Dhru Purohit Show - How a Small Italian Village Inspired My Longevity Protocol

Episode Date: October 21, 2024

This episode is brought to you by Ketone-IQ and Lifeforce.  We know that community and stress management greatly influence longevity and overall health. Yet, many people find themselves feeling isolated or lonely amid their busy lives. Today’s episode will inspire you to build and nurture connections to optimize your health, as well as the health of your family and friends. Today on The Dhru Purohit Show, we have a special compilation episode featuring Dhru's conversations with several guests on the importance of social connections for long-term health. Dr. Rose Anne Kenny shares the fascinating story of the Roseto, Italy, immigrants and how their deep-rooted community bonds helped them maintain optimal health. Dhru also explores the concept of Moais and how he built a strong community through his Man Morning group. Group members share their personal experiences, what surprised them the most, and how this community has positively impacted their lives.   In this episode, Dhru and his guests dive into:  A study on happiness (1:30) The town of Rosetta, Italy (2:57) Health assessment of the mini Rosetta town (4:25) Social engagement and its impact on good health (6:20) Behaviors of the townspeople that led to good health (7:15) The concept of Moais (10:05) Man Morning Thursdays and the question of the week (12:51) Vulnerability and surprising revelations (14:30) Creating a safe space (17:35) Weaving community into daily life (22:00) Rose Anne Kenny holds the chair of medical gerontology at Trinity College Dublin and St. James’s Hospital and is director of Mercer’s Institute for Successful Ageing. She has published extensively on cardiovascular risk factors for falls and cognitive decline in aging. Her recently published book “Age Proof – The New Science of Living a Longer and Healthier Life” was shortlisted for the Royal Society Science Book Prize 2022.  This episode is brought to you by Ketone IQ and Lifeforce.  Right now, my friends at Ketone-IQ are offering 30% off your first subscription order & a free six-pack of Ketone-IQ when you order using the link ketone.com/dhru and promo code DHRU.  Right now, you can save $250 on your first diagnostic and get personalized suggestions. Optimize your longevity and track your progress; go to mylifeforce.com/dhru!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi everyone, Drew Prote here. Today we're talking about a tiny Italian village outside of Rome that ended up migrating its inhabitants and its citizens migrated to the U.S. And something pretty amazing happened. Something that really shocked the scientific and the medical community at that time here in the United States. And we have an incredible storyteller for you, Roseanne Kennedy, a scientist, a researcher, past podcast guest that's going to tell you this story. but before she tells you this story, which is coming up right here in one moment, I'm going to tell you why we're telling you this story. See, this little Italian village that ended up popping up in the United States discovered something incredible. And that discovery was so amazing that it's had all sorts of reverberations on how we think about health.

In particular, this idea that our relationships, how we live, the close-knit nature of our, friendships actually has a massive, a massive freaking impact on our health span and potentially even maybe our lifespan. You know, this isn't news for a lot of people. In fact, if you've been paying attention to the headlines, one of the biggest studies that got so many eyeballs and media hits last year was a study, which was the longest study ever done on happiness. The study, which was led by Harvard University. It started in 1938, and it followed 724 young men from all sorts of socioeconomic backgrounds throughout their lifetime to gain an insight into the factors that influence adult development and healthy aging. So researchers, they collected a wealth of data

points on the participants over these years. Every two years, they sent out these questionnaires, and they collected all sorts of information, medical information, and they even did interviews with the participants every 10 years. So as the study progressed, they discovered that the men who aged the best were also the happiest. And it wasn't money or fame that brought them happiness. It was the quality of their relationships.

In other words, it was how supported they felt by their spouses, friends, family, and community. This is the longest study ever conducted on happiness. and that's the conclusion, something that we all obviously know. But the question is, do we actually implement this in our life? So today, as I mentioned, we have Roseanne Kenny on the podcast, scientists, researcher, into all aspects of aging and healthy aging, talking to us about this little town in Italy. And then I'm going to come back and I'm going to tell you how this little town in Italy

inspired me to do something for the last 10 years, religiously, every single week with a group of friends. Let's start off with Roseanne Kenny talking to us about the little town of Rosetta that had a big impact. Rosetta was a town and this story goes back to the late 1800s. There was quite a bit of poverty there. It was based in Italy, near Rome, outside Rome. And at that stage, it became apparent that there were immigration opportunities in the USA. So a number of the Rosetta and citizens did emigrate to the USA. And they established really what was a mirror small town Rosetta, but in Pennsylvania.

