The cover line is guaranteed to strike fear into the heart of anyone with a God-given allergy to self-help, change-your-life health regimes. "How the world's longest-lived people achieve everlasting health, and you can too," it says. And there's more: "Features four-week turnaround plan." Now there's a lot you can do in four weeks, but I'm willing to bet, er, everything, that achieving everlasting health isn't one of them. So far, so alternative, new-age, step-plan-tastic.
Sadly, the Okinawa Program - or the Okinawa Way, as it'll be repackaged when it's published on this side of the Atlantic next month - isn't that easy to dismiss. The sales pitch and the writing may well make you gag, and there's no getting round the innate tackiness of anything that describes itself as a "step by step guide to a new feeling of vitality and well-being", but that's not the point. The point is that in direct contravention of all the rules of self-help book writing, the Okinawa Program is based on facts. And those facts are these: the people in Okinawa, Japan's southernmost prefecture, live longer than anyone else on this planet and they spend a surprisingly large amount of that time fit, happy and well. We're not talking about lingering about in nursing homes struggling to recognise themselves in the mirror and playing with wool here - we're talking about people in their 90s riding bikes, digging up carrots and going fishing - or doing just about exactly what it was they did do when they were 40. We're talking about Shangri-la.
The book's advice - which "may add five to 10 vital years to your life" - is based on the results of the Okinawan Centenarian Study, now in its 25th year, which focuses on the health and lifestyles of elderly people on this chain of islands south of Japan. These islands produce more 100-year olds, per head of population, than anywhere else. Compared to westerners, the islanders age slowly and are far less likely - about 80% less likely - to get heart disease. They're a quarter less likely to get breast or prostate cancer. They have half the risk of getting colon cancer, and they are less likely than us to get dementia. In fact they spend 97% of their lives, on average, free of any disabilities. Their average age of death is 81.2 years - that means they get about five more years than we get.
The study, funded by Japan's ministry of health, is the largest of its kind ever carried out, and over the years the scientists in volved have had access to more than 600 Okinawan centenarians - and lots of islanders in their 70s, 80s and 90s - in their attempts to piece together what makes these people so damn plucky.
And it turns out that the authors of the Okinawa Program are far removed from the run-of-the-mill, sell-out flakes you might expect from a book that promises you everlasting health - they're the scientists who've been involved in the study. One is Makoto Suzuki, a cardiologist and geriatrician. He is a professor at Okinawa International University and the principal investigator of the Okinawa Centenarian Study. His co-authors are two Canadian-born identical twins, Bradley and Craig Willcox. Bradley is a distinguished doctor - he was trained at the Mayo Clinic and now works at Harvard Medical School's "division of ageing". Craig is a medical anthropologist in Okinawa.
Clearly with all this heavy-weight real-science-shock stuff going for it, the Okinawa Program has taken American by storm. Even Oprah Winfrey has put her weight behind it, and there's loads about it on the web. It's number 17 on the bestseller lists in Canada, and, according to amazon.com, it is for some curious reason number one bestseller in Springfield, Oregon. The twins, Craig and Bradley, are buzzing about on the US chatshow circuits (although they refuse to give interviews in Britain until the official launch of their book).
So what are the Okinawans doing right? The simple answer is, of course, that they are living a depressingly healthy lifestyle. They don't get drunk every night. They don't eat loads of fastfood and they don't get really, really stressed out over work. They do not chain smoke or work closely with asbestos. Nor do they indulge in class A drugs, a couch-potato lifestyle and the belief that swallowing their anger/grief/fear/panic, packing it all down and screwing the lid on tight is a good way to deal with the bad times. Oh, and they don't live all alone in their old age in 25-storey blocks of flats with a half-dead cat and no visitors from one day to the next.
No - as you may have guessed, the Okinawans (at least the older ones, who've not yet been tainted by western society) are regular paragons of clean, healthy, spiritually-sound living. They eat well, they eat little, they're surrounded by lots of loving family members and they're well into their martial arts and meditation.
