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Longevity Lessons From the World’s Happiest People Dan Buettner introduced the world to Blue Zones in his cover story for National Geographic magazine’s November 2005 The Secrets of Long Life edition. The issue became the third-biggest seller in the magazine’s history. In 2008, Buettner shared his statistically derived findings in his book The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who’ve Lived the Longest. It became a New York Times best seller and led to a 2009 TED Talk, which has more than 4 million views. (See THYNG icon, p. 24.) He then continued to write successful Blue Zones books and initiated the Blue Zones Project, which helps American cities create environments that nurture habits that promote longevity. Buettner maintains that the message is clear—creating lasting happiness is achieved through optimizing social and physical environments. The following is excerpted from his 2017 book, The Blue Zones of Happiness.
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n 2002, with a grant from the National Institutes on Aging, I commissioned a team to identify places where people lived the longest. Together with Michel Poulain, a Belgian demographer, and Dr. Gianni Pes, an Italian physician and medical statistician, we identified five areas that we called the world’s Blue Zones. Next, with a grant from National Geographic, I recruited teams of experts to help me tease out the characteristics of longevity in these Blue Zones. Remarkably, wherever we found long-lived populations, the same healthy practices seemed to be present. About five years into the project, I was struck with an epiphany: In a place like Okinawa, where I met a 100-year-old teaching karate, no one had ever set out to live forever. None of the spry centenarians that I encountered had resolved at age 50 to adopt a better diet, start exercising or begin taking supplements. Longevity had just happened to them. In other words, instead of seeing a long, healthy life as a goal that required discipline, effort and a prescribed routine, people in the Blue Zones found that it occurred almost naturally; it flowed from their surroundings. In these places, it seemed, the healthy choice wasn’t just the deliberate choice; it was the unavoidable choice. Grains, greens, and beans—which many studies have linked to healthy, long lives—were the least expensive and most accessible foods in these places. People used time-honored recipes to make food tasty, and their kitchens were set up to allow fast and easy preparation. When friends and neighbors got together, they often shared the same healthy meals as part of their regular social activities. Being lonely wasn’t an option. And in all of the Blue Zones, people had a vocabulary for their purpose in life. People knew why they woke up in the morning. They were able to describe their responsibilities, and they pursued their passions into their 10th decade. They lived not only long lives but also rich, happy ones … these recommendations have become a kind of shorthand for the Blue Zones approach to a better life. In a nutshell, here they are:
luckbox | may 2020
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4/13/20 11:11 AM