And then a physician called Stuart Wolfe had a holiday home nearby and was visiting one summer, gave a lecture, as you do, to a local community of general practitioners, etc. And the GP, the general practitioner or family practitioner, who was looking after Rosetta, came up to him afterwards and said, you know, you were talking about cardiac disease, heart disease, heart attacks, which at that time in the USA was an epidemic proportions. Men were literally dropping deads in their thousands in the US in their late 40s and early 50s, which we don't really see that much now. And he said, but in the town of Rosetta, where I practice, I don't see that. Now, at this stage, it was in the 1900s. So Wolf, being a very good scientist, physician scientist, took his research team the next summer to Rosetta. And this part of the story is fab, because the local mayor gave him the community hall.

And the mayor's, I think, four sisters helped the students with food and with setting everything up. And they literally set up a mini health assessment laboratory in the town hall. And they assessed all of the participants. Because in advance of this, Stuart Wolfe had checked the death records and found it actually to be the case that the age of death appeared to be older by almost a decade in Rosetta than in nearby towns. And there didn't seem to be any particular reason for this. So they basically did everything that measurements that we know are associated with

heart disease and healthy livestock and found, yes, that people were living longer, but it wasn't what they expected. It wasn't the diet. Actually, they were eating more pizzas than would have been expected. It wasn't the exercise levels. It didn't appear to be that. And anyway, it wasn't genetics. They looked at everything that we traditionally associate with longevity. And Wolf himself was sitting outside the church. And the church was built in the center of this wee town with all of the houses built around it, very much in the same fashion as Rosetta, Italy. And he noted on Sunday, as the inhabitants poured out onto the square, that they spent a considerable period of time on the square, after church, chatting and laughing

and engaging in families. And it was then that he had the light bulb moment, that the truth about Rosetta and the secret of Rosetta was. was Rosetta itself. The inhabitants of Rosetta. And then he started to explore this more. And this was one of the first studies that actually looked in a rigorous way at, the question,

is there a relationship between how we engage and social engagement, friendships, quality of friendships, et cetera, and good health? And he studied with a scientist for a number of decades called Bruin and they identified that indeed there was. Now, it's worth saying that they had a job selling their findings

and getting them published and eventually they did in the American Journal of Medicine. But at that time, genetics was exploding. And the medical community and indeed scientific community weren't probably prepared to accept that something is so-called soft as having quality friendship and relationships could actually affect. affect biology. But of course, we now know from a number of studies that that is the case. Just to pull on that thread a little bit more, what were some of the behaviors or ways that this town and the populace inside of it? What were they doing that was so different than how

friendship, relationships were happening in the rest of America around the same time? So the town had, I think, 2,200 inhabitants at the time. And there were something like 22 civic societies. So for 2,000 people, if you've got 22 societies, that's a lot of activity for individuals in the town. That's the first thing. Secondly, he noted a very egalitarian attitude in the town. There was no one-upmanship.

There was a good, a lot of sharing and engagement, amongst the participants. Three generations often lived in one household. So that a grandfather lived with two other generations younger than him. And the house was constantly in flow with people, people coming and going, loads of variety. There was never a lonely moment for older individuals. They were also respected within the family structure and within the society. So they were very much engaged with the society.

So there were some of the observations that he made at that time. Now, the resettance at the time stuck very much to themselves. They spoke the dialect that they had spoken in Rosetta in Italy. They continued to speak that they married, intermarried, etc. So they were quite a closed community also. But it was the egalitarian approach and the constant variety and social engagement that particularly were attributed to their extraordinary longevity compared with nearby towns. Well, fast-forwarding a little bit, and, you know, Malcolm Gladwell and others have written

about this, and I think there's some documentaries about it. Unfortunately, as the years went on, things changed. Can you just share a little bit more about that? Well, except that, I suppose, that you could say it became polluted. by our Western approaches to things, by there was more investment in the town, more external travel by inhabitants of the town to other areas to work, etc. And, you know, I suppose the 20th and 21st century caught up with the Rosettins.

Some of you know about this concept, but there is a term from Okinawomen. Nawa, the blue zone that's based in Japan, and that term is Moi. M-O-A-I-S. It's a social support group that's formed in order to provide support to the individuals that are part of it. It's basically a buddy system of friendship. And it's one that's maintained as long as the individuals are living throughout your life. And as we know, the blue zones in Japan and other places have so many concentrations of centenarians. And those individuals in many of these blue zones, but it's especially in Japan, they're known for their closeness, their friendships, the strength of that community.

Now, hearing about this work and hearing about the town of Rosetta and many other things that are out there, there was a group of my friends and I that all moved to Los Angeles almost 10 years ago. And we didn't have an established social network group of friends. A lot of us weren't even married at the time. We all independently moved here and we were looking to make community. So we started a hike and a semi-regular hike became a regular hike. And then one day a group of guys kept on coming. And we thought, what if we made this a regular thing?

And we did. And we've been doing it now for 10 years. And this little Italian village has definitely imprinted upon me. The importance of this group that I helped start. And that group is called Man Morning. It's a weekly accountability and support group of a group of guys. Obviously, if you want to start one, it doesn't have to be just a group of guys. Could be a group of girls.

