Age-related chronic diseases are growing more and more prevalent. Your lifestyle likely has a greater impact on your lifetime and susceptibility to these diseases than your genes do. Only a few locations on earth are referred to as “Blue Zones”.
A Blue Zone is a non-scientific concept that refers to geographical locations where people have lower incidence of chronic disease and live longer lives than elsewhere.
Dan Buettner, an expert on ageing, author, and host of the Netflix series"Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zone“, first used it when researching regions of the world where people live incredibly long lives.
Blue Zones are connected to food, fasting and exercise, as per data from the World Health Organization. These regions of the world are where people typically live the longest and painlessly, and they come to life in a new series that focuses on learning from them about longevity.
Buettner, an explorer and best-selling author who has studied Blue Zones for more than 20 years, takes viewers on a journey to the places with the highest concentration of centenarians, including Okinawa in Japan, Sardinia in Italy, Ikaria in Greece, Nicoya in Costa Rica and Loma Linda in California.
During the four-part series, viewers discover the foods that feed this remarkable population through visits to their homes and talks with Buettner, as well as other facets of their everyday lives that have a positive impact on their health.
The four guiding concepts that apply to each zone are having a goal or attitude, eating sensibly, moving organically and interacting with people.
“The essence of Blue Zones is people live a long time not because of the things we think — they’re not on a diet, they’re not on exercise programmes, they don't take supplements,” Buettner says in the docuseries.
“They don't pursue health, which is a big disconnect in America, because we think health is something that needs to be pursued."
Instead, he claims that in Blue Zones, people's entire lifestyles lead to good health. In the first episode, he says: "It ensues by setting up your surroundings the right way, and in Blue Zones, those surroundings are naturally set up," adding that these concepts apply to everyone, regardless of age.
"Starting at any age will make you live longer," he says in the second episode. At 60, you might add six more years to your life. And if you live in a Blue Zone instead of a typical American lifestyle at age 20, you might add 13 extra years if you're a man“.
In his most recent book, "The Blue Zones: Secrets for Living Longer," Buettner delves even further into the topic of how people might create environments that subtly promote healthier lifestyles, similar to those of people who live in the Blue Zones.
The documentary series discovered that humans make roughly 220 dietary decisions each day. About 10% of them — 22 or so— are cognizant, while the rest are unconscious.
The Blue Zone strategy aims to help you organise your kitchen and social life such that your 200 unconscious decisions are slightly better rather than forcing you to summon the will or foresight to control those 20 decisions.
In the video broadcast on CBS News' official YouTube channel, Buettner discussed plant-based recipes for longer life during a face-to-face chat with Norah O'Donnell earlier this year.
His most recent initiative teach even those previously familiar with his work something new. According to Buettner, the series offers roughly a dozen fresh perspectives, including one on Singapore, which he terms a "Blue Zone 2.0."
"Singapore demonstrates that we don't have to be as sick and unhealthy as we are as a nation," he says in the CBS interview. "There are other economically developed young countries that are vastly diverse, culturally speaking, that achieve much better health outcomes."
And Buettner claims he is still learning, hinting at three additional places he is researching and intends to reveal soon.
In the docuseries, Beuttner claims that America performs very poorly when it comes to measuring years of life lived at full health.
He thinks these new sites should include information on "not just getting to 95 or 100, but making the journey an absolute blast and feeling good the whole way”, he says in the conclusion of the health documentary.