Make Your Home a Blue Zone

Dan Buettner is one of my favorite spokespersons for improving health through food and lifestyle. He is a National Geographic explorer who identified the communities around the globe that enjoy the greatest lifespan. Specifically, if there are places where people routinely live over 100 years old, what can we learn from them to improve our own health? Buettner traveled to Sardinia, Italy; Okinawa, Japan; Loma Linda, California; Nicoya, Costa Rica; and Ikaria, Greece to interview the earth’s oldest inhabitants to learn the secrets of their health and remarkable vigor. What did he find? While having the right genes may be helpful, it turns out a healthy lifestyle is even more important. Buettner concludes (and other research supports) that practicing certain habits can add more than a decade of healthy time to your life. He describes his lessons in his book entitled, The Blue Zones: Nine Lessons for Living Longer and he has incorporated them into a more recent book, The Blue Zones Solution: Eating and Living like the World’s Healthiest People. You don’t have to be envious of the results as if they are only possible in some exotic locale. Anyone living anywhere can implement these lessons into their own home and community.  

1. Movement: Choose a lifestyle that perpetuates constant motion in your day.

2. Purpose: Know why you wake up in the morning.

3. Down shift: Find ways to manage stress.

4. 80% rule: Stop eating when your stomach is 80% full.

5. Plant slant: Consume diets rich in beans, vegetables and fruit. All Blue Zones only consumed very small amounts of animal protein and on rare occasions.

6. Wine: Consume small amounts of alcohol. Moderate, regular drinkers outlive their nondrinking counterparts. (Learn more about the benefits of organic wines here.)

7. Belong: Attending a faith-based service four times per month added 4-14 years of life expectancy.

8. Family first: Respect your elders, stay committed to your life partner and invest in your children.

9. Right tribe: The community and company you keep reinforce your behavior.