To live a long and healthy life
Let's make it a '100-year blood vessel'
Vascular health is overall health.

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The author has some recommendations for those who aim to live a healthy 100 years, as well as those who are a bit uneasy about living to 100.
It is about making your blood vessels healthy so that you can easily live for 100 years.
In other words, this is how to create a ‘100-year blood vessel.’
If we can keep our blood vessels young, we can all get closer to the hope of living a healthy 100 years, and the health concerns that inevitably arise as we live longer will also be alleviated.
Because ‘vascular health’ is directly linked to ‘body health.’

It is well known that the heart is a very important organ.
Because if your heart stops, you can't live.
But even this important heart is maintained thanks to blood vessels.
The heart is a 'blood pump' that supplies blood to blood vessels that extend to every corner of the body by repeating contraction and relaxation.
Our body can be healthy only when the oxygen and nutrients in the blood are sufficiently absorbed by the organs and cells in our body.
Therefore, it is said that vascular health is directly related to overall health.
The same goes for the heart.
The heart also sends the blood it sends back to itself through blood vessels called coronary arteries to absorb the oxygen and nutrients necessary for survival.
In other words, the heart, which is responsible for pumping blood, maintains its continuity through blood vessels just like other organs.

The heart and blood vessels have a symbiotic relationship.
No matter how hard the heart pumps blood, if the blood vessels that supply it are blocked, the oxygen and nutrients cannot be delivered to the necessary locations.
To use an analogy, it's like a factory working hard to produce goods, but if the distribution network is not good, the products won't be delivered to consumers across the country.
However, what blood vessels carry are essential items that are absolutely necessary for sustaining life.
It is not a necessity of life, but a 'necessity of life'.
If a problem occurs in the blood vessels that are distributed throughout the body (their total length is a whopping 100,000 km!) and blood flow stagnates, the organs connected to them will naturally not be able to function properly.
Likewise, if a problem occurs in the cardiovascular system, the heart cannot function properly.

Why does heart failure remain a shocking condition with a five-year survival rate of only 50%? This is the second reason heart failure is so frightening.
That's because there is no fundamental treatment.
In other words, there is no drug that completely cures heart failure.
When heart failure progresses to a severe stage, there is no other way than a heart transplant.
That is precisely why drug therapy is so important for heart failure.
And the drug therapy at this time is only a drug that alleviates symptoms or suppresses progression, and cannot restore a healthy heart.
Once diagnosed with heart failure, it is difficult to restore the heart to its original healthy state, so you have no choice but to live while gently patting the easily tired heart.
Therefore, the ideal is to be alert and properly manage the heart to restore its function even before it reaches heart failure.
--- p.28

High blood pressure means that the walls of your blood vessels are constantly being pressed hard by the blood pumped out by your heart.
When this happens, the originally flexible blood vessels gradually harden to withstand this pressure, and as a result, the space through which blood can pass becomes narrower.
As blood struggles to pass through the narrowed passage, the pressure on the blood vessels increases, which can lead to blood vessel damage.
In such cases, vascular endothelial cells that come into direct contact with the bloodstream are particularly damaged.
When vascular endothelial cells are damaged, lipids in the blood seep into the blood vessel membrane through the gaps, leading to arteriosclerosis.
In the Japanese hypertension guidelines revised in 2019, the target blood pressure level, which is the target value for lowering blood pressure, became somewhat stricter.
However, there are people who think that 'it's okay to have slightly high blood pressure', but high blood pressure definitely increases the risk of developing a vascular accident 10 or 20 years later.
--- p.43

Therefore, the period of time that women need care or are disabled is on average about three years longer than that of men.
Of course, it's not easy to accept this reality, but even if you need care, not everything will fall apart in an instant, so it's best not to think that receiving help from others makes you unhappy.
There are five levels of nursing care, and the most severe level, 'Nursing care level 5', refers to a condition where a person cannot leave bed.
Because he has to lie down most of the time, he is completely unable to carry out daily activities such as eating and going to the bathroom without the help of others.
When faced with this reality, it would be honest to think that no one would want to end up like that.
Currently, there are over 7 million people in Japan who receive support and nursing care.
This means that slightly less than 20% of those aged 65 or older are beneficiaries, and the details are as follows.
--- p.62

