch of the 20th century.

They then add in some leafy and bitter greens, Goya, which is a beer, melon and dama, and the leaves of the potatoes.

Actually, they did have their soy and other legumes in the forms of tofu and miso, but it wasn't the bulk, it was a condiment.

They had seaweeds like kombu or wakame, and they had herbs like mud wort.

No, witches.

They weren't used in the same way you are.

Yeah.

Animal foods were present but modest and often ceremonial.

Pork was had at festivals and they was taken in broths.

Small fish were had in their stews.

And as you said, you're making me think of Mr.

Miyagi and Shrimp O Sensei, whose boat it flew over to China, where we learned Okinawan to karate.

I endorse this.

I'm Japanese so it's not offensive.

There it is.

I love it.

But we're talking about Okinawans.

I don't know.

All that aside, if you haven't watched Cobra Kai, I highly recommend it.

But back on point, fats overall were low and that produced a plate that was mineral rich, fiber dense and calorically modest without anyone counting anything.

Right.

And so the meme version of that says eat pork all day, but the actual census version is saying mostly plants, a little animal product and stop before you feel full.

Exactly, not stop before you feel stuffed is embedded culturally as Harahachi Boo.

Or eat to 80% full.

It's not a hack, it's focus edicism.

And we have that same idea in Orthodoxy.

You're never supposed to be eating to your stuff, to the gills.

That will lead us into gluttony, right?

So here's a boundary that keeps appetite in its lane.

So inside our art, as we said, that's huge.

It's an aesthetic practice without a soup.

It's a lived rule rather than a private obsession.

But longevity didn't come from food alone.

The social fabric matters.

Moai or or mutual aid friend circles that start young and last for decades, or Icky Guy, which was a reason to get up in the morning.

Bound to family roles.

There was garden work like bonsai trees and community tasks and movement is baked into life.

Wax on, wax off, Walking, carrying, gardening and squatting.

Right, and the part we always have to say out loud, the modern drift is real.

Unfortunately, you can't fly into Naha, order a purple potato latte and assume that you downloaded 1949.

It's not the way it works.

Sadly no.

And that's exactly right.

Those post war shifts increased refined grains and oils and introduced convenience foods and more sedentary work as the bundle unraveled food movement, social ties.

And that 80% rule well with it.

The Okinawan advantage faded in younger cohorts.

SO3 myths that we want to help debunk.

One that Okinawans 8 tons of pork daily while festival pork shows up in stories and broths.

The weekday plate with starch, legume and greens.

So confusing the feast with the average weekday is a common problem.

And that's exactly what our Orthodox calendar guards against.

Number 2 is that it was one magic vegetable.

Yes, sweet potato is central, but the signal comes from the low energy density and it's micronutrient variety paired with portion restraint, movement and social obligations.

It is the whole bundle, not simply a Talisman.

However, again, I cannot recommend enough how delicious those jet purple sweet potatoes are.

And #3 is that we need to copy the macro or just the specifics of the diet, right?

We have to come low fat vegans in order to be healthy.

But reducing the culture to percentages misses the form that enforce it.

Gardening, the market, the moai, the shared kitchens, the meal pacing.

And without the forms, the numbers start to fall apart.

That's quite the saying, Mike.

Without forms, the numbers fall apart because especially in New York, all people seem to care about is the numbers of everything, and all of our forms are falling apart already.

How do we transfer something like that into Christian terms?

Absolutely.

So simplicity without scruple.

A vegetable legumes roots as a base on most days, but in particular during the fast will help to naturally lower the energy density while preserving the minerals and the fiber.

Secondly, we have embedded portion control.

Not a tracker, but rules of the house.

Smaller balls, that 80% proverb along with prayer, bracketing meals so we pause before seconds.

Now, unless they're Christian, we can't necessarily coast on their prayers, but you get the idea #3 movement as duty.

So helping out around your parish, your own yard work, carrying things, walking up stairs and walking to visit people where too often is going to jump right into the car to get wherever we need to go.

But we can build that into our weeks.

The gym optional, but you probably should be getting there.

However, the tasks are essential #4 making sure that we have social glue on the calendar.

We can formalize your own Why as Wednesday and Saturday night at the parish, maybe a Friday soup supper and Sunday coffee hour.

Those are the Orthodox version of durable friend circles.

Absolutely.

And so now I'm sure listeners will ask, doesn't a starch forward plate under deliver something like protein, especially if I'm trying to maintain my muscle?

Yes.

But the traditional Okinawa plate does include protein.

Unfortunately a lot of it in the form of soy and legumes.

But fish, pork, and the broth themselves are all going to be there.

However, it's not a bodybuilding template.

Yes, it'll have protein for survival, but not necessarily for optimization for Orthodox families, Fast calendar already toggles with protein.

So the point though, is not to force old Alkanawa into your macros.

It's to borrow the forms that protect appetite and promote leanness, movement and community without the anxiety.

Right, because if the only way you can adopt the this Okinawan way of living is by exiling yourself from the parish meal and panicking over grandma's Stew, you did not imitate it.

You imitated anxiety.

Exactly, and anxiety is not virtue, and this is where the whole arc matters.

In the occult kitchen we warned that technique becomes magic when it's used to crush contingency and we were clear last episode at the Orthodox response is that the aim of eating is to be ready is to be ready to receive the body of Christ.

So while the traditional Okinawan style eating does be compatible patterns that 80% rule the small bowls, the garden and the friend circle to caution would be to beware of hero foods and influencer add-ons that this powder is why they live long if it wasn't on their actual plate routinely.

It's marketing but also don't pretend that every difference is died alone.

History, war, work, patterns, they all matter and that helps to teach humility that multiple causes are usually the answer and not just a single lever.

Absolutely so.

Okinawa's gift to us is not a magic sweet potato.

