On the Mediterranean island of Sardinia,   it is not uncommon for people to wish each  other good health or prosperity with a fairly   specific turn of phrase that translates  to something like “may you live to 100.” And in the late 1990s, some researchers decided   to see just how many Sardinians  actually followed through with that.

Their findings took the world by storm, inspiring  countless follow-up studies and health crazes,   all focused on this idea that specific groups  of people might have better odds of living to   be 100 than others, and more importantly,  staying healthy into the triple digits. These places are called Blue Zones, and  we still don’t really understand all the   ingredients in the secret sauce that  makes these places longevity hotspots.

Naturally, proponents believe that mimicking  exactly how people live in these Blue Zones   can help people everywhere live longer.  This is enticing, to say the least. But you may have heard that  there is more to this story,   but we’re going to tell you that  there’s even more to the story! So let’s look at whether we can  really harness the power of Blue   Zones to make more centenarians, or  if this is all too good to be true. [♪ INTRO] First, let’s talk about how  these areas got their name,   because they were not called  Blue Zones to begin with.

And no, it doesn’t happen to do with  like, blue-haired old ladies. It’s   all about the little dog from the  show Blues Clues, actually… No. This concept started in Sardinia, when in  1999, researchers in the field of gerontology,   or the study of aging in humans, found a high rate  of very old folks on the Italian island.

By their   tally, somewhere between 13 and 16 out of 100,000  residents counted their age in three digits. Data from other European countries suggested a  prevalence of 10 centenarians per 100,000 people,   and the rate of centenarians  worldwide was even lower. Because this was like, a shocking  and weird thing to have discovered,   the rest of the scientific community  was skeptical, to say the least.

Critics pointed out that the counts were not  just high, they were, like, suspiciously high. They argued that inaccurate record-keeping and  scammers have inflated people’s ages for… ages. But years later, when a researcher named  Michel Poulain set out to verify the age   claims of the island’s centenarians,  he found something surprising.

Poulain and his team discovered even more   robust evidence that these Sardinians  were as old as they said they were. They also found that the super old residents  weren’t evenly spread across the whole island.   Most of them lived in the  most mountainous province. Poulain’s team plotted neighborhoods with high   concentrations of centenarians  with a blue marker on a map.

Places where these marks converged enough  to create a blue-shaded area were dubbed   Blue Zones. Their results were published in  2004 in the journal Experimental Gerontology. So now that the data seemed  to support these Blue Zones,   the next obvious problem to solve was  how these elderly enclaves came to be,   and whether we could copy what they did  elsewhere to reach similar record-breaking ages.

Genetics, of course, could be a factor,  since geographical isolation in Blue Zones   could lead to a concentration of beneficial  genetic variants among these populations. Specifically, there are a few variants  that we know are involved in biological   processes that contribute to aging. These variants   affect everything from inflammation to  insulin signaling to fat metabolism.

A 2023 study of DNA sequences from the  extremely elderly in these Blue Zones   found that these old timers were way more  likely to have one or more of these variants,   and the authors argue that it could be the  combination of that and lifestyle factors   that contribute to these regions’  frequent birthday celebrations. Actually they still only happen once a year  for each person. But there’s more in a life.

However, a 2024 study found that the  correlation of these genetic variants   in these regions wasn’t strong enough to explain  the concentration of living great grandparents. Plus, the variants are not unique to Blue  Zones. People all over the world have them.

Overall, genetics can only account for a fraction  of why someone reaches the oldest of old ages. But epigenetics, or the modulation of which genes  are turned on or off, may be just as influential. Lifestyle habits like physical activity and  nutritious food help modulate the activity   of these genes in various tissues.

And  those protective habits can do big things,   like protecting you from heart  disease, keeping your bones stronger,   or even preventing cells from growing  out of control and turning into cancer. Ultimately, lifestyle and environment are the  overarching factors influencing age attainment. And here’s where things get a little bit weird.

Around the same time that Michel  Poulain’s team published their   results about an isolated Blue Zone  in Sardinia, a journalist by the name   of Dan Buettner was digging into the  100-plus-year-olds in Okinawa, Japan. For a while, Buettner and Poulain were working  together and even found some additional Blue   Zones, including Nicoya, Costa Rica,  and the island of Ikaria in Greece. The work has led to a ton of media attention  over the years, including a 2005 National   Geographic cover story by Buettner and  a Netflix docuseries released in 2023.

Sadly, though, this academic dream team was  not meant to last. Reports suggest that the   relationship between the parties soured when  Buettner began commercializing Blue Zones,   and he even trademarked the  term without consulting Poulain. Poulain has also expressed concern that  increased tourism and the associated products,   like cookbooks and skin serums, undermine  the integrity of ongoing scientific research.

