While we’ve been so focussed on ourselves, Dr David Agus writes in The Book of Animal Secrets: Nature’s Lessons for a Long and Happy Life, “one of the things we’ve missed is that every other creature on earth has also been evolving, figuring out how to handle threatening stressors, procreate, and thrive”. For instance, elephants very rarely get cancer. Giraffes don’t get cardiovascular problems, even with the highest known blood pressure of any animal. Queen ants are able to live 80 times longer than their genetically similar colony mates. Chimps have lessons about helicopter parenting for us. It’s only fitting that Dr Agus dedicates the book to his dog, Georgie, who, he writes, is “a better person than I, even though you are a dog”.
And the book isn’t just about all the incredible things we can learn from our fellow — but more experienced — earth dwellers, it’s also a guide to all the ways we can affect our health, our well-being and even our longevity through simple lifestyle changes.
We may think, for instance, that genetics determine our health. But our genes account for less than 7% of our life span. “Our longevity is based mostly on our lifestyle choices,” Dr Agus writes, “what we eat and drink, how much we move, what kind of stress wears on us, and even other factors like the quality of our relationships.”
One of the biggest themes of the book is stress, and the connection between stress and chronic inflammation, which Dr Agus writes, is “at the centre of virtually all of our most pernicious ailments”, including diabetes, obesity, vascular diseases, dementia and depression. And even cancer. “Yes, how you think — and respond to stressors in your life — factors into your risk for cancer,” he writes.
“Survival of the fittest today isn’t about getting enough calories through hunting and gathering to survive,” writes Dr Agus. “It’s about choosing to consume the right foods from the bounty.” And while animals hardly spend hours on the treadmill, they constantly engage in brief bursts of activity, which Dr Agus calls “nature’s best exercise”. As he notes, just two minutes of activity per hour can extend our lives significantly, and even just three seconds of contracting our arm muscles can increase the strength of our biceps. That’s the basis for Thrive’s Microsteps — small, science-backed actions we can incorporate into our daily lives to build healthy habits. And as Dr Agus writes, habits “are as much shapers of our lives as we are shapers of our habits”. After all, nearly half of our daily actions are habits.
And there’s so much more to learn — from dogs (about friendship and being in the moment), from fish (about the value of moving and adapting to our environment), from rhinos (about, yes, fertility), and from dolphins (about neurodegeneration). I can promise you that once you pick this book up, you won’t look at either the animal world or your own human world the same way ever again. In fact, you’ll no longer see them as different worlds. All around us, the solutions to virtually all of our physical and mental ailments — from our chronic illnesses to our existential angst — are hiding in plain sight.
This article first appeared in Arianna’s On My Mind newsletter. Subscribe here. Read more at Thrive Global.
Arianna Huffington is the founder and CEO of Thrive Global, the founder of The Huffington Post, and the author of 15 books, including Thrive and The Sleep Revolution. In 2016, she launched Thrive Global, a leading behaviour change tech company with the mission of changing the way we work and live by ending the collective delusion that burnout is the price we must pay for success. She has been named to Time Magazine’s list of the world’s 100 most influential people and the Forbes Most Powerful Women list. Originally from Greece, she moved to England when she was 16 and graduated from Cambridge University with an M.A. in economics. At 21, she became president of the famed debating society, the Cambridge Union. She serves on numerous boards, including Onex and The B Team. Her last two books, Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder and The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life, One Night At A Time, both became instant international bestsellers. Most recently, she wrote the foreword to Thrive Global’s first book Your Time to Thrive: End Burnout, Increase Well-being, and Unlock Your Full Potential with the New Science of Microsteps.
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