It is, though, a mood they had around the table.

Unhurried, shared, modest, repeatable.

And the forms that keep it that way?

If you can copy those forms inside of the Church's calendar, you'll capture the most of what the data praises without converting that food into a sacrament of self salvation.

Absolutely all summed up.

Keep the ball, keep the people, and keep the walk, but lose the dogma.

That would be OK.

Now for Christians.

Our next stop, however, is Sardinia, the birth place of the literal blue ink on the map, where two demographers, Michael Pullaine and Gianni Pez, went and circled interior villages with a pen because of the odd male longevity curve, they found where there were certain upland municipalities where older men were just unusually common.

And that was the seat of truth that everything blew up from after the books, the TV, the branded lessons.

It all started because of the fruit of that.

That but before we romanticize Sardinia is not heterogeneous.

Coastal resort towns are not the same thing as the interior villages, and not every municipality sings the same survival song.

So the pattern clusters in mountainous and pastoral communities, places where you have to walk the hills, carry loads and live in dense skin networks that refuse to let you retire from usefulness.

Right, and so translate.

There's nothing magic about the dirt, the terrain, enforced movement, plus an aunt who notices if you're not showing up to work.

Exactly, the live pattern in those Ontario villages looks like daily vertical movement, hills, stairs, uneven paths.

Shepherding isn't cardio class, it's thousands of micro stabilizer reps.

They also continue labor into later life.

The grandfathers will still carry fix, tend to animals and the children.

The role persists and the the body follows.

I know from my own life that I'm both sides.

My grandparents were very active late into life.

My dad's parents were professional dance teachers late into their 80s and the second they stopped working everything fell apart.

So I've seen it anecdotally myself, but king density.

Unlike the modern western world, we have a nuclear family where it's mom, dad, and maybe 2 1/2 kids.

Although these days those numbers are dropping due to testosterone, estrogen and all the craziness we have hormonally.

Got to get those numbers up.

Those are.

Numbers.

That's right.

And to that point, traditionally in Sardinia and in many locations, multigenerational housing with doorstep proximity meant that someone always needed you.

You always have either a grandparent or a child, someone who needed your help from mayor.

The meals themselves were rustic.

They were simple and seasonal, filled with traditionally prepared legumes, wild greens, sourdough or other flatbreads, some olive oil, goat and sheep, dairy, modest amounts of meat and wine, with meals in some families.

And so the male anomaly here invites speculation.

Is it diet?

Is it labor?

Is it selection?

Likely a bundle of those things, work roles, geography, sunlight, and kinship, as well as the fact that your identity is tied to responsibility, not entertainment.

And before someone clips this and turns it into a drink wine live forever nonsense, let's put a cone around that and keep the wine moms at Bay.

We're not supporting the Canons of Franzia here.

Absolutely so alcohol is the classic Talisman candidate, and in interior Sardinia you might see modest wine with meals, but the signal comes from the whole way of life.

Wine in and of itself isn't a sacrament.

The Eucharist is before it becomes the blood of Christ.

That wine, while potentially beneficial as a hormetic stressor, is not life giving.

So what would I keep from Sardinia?

The hills and the hands.

Meaning that the bodies were used all day, not crushed at 6:00 AM, then immobilized.

People use their bodies all day 'cause they're carrying, walking, fixing things, etcetera.

And you kept a job, some type of role into your old age.

So a patch of land, a stool in a workshop.

This kind of purpose is baked into a geography and the kinship which brings us to the next one, having kin density and real obligations to your family.

So that proximity helps to enforce mutual aid and finally feasting without necessarily driving into excess.

So we have the cheeses, the meats and the wine, but they are structured by the calendar and the community.

Where I start to question though is pretending that coastal Sardinia is identical to in the interior pastoral life.

So just partying on the coastline is not the same thing as the people actually living out in the villages.

Now the other thing is trying to bottle the hills and duties instead of actually installing.

Them, that's fantastic, Mike.

And honestly, the big connection we're seeing so far here is that part of the lifestyle in many of these places that there is a deep tie to their communal duties.

Here in the West, we're so focused on things like our rights, which really have no ontological existence.

They're essentially a figment of our imagination.

But these duties have a real practical application in the real world that are clearly benefiting these people, helping them live longer and providing them telos in their community, providing them telos as human beings.

And now that could potentially even be outside of Christ.

So now connect that to the telos we have in Christ.

Absolutely.

And that's the key, right?

Even the Jordan Peterson mindset of just clean up your room, bucko.

And it's about finding that purpose, finding that telos.

So what we're trying to do here is actually give you the big T truth that we're trying to direct our lives towards.

So that's exactly it.

We can borrow from that idea that key focus on responsibility and I get where you're picking up there.

That is a very common rhetoric from Andrew Wilson, husband, a friend of the show Rachel Wilson, where he's used that a lot to people that where the fall in the West is, is is that we are so focused on rights that can't be defined, whereas we have to pick.

We actually have to live by our responsibilities and our duties.

So what is the Orthodox translation?

One that time helps to build the terrain.

The church creates hills in time, through Vesper lyergies, through Matins, through visiting the sick.

So actually acting like the second great commandment of loving our neighbor as our self is a real thing.

The second thing we can do is build vertical movement into your week.

We can walk the stairs, we can carry a groceries, we can do yard work, and if you're feeling really spicy, you can hop onto a Jacob's ladder, get some extra vertical movement in that way.

But I can't recommend it for the faint of heart.

For those of you that aren't aware of what that is, look it up quick.

It's a fantastic exercise machine.

That's just evil man, I can't believe to tell people to do it.

Although we did bring up at least in the previous episode before, can't remember which one exactly.

Now that of course brings back to your side 1.

You had install duties, so actually prescribe for yourself some named responsibilities.

Visit a shut in help to set up the Sunday school classroom.

