Impressions from Okinawa

Okinawa is the cutest, prettiest island one could imagine. It won't strike you like that because of its architecture, cleanliness or general development. But it will definitely impress you through the air that it surrounds itself with. It's an air of kindness, of going back to the roots of what a beautiful life is ultimately all about: cultivating virtue in yourself and in others as well.

Okinawans are extremely friendly and genuinely caring. They will say hi to anyone that happens to look their way. They will engage in conversations about trees and their roots with total strangers that might not even understand their language. They will spend quality time with their family and friends, but they will also spend quality time with themselves, leaning against the water front with a book in one hand and a can of soda in the other.

The reason for which I was really excited to be going to Okinawa is that Okinawa is a blue zone, an area that exceeds the upper limits of human longevity. In all honesty, I expected to see people eating raw fish and drinking green tea all the time, to exercise and maintain a good state of mind.

Almost all my predictions were confirmed and the notable exception was one that I hadn't in the least anticipated. Okinawans do not eat exactly right. The youngsters on the island have visibly heavier body frames as compared to the people in Tokyo, for instance, though most of them are certainly not overweight. The old people, who constitute most of Okinawa's population, are slim but not frail. During my stay there, I could only observe the lifestyle and habits of the inhabitants of Naha, the capital city. In spite of this, I did encounter a couple of centenarians and I could not be more surprised when I realized that the type of individual that constituted until then an instance of righteous eating in my mind - the (super)centenarian - does in fact eat a lot of sugar.There are many more types of sweets in Okinawa than in Tokyo. Apart from the sugar, Okinawans eat quite a lot of deep-fried food and pork. Add to all this high quantities of white rice and noodles, and you won't get what I would normally consider a longevity promoting diet.

But if the Okinawans do not excel at eating perfectly correct, they do excel, nonetheless, at taking care of each other and at protecting each other's peace and happiness. Where else in this world, except for Okinawa maybe, could two foreigners ride a bus without paying for the tickets, all of this taking place under the eyes of the driver? Now, don't get me wrong. It's not like in Okinawa people don't pay for public transportation. But, as it happens, bills that exceed 1000 yen are unusable in buses and the payment is done when you get off. So when I hopped in the bus without any appropriate money to pay with I couldn't have imagined that I could get away with my honest mistake so easily. But that's what the rule of thumb is there and that's what it should be in any place that would like to call itself a civilized society: mistakes are honest and should be treated as such. On top of this, embracing any other course of action would've certainly led to delays and everyone would've been worse off.

People take things easy in Okinawa. They breathe and live the moment. They take time off to look at the water or at a tree, to always be in touch with their dear ones and to improve themselves. I genuinely love this island and would really like to go back. The sunsets are incredible and simply impossible to capture in pictures. The air is perfectly humid, not too much, not too little, but just the right amount to give you a healthy glowing complexion.Okinawa changed my view about the centenarian lifestyle. What you eat or drink is not nearly important as to what kind of person you are. I could notice on the faces of seemingly old people the spark of curiosity, of intellectual alertness and of the serenity that comes only with an understanding of the deeper intricacies of life.

Books that I Like: Roy Baumeister and John Tierney's 'Willpower'

In a world that values instant gratification, high self-esteem, a rule-breaking attitude and a general departure form the strict Victorian ethics, it is worth being remembered every once in a while about the virtues of self-control and willpower. From an early age we are being taught that we are unique in uniquely different ways and the paths we take, unless openly outrageous, need to be accepted as uniquely ours. Good and bad seem to have lost face while confronted with the impending storm of diversity and its multiple shades that derive from the singularity of our selves. 

In this context in which video games have been  deliberately rendered easier so that more people could excel at them, when trophies for different sport competitions do not stop at the third place but go beyond, when parents flamboyantly praise any art work of their offspring that is not in itself artistic nor close to it, Baumeister and Tierney take on the difficult task of reminding us that willpower and self-control are valuable traits to be developed in order to build one's character and achieve personal success. The cultivation of  willpower and self-control go beyond the stream of current personal development techniques due to its emphasis on the need to respect rather than break rules and to develop a generally disciplined attitude towards all aspects of life. It encourages 'if then' algorithms for thinking, precommitments and delayed gratification.

