I’m always curious to learn how other people live a long, fulfilling and healthy life. As I’ve previously wrote in Top 5 Myths about Aging, I believe that old age doesn’t necessarily have to mean debilitating diseases and disability. By making the right lifestyle choices while you are still young, it’s possible to prevent bad genes which may predispose you to certain illnesses from being activated, and increase your number of good years.

And what better ways to learn the ‘secrets’ of disability-free and healthy aging than to hear them directly from the centenarians? So it’s with this intention that I picked up the book, The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who’ve Lived the Longest by Dan Buettner, and I’m glad I did.

The Blue Zones

The Blue Zones is a term dubbed by demographers for certain parts of the world which have an unusually high number of people who lived to 90 and 100 plus years of age. In these longevity hot spots, people suffer only a fraction of the diseases that commonly kill people in other parts of the developed world.

In this book, four different Blue Zones are covered.

They are the Barbagia region of Sardinia in Italy, Okinawa in Japan, the community of Loma Linda in California and the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica.

Dan, the author, together with a team of demographers, medical scientists and journalists interviewed some of the world’s longest-living people in these places to find out what foods they eat, how active they are, how much they socialize, what types of medicines they use, and more. These findings were then studied and compared to identify the common practices found in the Blue Zones that can be emulated by others who wished to live a longer, healthier life.

What I Think about The Blue Zones

Unlike other health-related books which, by their nature, tend to be an impersonal report of facts and figures, The Blue Zones reads pretty much like a story; a real life story about a person’s search for extraordinary people in remote parts of the world.

Inside the book, you’ll read about Dan’s descriptions of the places he visited, his grumbles about the protocols in Japan and his impressions of the people he met. It makes you feel like you’re reading a travelogue more than a health book. And once you’ve started reading on one Blue Zone, you will find yourself glued to it until you’re done with it. That’s why I found reading The Blue Zones both addictive and enjoyable.

For those who prefer hard facts and statistics, you will still be able to find what you need in this book. But, you’ll find them weave seamlessly into the stories, or boxed up at the side of pages as additional background information that are meant to help you enjoy the stories better.

The last chapter of the book, which only takes up 36 pages out of the 270-odd-page book, is perhaps what most people are looking for: the secrets of longevity. Here, you’ll find nine lessons, the result of a ‘cross-cultural distillation’ of all the works the team has done, on how you can create your personal Blue Zone and live like the people you have met in the book. At the end of every lesson, you’ll also find useful tips proposed by the author to help you translate the lesson into concrete actions.

But if you’re looking for ground-breaking advices or a magic pill for longevity, you’ll be sorely disappointed. As you probably already know, the formula to a long and healthy life is both simple and familiar. Eat mostly plant foods, drink red wine moderately and be active are some of the lessons which you’ve heard and read many times over in the media, research papers and health reports, such as the Diet and Cancer report by the World Cancer Research Fund. Other lessons emphasize the importance of reducing stress, taking time to know yourself, building meaningful relationships with others and more.

Although there is no secret to a long and healthy life, the stories of century-old grannies and grandpas in this book lend the timeless health lessons more weight and give them a human perspective that can’t be found in any laboratory studies. Who knows? This book might just motivate you to start making some real lifestyle changes that you’ve been resisting all these years.

Lingering Thoughts about the Centenarians

After finishing the book, a few thoughts linger in my mind:

• The longest living people aren’t rich in material sense.
  Many of them have in fact led a very poor life when they were young. Ironically, their past poor financial status might have actually gave them an unintended advantage by depriving them from frequent access to meat.

  The centenarians are definitely much better off now and they probably don’t have to worry too much about money since many of them are being looked after by their children. But still, none came across as rich when they were interviewed. They don’t own big expensive cars, opulent houses, branded clothes, or high-class club memberships. So it appears that longevity has little to do with the size of your bank account.

• They have an amazingly strong purpose and sense of belonging in life.
  They might not be rich materially, but they appear to have no lack of family support and friends. Many of them are backed by a tight social fabric consisting of friends and family members who support them and whom they support in return. A balanced give and take type of relationship.

  In addition, most of these elders aren’t sitting around and waiting to die. They wake up each morning with a sense of responsibilities as well as purpose and are certainly very different from the frail and helpless old people advertisements would like us to believe. They continue to engage in purposeful work to earn their keep and keep themselves busy and active. Even those who are disabled manage to keep their spirits high and exude serenity in their demeanor. This shows how important it is to find your purpose in life and the reason to wake up raring to go each morning.

• They eat really simple, but whole foods.
  Tofu, beans, miso, sweet potato, maize and garden vegetables that have been cooked lightly and simply will probably be labeled as peasant foods by the younger generations. But these are what the world’s longest-living people have been eating for most of their lives. Less is more, in every sense, seems to apply when it comes to food and health.

• They live a life close to their traditions.
  The elders interviewed eat pretty much the same traditional foods which their forefathers have eaten, do work which are likely to be the same as what their fathers have done and live in the same land where their ancestors were buried. This speaks for itself. Where traditions serve a good purpose, be it in increasing one’s sense of belonging or enhancing one’s health, we should preserve it.

• The longevity trend is quickly eroded by changing food culture.
  Here is the author’s description of Naha, the capital city of Okinawa:
  “Towering electronic lights blinked on every building: Sony, Hitachi, Coca-Cola. As our taxi crept down gridlocked streets, raindrops splattered on the windshield in garish red, blue and green blotches of refracted light. At an intersection near our hotel, we passed a bubble tea stand, a shop selling electronic merchandise, a Pizza Hut, and a McDonald’s. I thought: This is the longevity Shangri-la?”

  In Okinawa, the influx of fast foods and processed foods are making more people obese. As a result, the lifespan of Okinawan men below 55 isn’t any longer than those in other parts of Japan. The other Blue Zones which are still relatively closed to outside influence may see the same trend if junk food industries gain a foothold in these places.

Conclusion

I have definitely enjoyed reading The Blue Zones. Though the lessons aren’t new, the stories behind them definitely served as good reminders and motivations. After reading the book, you may end up thinking the way I do: When I grow old, I want to remain as strong as Tonino and as witty as Marge!

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