Polish the candle stands at church.

You need to be able to let people depend on you.

Next one feast by the calendar.

Keep your fast days simple.

Let Sunday and the feast carry the richer foods.

That helps to rescue the cheese, the meat and the wine from idolatry by putting them under liturgy.

Ex king density by parish.

If you lack biological extended family, make your God family and everybody else at that coffee hour table function feel like they're your own Sardinian king.

Right.

And so snapshot into a kitchen like this, it is not Pecorino goat cheese therapy.

It is, however, beans, the greens, bread that you can pronounce, and a grandmother bossing you around while you carry the chairs for all the people that are going to be with you at the feast.

Absolutely picture of fast season.

Saturday you spend an hour with the parish maintenance team.

Your Sardinian hills, you go home to a leg.

Fume and green Stew with achela sourdough.

But then on Sunday, after lergy, there's a feast with modest portions of fish people and without the guilt that calendar, not the cravings, help to decide.

Now, what are two errors to avoid?

One, we have a heroic purity.

You don't need to abolish cheese or meat outside of the fasting seasons to be healthy.

We are not giving up those things during the fast because they are bad ontologically.

As we have said repeatedly throughout the course of the show with the fast, we are giving up a good for a greater good.

So we need to put that placement and proportion inside of a Christian calendar.

Next up, we have number worship.

You can destroy Sardinia by turning it into steps and zones divorced from that obligation and love.

And that is what we are looking for in a Christian life, right?

We are looking to love our neighbors and we have a duty.

We are our brothers keeper.

Absolutely, and that is how you get people who are so focused on the perfect step counts and nobody to visit.

They're fit but lonely and honestly a little bit fragile.

Right, and waiting for the next burst of likes on their Instagram photo.

So sadly, that's the case.

But having said that, Sardinia's durable gift is the concept of useful bodies inside of thick communal ties, that fractal layering of community.

Right, Mike.

So we can obviously keep that vertical walking, keep the hands busy at work and definitely keep the people close around you.

But we're going to lose the myth behind a lot of that.

That is the type of Sardinian living that is more for Christians.

Beautiful.

So Next up we have Icaria, the island that launched 1000 headlines about forgetting to die.

So we'll keep the long tables and the forged greens and retire the idea that no one there ever get sick because Icaria is actually an orthodox island with a very good press agent.

And that people here forget to die is a lovely line, but not a method statement.

And what Icaria actually gives us is the Mediterranean bundle lived at human speed.

So we have properly repaired legumes and forged greens.

We have olive oil oil as a condiment, not as sacrament, unless it's being used for anointing oil, I guess.

Right?

But fish is consumed modestly, along with the occasional goat, and their meals are consumed communally and unhurried.

They walk daily on graded steps and structure their rest rhythm in a way that calms the nervous system.

As we said, on their plates they have those stewed legumes, fava, chickpeas and lentils in particular.

They have forest wild greens such as orta.

They have seasonal vegetables, country bread, olive oil poured generously on their food, not in a shot glass for detox, but their dairy is goat dairy, so it's in a form that is better digestible to a people who have issues with the casein.

As we talked about with Presbyterian Marina, their meat intake is modest, they have plenty of local raw honey, and they bookend their days with herbal teas such as sage and the mountain tea.

Right.

And so, to put that all into simple terms, this is real food, cooked and eaten slowly, as well as with other humans.

Absolutely, and the table is rarely a solo act.

Meals, they will stretch.

You'll talk and talk and talk.

You'll pass.

Dishes you'll linger.

Evenings often include music and dancing, not as cardio but as community glue.

And then there is that rest rhythm called a siesta.

Call it sanity, a midday pause with gentler evenings, less artificial light and fewer frantic commutes.

Sleep is respected and not just bio hacked.

The terrain forces walking to neighbors to church, long grade so there's elevation built into it.

And again, daily non exercise activity will beat heroic gym sprints filed by 10 hours in a chair.

But two overreaches that we need to retire that we debunk one that Icaria has no dementia.

That's marketing.

There may be lower risk in some groups, but zero is not a scientific word here.

Think risk reducing bundle, not immunity.

At #2 is that olive oil is a sacrament in of itself.

Olive oil is good food and it has any health benefits, but it's magic dissolves when you remember the bundle, the rest of the diet, the movement, the social ties, and the pace.

Absolutely.

And so if you're drinking that olive oil alone at your desk to do what Ikarians do, you've misunderstood both Ikarian living and the olive oil.

If we remember back to the beginning with our landmines, the survivorship bias, the small samples and the migration patterns, we will keep that in the background and then ask what do we keep?

Well, the unhurried communal meals.

This is hospitality and odds giving emotion.

It's slow intakes which help to raise ACIT or fullness and if there is a cementing of bonds, two, we have our legumes and greens core.

Now there is the digestibility piece to that.

We need to make sure that we are properly repairing them in the traditional way.

But if we are doing that, they can be a mineral and fiber rich along with low energy density that may be able to provide enough protein and is very easy to place right into our fasting seasons.

The next one is that daily non exercise movement.

Walking up elevations, carrying things, performing your regular chores and the time disciplines that midday pause or evening downshift.

The low artificial light and social evenings instead of just sitting there doom scrolling.

And finally, the music and dancing, often after their church festivals, which helped to provide movement, joy and a social dynamic.

Right.

And so the translation of that would be something like vespers supper, a visit to a friend and then going on a walk and repeat.

And if the parish throws A feast and someone starts playing music, don't log it down as cardio, Just Dance and have fun.

Absolutely.

So what do we question late night dinner as mandatory?

The spirit.

We keep it unhurried, the shared meals, but not on a specific clock unless we're talking about the fast and we want to make sure that we are abstaining when necessary.

Next is turning individual ingredients into talismans.

