C Saturday, January 29, 2011
MMUNITY BUILDER Extra
8 Pages
Alexandria Detroit Lakes Morris East Ottertail Focus Park Rapids Wadena In this issue of Community Builder, a quarterly publication of local Forum Communications newspapers, is focused on health care and more specifically “staying young.”
Living longer, living happier Minnesotan travels the globe for National Geographic, seeking secrets to healthy, happy life
STEVE SCHULZ
are a handful of them in the world who know the technique for accessing birth records from 100 years ago and the death records from now, and doing the math, adjusting for immigration What’s the secret of long life? What’s and emigration. And you want geographically defined areas, so you want to make sure it’s not the secret of a happy life? just the way people are moving that explains Many of us have pondered those questions, but Dan Buettner, longevity. You want places where we know people are living to 100 at extraordinary rates, a Minnesotan working for National Geographic, traveled the or they have longer life expectancy, or they have low rates of middle age mortality — in other world to find out. And he came words, they’re not dying of heart disease and back with answers. cancer.” Buettner is the author Buettner found Raffaella Monne, 107, of “Blue Zones: Lessons and a high incidence of other centenarians for Living Longer in Sardenia, an island west of Italy. There he from the People found people who drank red wine and goat’s Who’ve Lived milk, laughed a lot, were physically active and the Longest.” He put family first. In Okinawa, Japan, he found identified five 105-year-old Seiryu Toguchi and learned more “blue zones” with the greatest secrets: plant a garden, get plenty of sunshine, eat more soy, have a purpose for getting up in incidence of the morning. In Loma Linda, Calif., Buettner people living to be 100 years found Seventh Day Adventists like Marge old by studying Jetton, 100, who exercised often and taught Buettner more tips: eat almonds, stick to a plantbirth and death based diet more than meats, find a sanctuary. In records. Then Costa Rica, he found Don Faustino, a centenarhe went to ian who made it his purpose to go to market and those places select the menu for the family meal. Buettner and learned also learned to eat a light dinner, keep a focus their secrets. In his new book, on family and get plenty of calcium. Buettner went wherever the demographers “Thrive: Finding told him there were unusual concentrations of Happiness the 100-year-olds. Some of the locations were a Blue Zones Way,” surprise to him. he sought out the “Sardenia and Okinawa made perfect sense,” happiest places on the globe and he said. “Costa Rica blew us away, the Nicoya came back with Peninsula and the Adventists in Loma Linda, because there’s a lot of smog and there’s junk food their secrets. around, but these people managed to squeeze Buettner out an extra decade of healthy life. said researchers In fact, some of these blue zones with used the scientific amazing long life were bordered by places that method to identify performed poorly in that category. pockets of popula“They’re usually isolated people who are tions that had seemvastly outperforming their neighbors,” Buettner ingly found the fountain Photo by Richard Hume said of the blue zones. “These are places where Dan Buettner traveled the globe with National Geographic of youth. to find the secrets of long life for his book, “Blue Zones.” His “We begin by work- a certain amount of isolation has shielded them latest offering, “Thrive,” set out to find the world’s happiest ing with demographers,” and insulated them from some of the forces populations. that erode longevity, like the American food Buettner said. “There PJeditor@gmail.com
culture and engineering physical activity out of our lives.” Asked what five things people should do today if they want to live to be 100, Buettner was quick to rattle them off: • “If you’re not sleeping at least 7 hours and less than 9, you should start doing that now. Make sure your bedroom is cool, and take the TV out.” • “Get your house down to one TV and put it in an out-of-the-way place. I think the TV is one of the biggest eroders of both living longer and living better. TV watching is good for about 45 minutes, but that’s it.” • “Think about who you spend your time with. Are your friends overweight and not doing anything about it? Are they the kind of people who complain and gossip, or do they talk about ideas? Are they the type of people for whom their idea of recreation is physical activity? If they’re not, you should really be expanding your social network. That makes a huge difference.” • “I don’t care if you’re Muslim, Christian or Jewish. If you were born in a religion, go back to it. There’s so much evidence that religious people are happier than non-religious people. If you don’t have a religion, spend some time to see if there’s one that’s right for you. It’s just such an easy proxy for building a social network, and finding purpose.” • “Go through your house. In every case where you can push a button to make your life easier, get rid of it. We’ve engineered so much physical activity out of our lives. We need to engineer it back in. Just filling your life with opportunities to burn five calories here or 10 calories there — that adds up. There’s science that suggests its even more important than the 20 minutes you spend on the treadmill every day.” Buettner said our culture has made life too easy for us, and we need to force ourselves to do a few things the hard way. “Mostly, we’re careening toward a huge problem,” he said. “It’s not individuals’ faults. I don’t think Minnesotans are any different than their forefathers. I think we’re disciplined, hardworking, good people, but we live in an environment of sickness where 370 marketing messages See BLUE ZONES on PAGE 7