Buettner is not the only one cashing in  on Blue Zones—there’s a whole ecosystem   of lifestyle influencers who try to  market their products based on this idea. Now, Beefs aside, both camps have continued  their research into the Blue Zones concept,   and they each have their own spin  on how individual people can try   to live like Blue Zoners and extend their lives. Buettner has a list of nine habits  and life philosophies that tend   to be important to folks who have  historically inhabited Blue Zones.

He claims that incorporating them in other  places can reverse-engineer longevity. His list includes cultivating a  sense of connection and purpose,   eating until someone feels just 80% full,  and having functional physical activity   built into your lifestyle – so like, gardening  instead of like, going to work out at a gym. These habits may be more common in  Blue Zones, but they’re not, like,   the exclusive secrets that they’re made out to be.

Like, we know that loneliness and a sedentary  lifestyle are harmful to health. Most   public health officials already recommend  avoiding loneliness and moving your body. So again, these aren’t, like, magic habits  unique to recognized Blue Zones.

Reducing overall   calorie intake and not regularly stuffing  yourself are known to protect against all   kinds of diseases over a lifespan. As are the  benefits of loading up on plant-based foods. Meanwhile, the Poulain group’s  list highlights 7 lifestyle habits,   most of which overlap with Buettner's.

Having a chill low-stress vibe is on both lists  of longevity-promoting factors in Blue Zones,   and it does seem like attitude and vibes  matter more for aging than you would think. A 2018 study found that Sardinian elderly  people were far less likely to be depressed,   so part of longevity could be about maintaining a  positive cognitive environment. And I personally   would have a very easy time staying  relaxed and happy if I lived on an   island off the coast of Italy, so I can see why  the Sardinians may have, like, a leg up there.

While there’s been a ton of work on the subject,   researchers still haven’t cracked the code  on just what makes these Blue Zones so blue.   And the reason they may be struggling could  actually be… that Blue Zones might not be real. This is the view of Saul Newman, a senior   research fellow at the University College  London Centre for Longitudinal Studies. His research has shown that most claims of  centenarians, and especially supercentenarians,   or those who reach upwards of 110 years  old, could be chalked up to clerical   errors in record-keeping or lack  of birth certificate records.

He found that in the US, after a state  started issuing birth certificates,   their rates of supercentenarians would  inevitably drop by between 69 and 82 %. Newman’s absolute roast of the Blue Zone  theory won him the 2024 Ig Nobel Prize,   an honor bestowed on research that  is both funny and thought-provoking. It is the first ever Ig Nobel in demography,  for what the award committee calls detective   work to discover that many of the people  famous for attaining extraordinarily   old ages lived in places that had  lousy birth-and-death recordkeeping.

Now, it’s worth highlighting that Newman’s  2024 paper, laying out pension fraud and   clerical errors, is still in preprint.  This means that it is not peer reviewed,   and no academic journal has agreed to publish  it. And the current version is a revision   of one he wrote in 2019, which also never  got published in a peer-reviewed journal. But Newman’s criticisms aren’t the only  reason to doubt the Blue Zone hypothesis.

In addition to the potential flaws in age records,   there’s also the weird issue where  Blue Zones don’t seem to last forever? For instance, while Okinawa used to be  Japan’s province with the most old people,   it’s now lost that title, and there’s no clear  reason why. There didn’t seem to be any lifestyle   or diet changes in the region, so there’s not an  obvious explanation for the drop in centenarians.

It’s also worth mentioning that the guidelines  for living a Blue-Zone life are pretty pricey,   and most people can’t afford  to adopt these changes. If everyone in the world had access to  nutritious food, high-quality medical care,   a safe living environment, and enough  leisure time to relax and avoid stress,   it’s possible that the whole  world would be a Blue Zone. There’s also a racially biased narrative at play.

Now that the people of Nicoya aren’t living as  long, there are no currently recognized Blue Zones   in Latin America. And there’s never even been  a suggestion of a Blue Zone anywhere in Africa. That’s probably more to do with a lack  of research than a lack of old people,   but that gap is telling in and of itself.

Overall, colonialist and racist bias have  contributed to gerontology as a field,   and how Blue Zones have  been studied and publicized. It seems like Blue Zones might not be the simple  secret to living a longer life, and only copying   the diet of a bunch of hundred-year-olds from  Italy isn’t likely to make you live longer. Based on what we know, helping more people reach   the triple-digits requires societal and  global changes like universal healthcare,   better nutrition, lower pollution, better  working conditions, and less stress.

In other words, whether Blue Zones are  real or not, there are aspects of those   lifestyles that could help more  of us live longer, happier lives. Even if living into triple digits  isn’t really location-based,   there are still true-blue ways to maximize  your chances at a long and healthy life. [♪ OUTRO]