So the greens, the oil, the yogurt itself are not magic Shields.

They will help to improve your health because of different properties of them and most importantly because they are God-given, but individually they are not your salvation.

And then the zero stress fantasies.

Yes, island life is wonderful, but there is still real stress.

The difference is how it's buffered with people, with prayer, and with pace.

Snap the Orthodox ditch.

Ikaria is already Orthodox.

It fasts, it feasts, it has the panagiria tied to the Saints days, and the eating pattern rides right on top of a liturgical calendar.

And that is why it's durable.

We don't need a foreign religion to enjoy the benefits.

We need to live by our own calendar.

Absolutely.

And so concrete translation would be two nights a week of slow communal dinners, neighbors, parish family or extended family phones away, gentle light prayer before and after the menu.

Something like legume pots, green simple bread, oil on the food, fruit to finish.

And if it's a fast day, it still fits.

You pair your dinner with a walk and not collapse and your evening deceleration.

Lights lower down, screens off, say your evening prayers and bed.

And so for you high rise folks out there, you still have your stairs.

If you're in your high rises, you have your neighbors and there's no shortage of music out there.

So you don't need to be on a beach having a party.

You just need the people that are around you.

Absolutely.

So what are the guardrails so that we don't turn Icaria into idolkaria?

Yeah, so if the doing the Ikarian lifestyle makes you say no to parish hospitality, you broke the point.

And if you're Mediterranean diet becomes a purity contest with your spouse or your kids, that is Vainglory and pride.

And if you are monitoring your macros during a names day dinner, repent and eat the Stew with gratitude.

So for the listener feeling shame about how my life is screens, traffic, frozen pizza, I'm doom, bro.

Well, Mercy says, borrow the forms, not the coordinates.

At least two nights a week of a slow table with those greens and legumes, with your prayer, with your walking and a reasonable bedtime will be 1000 rules applied alone.

Absolutely.

And so, as has been the running theme here, the keeper is the bundle.

Unhurried table, simple staples, daily movement, time discipline, all inside a calendar that centers worship and love of neighbor.

Absolutely.

So the idol is turning an island into a Talisman and mistaken olive oil for the Eucharist.

But Next up we're heading over to Nicoya or Costa Rica, where the registry does more of the talking and the practical takeaways look suspiciously like earlier meals, family tables and ordinary life.

So the key signal we see here has been the male survival advantage late in life, which observed in record based analysis, not birthday cake legends, but link births, marriage and death records.

In plain English, that means that older men in the Korea have historically shown lower mortality risk than comparable men elsewhere in Costa Rica.

So they're not invincible, but they do have an advantage.

However, more recent work suggests that in younger cohorts that advantage is shrinking thinking as we move into that modern drift, the ultra processed foods, the sedentary work, the screens, which in turn eats into that whole package.

That rise and fall pattern itself points to habits and environment, not to magic water.

Right.

And so this isn't Immortality by Mango, it's a registrar which is saying men in this region live a little longer until they don't, when their habits change.

Exactly, their plates are simple, their rice and beans at a daily base, the Gallo Pinto in some form, along with corn tortillas from Nixtamalai's corn which is a lime treated process and which will in turn unlock niacin and boost the calcium we actually see in masa chips, which are an orthodox own company.

So highly recommend you look into masa masa chips.

This is not a paid advertisement, just a fan of the brand, but plantains squashes, tropical fruits, garden vegetables and modest animal protein, mostly in the form eggs, along with small portions of meat or fish.

Then their cooking fats are kept simple with overall energy density relatively low.

And the time day matters with a larger main meal earlier midday and a lighter evening meal.

That front loads energy towards the day's work and eases night time digestion and blood sugar.

We talked about that a whole bunch last week.

We then add in the daily not exercise movement, their field work, walking to neighbor neighbors, their daily chores, and of course the family tables as a social anchor.

Absolutely, Mike.

And so none of that is particularly glamorous, but all of it is moving the curves of data on these survival charts.

Absolutely.

And then there's the part that literally every headline loves.

It's the water.

If you read the Blue Zones write ups, there's literally a bullet point.

Drink hard water.

The koi in water has some of the highest calcium in Costa Rica, with decent magnesium riding along.

And is that nothing?

No, absolutely not.

We love mineral rich water.

It can absolutely help your bones, your teeth, and vascular tone.

But notice the move?

A perfectly normal environmental factor gets talked about like it's a sacrament.

Just move here, drink this and you'll live forever.

We've heard this song before.

Absolutely.

This is where our Gospel of the Grains episode comes back.

19th century America was full of this idea of the healing springs you talked about and the water cure resorts.

You had revival tents and of course the sanitariums built around miracle wells, quote UN quote.

The theology was of course quite wobbly, but the marketing behind it was fantastic.

Exactly.

And we don't have to look to Costa Rica for this pattern.

Right here in Arkansas by me, we've got our own pre Blue Zones, Blue Zones, Eureka Springs, which was a whole town built around the healing water and the hotels and bath houses, promising relief if you just soak up sip and believe.

And right next door to me, we have Siloam Springs, named after the pool of Siloam and the Gospels, leaning on biblical language to sell springs as a place of cure.

And you can feel the overlap owning channeled into location, plus liquid, low geology, low chemistry, and suddenly the water itself, absent the living water of Christ, hums a kind of lace sacrament.

Right.

And so Nikoya's Hard Water is like the polite 21st century version of a Healing Spring brochure.

The minerals are real, of course, but the marketing behind that promises a lot more than it can deliver.

Right, And the Orthodox move is to separate gift from Gospel.

God absolutely works the creation, the minerals in the water, the sunlight, the soil.

We bless wells, we bless rivers, and we're going to talk a whole bunch more about the theophany, but we never confuse the well with the one who made it.

So here's how we treat the water claims.