When comparing the number of deaths per 100,000 people due to cerebral infarction and cerebral hemorrhage, the number of deaths due to cerebral hemorrhage at that time was 20 to 30 times higher than the number of deaths due to cerebral infarction today.
Until the early 1970s, the number of cerebral hemorrhages always exceeded the number of cerebral infarctions.
Why were cerebral hemorrhages so common back then? The most frequently cited reasons are excessive salt intake and neglected high blood pressure.
At that time, people often consumed foods with high salt content, and it was very common for people with high blood pressure to not be treated.
It is true that these factors increased the mortality rate from cerebral hemorrhage, but if we dig a little deeper, protein deficiency was also a major factor that cannot be ignored.
The walls of the blood vessels themselves were weak due to a lack of protein, the material of blood vessels.
--- p.75

When it comes to 'hidden', heart failure is no exception.
So, although it is not in the top three causes of receiving nursing care support or nursing care protection, heart disease is the second most common after the diseases and disabilities explained so far.
In the previous chapter, it was said that the most common cause of sudden death was heart disease.
Heart failure, where the heart's function declines and it cannot pump enough blood throughout the body, can cause sudden death with strong symptoms, while in other cases, symptoms can develop slowly and chronically.
Acute heart failure is often accompanied by severe pain, so it is difficult to detect it. However, chronic heart failure progresses slowly and symptoms do not appear clearly, so it is easy to overlook it as just feeling unwell.
--- p.88

The reason why cold 'zaru udon' is better than warm 'on (溫) udon' and cold rice is better than freshly cooked rice is because some of the starch in udon or rice turns into resistant starch, which acts like dietary fiber.
So, does that mean dietary fiber is good for you? Yes.
Dietary fiber is an essential nutrient for the '100-year blood vessels'.
There are two types of dietary fiber: ‘insoluble dietary fiber’ and ‘soluble dietary fiber.’
Both are important, but soluble fiber is more important for vascular management.
Soluble dietary fiber, which dissolves in water, absorbs moisture from food and forms a thick, jelly-like substance.
So, it passes through the stomach slowly, so the time it stays in the stomach is…
--- p.115

It exhibits unique properties such as color, smell, spicy taste, or bitter taste.
This phytochemical also has antioxidant properties, so when we consume it, it can suppress free radicals that are involved in aging.
It's been a while since we mentioned active oxygen in Chapter 1. Some of the oxygen that enters the body through breathing becomes active oxygen, which has a very high oxidizing power.
So, not everyone can completely eliminate free radicals.
When expressed this way, it is easy to focus only on the harmful effects of active oxygen, but active oxygen also plays a positive role to some extent, such as being used as a weapon in the immune response to destroy external invaders that enter our body.
However, if it increases too much, it damages the cells in the body.
It is known that active oxygen is involved in the process of arteriosclerosis in blood vessels and also affects skin aging such as cancer development and skin wrinkles.
Our bodies naturally have enzymes that remove active oxygen, but their function declines as we age.
It is natural for aging to progress as we age, but if we want to live a healthier and more energetic life in the 100-year lifespan, it should be reduced.
--- p.139

Brown fat cells are abundant in babies, but decrease with age, and after the age of 40, they decrease rapidly and are said to be almost gone by the age of 60.
Therefore, as we age, our body gradually becomes more and more 'fat-free'.
However, there are large individual differences here.
I'm the type of person who gains weight no matter how much I eat, but my wife doesn't gain much weight no matter how much she eats.
And even when we are in the same space, my wife often says, "It's hot," and when I touch her back, it feels warm.
Brown fat cells are located around the collarbone and shoulder blades, so your wife will definitely have a lot of brown fat cells.
I've always been envious of my wife who doesn't gain much weight even though she eats the same amount of food, but it wasn't until recently that I finally realized that the main reason for this was her brown fat cells.
And what I'm going to say from now on is really important.
Most people lose most of their brown fat cells by the age of 60, but it has been discovered that certain stimuli can cause normal white fat cells to break down and burn fat like brown fat cells.
This transformation is called 'beigeization', and the beigeized white fat cells are called 'beige fat cells'.
In other words, white fat cells that absorb neutral fat transform into beige fat cells that burn fat.

--- pp.165-166