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Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who’ve Lived the Longest
Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who’ve Lived the Longest
By Azriel ReShel on
Thursday January 4th, 2018
How to Live to Be 100+
We all
inhabit this beautiful blue planet, breathe the same air, eat
food grown on our world’s surface and drink fresh water sourced from the Earth, yet
some people are a whole lot healthier than others, and in fact, live decades
longer.
These
are people who live in what has become known as ‘Blue Zones’ across the globe and we can learn
a lot from their way of life. These
zones describe the characteristic lifestyles and
the environments of the world’s longest-lived people
and, remarkably, the average person’s life expectancy could increase by
10-12 years by adopting a Blue Zones lifestyle.
The concept of blue zones grew out of the
demographic work of Gianni Pes and Michael Poulain, who
identified Sardinia’s Nuoro province as the region with the
highest concentration of male centenarians in the world. Dan Buettner
studied and then expanded on this research, identifying five geographic areas
where people live, statistically, the longest. The areas are sprinkled across
the planet and include villages in Greece, Costa Rica, Italy, Japan, and California.
Author
of Blue Zones, Lessons for
Living Longer from the People Who’ve Lived the Longest, Dan
Buettner offers an explanation, based on empirical data and firsthand
observations, as to why these populations live healthier and longer lives. He
and his team joined up with National Geographic to find the world’s
longest-lived people and study them. They worked with a team of
demographers to find pockets of people around the world with the highest life
expectancy, or with the highest proportions of people who reach age 100.
The result was five places that met their
criteria:
·
Barbagia region of
Sardinia – Mountainous highlands of inner
Sardinia with the world’s highest concentration of male centenarians.
·
Ikaria, Greece – Aegean Island with one of the world’s lowest
rates of middle age mortality and the lowest rates of dementia.
·
Nicoya Peninsula,
Costa Rica – World’s lowest rates of middle age
mortality and the second highest concentration of male centenarians.
·
Seventh Day
Adventists – Highest concentration is around Loma
Linda, California. They live 10 years longer than their North American
counterparts.
·
Okinawa, Japan – Females over 70 are the longest-lived population
in the world.
Following their discoveries, they assembled a
team of medical researchers, anthropologists, demographers, and epidemiologists
to search for evidence-based common denominators amongst these five places, to
work out what was creating a long life.
People who live in the ‘Blue Zones’ live in
different parts of the world, but their lifestyles have nine key things in
common. Try these tips for living a longer, healthier, happier life:
1. Move Naturally
Movement
is part of their daily life and rituals. They live in environments that nudge
them into moving without thinking. For instance, they grow gardens and
don’t have mechanical conveniences, but instead use their own labor to make
things happen.
Sardinian men, for example, raise farm
animals, often live on steep slopes and walk long distances each day to
work. Moving comes naturally and is something they are doing constantly.
Whether you are gardening, walking or
cooking, or doing other chores, natural movement will help improve your health.
2. Know Your Purpose
People in Blue Zones tend to have a strong
sense of their life purpose, known as ‘ikigai’ in Okinawa or ‘plan de vida’ in
Nicoya, which loosely translates to ‘why I wake up in the morning.’
3. Shed the Stress
Stress
is a major cause of disease and unhappiness in the world today. It leads to
chronic inflammation, associated with every major age-related disease. Stress
is a part of daily life and even people living in the Blue Zones
experience stress, but it’s how
they manage it that makes all the difference. The world’s longest-lived people
have routines for shedding stress. Okinawans take a few moments each day to
remember their ancestors, Adventists pray, Ikarians take a nap and Sardinians
do happy hour, says Dan Buettner.
4. Follow the 80% Rule
Restricting calorie intake and intermittent
fasting are common practices in the Blue Zones. The Okinawan recite a
2,500-year old Confucian mantra, ‘Hara hachi bu’, before meals.
This reminds them to stop eating when their stomachs are 80% full, helping
to prevent weight gain and risk of disease. Icarians, typically Greek Orthodox
Christians, practice fasting for religious holidays at different times
throughout the year. Fasting has been shown to reduce your risk of chronic
disease, including blood pressure and cholesterol.
5. Eat a Diet Full of Whole Plant Foods
According
to their research, meat is only eaten–at most–five times a month in the Blue
Zones. The cornerstone of the diets of
long-lived people is plants and beans, that make up around 95% of their eating
habits. Soy, lentils, black beans and other legumes and plants, make up a
healthy and nourishing diet, and meal portions are a lot smaller than Western
serving sizes. A plant-based diet is not only good for your health but is also
good for the planet too.
6. Wine at Five
All of the Blue Zones areas, except the
Adventists, drank moderately, and a glass of wine with food and friends daily
seemed to elongate life. But the trick is the social connection and moderate
drinking, not twelve drinks in one night.
7. Embrace a Spiritual Belief System
Faith plays a big part in the lives of people
living in the Blue Zones. This sense of belonging provides you with social
support and can help to alleviate depression and loneliness.
All but five of the 263 centenarians we
interviewed belonged to some faith-based community. Denomination doesn’t seem
to matter. Research shows that attending faith-based services four times per
month will add 4-14 years of life expectancy. – Dan Buettner
8. Put Your Family First
In the
Blue Zones, families are kept close. This includes the aged parents and family
members, who remain in the home with other family members, or live nearby.
Studies show that having grandparents and parents nearby lowers the disease and
mortality rates of children in the home too. They commit to a life partner and
invest lots of time and loving energy into their children.
People who live in Blue Zones eat a diet full
of whole plant foods.
9. Find Your Tribe
We all
know the benefits of finding your tribe.
But
even more so, being with a tribe that promotes life-affirming,
healthful
behaviors is even more vital.
The world’s longest lived people chose–or
were born into–social circles that supported healthy behaviors, Okinawans
created ‘moais’–groups of five friends that committed to each other for life.
Research from the Framingham Studies shows that smoking, obesity, happiness,
and even loneliness are contagious. So the social networks of
long-lived people have favorably shaped their health behaviors. – Dan Buettner
Other life-affirming habits of Blue Zones
people include a lack of time urgency, eating lots of whole grains, having a
healthy social circle and a strong community which is culturally isolated.
Creating Health and Happiness
By
rethinking our homes, yards, circles of friends and daily lives, we can maximize
our health and happiness. Simple changes can go a long way to ensuring a life
full of vitality and happiness. You can revolutionize
your health by eating better and making a few small changes in your kitchen
will have a great effect on your health.
Simple
hacks, such as using smaller dinner plates, filling the top two shelves of your
fridge with fresh produce, and keeping junk food out of sight in a junk food
drawer, go a long way to changing eating habits.
‘Deconveniencing’ your home, and creating a garden will burn more calories,
along with adding greater physical activity to your life. Our friends rub off
on us, so making sure your friends are a positive influence is another good
first step.
We have much to learn from cultures that live in more
direct contact with the land and nature. In today’s
world of conveniences, machinery, cars, and cities, we must get back to a
slower, simpler and more wholesome way of life if we are to live a fulfilling
and purposeful existence. Learning from our wise Blue Zones neighbors and
adapting their lifestyle habits to our own can make the world of difference.
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