Could be a co-ed. Could be this, that, whatever you want to do. But I'm just telling you the group that I started. Man morning, we meet every week. Every Thursday morning, we meet somewhere in Los Angeles, often on the west side, Santa Monica, Brentwood, et cetera. And we go on a hike together. Well, let's be real.

It's really a walk. We're walking on the beach. We're walking on a light trail. It's not like we're crazy hiking or anything. On this walk, we check in with each other. We ask each other how each other's week is going. We have a question of the day. And it's an opportunity to regularly make sure we're supporting each other in each other's lives.

Now, when we first started this group, we had no idea the impact that it would have on all of our lives. And in this next clip here, I brought a group of my friends together that are part of this man morning group to talk about why we started man morning, how it works, and why it means so much to us. And the thing is, I don't want to just tell you about man morning. I'm telling you about it because, as you'll see here in a second, the quality of our friendships has had a massive and significant impact on our health and happiness. Don't just take my word for it. Hear about this from the guys in man porning in this next clip.

Man morning is a weekly group of guys that started here in Los Angeles. And we get together on Thursday mornings. and we go for a walk together. We'll typically have a captain. That captain will pick the place that we want to walk to. They'll have the question of the day. And we will all meet up on time and we'll walk for an hour

and we'll bring up that question and it'll open up different dialogue. And sometimes when we don't have a question, one of the go-to questions that's there is tell us what you're celebrating in life and tell us what you're navigating, which I stole a little bit from this group called Summit Series that I'm a part of.

And in that process of people going around and sharing their highlights, but also what they're navigating, which means maybe something that you're stuck on, something that's a little bit like, you know, you feel the frustration or there's inertia, but you haven't talked about it before with anybody. It's a beautiful opportunity to let go of all that buildup. And now you have another group of people that are just listening without judgment,

and they're just here to listen. And in some cases, ask really good reflecting questions to help you go a little bit deeper. And one of the things that you see, time and time again, besides the fact that there's all this science, I've done an episode on it, we'll link to in the show notes, about how walking in particular allows for the bilateral movement of the eyes, which scans the horizon, which actually relaxes the nervous system.

There's a bunch of work that's been done on this from the group and the founder of the EMDR method. And so doing that together as a group has been foundational. It's something that I look forward to every week. I didn't know was missing in my life, that brotherhood, that intention when we get together. I love that it's happening typically at 7 or 8 a.m. There's something about the conversations you have with someone over a cup of coffee or a cup of tea that is so different than the conversations you have with someone at 7 p.m.

over a beer, a mescal or a glass of wine. Don't get me wrong. I like those things as well. but the intention about it is so different. You know, I walk away from all these manned morning gathering so inspired. So sometimes challenge in many ways to think a little bit differently, so encouraged. And to your point, Drew, you know, I've shared some things out loud there that I didn't plan on sharing that were frankly vulnerable.

And you said something so key about this, Drew, in that being that it's a place where you're not judged where you can share some things that you're going through in your business. We're all pretty much operate our own businesses. you can share things, maybe challenges you're experiencing in your home life with your marriage or raising kids, and you can get some different perspectives. But also here's what's cool is you also realize that I'm not the first person to experience this or I'm not the only one to experience this. It's interesting because I have two boys and I'm already passing a lot of this information

to my boys and encouraging them being 17 and 13 to start talking to their friends and how are they sharing their challenges. With this group, I find guys are more balanced. They care about their relationships. They care about their family. They care about their health. They care about winning, but trying to have the appreciation of like, okay, this is my life garden. These are my life departments.

I need to be balanced. And I can still win. So I think that has been really great, you know, through Mark Antonio, we're all entrepreneurs in our own way and in our own businesses. So it's nice to have like living examples of that and talk to people because we have a similar mindset of a North Star of what is a healthy, successful, impactful life. Antonio, in your man morning newsletter, manmorning.com, people can sign up. You also have a little bit of a roadmap. If people are listening to this and are like, wow, that's great for you guys.

You guys have this group. Go start your own group. And by the way, you can do that. If people go to their website and you kind of like see a little bit of the framework that we use to just set up this informal group. of people that are all there in Brotherhood to support each other. Yeah, I mean, we tell you we laid out exactly how it works. There's also a recent post in the newsletter where we talk about the type of men you want to have in your life.

