I recently came across blue zones through, believe it or not, Netflix. I was watching Down to Earth with Zac Efron, and in an episode, he visited Sardinia, a blue zone. I remember hearing about blue zones before, but they didn’t pique my interest back then as they do now. Blue zones are basically regions of the world that are home to the oldest people. Dan Buettner is the founder of this concept and named five places in the world as blue zones: Okinawa, Japan; Sardinia, Italy; Nicoya, Costa Rica; Ikaria, Greece; Loma Linda, California. Through researching, Buettner and his team discovered specific lifestyle habits that were common to all blue zones, which they call the Power 9. Blue Zones is now an organization with the mission to create healthy communities throughout the United States based on the lifestyles of people in the original blue zones.
Blue zones are not without their critics and skeptics, though. One in particular is Dr. Saul Newman. From an interview I saw here, Dr. Newman believes that there is fault in the classification of blue zones. For example, he questions why Okinawa was chosen as a blue zone, even though it has the shortest average lifespan within Japan. He also believes that there could be data fraud, like people lying about their ages in order to claim higher longevity rates. Nevertheless, I believe blue zones are interesting to discuss, as they’ve been researched extensively into. Even if they aren’t necessarily different from places that weren't dubbed as blue zones, the research done on the elderly population in these places makes it valuable to learn from. Therefore, for the next couple of blog posts, I’m excited to learn about and discuss research discoveries of a particular blue zone!
1 Comment
Laura
10/11/2020 07:07:25 am
What an interesting concept! Now I'm curious to search about the secrets of these blue zones
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