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

by Dan Buettner

For more than a decade, I’ve been leading a series of interactive, educational projects called “Quests,” in which a team of Internet-linked scientists investigated some of Earth’s great puzzles.

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.

Sardinia.

Okinawa

the simplicity of her life, how she made people around her feel good, how she was not worried about getting something in the future or sad that she had missed something in the past.

wisdom is the sum of knowledge plus experience,

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.

It follows that if we optimize our lifestyles, we can maximize our life expectancies within our biological limits.

Barbagia region of Sardinia in Italy,

Okinawa in Japan,

Loma Linda in Cal...

Nicoya Peninsula in C...

Greek island of...

The brutal reality about aging is that it has only an accelerator pedal. We have yet to discover whether a brake exists for people. The name of the game is to keep from pushing the accelerator pedal so hard that we speed up the aging process. The average American, however, by living a fast and furious lifestyle, pushes that accelerator too hard and too much.

experts say that if we adopted the right lifestyle, we could add at least ten good years and suffer a fraction of the diseases that kill us prematurely. This could mean an extra quality decade of life!

These are the places where people enjoy up to a 3 times better chance of reaching 100 than we do.

You can think of it as the balance between the individual and the environment. In essence, we can think of aging as a loss of coping mechanism, a failure to be able to maintain internal control and balance.

In the case of humans, we probably peak in our mid-20s.

Most people who make it to be centenarians when you look back, they were quite healthy at 80.

Rather than exercising for the sake of exercising, try to make changes to your lifestyle.

But in general, if somebody could do a minimum of 30 minutes—maybe we could raise it to 60—of exercise at least five times a week that would help.

ratio for centenarians in the U.S. is roughly one per 5,000.

Y chromosome, inherited from male to male (the females do not have it), and the mitochondrial DNA, inherited from female to female (the males do have it, but they cannot pass it to their offspring).

intense dedication to their families and community and earning a reputation for toughness.

environment and lifestyle might be more important factors than genetics to explain the longevity of Sardinians.

prosperity arrived in the 1950s.

Everyday hikes taken by Sardinian shepherds can burn up to 490 calories an hour; to get the equivalent, try 120 minutes of brisk walking (about 3.5 mph), 90 minutes of gardening, 2 hours of bowling, or 120 minutes of golfing (be sure to carry your bag).

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

In most areas, families ate meat only once a week, on Sunday.

meat is a luxury eaten only during festivals, not more than twice a month.

miles and miles of walking a day. (Walking five miles a day or more provides the type of low-intensity exercise that yields all the cardiovascular benefits you might expect, but it also has a positive effect on muscles and bones—without the joint-pounding damage caused by running marathons or triathlons.)

diet was lean and largely plant-based

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