What are they, where are they, and what do they know that we don’t?
No, they are not concentrations of Democratic party voters or areas of Democratic influence or government control, but they received their color designation in the same way—by blue-colored labeling on a map.
In 1996, Sardinian epidemiologist Giovanni Mario Pes, who himself had many long-lived relatives, including a super centenarian uncle—i.e., an individual of 110 years or more—noticed that a certain area in the central part of the island of Sardinia had a particularly low rate of mortality and high number of centenarians. He teamed up with demographer Michel Poulain to develop a database of confirmed centenarians, which eventually numbered over three thousand. As they worked, Dr. Pes used a blue highlighter to label a map with each village with a number of centenarians past an established threshold. Eventually, a section of the map within the province of Ogliastra became covered with blue marks, and Dr. Pes began referring to it as the blue zone.
In 2003, Drs. Pes and Poulain submitted a paper on the Sardinian “ blue zone” to the Journal of Experimental Gerontology. At that time, Guinness record-holder and adventurer Daniel Buettner approached the National Geographic Society for support to research areas of the world marked by exceptional longevity. In collaboration with Dr. Poulain, he identified several of these areas, including Okinawa, Japan, Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Loma Linda, California, Nicoya, Costa Rica and Ikaria, Greece, to most of which he led tours, and soon registered the “ blue zones” trademark. His “ Secrets of Long Life,” became the cover story of the National Geographic Magazine, November, 2005 issue. In 2008, he published The Blue Zones:Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who’ve Lived the Longest through National Geographic Books, the first of his four books on the blue zones.
located in the southern part of Okinawa Prefecture, in summer.
So, what are these people in the blue zones doing to reach these numbers? In many cases, lying, in others simply miscounting. According to Professor Saul Justin Newman of the University of London and Oxford Institute of Population Aging, the existence of super centenarians coexists with the lack of vital statistics registration. When states in the United States began to register births, the number of super centenarians dropped by over fifty percent and, in some cases, over 75 percent. In England, France and Italy, population centers that report higher numbers of super centenarians are also those marked by high poverty, worse health and low literacy—all predictive of short life spans—and ad hoc record-keeping—more indicative of fraud and error. “ If equivalent rates of fake data were discovered in any other field,” he said, “a major scandal would ensue.”
In fact, Buettner and Poulain do not agree on which of the originally named areas were ever blue zones in the first place. Only those in Sardinia, Okinawa, Nicoya and Ikaria were accepted as blue zones by both. Since that time, University of Costa Rica demographer Luis Rosero-Bixby, who had identified Nicoya as a blue zone, has now reported that residents born after 1930 are no longer exceptionally long-lived. Dr. Poulain has also stated that Okinawans are not attaining such ages any longer either.
Is there no such thing as a blue zone, then? Not necessarily. One thing that distinguishes these areas is their remoteness. While that may contribute to the unreliability of the data, it also makes for a closed gene pool. A high incidence of marriage between cousins and a low influx of immigrants means that whatever genotypes are present in a population will be expressed in phenotypes in spades. If these genes are responsible for longevity, that is what the community will demonstrate, and that is what the most recent research shows.
In a study published this year in Science, Dr. Uri Alon of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel examined data from Swedish twins, including a pair that were reared separately, and from over two thousand siblings of centenarians, and excluded those who died from accidents or other non-genetically relevant causes of death. As a result he concluded that over fifty percent of the human lifespan is controlled by genes, as it is in animals. After all, the healthiest, fittest non-smoking fruit fly is not going to live for a year, no matter how often he meditates.
Dr. Amy J. Wagers, a Harvard professor and researcher in stem cells and immune cells, noted that among populations of exceptional agers, centenarians as a whole do not lead particularly healthy lives. She pointed out that Jeanne Kalment, the oldest age-verified person who ever lived, who died at the age of 122 years and 164 days, did not even stop smoking until she was 117. Dr. Wagers stated that the onset of age-related diseases is tied to damage to cellular constitutents, including DNA, protein and lipid metabolism, changes in inter organ communication and reduced stem cell function that the most recent research indicates is due to variation in the presence of blood circulating factors.
Does this mean we might as well ignore the nine lifestyle factors that have been identified as the keys to longevity as practiced in the so-called blue zones, termed the Power Nine by Dan Buettner? Of course, not. According to professor of epidemiology Walter Willett of the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, “ The Blue Zone theory is not regarded as strong science, but the Power 9 behaviors [see Sidebar] are still broadly consistent with what we understand about how diet, exercise, social connections and emotional well-being affect health and longevity.” University of Illinois epidemiologist S. Jay Olshansky reminds us that it may not be easy to lengthen life. Yet, “It’ s easy to shorten it,” he said.
No, the people from the blue zones don’ t know anything that we don’t. We all knew about those healthy lifestyle factors long before this writer opened a blank document. But, if nothing else, it is to be hoped that this article may have provided a useful reminder. Dr. Wagers admits that she has paid a little more attention to her diet and exercise routine since she began teaching “ Understanding Aging” at Harvard.
Sue Kleinberg is a contributing writer to JLife magazine.