The book is marvelously written. It is abundant in experiment descriptions and references that help unravel the essence of willpower and self-control, the way in which they work and the methods through which they can be trained. I don't usually say this easily, but 'Willpower' is a must read for any person of any age, as it covers both general and specific topics that we are confronted with everyday, among which parenting, dieting, procrastination, just to name a few, are brilliantly exposed.

My favorite quotes

The point of self-control isn't simply to be more "productive". People today don't have to work as hard as Ben Franklin and the Victorians did. In the nineteenth century, the typical worker had barely an hour of free time per day and didn't even think about retiring. Today we spend only about a fifth of our adult waking hours on the job. The remaining time is an astonishing gift - an unprecedented blessing in human history - but it takes an unprecedented type of self-control to enjoy it. Too many of us tend to procrastinate even when it comes to pleasure because we succumb to the planning fallacy when we estimate "resource slack", as behavioral economists term it. We assume we'll magically have more free time in the future than we do today. 

Self-control is ultimately about much more than self-help. It's essential for savoring your time on earth and sharing joy with the people you love. 

Your supply of willpower is limited, and you use the same resource for many different things. Each day may start off with your stock of willpower fresh and renewed, at least if you've had a good night sleep and a healthy breakfast. But then all day things chip and nibble away at it. The complexity of modern life makes it difficult to keep in mind the all those seemingly unrelated chores and demands draw on the same account inside of you.

"Me, I wait for inspiration", [Raymond Chandler] said, but he did it methodically every morning. He believed that a professional writer needed to set aside at least four hours a day for his job: "He doesn't have to write, and if he doesn't feel like it, he shouldn't try. He can look out of the window or stand on his head or write on the floor, but he is not to do any other positive thing, not read, write letters, glance at magazines, or write checks." This Nothing Alternative is a marvelously simple tool against procrastination for just about any kind of task.

Dieters have a fixed target in mind for their maximum daily calories, and when they exceed it for some unexpected reason, such as being given a air of milkshakes in an experiment, they regard their diet as blown for the day. That day is therefore mentally classified as a failure, regardless of what else happens. Virtue cannot resume until tomorrow. So they think, 'What the hell, I might as well enjoy myself today' - and the resulting binge often puts on far more weight than the original lapse. It's not rational, but dieters don't even seem to be aware of how much damage these binges do [.]

People working in what Flynn calls elite professions, like physicians, scientists, and accountants, generally have an IQ above a certain threshold. For white Americans, that threshold is an IQ of 110, but Chinese-Americans manage to get the same elite jobs with an IQ of only 103. [...] The pattern is similar for Japanese-Americans. By virtue of self-control - hard work, diligence, steadiness, reliability - the children of immigrants from East Asia can do as well as Americans with higher IQs.

After reading this book, I've decided to...

... train my self-control and willpower by taking a cold shower everyday. To say that I love cold showers would be a gross exaggeration, but I do love the way they make me feel about myself, my strength and my determination. No matter how the day turns out, I have this one achievement that cannot be matched by other healthy habits that I've developed throughout the years. The act of gasping for air after the first contact with the icy cold water doesn't come close to the general state of relaxation and well-being that I have, for instance, after meditation or physical exercise. It's anything but pleasurable (at least, for me) and this is what makes it all the more valuable.

...train my self-control and willpower by brushing my teeth with my left hand once a day. Basically, this boils down to decomposing an automatic process, which leads to increased awareness and brain plasticity. 

...train my self-control and willpower by checking and adjusting my posture every time I happen to think about it. This is not an especially difficult task. Its value, nonetheless, resides in its uninterrupted continuity, which may lead in time to a slower rate of willpower depletion.

The Non-Dietary Component of Life Extension

Most discussions revolving around life extension and its current feasibility focus on individual dietary and training habits and also on various lifestyle aspects that may or may not lead to a good state of health, like optimal sleep hygiene, supplementation or regular medical check-ups and screenings. Obviously, all these factors have quite an impact on the extent of one's life. However, by placing them into the spotlight of any anti-aging attempt, we may run the risk of forgetting other equally important pieces of the longevity equation. 

