🔗In this Nexus:
🗺 What is a Blue Zone?
🏙 Creating your own Blue Zone: the Power 9
📚 Scientific evidence behind the findings in the Blue Zones
🎬 Documentaries recommendation
In my previous edition of Nexus you got to know how not to die too early. While I am a pharmacist by training and you might be expecting to get some insights on which food supplements or even medicinal products to take to extend your healthspan, I can calm your curiosity that this is coming. But for now, let’s continue exploring how to live longer, and most importantly healthy and high quality life. This time, the Blue Zones are on my radar.
What is a Blue Zone?
Blue zones refers to regions of the world where people live significantly longer than average. This term is relatively new, as it originated from a demographic research conducted by Michel POULAIN and his team called the AKEA Study back in 2004 (1). In this study, they tried to identify zones in the world with exceptionally high number of centenarians. While aging was in the focus of scientific researchers for many years, the identification of the blue zones definitely made it’s boost to the interest in this area.
In 2016, an article published in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine determined 5 demographically confirmed areas with the highest percentage of centenarians (2). These included Loma Linda, CA, USA, Nicoya, Costa Rica, Sardinia, Italy, Ikaria, Greece and Okinawa, Japan, as shown in the image below.
Fun fact. Blue colour has actually no relationship with the longevity itself, as the term was inspired by the blue pen the AKEA study researchers used to highlight the map areas with a significant presence of centenarians.
Creating your Own Blue Zone: the Power 9
Blue Zones research identified 9 key habits common among the world’s longest-living people, believed to contribute to slower aging (2). So how you can create a blue zone of your own right where you are, without moving to a far away village in the mountains of Sardinia? Well, try to follow the Power 9 (2), as shown below.
- Natural Movement: Centenarians were found to engage in regular, natural physical activities like gardening and walking, rather than structured exercises. My take here – regularity is way more important than the intensity of physical activity.
- Purposeful Living: Similar to the Okinawan concept of ‘Ikigai’ and the Nicoyan ‘plan de vida’, having a clear life purpose can add years to life expectancy. When I think about this, it makes perfect sense. Especially when I look at the people around me who reach their retirement, stop working and suddenly, their aging starts to speed-up, as their only purpose is to ‘survive the day’, but not something really meaningful that they can contribute to.
- Stress Reduction: Long-lived people practice daily routines for stress relief, such as ancestor remembrance, prayer, napping, or socialising. While you might not have a luxury of napping during the day with the current speed of the modern world, you can still find what works for you individually and practice it regularly.
- Moderate Eating: Following the ‘Hara hachi bu’ principle, centenarians were found to eat until 80% full, avoiding overeating and usually having their smallest meal in the late afternoon or evening. This of course contributes to maintaining a healthy body weight and metabolism, and as I showed in my previous Nexus, obesity is a risk factor of 7 out of 10 deadliest diseases worldwide.
- Plant-Based Diet: In the Blue Zones diets are centered around beans and legumes, with limited meat consumption, averaging about five times a month. This is a hard one for a beast and meat-lover like me. But the main idea here is that you don’t have to cut off meat completely and suddenly become a vegetarian, but rather to balance it out with a significant increase of fruits, vegetables, seeds and nuts in your diet.
- Moderate Alcohol: In most Blue Zones, moderate and regular consumption of alcohol, especially wine, correlates with longer life. The surprise for me here was the regularity aspect. But I will dig deeper into this in the ‘What Does Science Says?’ section of this Nexus.
- Community Engagement: Nearly all centenarians belong to a faith-based community, attending services regularly, which has been linked to increased life expectancy. This doesn’t mean that you need to become faithful if you aren’t, but becoming a part of some sort of a community that is appealing to you can make a difference in slowing aging.
- Family Focus: Prioritizing family, keeping elders close, committing to a life partner, and nurturing children were found to play a crucial role in longevity. The situation that happens quite often these days, is when the elderly after their retirement are suddenly left alone, without anything or anyone to take care of but themselves. This also closely relates to the point 2, having a purpose in life.