We break down the five type of men that are critical to have in your life. And these aren't folks you engage with on a daily basis. They don't have to be best friends, but it literally is laid out. These are the folks you want around you on a regular basis. Trust and confidentially is like a core pillar of how to be. be and be a part of Man Mourning, if somebody's going to have their group. What are some other ones? And actually, Mark and Junaid, you guys have probably seen this, but you may not have known that these things are kind of like unwritten or written rules. Antonio, can you give us a few other

written rules that are part of Man Mourning that allow for this sort of vulnerable place of people sharing and like it leading to being something super productive that every one of us looks forward to in our life? 100%. It has to be a no judgment zone. where I think men feel, they feel safe, they feel protective, but they're not feeling like they're being judged. Now, can we challenge, positively challenge someone, call someone up versus out 100%. So we don't want, you know, judgment taking place. A quick example, again, this is on the calendar.

It's not something that you opt into, you opt out. One that is really critical that shows up a lot in relationships and conversations, probably with men and with women. And you probably can speak to this as well. And this is a tough one for me. We try to limit sarcasm and cynicism in our conversations. We just find that when sarcasm shows up or our cynicism shows up in those conversations, it doesn't take it in a right direction. And it's not always productive.

It doesn't mean you can't be funny. It doesn't mean you can't tell a bad, corny joke, which I'm guilty of many times. But we find that sarcasm and cynicism, some thief kind of energy can show up and it can kind of derail what's taking place. And this is what's cool about this group, and you guys are new. I'm curious if you can speak to this is we don't try to solve people's problems. It's very rare that in a man morning that we're prescriptive. Okay, Jay, you're experiencing this with your significant other.

You experience this in your business. Do X, Y, and do Z. Very rarely is a prescriptive. Most times what I'll hear, and even with one-on-one conversations with Drew or with anyone here, what you'll hear is, well, in my experience, this is what I've seen. When I experienced something similar, this is what I did. Or they'll say, can I make a suggestion? But very rarely are we there trying to solve?

It's more of a definitely a coaching dynamic. As a coach who works with professionals all across the country and globe, I want to make sure folks know there's a difference between coaching and consulting. When you tell someone what to do, you are being a consultant. You are no longer a coach. A lot of managers out there at organizations, they think, oh, we're bringing in coaching emphasis to our work. No, you are, you're being consultative right now. You're telling them what to do, but with coaching, you're asking really great questions and you're getting on information

and creative ways to learn more about the situation. So it's definitely a coaching type of environment, not a consultative type of environment unless, unless that person specifically says, hey, is it okay if I'm prescriptive right now, which we tend to ask for permission first to do so, then they'll dive in deeper. So those are some key tenets. A lot of men and a lot of women that are listening that feel like they have a partner, a boyfriend, whatever, somebody in their life could even be a brother or a cousin, that they wished like that this was available for them. One angle that would get a lot more people excited is like, this has impacted every aspect of my life, including my career success. When you're younger and people ask you, what do you want to do

when you get older, right? You ask a kid. Kid says astronaut, police officer, veterinarian, doctor, right maybe teacher a few other things and then let's say you get into high school okay you have those and you have a few more you know about an engineer you know about an accountant but the surprising thing is that as people are looking to evolve in their career when they're in high school and even post college they know maybe instead of 10 when they're a kid they know about maybe you know 200 professions right there are literally thousands if not hundreds of thousands if not millions of ways to make an impact in the world and get paid for it. And one of the best ways to find that aspect of your life, which I know is important to a lot of men in sort of being driven by success and other things

like that, is to see other examples. So when somebody invites you into their world and you get a chance to see how their team is run, you get a chance to see of how they built this business, you get a chance to see the conversation of what were the ups and downs that they had to go through on their path of success. That is a clear way to expose you to something completely different that you wouldn't have seen before. And that is actually a really strong motivator for anybody who may not necessarily think that they're going to get a lot from something like this.

It's going to absolutely help your relationships, but it's also going to help your career as well. Whether you have a walking group, whether you have an accountability buddy, whether you have a formalized moi that you decide to develop inside of your community, do not sleep on the idea of community, and its ability to make a massive impact on your health and happiness.

Community, friendships, they matter. And when we take them seriously and we weave them into the fabric of our life, that's when we get these deep benefits and rewards from them. Man Morning has made such a difference in my life. The brothers and the friends that are part of this group that we all started together almost 10 years ago, we are so close to. knit through the tough times in life, through the celebrating moments of life and everything else in between. I know. I feel it in my bones. Besides the fact that this group helps me actually

be healthier, I genuinely feel that their level of support is going to help me live longer. That's just my hunch. I can't promise that for anybody else, but that's my hunch that's out there. Take community seriously. If it's something that you have not prioritized in your life, there's never a better day to start than now. You can start today and it can start simple. Start a book club at your office. Start a group of friends that maybe work out together once a week. Start a walking group with a question of the week. It doesn't matter what it is. Just start small and make it a regular part of your life. That's my hope for you. And that's why we featured today's compilation episode with my Man Morning Group as well as Roseanne Kenny, the researcher on aging.

thanks so much for tuning into the podcast. We'll have a brand new episode of the Drew Prode Show later on this week. See you then.