 |
| Sardinia, Italy (Source) |
What are Blue Zones? These are regions of the world where people live much longer than average or as Buettner describes - "where people enjoy up to 3 times better chance of reaching 100 years old than we do". Where are the Blue Zones in the world? Buettner identified five geographic regions in the world as follows: Okinawa (Japan), Sardinia (Italy), Nicoya (Costa Rica), Icaria (Greece) and Loma Linda, California.
In the book, Buettner attempts to identify what the longest-living people eat, what physical activities they do, how they socialize, how they deal with stress, how they heal themselves or avoid disease, etc. and see if there are common denominators among the 5 blue zones.
In the book, Buettner attempts to identify what the longest-living people eat, what physical activities they do, how they socialize, how they deal with stress, how they heal themselves or avoid disease, etc. and see if there are common denominators among the 5 blue zones.
I'm just in the first Blue Zone which is Sardinia, Italy and it's amazing to learn about their lives and hear profound thoughts about life.
But first off, there was something in the intro of the book which caught my attention. Buettner shares that "Scientific studies suggest that only about 25 percent of how long we live is dictated by genes, according to famous studies of Danish twins. The other 75 percent is determined by our lifestyles and the everyday choices we make. It follows that if we optimize our lifestyles, we can maximize our life expectancies within our biological limits."
It caught my attention coz oftentimes, we use our genes as an excuse for everything - why we gain weight easily, or why it's hard to lose weight, or why our blood sugar/cholesterol level is high... 🙈😜 So noted, 75% of how long we live is actually within our control. 😆
Anyway, going back to Sardinia, it's amazing how centenarians are revered there. Everyone knows them and are treated like celebrities. Buettner shares that in taverns instead of seeing posters of women in bikinis or sports cars, you'd see calendars of their centenarians. How cool is that? 💪💪
Buettner goes on to describe what he has discovered - Most centenarians in Sardinia spent their time somewhere between their bed and their favorite sitting chair. Their days were punctuated by meals with their families and perhaps a stroll to meet friends. As a rule, they had worked hard their whole lives as farmers or shepherds. Their lives unfolded with daily and seasonal routines. They raised families who were now caring for them. Their lives were extraordinarily ordinary—with one exception.
Here's an example of an exception - in the life of 102-year-old Giuseppe Mura - whose life sounds like a movie plot material. Here you go -
Giuseppe was raised by a single mother. His father got his mother pregnant and then went off to war. When he returned, he took up with another woman and soon got her pregnant too, leaving Giuseppe and her mother alone.
One Sunday morning, when Giuseppe’s father was on his way to church with his new wife, Giuseppe’s mother intercepted him and shot him dead, murdered him right on the church steps. The police put her in jail, but everyone in the village knew that her honor had been violated. The police let her out after only four months.
The other child, Giuseppe’s half brother, was named Raimondo Arca. Giuseppe did not even know he had a half brother until one day when he was 17 years old and was playing a Sardinian game with other boys in the village square. “It was a game of elimination, much like rock, paper, and scissors.."
Giuseppe and Raimondo found themselves in a final round of elimination when a dispute erupted and a fistfight ensued. Raimondo was giving Giussepe a licking when a passing villager who knew the story of their mothers broke them up saying, ‘Brothers shouldn’t fight.’ The secret was out, and once they learned it, they became friends and remained so ever since. Guess what? Raimondo is still alive and lives right down the street. The whole village celebrated when the two of them turned 100.
The story could have broken Giussepe (or Raimondo) or made him remorseful or rebellious, but it's amazing how he went through life gracefully and how he welcomed his long lost brother so openly and immediately after they found each other.
After learning about Giussepe's lifestyle, Buettner thought of participating in the life of a Sardinian farmer to observe more closely. He met with a 75-year-old shepherd in the 3,000-year-old village of Silanus who still tended his own sheep, made his own wine, and lived in a traditional Sardinian home. His name was Tonino Tola.
