What are blue zones?

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
There is so much NFL on ESPN right now.
Monday Night Football, plus pregame and postgame. NFL Live, NFL Primetime. Everything you need to stay on top of every game, every week. Unbelievable. And now, NFL Network is on the ESPN app. More football, more coverage, more ways to watch. Football's on, all season long, on ESPN and streaming on the ESPN app.

**Bababam** (0:34)
What are Blue Zones?
Thanks for asking.
Humans have wondered about the secrets behind longevity since the beginning of time. Well, as it turns out, the world's five Blue Zones offer some revealing insight into this mystery. In these regions, people seem to live longer than in the rest of the world. Researchers have sought to understand the unique lifestyles that may be present in this phenomenon. Let's go back to the year 2000
Studying the province of Nuoro in Sardinia, Italian professor Gianni Pes and Belgian demographer Michel Poulain discovered to their great surprise that certain villages were home to a high number of people in their nineties or even over a hundred years old. The researchers marked these locations with blue circles, which is how the non-scientific Blue Zone label was coined.
Where are the other four Blue Zones then? We're getting there. The original findings inspired further studies, with American journalist Dan Butler keen to find out the secrets behind other regions with unexpectedly high numbers of centenarians. In the 2000s and with the support of the National Geographic Society, he coordinated in-depth studies by anthropologists, demographers and epidemiologists. They identified four other areas which were also labelled as Blue Zones. In addition to Nuoro, you also have the Greek island of Icaria, the Japanese island of Okinawa, the peninsula of Nicoya in Costa Rica, and the Loma Linda community in California. Scattered in four different continents all over the world, these places might seem to have nothing in common. Nevertheless, the chances of living to be a hundred are ten times higher in a Blue Zone than in the United States. So what are the secrets behind these people's long lifespans? The good news is genetics, although sometimes affecting susceptibility to chronic diseases, generally only accounts for 10-20% of longevity, according to experts. That means lifestyle factors, which are at least somewhat under our control, are far more significant. These include having solid social connections, whether through belonging to a religion or living under the same roof as several generations of your family, for example. A study by the German Max Planck Institute found that regular contact with grandchildren helped older generations to improve their cognitive functions, lowered stress levels, and reduced their risk of developing Alzheimer's. Let me guess, diet and exercise have something to do with it too? Yes, food is also of huge importance. In blue zones, people mostly share a plant-based diet, eating lots of vegetables, legumes, whole grains and nuts. The inhabitants of these isolated communities often produce their own food, so they aren't exposed to processed foods and pesticides. Furthermore, they eat in moderation. In Okinawa, many follow the Haruhichi-bu rule, which means they stop eating when their stomachs are 80% full. You might have been surprised to hear one of the blue zones was found in the USA, given Americans are stereotyped as having a poor diet. But the residents of Loma Linda are seventh-day Adventists, who take their vegan diet directly from the Bible, they chew cigarettes and alcohol, and avoid TV. On average, they outlive their fellow Americans by a decade. Of course, physical activity is important too, but not the kind of purposeful gym sessions you might be thinking of. Instead, staying active is part of their daily lives, through activities like gardening, walking and cooking. Living on steep slopes in the mountains makes exercise unavoidable for residents of the Nuoro province. We can't control where we're born or what genes we have, but taking inspiration from the Blue Zone's lifestyles may help us to live longer, healthier lives.
There you have it.
Now you know what Blue Zones are. In under 3 minutes, we answer your questions. What would you like to know about? Use the comments section to ask your questions on the podcast platform.