Yes, if your local water is mineral rich and clean, that's a real health advantage if you need to add some minerals back in.

We talked about that a whole bunch.

We definitely recommend that.

But no, you do not need to go on a pilgrimage to find the right aquifer to be saved or even to be healthy.

We're not Ponce de Leon looking for the fountain of youth, but as we've seen all throughout the Sacred Diets arc, this is just the water version of the same temptation we saw the grains with meat substitutes with magical oils.

Take a created good baptized into a private sacrament and build a personal allergy around it.

Absolutely.

And so of course we want to keep the calcium, but we're going to lose the cult.

Appreciate the spring itself which God made, but don't build a new religion around your tap.

Exactly, This isn't the River Jordan over here, but the key is if Nicoya's water helps you to remember to hydrate and care for your bones, right?

But if it makes you feel spiritually superior because your minerals came from a Blue Zone.

We've slid from gift into magic.

And as we've said, that is exactly the line that we are trying to guard against.

Absolutely.

And so specifically, what are some of these myths that we need to retire?

Number one, like we just beat India.

It's the water.

Yes, minerals will help, but nobody gets saved from an aquifer alone.

And two, it's a vegetarian miracle.

It's a very common trope scene in the Blue Zones and the but it's going to be very important in the next one.

But while a pattern is plant forward, it is not ideological.

It's a bundle.

Again, there's the timing, the movement, the social ties, the restraint.

And one more is that it's just one dish.

Properly prepared.

Rice and beans can be great because they're cheap, filling and reasonably balanced, but they are not Sacramento, so the context matters.

That's fantastic, Doctor Mike.

So what are some of the things you'd say we should keep?

Absolutely.

So we have our earlier main meals a few days a week, especially young fast days.

We have our properly prepared beans, grains, it's just corn as economic and repeatable staples, particularly those mixed amylized tortilla really bring home some narrow benefit.

Having the family table as a daily non negotiable along with daily chores, the carrying, The Walking, the yard and house tasks.

Where we start to question is that mineral mysticism, the die alone narratives that ignore time, discipline, movement and family structure, and the idea that you can explore the results without practicing the culture.

That's great, great Mike.

And so the Orthodox translation, I suppose would be of course to put the calendar 1st.

The church already front loads this sanely Wednesday, Friday fast and Sunday feast.

Slip an earlier May meal and do two or three weekdays and especially on a fast day.

Blessing over measurement.

Praying before and after meals often fixes the portion issue better than your macro app can.

Alms giving as metabolic guard rails one night a week giveaway what you would eat financially or with a pot of beans to someone who needs it.

And then next is movement as duty, chores, errands on foot, carrying your groceries, yard work, or visiting those who are alone and need some company.

And then on protein, your rice and beans and eggs we're talking about not fasting or someone who has special accommodations across the week can absolutely hold the line for most normal humans, especially during the fast.

On non fast days, put protein back in same proportion without compensating by snacking at midnight.

The aim isn't to enshrine Nekoia, it's to borrow the forms.

But it's to be to be, So it's the simple staples, an earlier main meal, a real meal table, your regular walking and fulfilling your daily obligations.

Absolutely Mike.

Maybe not the most popular thing on Instagram, but it's exactly why it works.

Probably.

It's cheap, repeatable, kid friendly, and of course parish friendly.

Absolutely so as a guardrail if moving your main meal earlier triggers panic because it breaks your favorite macro schedule.

Remember, the church sets the clock, not the app.

And honestly, two or three days a week is plenty.

Where Nicoya's strength lies is an ordinary life well ordered.

It's a parable that health is relational and temporal, not just nutritional.

So keep the properly prepared beans, keep the clock, and keep people, but lose the altar to the numbers.

Amen.

So now, with Nicoya's receipts in hand, we're going to head to Loma Linda, where large Adventist cohorts give us rare lifestyle mortality data, and where we need everything we learned back in episode 30 about Gospel of the Grains to interpret it sanely.

Absolutely.

So our last stop on the regional tour, Loma Linda, CA home to 7th Day Adventist cohorts and some of the best lifestyle and mortality data that we have honestly.

And unlike a film crew tracking a charming centenarian, here we have big cohort studies that follow 10s of thousands overtime and and seeing who develops what outcomes.

The avatus signal is consistent lower all 'cause mortality, especially in men with reductions in heart disease and even some cancers.

And yes, the vegans love this one because more plant centered patterns within avatus samples often show additional protection compared to more animal heavy avatus diets.

But if all you hear is vegetarian equals immortal, you miss the larger architecture that we already met in the Gospel, the grains and the temperance table, which is that weekly sacred time, the community belonging, the food restraint, life structure, and a diet sitting inside the covenant as a way of life.

Absolutely.

And so as we've said before, it's not about eating the tofu and you live forever.

It's we're going to rest weekly, eat simple, belong to your church family and avoid self-destructive habits.

And yes, many Adventists do eat plant forward.

That is true, but let's be very clear, if you're eating the tofu, you're probably not going to live forever.

I don't care what the cohorts say.

And long before Bill Gates came to the party with his designer fake meats, the Loma Company has been producing Franken meats based out of plant stuffs for a long time, and most of them are complete chemical firestorms.

But the stronger male advantage found in these populations does remind us that men have had a little bit more room to benefit from these changes in lifestyle.

Comparing Adventist vegetarians to Adventist omnivores is not the same thing as comparing Adventists to the general population as a whole.

Their lives are lived in behavioral covenant that already shifts the curve and they have a shared lifestyle pattern.

They keep a Sabbath with real 24 hour rest on Saturdays, they worship, they have meals with family, they walk, and there's no frantic commerce.

Their diet itself that plant forward baseline from vegan to lacto Ovo depending on who you're talking to, along with lots of properly prepared legumes, grains, nuts, fruits, vegetables and low process junk.