Tonino and Giovanna married when they were in their early 20s, and they quickly had four children. When their family was young, in the 1950s, they were very poor. They ate what they produced on their land—mostly bread, cheese, and vegetables (zucchini, tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant, and most significantly, fava beans). Meat was at best a weekly affair, boiled on Sunday with pasta and roasted during festivals.
They usually sold their animals to buy grain staples, from which they made their pastas and traditional breads
Sheep and goat milk products contributed most of the protein. Their small vineyard grew Cannonau grapes for wine.
Almost every day for the past 70 years, Tonino had walked or ridden his donkey the 5-mile journey (whoa!😲) to tend his sheep on his family’s mountaintop pasture.
Take note, that's a 5-mile journey almost every day in the last 70 years, doing the same thing and seeing the same scenery every day. Buettner asked if Tonino ever gets bored.
You know what Tonino answered?
“I’ve loved living here every day of my life.
I love my animals and taking care of them. We don’t really need the cow that I butchered today. Half of the meat will go to my son, and most of the other half we’ll share with our neighbors. But without the animals and the work it takes to raise them, I would be sitting in my house doing nothing; I would have little purpose in life. When I think of them, I think of my children. I like it when my kids come home and they find something here that I have produced.”
What beautiful answer! 😊 He clearly knows what matters in life.
Buettner interviewed another Sardinian, Giovanni Sannai, 103. He drank goat’s milk for breakfast, walked at least six miles a day, and loved to work. For most of his life, he woke early and spent his day in the pastures. In the winter months, from November to April, he would herd his sheep over 100 miles to grassier lowland pastures. He made these journeys on foot, sleeping in pinnettas at night and eating only carta da musica bread, pecorino cheese, wine, sheep’s milk, and the occasional roasted lamb—which they could obtain along the way.
When Buettner asked if Giovanni had ever been stressed in his life, Buettner said he looked flummoxed (perplexed) so he asked the question in a different way.
Giovanni replied:
“Sometimes, but my wife was in charge of the house, and I was in charge of the field,” he said. “What’s there to worry about in the field?” Then he added, “Mostly I’ve always tried to remember that when you get good things from life, enjoy them, because they won’t be there forever.”
What a sense of humor and such wisdom! Can their wisdom and profound thoughts be implanted into my tiny brain? 😂
And similar to Tonino, Giovanni never gets tired of his surroundings. In fact, he takes a few moments each day to admire the view of the island from his pastureland perch—though he’s seen the same vista nearly every day for almost 80 years. Wow.
Anyway, to recap, here are the secrets to a long life of the oldest living Sardinians as revealed in the book:
- The classic Sardinian diet consists of whole-grain bread, beans, garden vegetables, fruits, and, in some parts of the island, mastic oil. Sardinians also traditionally eat pecorino cheese made from grass-fed sheep, whose cheese is high in omega-3 fatty acids. Meat is largely reserved for Sundays and special occasions.
- Put family first.
- Drink goat’s milk.
- Celebrate elders. Grandparents can provide love, childcare, financial help, wisdom, and expectations/motivation to perpetuate traditions and push children to succeed in their lives.
- Take a walk. Walking five miles a day or more as Sardinian shepherds do, provides all the cardiovascular benefits you might expect, and also has a positive effect on muscle and bone metabolism without the joint-pounding of running marathons or triathlons.
- Drink a glass or two of red wine daily.
- Men in this Blue Zone are famous for their sardonic sense of humor. They gather in the street each afternoon to laugh with and at each other. Laughter reduces stress, which can lower one’s risk of cardiovascular disease.
P.S. This second edition of the book was published in 2012 which means the interviews of some centenarians were conducted years before that. Some of them may have passed away already, but some could still alive and are now supercentenarians (a term which refers to people who surpass 110 years old). 💪💪💪
*Italicized text are excerpts from the book.
*Italicized text are excerpts from the book.
