In this week's Body Issue, the magazine included an adaptation of new material being published in the second edition of Dan Buettner's book "Blue Zones." (National Geographic is publishing the book next month.) The article described a Greek island where many people live into their late 90s and beyond.
For more than a decade you have been looking into why some people manage to live so long. How did you first get interested in the topic?
I was leading scientific expeditions for National Geographic, often oriented around a mystery or a question. We had done expeditions around the collapse of the ancient Mayan civilization and followed Marco Polo's path across China, and then the Japanese government suggested we do a trip there. We looked around for a good mystery and I stumbled on a World Health Organization finding from 2000 that showed that Okinawa had the longest disability-free life expectancy in the world. I figured that the answer to why had to lie in traditional wisdom, because it is a genetically heterogeneous place. So perhaps they were doing something that made them live for a long time, and I wanted to figure out what that was.
The magazine article focuses on the Greek island Ikaria, but you've looked at other diverse places where people live a really long time. Costa Rica, for example — except unlike Greece, maybe, it's not usually recognized for its healthful diet.
Right, we were working with a demographer who had all the birth and death records. National Geographic spent a lot of money — way over $300,000 — just to do the demographic work before we would go into these places. The longevity phenomenon on the Nicoya Peninsula of Costa Rica is inland, not on the coast where Americans go on vacation. There is a fairly isolated area where Chorotega indigenous people had some contact with Spanish settlers and intermarried — but it has been isolated for a long time. The isolation allowed a certain diet to survive based mostly on beans and squash and a special kind of corn tortilla made with nixtamal, corn that has been soaked in lye, which releases niacin and gives the body access to all the amino acids. Yes, meat and fruit come into the picture, and in some of the bigger cities the American food diet is coming into the picture and that will probably wipe out the Nicoya Peninsula's longevity gains within a generation.
Americans may focus on diet because it seems to be something we can actually change. But you emphasize the communitarian aspects of life in these places. Is that true in that part of Costa Rica?
It's true in all these areas of increased longevity. I like to use the metaphor of collagen. They eat the right way and get physical activity but what holds those behaviors in place like collagen holds your skin in place is belonging and having a sense of purpose, often through a faith-based community. Health habits are as contagious as catching a cold. Another interesting thing about the Nicoya Peninsula is that we had the water there tested, and unlike other parts of Costa Rica, which are volcanic, the Nicoya Peninsula is made from fossilized microscopic seashells. And the water that burbles up through this is very high in calcium. You combine calcium with Vitamin D, which they are getting from the sun, and not coincidentally you have very low rates of hip fractures and fatal falls. The water also has a high magnesium content.
When you first arrive in one of these places that you call blue zones, what's the first thing you notice? Do they all have something obviously in common?
They are culturally or geographically isolated, which isolates them from the forces of globalism. They are all big gardeners — even people in their 100s. There is always a garden out back. Of course there is usually a clean atmosphere, with the exception of the Seventh-day Adventists I looked at in California. It's harder to put the science on this, but after looking at this phenomenon for over a decade, it seems that if you give older people the message that they are needed then they will live much longer. In Sardinia, for example, and Okinawa and to a certain extent in Ikaria, there is no real concept of retirement. As an older person you don't just receive care — you are also expected to cook and help take care of kids or tend the garden. In Ikaria, often they live under the same roofs as their children — or there is a small house for grandma right on the property.
It sounds like the worst threat to Ikaria might be Coca-Cola. These communities seem somewhat removed from capitalism and globalization.
I wouldn't necessarily draw the line politically, although a lot of these people are living a more traditional way of life. I'd point out that all of these particular places are in capitalist countries. But I will tell you that they usually have access to good public health, especially the Costa Ricans. There are little health clinics dotted all over that country with nurse practitioners who make sure kids get their vaccinations or take care of emergency health situations.
So, would you move to Ikaria? Have you found ways to incorporate your findings there into your own life?
Well, yes. I have a garden and I certainly justify my social life, and going out every night, to myself in a different way. You can change your environment, socially, without moving so far. Instead of trying to change your habits — which are always short-term changes and long-term failures — you can model your environment on some of these places like Ikaria. I've reconnected with my church, and I come from a family of gardeners, so planting a garden was an obvious thing to do. Also, remember that Americans move an average of nine and a half times between the age of 18 and when they retire. That's nine opportunities to move somewhere that will make you happier and healthier — somewhere like Ikaria.
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