Dr. Shigeaki Hinohara has been a Japanese cardiologist and is considered the world’s longest serving physician. He worked until he was 100 years old, teaching his contemporaries to live with dignity, no matter what age at which they were working.
He cared for the victims of the Tokyo firebombings during World War II. In 1970, he was taken hostage when Japanese Red Army terrorists hijacked a commercial airliner, an event that changed his life and prompted him to devote himself to others. Not only that, he managed to save the lives of an astounding 640 victims from a terrorist poison gas attack in the Tokyo subway in 1995.
In 1941, he began working at St. Luke’s International Hospital, where he spent 76 years of his professional career. He achieved many things including reclassifying stroke and heart disorders into often-preventable lifestyle diseases, insisted that palliative care should be a priority for the terminally ill, and advised an annual check-up plan that helped lengthen the average life span of Japanese people. Currently, Japanese life expectancy sits at 87 years for women and 80 years for men among others.
He provided advice that enabled Japan to become the world leader in longevity, including challenges and 10-year goals. The advice was: Try new things, enjoy new experiences and be active both physically and mentally to keep older people healthy and happy, get routine check-ups, be socially active, eat the essentials, be optimistic (because he said the most important thing was attitude), recommend doing what you want to do, go to bed early and get up early, Do sports (at his centennial age, he still walked up the stairs, because a physically and mentally inactive life will most likely lead to dementia), avoid obesity because it causes stress on the heart and increases the possibility of damaging the arteries, and to top it all off, he presumed that the most important reason to maintain a long life was to eat a balanced diet including EVOO. He was informed of all the benefits that this liquid gold brought to the organism and how essential it could be as a preventive measure in the face of certain cardiovascular and tumor diseases, therefore he included it in his diet on a daily basis and strongly recommended it.
Doctor Shigeaki Hinohara died in Tokyo at the age of 105 from respiratory failure, and left us with the very best of his legacy – his wisdom.