What makes their prescription for longevity interesting, however, is in the detail. For a start, the soya. These people eat a lot of soya, and it clearly does them no harm whatsoever, even if it's not keeping them alive. Then there's all the carbohydrate - they get about two thirds of their calories from it. So forget about Hollywood's high-protein, low-carb "zone" diet and those half-baked theories that we're hunter gatherers and poorly suited to eating the fruits of agriculture: you finish your sandwich, love. Some other tips from Okinawa: eat up your sweet potatoes and your watermelon (surely a completely useless fruit?). The Okinawans, who speak a language similar to ancient Japanese, can't get enough of them.
There's no doubt that following the Okinawa Program will mean a radical lifestyle change, but the authors think we're up to it. "What we saw when we grew up was disability in old age," Bradley Willcox, 39, told the San Francisco Chronicle this week. "We don't want that. So our generation - baby boomers - are actually healthier. They're spending more time with their parents and more time with their families."
Could there be a glitch here somewhere - could it be that the Okinawans are blessed by some freakily healthy weather system, ridiculous wealth, or unique genes, and that their longevity has nothing to do with their diet and exercise regimes?
It seems not. Okinawa is poor - Japan's poorest region in fact. It has had its fair share of hardship - it has been invaded many times over the centuries and suffered heavy losses in the second world war. Studies suggest that when they emigrate, Okinawans quickly lose their health advantages - which means it's not entirely about genetics.
"A lot of gerontologists feel [longevity] is two-thirds lifestyle, one-third genetics," Bradley Willcox told the New York Post last month. "While there are several genes clearly associated with premature or delayed ageing, lifestyle still acts on these genes."
Personality may play a part however. The Okinawans are said to be remarkably easy going: they shy away from any kind of rushing. "We in the West suffer from hurry sickness," Bradley told the Post. "We try to do more and more in less and less time, and that kind of constant stress can have devastating long-term consequences - such as dementia, the premature ageing of the brain."
A few more years: The Okinawa way
Diet
Seven servings of fruits and vegetables a day.
Seven servings of whole grains a day.
Two servings of soy products a day (you can use soy flour or tofu, or snack on "soy beans in the pod", if you can find them).
Eat fish (particularly salmon, mackerel or tuna) three times a week.
Drink six glasses of water a day.
Choose green tea, rather than "normal" tea or coffee - it's low in caffeine and has cancer-fighting properties.
Cut out alcohol.
Go easy on the dairy produce and meat (the islanders do eat pork stew occasionally, but only very occasionally, and they boil it until the fat has disappeared).
Don't fill up - eat slowly and stop early.
Eat watermelon and sweet potatoes.
Exercise
Forget the gym and think t'ai chi, karate, traditional dancing and gardening. Strech and walk daily.
Meditation
Meditate by breathing deeply and counting each breath up to 10. If your mind wanders, start again. Eventually, you will be able to "quiet your mind" without counting.
Social networks
If you thought the soya bean pod bit was stretching it, listen to this. The Okinawans are big believers in family and communal support. The woman there have clubs which they go to each week with some money. At the end of the meeting, all the money goes to the woman they decide is most in need. If that's not going to work with the people you know, try joining a club, choir or charity.
Religion
Get some - and put women in charge. In Okinawa, the women are the religious leaders. They're also responsible for the spiritual health of their families. The oldest woman in the clan has to ensure good relations between ancestors and surviving family members, and presides over an annual ceremony at the family tomb. This is an important and prestigious role, and perhaps explains why women on the island have the lowest rates of suicide recorded in Japan or the Far East.
A good attitude
Age is celebrated, not hidden or lied about - on Okinawa you are considered a child until you turn 55. When you reach 97, your local town will hold a special ritual called kajimaya which symbolises a return to youth.
(Gleaned from the American edition of the Okinawa Program, available from amazon.co.uk. The British edition will be published on July 26.)