In terms of substances, they deliver certainly restrain from things they see as harmful.

From a community perspective, they regularly attend their church services and they have potlucks and lifestyle.

They generally get more sleep with clear boundaries and moderate levels of exercise.

That's great, Mike.

And so that what would be some of the myths surrounding them that we should drop?

The single biggest one to drop is that vegetarianism alone explains the whole effect.

We talked about that a lot in our carnivores, vegans and Orthodox response to the Diet Wars episode, that yes, the diet helps, but it's more so about what's being removed along with that timing, that Sabbath rest mindset, the community that they share, the restraint, the actual moderation, the temperance, not the complete abstinence and having a built in structure to your life.

Absolutely.

Mike and that line is 1.

We've seen through the entire arc that macros are not sacraments.

Absolutely.

So what should we keep from Loma Linda?

That Sabbath rhythm as a physiological reset.

It's a nervous system relief and helps with decision fatigue.

Plant forward simplicity focusing on fruits, vegetables and properly prepared legumes, grains and nuts all in an unprocessed God-given manner.

First.

It's when we start veering into the Franken foods that we start to cause problems from their community.

Compliance with shared norms making behavior durable.

We have our sleep and boundaries, which again that Sabbath rest mindset talks about and we've covered that before as well.

Where I start the question however is the diet absolutism transplanted without the weekly rest and community that gave it.

So it's universalizing vegetarianism as being the end all be all across all bodies and all seasons.

We're no longer giving up a good for a better good.

We are ontologically demonizing meat and all animal based products.

So by turning that Adventist advantage into Adventist exceptionalism.

Right.

And so our Orthodox stitch here would be that we already have a weekly holy day, the Lord's Day, with Saturday evening prayers or Vesper service, Sunday liturgy, parish meal, coffee hour.

We have a fast feast calendar, Wednesdays, Fridays, and the four major fasts a people.

We have our parish community.

Our version of dietary restraint is the fasting seasons.

We of course keep the Sabbath, but we also keep Sunday as the Lord's Day, the day of Resurrection.

Our sacraments are Baptism, confession, Eucharist among others, and not olive oil or nuts.

So when we place plant forward simplicity inside that calendar, it sticks without scruples.

And when we sanctify rest as as rest, our nervous system starts to get the memo.

And when we bind ourselves to a parish loneliness, which is the silent killer that we see in the Blue Zones and beyond, especially in these last several dark years, we end up actually getting to the root, which we talked about that before too.

Right.

And so bringing that down to a kitchen level translation, on fast days, legumes, vegetables, grains, fruit and nuts.

On non fast days we reintroduce animal foods sanely but also joyfully.

Keep Sunday as Sunday.

Go to your Divine Liturgy, have your shared parish meal coffee hour screens down.

Go on a walk, visit with those who are alone.

Guard your basic rest and restraint.

Not as bio hacks, but as obedience.

So 2 main caveats.

Protein anxiety during fasts where the Christian year will periodize its intake.

You don't have to hit bodybuilding macro during Lent.

So we can be mindful like we talked about last episode of how we reach the protein levels that are going to help us to achieve at least survival but improve our health during fast without necessarily being stage ready.

And we have to be mindful of sanctimony creep where if your diet makes you hard to live with, it is not Christian health, it is pride in a grocery cart.

So the big picture is that longevity at any cost.

Religion wants control.

It will track, trace and database your numbers as talismans and the diet gets treated as a sacrament.

So the Adventist data invites a better reading with shared restraint, weekly holiness, community, simple food and ordinary goods that scale.

So in Orthodoxy, those goods though already live under the cross, and they are directed towards the chalice.

Absolutely.

And so we're looking to keep the Sabbath form here.

We're keeping the bundle, keeping the people, of course, and lose the priesthood of metrics.

That's Loma Linda, but for the Christians.

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Thank you for trusting me with your health journey.

So having walked Okinawa, Sardinia, Ikaria, Nicoya and Loma Linda, let's name those keepers and those idols so that your kitchen, your parish hall and your week don't get hijacked by the cult of control.

So keeper #1 modest energy intake without malnutrition, Okinawa's low energy plates, Icaria's legume and greens meals, Nicoya simple staples all show that ordinary restraint, mineral staples and enough protein over the week will all be a solid framework.

Keeper 2 daily non exercise movement, hills that vertical walking, stairs carrying things you're gardening and chores.

Sardinia sings this, Ikaria dances it, Adventists walk it on their Sabbath movement, embedded in life but not bolted on.

Absolutely.

Which brings us to keeper #3 thick social obligation moai in Okinawa, king density in Sardinia, Panagiria and parish tables in Ikaria, family tables in Nicoya, potlucks in Loma Linda, and coffee hour at your parish.

Whereas loneliness raises risk, belonging heals, and there is nothing that is a greater belonging and then belonging to the one true Holy Catholic Apostolic Church, the very Body of Christ.

Beautiful now keeper #4 time disciplines, weekly sacred time such as that Sabbath and Lord's Day, earlier main meals in some regions, midday pauses, the fast feast calendar time, doing what hacks can't, retraining our desire.

Absolutely, and that brings the keeper #5 low toxin load and restrain self harm.

So long lived communities tend to avoid chronic self damage.

However these traditions name it, you see it as temperance rules and Abbotus covenants.

Or simply, we don't live that way here.

Fantastic, Mike.

So now let's move into some of our idols that we should be avoiding or smashing, depending on how you want to talk about it.

Absolutely.

So idol #1 talismanic foods, olive oil, wine, goat cheese, that one herb, the Okinawan sweet potato, they are all treated like sacraments.

And underneath the magic usually melts back into the bundle.

It melts into the whole lifestyle.

All right, Idol 2, that heroic purity rules that exile you from hospitality.

