115 - Hong Kong, Japan & You: What Curious Physicians Learn That Burned-Out Doctors Don’t

Can curiosity really change how you practice medicine—and how long you thrive doing it?

In this final episode of the Independent Physician Blueprint’s longevity series, Coach JPMD challenges the idea that clinical expertise alone is enough. He explores how global curiosity—especially around healthcare models, lifestyle habits, and longevity—can empower independent physicians to deliver better care, avoid burnout, and unlock new paths to personal and professional fulfillment.

• Discover how staying curious about international healthcare systems can improve outcomes in your local practice.
  
  
• Learn why curiosity isn’t just intellectual—it’s a powerful shield against burnout and career stagnation.
  
  
• Explore how a curious mindset can spark new ways to generate wealth while living a more balanced, energized life as a physician.

Press play to discover how embracing curiosity can transform your career, your practice, and your longevity as a physician.

Discover how medical graduates, junior doctors, and young physicians can navigate residency training programs, surgical residency, and locum tenens to increase income, enjoy independent practice, decrease stress, achieve financial freedom, and retire early, while maintaining patient satisfaction and exploring physician side gigs to tackle medical school loans.

Transcript

Coach JPMD (00:00.482)
Can curiosity really change how you practice medicine and how long you thrive doing it? Welcome back to another episode where I help younger physicians decrease stress and increase income by transitioning from corporate to independent practices, even without any business experience. In this episode, you'll discover how staying curious about international healthcare systems can improve outcomes in your local practice. You'll also learn why curiosity isn't just intellectual.

It's a powerful shield against burnout and career stagnation. We'll also explore how a curious mindset can spark new ways to generate wealth while living a more balanced, energized life as a physician. So welcome to another episode of the Independent Physicians Blueprint with your host, Coach JPMD. That's me. And we're here to finalize our longevity series. And some of you might be wondering, why am I doing this long series on longevity? Well, it all started with curiosity.

I was curious about why countries live longer than we do in the United States. And so I embarked on this journey to just kind of research the top 10 countries as per the website called Worldometers. There's a site that actually attracts all of this. so we talked about the reunion being number 10, Spain being number nine, Singapore, eight, Italy, Australia, Switzerland, number five, French Polynesia, number four.

and South Korea, number three, which we kind of talked about those two countries last time. And today we're going to talk about Japan and Hong Kong. And I think Japan and Hong Kong have switched sometimes to be the number one and number two. These are the two countries that we're going to talk about today. And so we've got Japan that ranks number two. And of course we know they're East of China, South of Korea, and their population is about 126 million, 146,000. That's as of 2020 census. So they live on average,

Combined population male, female, 85 years. Women live to be 88.03 years and men live to be 81.9. That's several years. It's almost like six years older than the US men, American males. Their healthcare system, they've got universal healthcare system and so they take care of their population. They've got about 12.7 beds per thousand people in that country. So that's almost four times, five times the population of

Coach JPMD (02:25.506)
beds in the US. Their physician population is about 2.6 per thousand, so it's similar, but their nursing ratios is 12.4 per thousand, which is much higher than most of the countries in the world. So as far as religion, most Japanese practice Shinto religion, which is a religion that doesn't consist of any structure, no organizing body. It's the way of the gods, they say.

And it consists of traditional Japanese religious practices, spiritual beliefs, attitudes, and they have no scripture. And there's no founding members of this organization or this way of practicing. So I thought it was pretty interesting to see that only less than 1.5 % are Christians. As far as the mortality, they die more of heart disease, strokes, pneumonia, bronchial cancer, bronchial or lung cancer, and dementia.

That is Japan. so you can tell that some of the characteristics of Japanese people are different than the other countries that we spoke about. It's very interesting. Very interesting because they also have a very large population and their populations are densely packed in their country. So I think one of the themes that we've been hearing all along is that they provide universal health care. There is a private public partnership, but mostly if you're Japanese, you're going to get taken care of.

That's also where Okinawa is in Japan. That's one of the five blue zones, or now six blue zones, where they have the highest concentration of centenarians in the world. So we have a lot to learn from in Japan. so number one, we go to Hong Kong. Hong Kong is a special administrative region of China. I'm not sure I knew this, but...

Hong Kong really is part of the People's Republic of China. They've got a population of 7.413 million. This is 2021. They're in an area just south of China. It's attached to the mainland. Their population of men and women live to be on average 85.8 and women live to be 88.4 on average, with men living highest in any population that I've seen. Yeah, Hong Kong, 83.1, that's the top. Men live the longest in Hong Kong.

Coach JPMD (04:51.586)
Data on hospitals and physicians, really, really hard to find. We do know that they have top-notch healthcare systems and their hospital systems are really good. They take care of their people. There is a public-private partnership as well where most, if not everyone, is insured or has access to care, religion. There's three teachings of the culture, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism that accounts for about 20 % of the population. And then Christians account for about 12 % and

The isomic religion is about 4%. What do they die of? Well, they die mainly of cancer, which was interesting because that is different than the rest of the top 10 that we've seen. We've got cancer, number one, pneumonias, CAD or ischemic heart disease, strokes, and accidents. And I think one of the things that I've read and I've read on several different websites and several different sources is that their longevity is linked

to the food intake, what they eat. They're in the southern part of China, so they are coastal and they eat a lot of seafood. They eat a lot of fresh fruits, exotic fruits as well. Some of their healthcare is taken care of by traditional Chinese medicine. And although it was reported that they mainly are a advanced society that uses advanced technologies for their healthcare systems, but I think one of the big things that I've seen is that they do

have traditional Chinese medicine as well in that country. So that is the top 10 countries in the world that live the longest. And so I really enjoyed doing this and I hope that you did as well. And I hope that may have sparked you to maybe do some of your own research, some of your own research in the communities that you live in. And I also think that it's going to be really difficult for the US to implement some of these things. But I think regardless of what political aisle you're in or on,

Our country is moving in the right direction. It's moving in the direction of looking at root cause analysis of disease, looking at things that we can do as a nation to help improve the conditions of our food, our lifestyles. I noticed in Japan and Hong Kong, they really promote outdoor living, outdoor lifestyles, walking. Everything is kind of centralized to where their population is. My take on this is...

Coach JPMD (07:14.058)
If you're a physician in the U S and you want to help your populations live long and you want to implement some of these things, I think it starts with you. Number one, it starts with your family implementing things that can help you be healthy as well as your families. So that is something that I do in my household and my kids are actually keeping me accountable. Sometimes, you know, I try not to eat as much meat and red meats and I try not to indulge in the sweets. And so, as soon as I do, I've got kids.

in the house that kind of remind me, Hey, why are you eating that? Dad, I thought you weren't supposed to eat that. So it's really good to start at home. And then of course, start in your office and start in your community. Start implementing some of the things that may be implemented in these countries that live longer than we do. And then from there, talk to your representatives, talk to people in your community, do seminars, be curious about the things that are happening around us, around the world that can help us live longer and help us.

populations live long. So I hope you've enjoyed this series on longevity, the top 10 countries that live longer than the rest of the world. And stay tuned next week for another episode. I'm not sure what that episode is going to be, but it's not going to be on longevity anymore. So we're done with this series and we are hoping to get back to really focusing on what we can help physicians do to decrease their stress, decrease their burnout, and generate wealth in this crazy world we're living in. So see you next week.

Thank you so much for listening to the podcast. If you'd to hear more, subscribe, follow, your favorite podcast app so you'll never miss an episode.