How to Avoid the Ravages of Aging and Heart Problems

These days, there’s a lot of attention being focused on finding what I call the “Holy Grail” of lifestyles. That would be the lifestyle that results in a long and strong life.

Everybody seems to have an opinion on this, and more often than not, the opinions disagree.

So, who’s right? Or, is anyone right?

A new report on a group of Amazon natives that live an amazingly long time free of disease offers some insight into the question.

The Tsimané are an indigenous people of lowland Bolivia. They live primarily on their own agriculture, hunting, and fishing. From the standpoint of heart health, the Tsimané are a model group. They have next to no heart disease, high blood pressure, obesity, or diabetes. And, what’s more important, in these people, the risk of these diseases doesn’t increase as they get older, as it does in America. So, what’s the deal? What supplements are these people taking that are so effective? It turns out that the Tsimané don’t take any supplements. They just live differently. The study shows just how important lifestyles are.

University of California anthropologists Thomas Kraft and Michael Gurven recently reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition a study that looked at how the Tsimané live.

To do the study, the researchers interviewed 1,299 Tsimané men and women multiple times about everything they had eaten or drunk in the previous 24 hours. Here’s what they found.

The Tsimané eat a lot of calories – about 20-30% more than Americans do. That’s because their lifestyle is so physically energetic. The study showed that their diet broke down like this:

• 64% of their diet consists of complex carbohydrates, particularly plantains, manioc (also known as cassava root or arrowroot), and rice.

• 21% consists of protein.

• 15% consists of fat.

Basically, they eat a diet high in complex carbohydrates, low in refined carbohydrates, high in protein, and low in fat. The study showed that 16% of their protein comes from fish and 6% from wild game. And, perhaps the most important thing about their diets is that only 8% of what they eat is bought in stores. And that’s not the only thing that’s special about the way they live.

Their diets are low in calcium. This is not surprising. For years, I have been warning about the negative effects of consuming too much calcium. You can get more information on this topic on my website (www.secondopinionnewsletter.com), and by reading Dr. Tom Levy’s well-referenced book, Death by Calcium. And because of their low fat intake, they were also relatively low in vitamins D, E, and K. But, to offset this deficiency, their intake of potassium, magnesium, and selenium – often linked to cardiovascular health – far exceeded U.S. levels. And their intake of dietary fiber was almost double U.S. levels. But that’s not the only thing that’s different about Tsimané lifestyles.

They are a lot more physically active than Americans. For example, Tsimané adults of all ages average 17,000+ steps per day, compared to Americans’ 5,100. And their “steps” are not necessarily limited to walking. Much of their labor is devoted to the hard work of slash-and-burn farming, hunting, fishing, and foraging. This intense exercise is critical to understanding why the Tsimané are so healthy.

So, take a lesson from the Tsimané and spare yourself from the ravages of aging and cardiovascular problems. Exercise every day, and combine that with a diet high in fiber, potassium, magnesium, and selenium, and low in calcium. A good way to ensure that you’re doing that is to take a scoop of my Super Immune QuickStart powder every day. It’s high in all these nutrients and low in calcium.

Yours for better health,

Frank Shallenberger, MD