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Dan Buettner's Three Blue Zones

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In the TED Talk “How to Live to be 100+”, Dan Buettner talks about lifestyles that are helping people live to be 100+. According to the Danish Twin Study, biology only factors into 10 percent of how long we live, the other 90 percent it based off lifestyle (Buettner 2009). Dan Buettner and his colleagues found three Blue Zones to try to find what types of lifestyles these people are living to become centenarians. Blue Zones are places where people live longer than the majority of people in the world. The Blue Zones are in Sardinia, Okinawa, and Loma Linda, California. They found similarities in their lifestyles that help them to live to be 100+. Those similarities are: they do not do strenuous exercise, have a period of down time, have a word …show more content…

None of the people in the Blue Zones exercise. Although Buettner (2009) states that the people in the Blue Zones do not exercise, they actually do, just not in the way most people view exercise. Buettner (2009) acknowledges that, “they set up their lives so that they are constantly nudged into physical activity,” to take the place of strenuous exercise. However, constant physical activity is the definition of exercise, which is what they do. According to Borgenicht (2012), “they move at a consistent pace as part of their daily routines. As with interludes of circuit training routines, this type of behavior requires less stress and strain on the body than pyramid strength training or cardio workout shedding at peak intensity” as their form of exercise. This is a heresy, according to Buettner (2009) and many others. The reason this is considered a heresy, is that our doctors regularly tell us to exercise. Doctors tell people to exercise for a variety of reasons. Sometimes, a doctor tells a person to exercise if they are trying to lose weight or keep a constant weight. The biggest reason doctors tell their patients to exercise though, is so they can live a healthy lifestyle. Cohort Two and I could easily work in many of the ways that people exercise in Blue Zones. One way we could implement one of their strategies is by focusing more on physical activity we love …show more content…

People in the Blue Zones put their families first. They take care of everyone in the family, ranging from young children to aging parents. People in the Blue Zone not only care for their aging parents but also treat them like celebrities. Dan Buettner (qtd in Gulli 2008) emphasizes that “A stop in any local taverna reveals just how much glory these seniors get. ‘Usually we see swimsuit calendars’ inside North American sports bars, says Dan Buettner, but when he was in Sardinia, ‘it was Centenarian of the Month calendars.’” Also, their relationship with their community is also very important. Those surrounding themselves with the right people allows them to add on many years to their life. Buettner (2009) states, “They all tend to belong to a faith-based community, which is worth between four and 14 extra years of life expectancy if you do it four times a month. And the biggest thing here is they also belong to the right tribe. They were either born into or they proactively surround themselves with the right people,” they purposely surround themselves with the right group of people in their lives. The relationships in the Blue Zone societies can be implemented into the lifestyles of the people in Cohort Two; however, many of their ideas cannot be implemented in our lifestyles

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