The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who’ve Lived the Longest
Dan Buettner
National Geographic, 2008

Dan Buettner first got interested in longevity as part of his interactive, educational “Quest” program, when he traveled around the world trying to answer difficult questions with a team of scientists linked through the internet. Then he wrote the 2005 National Geographic cover story “Secrets of Living Longer.” That story led to this book. In interviewing some of the world’s oldest people, he’s learned some of the secrets of healthy aging – not just living long, but living long well.

Buettner and his team of scientific researchers studied four populations in this book – the centenarians (yikes! they’re all over 100!) of Sardinia, Italy; Okinawa, Japan; Loma Linda, California; and the Nicoya peninsula of Costa Rica.

Each population has a chapter detailing research such as age verification and family trees, regional history, geography, and a social/cultural study. The centenarians were interviewed about their daily and lifetime habits, but Buettner also managed to establish deeper relationships with many of his subjects, joining them for family meals, daily work, social gatherings, and more. Each population also has specific longevity secrets – a few practices that can be adopted for your own life.

The final chapter of the book is a summary of the lessons we can learn from these longevity populations, as well as from the centenarians themselves. These lessons include lots of natural movement, cutting calories, eating mostly plant foods, drinking red wine (in moderation), seeing the big picture, downshifting to relieve stress, participating in a spiritual community, making family a priority, and surrounding yourself with people who have similar values. Each of these lessons has several strategies so you can incorporate the lesson in your own life.

The Blue Zones is easy to read, filled with anecdotes and personal histories. It also makes healthy living seem easy and attainable.

The book is not completely aligned with the Total Health Makeover®, however, it certainly supports many of our dietary guidelines and THM basics. One of the big messages of the book – health is more than diet and exercise – is something Marilu has taught since the publication of her first book on health, The Total Health Makeover. The lessons and strategies of The Blue Zones may be a way to introduce more people to healthy living, and even to THM.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 7th, 2009 at 7:47 am and is filed under Books. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.