Today we are living longer than ever before, and a few of us can expect to live to 100 or more. But many people feel that they will inevitably suffer the diseases of old age in their final years. Pharmaceutical companies have spent billions of dollars trying to find a cure for the "diseases of aging"—they may have found ways to stem some of the symptoms, but they have yet to find a panacea. Yet there are places in the world where, all along, people have commonly lived to 100 or more without suffering so much as a headache. How do they do it? The answer is simple: through sound dietary habits and balanced, healthy lifestyles. The 50 Secrets of the World's Longest Living People looks at the nutrition and lifestyle mores of the world's five most remarkable longevity hotspots—Okinawa, Japan; Bama, China; Campodimele, Italy; Symi, Greece; and Hunza, Pakistan—and explains how we too can incorporate the wisdom of these people into our everyday lives. It offers each of the secrets in detail, provides delicious, authentic recipes, and outlines a simple-to-master plan for putting it all together and living your best, and longest, life.
I was born and brought up in London by my cellist mother and violin dealer father. After leaving university I worked variously for Friends of the Earth, the architect Ron Arad, as a teacher at a boys' school in Harrow, and then in documentaries for several years during which time I had the privilege to work as a researcher and associate producer for some highly acclaimed directors including the BAFTA award-winning Peter Kosminksy, the Oscar award-winning Kevin Macdonald and London Film Festival prizewinner Amanda Rudman.
My health was, however, not what it should have been so in my late twenties I went to see the inspirational nutritionist Gudrun Jonsson. Out went my diet of wine, roll-ups, cheese croissants, cappuccinos and pasta, and in came a new diet of health-giving and, most importantly, delicious food, and my life changed completely. I lost half a stone, my skin cleared up, my up-and-down moods vanished, the constant sneezing stopped, the insomnia stopped, and I stopped getting colds all the time. That set me on the path I have followed since then, namely the science of nutrition, and what good food does for our bodies.
I wrote my books about the Longevity Hot Spots and did my diploma at the UK College of Nutrition and Health after working on a series about aging for the National Geographic Channel and discovering that diet and lifestyle are, in general, far more powerful tools against illness and premature aging than pharmaceutical drugs.
I now try to dispense the knowledge I have, which is just the tip of the iceberg of course, to my clients and readers, and of course my children who are sometimes enthusiastic about it and sometimes less so, as well as those who use the website www.akealife.com. Some of this knowledge comes from my visits to Longevity Hot Spots such as Sardinia, Costa Rica, and Hunza, where people regularly live to the age of 100 and over without suffering any illness at all. I have also just joined an initiative by the Natural Health Clinic in Bristol to hold sessions on healthy eating at schools in deprived areas. Look out for my new diet plan, coming soon....