Nearing 90, curiosity still drives her busy schedule BRIAN HANSEL
brianh@wadenapj.com
Dorothy Parker, the famous 20th century writer, poet, satirist and critic would have said that Ethelyn Pearson had an incurable disease — curiosity. Pearson will be 90 on her next birthday and while her family is sure to make an occasion of the event, she does not take much notice of another trip around the sun. “I don’t pay any attention to my age,” Pearson said. Sitting in her Fair Oaks Lodge apartment on a cold, January day, Pearson took a trip down memory lane to a time when she received a oneway ticket from Nebraska to Minnesota, helped her mother with janitorial work at the Wadena County courthouse, wrote in a tablet as she sat in a tree and helped her late husband, Milton, put in his crops. She has been told to “grow up” and has been pitied by her friends at Fair Oaks for having to rise so early in the morning to write. She does a weekly column on residents of Fair Oaks, writes feature stories for the Wadena Pioneer Journal and has many other freelance writing jobs. Pearson thanks her lucky stars for living the kind of life where she does not have her
day all mapped out. “I am deathly afraid of ‘same old, same old,’” Pearson said. She has held many titles in her day but writer is the one she is the proudest to bear. “I might get up in the morning and start writing right away instead of making the bed,” Pearson said. So what does a woman who is pushing 90 consider to be the secret to living a long and happy life? Pearson finds her happiness in making the journey — facing new challenges, talking to people, wrestling with life and always asking questions. The 89year-old writer is still meeting up to six deadlines a month. Pearson has also done her best to take care of herself. She has always refrained from the use of alcohol, drugs and tobacco. “Anything that screws up your mind is not for me,” Pearson said flatly. Pearson was seriously ill when she was a teenager and quit high school to recover her health. She did not see it as a big sacrifice at the time because she was already planning to be married. The Pearsons gave up on farming, traveled to California and lived there for several years during World War II before returning to farming. Ethelyn tackled many tasks
The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity. — Dorothy Parker
in the first years of her marriage, succeeding in some and botching others, but she kept learning. Her special interest was writing and she became a free-lancer. She once had a piece published in Redbook and later received an invitation from author, editor and publisher Helen Gurley Brown, to train as a staff writer. With her kids in high school, Pearson had to decline Brown’s offer. She played the guitar in a band and loved roller skating. Her family “grew up on wheels” as the Pearsons made trips all around the area to skate. After their last child left for college, her husband asked her “what should we do next?” Following their greatest interest, they bought a roller skating rink of their own in St. Cloud.
Pearson enjoyed the years they owned their rink and she learned to appreciate a common trait found in the very young and the very old — honesty. “I think they are the most honest,” Pearson said. All through the 23 years that Pearson worked as a supervisor at Fair Oaks she was able to continue writing. She has written on and off for the Pioneer Journal since 1969. As a free-lancer, Pearson has had to market her stories after writing them. She maintains that while writing is fun the marketing is tough. Without the benefit of a college education, Pearson learned to write from being an avid reader. She has subscribed to many writing magazines, followed the tips of professional writers, and can now recognize “formula” writing in a snap. Her own writing has been mainly non-fiction but she considers the best writer she has ever read to be Zane Grey, the famous western fiction writer who authored “Riders of the Purple Sage.” “That book has everything,” Pearson said with a smile. So how has Pearson lived such a long and productive life? “That’s an easy one, you have to keep a lot of lines out
Photo by Brian Hansel
Ethelyn Pearson keeps herself very active at the age of 89 as a free-lance writer.
there,” Pearson said. She is as interested in the future as she is in the past. If she is curious about a question she has to dig for the answer. Anyone telling her that she can’t do this or find out that is
apt to meet with a curt “why not?” from Pearson. “I am curious,” Pearson said. “I’ve never been able to fight it off.”
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