Into the Blue Zones
The quest for immortality has been around a long while. For some seekers of the infinite, obviously not long enough. For others, the formula for living well – and longer – is all about location, location, location.
Time was, a hope and a prayer was the main modus operandi when pursuing eternal life, but recently something you might term X-treme Personal Science has been the go-to tool for a few billionaires. Mere millionaires needn’t apply. Have you seen the cost these days of bioengineering? There’s your cryogenics tank to install, your plasma infusions to diarize, and don’t forget the 100+ customized multi-mineral pro-vitamin pills you’ll be ingesting every day. And that’s just the tip of the ice bath.
But there is another way to extend your time on the planet. Just move home. Some parts of the world, by some accounts, are the ideal longevity location. Choose from one of the following: Sardinia, California, Okinawa, the island of Ikaria in Greece and the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica. These are the five fabled Blue Zones, where a longer than average life expectancy awaits you. And to some extent that’s more than wishful thinking, since public records of births and deaths are open for inspection.
At a far remove from tourist traps, a genuine sense of community keeps ageing at bay throughout the Greek islands, most of all in Ikaria. (Shutterstock)
In 1986 a man from Minnesota by the name of Dan Buettner set off on six years of trans-world cycling with the idea of setting a Guinness World Record or two. On his travels, he noticed that certain locations were populated by an unusually high number of centenarians – wrinkled, fit, skin like tobacco leaves, and smiling beyond their 100 years. Worth looking into. Supported by National Geographic and a research grant from the National Institute of Aging in Washington DC, Buettner’s interest in cycling was quickly overtaken by a drive to discover exactly what accelerated such levels of longevity.
Collaborating with anthropologists, dieticians and other health-focused specialists, from 2003 Buettner began recording how people in those five hallowed locations lived their daily lives, what they ate, how they socialized, how they got themselves around. Among his findings were that Sardinia was home to the world’s highest proportion per capita of male centenarians. One in three on the island of Ikaria was in their 90s. Similar figures backed up the other compass points. Naturally, a few local differences got in the way, but even across diverse continents the similarities in behaviors in those long-lifespan hotspots were striking.
Prepping for perpetuity. A simple diet of fresh local produce is one of the commonalities across Blue Zones. In Costa Rica’s Guanacaste Province, simply seasoned and grilled red snapper is rich in Omega-3 fatty acids and vitamin B12. (Alamy)
Striking but surely not surprising. Social media posts forever feed the same top-ten list of common wellness markers, from moving our body by using our feet instead of a slumping in a car, to eating beans not beef, and prioritizing time with family and friends. None of the healthy ancients in the Blue Zones suddenly adopted a self-help regime at age 95. Their lifestyles evolved unconsciously since birth, influenced by their surroundings. Their longevity is just another expression of natural selection.
A good proof of truth and logic for any proposition is that the opposite also holds. If you live in a center of urban decay and drug-infested detritus, it’s likely a number of your neighbors won’t be enjoying endless birthday cakes.
As Naomi Imatone-Yun says, “Their surroundings and cultures shape them and nudge them into these habits every day.” For clarity, she was talking there to Storied as editor-in-chief of bluezones.com, not about the unfortunates of urban blackspots but about the inhabitants of Blue Zones. Both sides of every coin are true. That our surroundings influence our behaviors, which in turn influence our lifespan, is plain common sense, heads and tails.
For Okinawa’s older generation, traditional tatami mats (seagrass cover, dried rice straw filling), once the preserve of nobility and samurai, keep perspectives grounded and encourage agility and mobility. Here, Chiyo Ameku, 78, offers formal prayers to ancestors for the safety, health and happiness of her community. (Blue Zones LLC)
Take the Okinawa prefecture of Japan, where the Blue Zones concept isn’t working so well any longer. What’s to blame? A rejection of traditional Japanese values and native Okinawan foodstuffs as juveniles glut on junk. Okinawa now has more KFC outlets than anywhere else in Japan, and the government bio-stats are blunt: the island is now home to the heaviest males under 55 in the whole of Japan.
The Blue Zone organization is pretty sanguine about that. It has to be, their proposition of longevity is based on plain data. And in fact every Finger Lickin’ bucket that’s wolfed down in Okinawa only proves the other side of the coin – that Blue Zone health and wellness persists elsewhere.
Both sides of every coin are true. That our surroundings influence our behaviors, which in turn influence our lifespan, is plain common sense, heads and tails.
If anything serves to taint the Blue Zone proposition, it’s the predictable shift from academic research project into a burgeoning commercial entity. Buettner trademarked Blue Zones in 2003 and began publishing books with “Blue Zones” in the title under the National Geographic imprint. The most recent of eight titles include The Blue Zones Kitchen: 100 Recipes to Live to 100 and The Blue Zones Challenge: A 4-Week Plan for a Longer Better Life. The latter seems worth a bet if you’re in a hurry.
A circle of stones quietly signals this century-old olive tree in the Golgo plateau near Baunei in Ogliastra, Sardinia as emblematic of the wisdom of the slower things in life. (Shutterstock)
Buettner sold his interest in the Blue Zones enterprise in 2020 to the Seventh Day Adventist Church in Loma Linda, California, one of the five original sites that he singled out as a Zone. Today the Blue Zones LLC website offers shopping opportunities galore. You can buy cookbooks, packaged meals, Blue Zone-labeled wines and much besides.
Imatone-Yun puts it simply: “Our mission is to help everyone, everywhere live better longer.” Behind this universal, beneficent intention, however, the logical inference is that if you can now buy all those positive products you don’t actually have to move to a Blue Zone to live longer any more. You can stay put and have your life-enhancing ingredients delivered by a man in a van. Maybe someone should tell those iced-up billionaires.
At the end of the day, the quest for immortality continues.
Researched by Shelley Boettcher
Main Image: Shutterstock