- Healthy Social Circles: Centenarians tend to maintain social networks that encourage healthy habits, like the Okinawan ‘moais’, groups committed to lifelong friendship and support. It is basically about employing your brain and having something to long for throughout the week.
If you would like to get more background about each one of the Power 9 and prefer visual information, I will leave a documentaries recommendation at the end of this Nexus.
What Does Science Say?
Scientific Evidence Behind the Findings in the Blue Zones
While the findings in the Blue Zones seems logical and appealing, I have tried to look into the scientific evidence supporting these observations.
- Physical activity. Regular physical activity has been shown to contribute not only to the overall fitness, but also to mental health, stress resilience, cardiovascular health, etc. The findings of Blue Zones emphasize regularity and low intensity. A review published in the Journal of Missouri Medicine seem to support these observations, as it has been concluded, that the optimal dose of exercise remains unknown and probably differs among individuals. However, the current studies suggest that 2.5 to 5 hours/week of moderate or vigorous physical activity will confer maximal health benefits, while >10 hours/week may reduce these benefits (3).
- Subjective well-being. While it is hard to measure social stress, having a purpose in life, community engagements or the effects of your family close to you in the older age as a predictor of longevity, these factors might be closely related to the overall well-being and mental health in the elderly. Subjective wellbeing, closely linked to age, encompasses life satisfaction, emotional experiences, and a sense of purpose. Recent studies, including the Gallup World Poll, reveal varying patterns of wellbeing across ages and cultures: a U-shaped curve in high-income English-speaking countries, declining wellbeing with age in Eastern Europe and Latin America, and stable levels in sub-Saharan Africa. The relationship between physical health and wellbeing is two-way, with illnesses impacting mood and wellbeing, which in turn may affect health. Analysis of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing shows higher survival rates in those with greater eudemonic wellbeing, independent of other factors. The potential protective role of high wellbeing on health is suggested, but not definitively established (4).
- Moderate eating. To date, dietary restriction without malnutrition is the most effective non-genetic approach for enhancing lifespan and health in rodents. This strategy also increases life expectancy in rhesus monkeys, protecting against obesity, cancer, neurodegeneration, frailty, and various cardiometabolic issues. In humans, it induces changes that help guard against these diseases (5). The current scientific findings related to the moderate eating or caloric restriction is summarized in the image below.
- Plant-based diet. The Mediterranean Diet is a nutritional approach centered around plant-based foods, such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, and olive oil, paired with moderate consumption of fish, poultry, and dairy. It’s characterized by minimal intake of red meat and processed foods, emphasizing fresh, whole ingredients and heart-healthy fats. As reviewed in the Journal of Internal Medicine, recent studies confirm the Mediterranean Diet’s cardiovascular benefits, including reduced heart disease and risk factors like obesity, hypertension, and dyslipidemia. This diet also lowers diabetes rates, improves glycemic control in diabetics, and is linked to reduced mortality, particularly from heart disease, increased longevity, less cognitive decline, and a lower incidence of Alzheimer’s disease (6).
- Alcohol consumption. A study conducted in the Netherlands, which have demonstrated the data of 5,479 study participants, followed for around 20 years have concluded that there was a statistically significant positive association between baseline alcohol intake and the probability of reaching 90 years in both men and women. The highest probability of reaching 90 years was found for those drinking 5-<15 g alcohol/day (7). This means that the alcohol consumption really has to be moderate not to cause any damage for your health, such as liver damage and cirrhosis, etc.
Documentaries Recommendation
If you are not a crazy fan of documentaries like myself, you might have not yet seen the Netflix series by Dan Buettner, Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones. It is a great summary about your daily life “higiene”, how small lifestyle changes can make a huge difference towards living longer, happier life. The biggest emphasis to me personally was on having a meaning, a purpose in life. Enjoy!
Hope you enjoyed the read. More on longevity and healthspan is coming in 2 weeks. Make sure to subscribe and share your thoughts!