If your plan can't survive that parish meal or time, time together with your kids and your neighbors.

It is not Orthodox.

It's Vainglory.

Absolutely.

Which brings to idol #3 numbers worship, your rings, your graphs, your scores promoted from tools to priesthood.

When the metric tells you who you are, you've enthroned a new God.

Idol 4 Geography Halos, assuming mountains or sea air cause holiness or health terrain often enforces movement and restricts ultra processed access, but that's it.

Absolutely and idol 5 documentary causality with the montages and the Instagram reels.

These help it to feel causal.

The music, the the sunset, they're all beautiful.

But we refuse to treat edits as doctrine.

And last, we have Idol 6 diet monotheism, enshrining just one pattern, this diet forever for everyone, as a sort of soteriology.

We saw it with revivalist serial, the temperance tables and the New Age cleanses.

And we see it again in some Blue Zones fandoms.

It's important for us to remember as Orthodox that of course Great Lent exists.

You don't need a new food religion.

You need to keep the one calendar that you already have from the one Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, as Doctor Mike said previously.

Absolutely so the keepers we've named are anti magic, ordinary repeatable habits that thrive when placed under worship and towards love.

The idols are just new forms of the same thing that we've traced.

All Ark control talismans and number worship dressed up as health.

And so the goal isn't to copy an island, it's to keep her feast, not to find magic dirt, but to bless ordinary bread, not to hack death.

Christ already defeated death by death.

And so our role is to die in Christ after loving and living well.

Amen.

So as a one line discernment tool, if a habit helps you love God and neighbor, then keep it, but if it can't survive that hospitality, confess it and release it.

That rule will save your kitchen from coming to shrine and your heart from becoming a lap.

That's awesome, Mike.

That's something you could take to the fridge to to remind you, absolutely.

So we're definitely running a little long right now, but they've been so many awesome things to touch on.

I just want to take one quick note that there is a documentary out there called the Human Longevity Project.

And I've actually worked with a number of his producers on several projects throughout the years.

And I want to handle this both a little bit of charity and clarity.

So for those who are unfamiliar, it came out in 2018 and it was filmed over multiple years and countries featuring elders and Long live regions and interviews with clinicians and researchers.

Visually gorgeous and help put community, environment, purpose and simple food ways back on a map.

Right.

And so not a TikTok, an actual docu series where there was traveling done and translators required.

Absolutely.

What the film did well was that it rehumanized the conversation and the cameras they caught with spreadsheets couldn't that the pace of the village meal, the texture of work, and the ways that the elders belonged.

And it also assembled a wide bunch of voices, gut health, lifestyle, medicine, functional clinicians, which gave viewers permission to question hypermedicalized aging and look at the habits that can scale.

These are things that I very much still stand behind.

It all came out of that ancestral health world that My Health Throne Them Out was developed in.

But what's missing is that orthodox ethos.

So having said that, we are very pro camera when it honors elders and resists A techno utopia.

But the friction is not against the producers, not against the film makers, but against how we the audience can misuse that film.

So we can appreciate that social architecture matters, that tables, festivals, faith spaces, neighbor, that's the environment and pace.

They all matter.

Light at night, noise, toxins, the commute, stress and simple local food ways and movement, they all appear again and again.

So here's how we take something like the Human Longevity Project inside the Sacred Diets arc without drifting into a longevity religion.

If the film can reawaken your imagination that aging can be human and communal, then you can understand how the church gives you those Wednesday and Friday fast, the Lord's Day, the Vespers, the almsgiving, all the scaffolding for those habits.

You want to translate but don't transplant.

You don't import a festival as a daily rule or a late dinner as gospel.

You translate the form, the unhurried meals, the shared tables, the movement, the prayer, the rest.

You honor the elders.

You can order the numbers, but you keep the feast.

So while the cameras can help to teach reverence for age, you want to let sober thinking keep you honest.

But most importantly, you let the Eucharist keep Christ at the center.

Perfect.

And so let's finish up where this whole ark has been headed.

The world offers a whole variety of these quote UN quote sacred diets, the grains, temperance, covenants, Zen spells, and today's blue zones.

The Church, however, offers the sacred table, fasting, blessing, almsgiving, and most important, the Eucharist.

We borrow these keepers we mentioned from anywhere they're found, simple food, movement, community, time, discipline.

Then we plant them in the rich soil of the Church so that they become love, not control.

Film can give the spark ordinary life for the practice, and Christ and His Church always for the meaning.

Absolutely.

As we continually say we want to be the bee.

We'll take what we can, but leave the rest behind.

So as we land this plane, we need to say something out loud that's been humming underneath throughout this whole sacred diet arc.

The body is good.

The body will be raised that the body in of itself is not God.

And the church fights this on three fronts at once, against those who despise the body, against those who want to escape the body, and against those who want to deify the body, making survival and performance the real Savior.

So in early centuries you see it everywhere but the certain Gnostic strands who treated matter as a mistake and salvation was to escape into secret knowledge that gnosis but never resurrection.

Or some dosetic currents treated Christ's body as a costume, but he only seemed to suffer to hunger and to die.

And that was later picked up in Islam, and then again later Gnosticizing asceticism to use fasting and renunciation not as love, but as a ladder climbing, and not even the ladder of divine ascent, but as a technique to ascend along with contempt for flesh as such.

But the Church answered all of that with something gloriously simple.

I believe in the resurrection of the dead and the life of the age to come.

Not escape from the body, not worship for the body, but resurrection of the body in Christ through His glorious resurrection.

Absolutely.

And so on one hand you had The body is a prison, and on the other the body is a lowercase G God the Father said no, the body is a temple, good, but fallen and redeemable, destined for glory, but only in Christ.

Absolutely.

Now Fast forward to our moment.

We've got our own Gnosticisms and body cults.

