The Blue Zones: 9 Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who've Lived the Longest

by Dan Buettner

Somehow Okinawans managed to reach the age of 100 at a rate up to three times higher than Americans did, suffered a fifth the rate of heart disease, and lived about seven good years longer.

Scientific studies suggest that only about 25 percent of how long we live is dictated by genes, according to famous studies of Danish twins. The other 75 percent is determined by our lifestyles and the everyday choices we make.

confirmed longevity hot spots, the Blue Zones themselves: the Barbagia region of Sardinia in Italy, Okinawa in Japan, the community of Loma Linda in California, the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica, and the Greek island of Ikaria.

(akea is a Sardinian greeting that means roughly “may you live to be 100”)

In the United States only about one male in 20,000 reaches age 100.

purpose and love are essential ingredients in all Blue Zone recipes for longevity.

in traditional Asian thought, the highest, most honored form of medicine was prevention, and the lowest was treatment. Today in Japan, the focus is on avoiding disease in the first place.

“Eat your vegetables, have a positive outlook, be kind to people, and smile.”

“Roles are very important here in Okinawa. They call it ikigai—the reason for waking up in the morning. A sudden loss of a person’s traditional role can have a measurable effect on mortality.

On average, an American has only two close friends he or she can count on, recently down from three, which may contribute to an increasing sense of stress.

Turmeric is one-fifth as powerful as cisplatin, which is one of the most powerful drugs in chemotherapy. Turmeric is an anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, anticancer.

“You know, you don’t just wake up one day and have cancer. It’s a process, not an event. And prevention is the same way; it has to be a daily activity.

Without that vitamin D, we increase our risk for nearly all age-related diseases including many types of cancer, high blood pressure, diabetes and even autoimmune diseases like MS (multiple sclerosis).

“It’s vitamin S,” he said. “You smile in the morning and it fortifies you all day long.”

In California, the study showed, a 30-year-old Adventist male lives 7.3 years longer than the average 30-year-old white Californian male. A 30-year-old Adventist female lives 4.4 years longer than the average 30-year-old Californian white female. “If you go to Adventists who are vegetarian,” said Fraser, “it becomes 9.5 years longer for men and 6.1 years longer for women.

“We learned that nonvegetarian Adventists had about twice the risk of heart disease as vegetarian Adventists,”

The Adventists who consumed nuts at least five times a week had about half the risk of heart disease of those who didn’t.

In the same way that we get pleasure from sex and eating, socializing brings us a fundamental satisfaction. But in today’s hectic society, too many of us let TV or “busyness” push face-to-face time out of our lives.

“Do you know there’s no word in Greek for privacy?”