Similarly to diet and exercise, this other component of life extension can also be placed under individual control and, as such, it is worth being mentioned for the same educational purposes. There are many things that we do everyday which are unrelated to the quality of our meals and which might exert an even bigger influence on the amount of healthy years that we can enjoy. Among these factors, our profession and our past time activities can greatly determine our life expectancy. Here is a list of those jobs, leisure occupations and habits that have been linked to diminished lifespans.

 Law enforcement jobs

 Construction work

 Long-haul truck driving

           Outdoor jobs, like logging and fishing

 Professional football 

           Professional wrestling

 Unemployment

           Long commutes

 Driving without a seat belt

 Sitting for more than 3 hours a day

 Watching television for more than 2 hours a day

 Poor education

           Being single for a prolonged period of time

 Weak social connections

 No sense of humor

 Thanatophobia or death anxiety

What Could Be Done Right Now to Alleviate the Organ Shortage?

Ideally, we should be able to put a stop to the organ shortage through the manufacturing of artificial organs. Research is advancing rapidly in this direction and there have even been successful transplants involving an artificial trachea, windpipe or esophagus. However, when it comes to complex organs, like the heart, kidney, liver or lung, the steps that have been taken so far are encouraging, although their concrete application is still to be expected at an indefinite and hopefully not too distant future time.

In a context in which in the United States alone 30 people die of organ failure every day, the organ shortage cannot be taken lightly. Relying on organ cadavers, though helpful in and of itself, has proven not to be enough for our current demands. It is estimated that even if everybody would register as an organ donor after death, the organ crisis could still not be solved. While waiting for the breakthroughs of artificial organ manufacturing, could there be a way in which we might at least partially improve the current organ situation?

A positive answer with high prospects for success comes from Sigrid Fry-Revere. In The Kidney Sellers, Fry-Revere looks into the way in which Iran has managed to successfully cope with the kidney shortage and also at those practices that set it apart from the American model. Rather than focusing on the harvesting of cadaver organs, Iran has encouraged the compensated living donation. Iranian people are not selling their kidney, but are instead being offered money and other benefits in order to make altruism possible.

Following this reasoning, the petition to introduce and pass the Stop Trafficking in Organ Procurement and Transplant Improvement Act of 2014 (SOTN Act) in Congress is aimed at increasing the penalties for illegal transplant tourism and at removing the barriers to living donation in the US. Here is the Act's detailed proposal:

1) Increase the criminal penalties associated with the brokering of / or sale of organs for transplant. 

2) Remove the financial disincentives that hinder living donation by establishing a federal benefit to help donors cover the non-medical expenses inherent in any living organ donation. The federal benefit established by this legislation should only apply to Americans willing to donate to people at the top of the waiting list in their own transplant region. If patients make it to the top of the transplant waiting list, it is pretty clear they have exhausted all other options for getting an organ. No one wants to wait longer than absolutely necessary because the longer patients are on the list, the more the chance that they will develop health problems that disqualify them from getting a transplant. Also, Medicare saves the most money by removing those at the top of the waiting list because those are the patients who are at the highest risk of developing debilitating illnesses that cost Medicare more than providing a transplant.

3) Allow charitable organizations to provide non-medical assistance to donors without fear of violating the National Organ Transplant Act (NOTA). The federal benefit would only go to donors willing to give to someone at the top of the waiting list, but charities could help any donor, for example, a linchpin donor for a chain (domino or paired) donation or someone who wants to donate to a family member or friend before that person even goes on dialysis.

4) Create a living donor registry that allows living donors to move themselves, or one relative, to the front of the transplant waiting list in their region should they at some later date need an organ themselves or for a relative. This provision removes a non-financial disincentive for donation.

It seems that, in the short run, living donation is our safest bet in the attempt to alleviate the organ shortage. Every day matters and every delay, big or small, leads to more lives being lost. If you believe in this cause, you can sign here the petition to remove the financial disincentives that hinder living donation.