On the one hand, a disposable body screamed, sedated, cut and patched like a rental car.

On the other hand, a longevity cult that treats the body as the real subject of the Creed.

And you can see it in the extreme edge of the life extension world.

Regiments built to escape aging, built around dozens of biomarkers.

Strict protocols carefully branded as rejuvenation.

And we have modern figures like Brian Johnson who become icons of this impulse.

Finally, enormous time, money, and attention into an N = 1 lergy whose functional creed is if I do everything right, I will outrun decay.

Now, to be clear, I am not here to demonize an individual man.

I'm naming a spirit of the age that the day is organized around the body's performance, not around prayers and love, and that meals have become ritual offerings to the self that I need to optimize my aesthetics and my performance.

And one where sleep, light, exercise, and relationships are all graded.

All serving the one big project me extended.

Right, it's almost like a new anti monasticism.

Same level of discipline but the rule is written by a biomarker panel.

The hours aren't maddens, vespers, or complin their morning fasting window supplement stack and protocol blocks.

Absolutely.

And to be fair, there's something recognizable there, the desire to take the body seriously.

And to Stewart, what we've been given to push back this apathy and gluttony, that in of itself is not evil, it's just unbaptized.

It's what happens when we get rid of God, when the ascetic instinct gets disconnected from Christ and the Church and wired instead into self preservation.

The ancient heresies told you escape the body, know the secret and become pure spirit.

Whereas the modern longevity heresies says perfect the body, control the inputs, become your own Providence.

It's the same underlying lie.

If I do the technique right, I can save myself absolutely.

Absolutely.

And you can hear it even in softer form than that.

If I just fix my gut, hack my sleep, and I nail my macros, I'll finally be at peace.

I'll finally be lovable and I'll finally be safe.

But of course, here in this show, we're not anti gut.

We're not anti sleep or anti macro.

We are anti soteriology by spreadsheet.

Right.

And the church's answer is painfully simple and endlessly offensive.

You will die.

Your body will be sown and corruption and I'm sorry but you can't outrun death.

Not with blue zones, not with tech, not with stacks.

But your body was created good.

Her body was assumed by the Son of God.

Your body is washed in baptism, it's chrismated and fed with the Eucharist.

And your body is destined for resurrection, not by metrics, but by his very mercy, because as we say in the apostle Troparion, he trampled down death by death.

So you're not going to beat it by your longevity cult, but through Christ himself.

So here is the line we need to draw gently but clearly.

If you're caring for your body makes you more available to God and neighbor, more patient with your kids, more president liturgy, we're able to visit the sick and the hungry and the poor and more able to stand in prayer, then that care is asceticism as love.

But if caring for your body becomes a way to avoid dependence, to avoid vulnerability, to try to avoid death itself, or if your health makes you harder to interrupt, harder to feed, hard to love, then he has slipped toward heresy by habit.

Absolutely.

And so two people could be doing the same walk, the same beans and their dish, the same sleep routine.

But one is saying with that life, Lord, I thank thee for this day in this flesh you gave me.

Help me spend it well and die in peace when thou wilt.

But the other may be saying, and I'm not going to die if I can help it.

It's the same habits, but a totally different religion undergirding them.

Exactly.

And so as we close the ark, let's put the sacred diets under a simple confession.

We fast not to bargain with God, but the clear space for repentance and mercy.

We bless not control outcomes, but to receive food as a gift.

And we give alms not to earn points, but to treat our neighbors hunger as our own.

We come to the Eucharist not to bio hack some mystical energy, but to eat and drink the very life of Christ, Christ who has trampled down death by death.

And yes, we move, we sleep, we eat sanely, we are mindful to be stewards of our environment so that these bodies can pray, they can serve and endure suffering without collapsing unnecessarily.

The body is a servant of love and not a rival savior.

The ancient Gnostics of the body didn't matter.

Modern techno Gnostics say the body is all that matters, but Orthodoxy says the body matters eternally, but only in Christ.

And so if you find yourself more nervous about losing yourself step count than losing your temper, more worried about your HRV than your hardness of heart, more afraid of wrinkles than of unrepentant sin, there's your little diagnostic.

The cult has crept in.

Absolutely.

And the medicine isn't to trash your help, it's to reorient it.

Take the best of the Blue Zones, the documentaries, even the better insights from people like Brian Johnson.

Simplicity, discipline, attention, and hand them back to Christ.

Put your routines under the side of the cross that your calendars be driven by feasts and fasts.

Not by fear.

And let your biomarkers serve your vocation, not the other way around.

Ask for the one thing the longevity cult cannot offer.

A good death and a good defense for the dread judgment.

Seat of Christ, repentant, reconciled in the Church in hope of the resurrection.

Absolutely, Mike.

That's beautiful.

That's the real health span to spend your days in such a way that when they end and they will, you can say with Saint Paul, I have fought the good fight.

I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.

Not I get all my targets.

Amen.

And so as this sacred IoT ark comes to a close, here's our final word.

Let your kitchen be a place of blessing, not magic.

Let your plate be an instrument of almsgiving and now a scoreboard.

Let your body be a temple and a tool offered, broken, poured out in love, but awaiting the resurrection and not clinging to this age.

So one more time, if a habit helps you love God and neighbor, then keep it.

But if you can't survive hospitality, repentance and death and let it go.

And on that note, be sure to simply pray deeply, love generously, and one day, God willing, we die in Christ.

That's the only Blue Zone that actually lasts.

Amen.

Thank you for traveling this arc with us.

This definitely ran a lot longer than we initially anticipated, but hopefully all of it was great for you.

Until next time, May God grant us all help enough to serve and grace enough to die.

Well.

God Bless is available on Spotify, Apple Music, and all of your other favorite listening locations.

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Until then, stay strong in faith, take care of your temple, and keep Christ the center of your health journey.