Living Longer ... And Better

Summary

TED Radio Hour: Living Longer ... And Better

Host: Manoush Zomorodi
Guest: Dan Buettner, TED Speaker and National Geographic Fellow
Release Date: November 29, 2024

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Introduction to Blue Zones

In the episode titled "Living Longer ... And Better," host Manoush Zomorodi engages with Dan Buettner to explore the concept of Blue Zones—regions around the world where people live significantly longer and healthier lives. Buettner, renowned for his research on longevity, shares insights from his extensive studies and efforts to replicate the success of these communities elsewhere.

What Are Blue Zones?

Dan Buettner defines Blue Zones as areas where the environment significantly contributes to longer and healthier lives. These regions exhibit lower rates of chronic diseases and higher life expectancy compared to global averages.

"The reason that people I found are living a long time is not because they have some magical diet or longevity hack. It's simply because they're avoiding the diseases that foreshorten their lives."
— Dan Buettner [03:09]

Key Blue Zones Explored

1. Okinawa, Japan

Okinawa, once part of the Rukus Kingdom, is highlighted for its high disability-free life expectancy. The traditional Okinawan diet, rich in purple potatoes (emo), tofu, and complex carbohydrates, plays a pivotal role in their longevity. Social constructs like ikigai—a sense of purpose—are also crucial.

"They have this vocabulary for purpose and the word ikigai, which roughly means the reason for which I wake up in the morning."
— Dan Buettner [05:15]

2. Sardinia, Italy

Sardinia's Blue Zones are characterized by a matriarchal society with a diet centered around beans, local greens, and whole grains. The physically demanding terrain fosters a lifestyle of constant activity.

"The steepness of the village predicted making it to 100 more than almost everything else."
— Dan Buettner [09:58]

3. Nicoya, Costa Rica

Despite being one of the poorest regions, Nicoya boasts the lowest middle-age mortality rate. The diet, known as the "three sisters" (corn tortillas, squash, and beans), combined with strong community bonds and high mineral-rich water intake, contributes to their longevity.

"Most of a centenarian's life came from three foods... corn tortillas, squash, and beans."
— Dan Buettner [23:25]

4. Ikaria, Greece

Ikaria's remoteness has preserved its traditional lifestyle, emphasizing physical activity, herbal teas rich in antioxidants, and moderate alcohol consumption. Strong social ties and communal living further enhance their lifespan.

"They live in places where every time they go to work or out with friends, it's a walk."
— Dan Buettner [38:21]

Common Factors Across Blue Zones

Buettner identifies several shared traits among Blue Zones that contribute to longevity:

• Active Lifestyle: Regular, low-intensity physical activity integrated into daily routines.
• Plant-Based Diet: Diets rich in whole grains, legumes, vegetables, and nuts, with minimal processed foods.
• Purpose: A strong sense of purpose that motivates individuals each day.
• Community and Family: Close-knit social networks and active involvement with family members.
• Stress Management: Regular routines that incorporate stress-reducing activities like napping or prayer.
• Moderate Alcohol Consumption: Social drinking practices, particularly of wine, in moderation.

"Happiness and laughter and a full, rich, purposeful life and longevity. They're part of the same mix."
— Dan Buettner [07:41]

Replicating Blue Zones: The Blue Zones Project

Buettner discusses his initiative to create Blue Zones in non-traditional areas, focusing on altering environments to promote healthier lifestyles without forcing behavior changes.

Case Study: Albert Lea, Minnesota

Since 2009, the Blue Zones Project in Albert Lea has transformed the city by:

• Implementing food policies favoring healthy options.
• Enhancing walkability with expanded sidewalks and walking paths.
• Promoting social activities that encourage community engagement.

"Albert Lea has really dropped in the percentages of people with high blood pressure. The same with high cholesterol."
— Dan Buettner [42:10]

The project led to a 15-20% increase in physical activity and significant reductions in obesity rates, demonstrating the effectiveness of environmental changes over individual behavior modification.

Challenges in Preserving Blue Zones

Buettner expresses concern over the declining health of traditional Blue Zones due to globalization and the influx of unhealthy lifestyles.

• Okinawa's Decline: Once a Blue Zone, Okinawa is now among the least healthy regions in Japan due to the proliferation of junk food and modernization.

"Okinawa is no longer even a Blue Zone. It's been so overridden by junk food and highways that it is now about the least healthy place in Japan."
— Dan Buettner [51:06]

The Role of Government and Policy

Comparing the United States with successful Blue Zones like Nicoya and Singapore, Buettner emphasizes the importance of proactive healthcare and supportive policies.

Singapore's Approach:

• Health Policies: Systematic health initiatives focusing on prevention rather than reaction.
• Urban Planning: Investments in walkable infrastructure encourage daily physical activity.
• Community Support: Tax incentives for multi-generational living promote family cohesion.

"Smart policies... everyone gets 8,000 steps a day without even thinking about it because it's just easier to walk to the subway."
— Dan Buettner [50:31]

The Importance of Purpose and Community

Buettner highlights that having a purpose and being part of a supportive community are instrumental in achieving longevity. These elements provide motivation, reduce stress, and foster social connections that contribute to overall well-being.

"They are repositories of resilience, of observed human history. They can help us get through the tough times."
— Dan Buettner [54:15]

Personal Reflections and Conclusion

Dan Buettner concludes with a personal note on his commitment to longevity through lifestyle choices aligned with Blue Zone principles. Living in a walkable neighborhood, maintaining social connections, and staying active are integral to his belief in reaching an advanced age with vitality.

"I'm probably a lot younger than my peers. At 63, I'm very healthy... I believe I'm going to hit 100 and I'll be very happy with that."
— Dan Buettner [51:37]

Buettner underscores the potential for societies to enhance public health and extend life expectancy by creating environments that naturally encourage healthy living, rather than relying solely on individual willpower.

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Notable Quotes

1. Dan Buettner on Blue Zones and Disease Prevention:
   "The reason that people I found are living a long time is not because they have some magical diet or longevity hack. It's simply because they're avoiding the diseases that foreshorten their lives."
   [03:09]

2. Dan Buettner on Ikigai:
   "They have this vocabulary for purpose and the word ikigai, which roughly means the reason for which I wake up in the morning."
   [05:15]

3. Dan Buettner on Lifestyle in Blue Zones:
   "They live in places where every time they go to work or out with friends, it's a walk."
   [38:21]

4. Dan Buettner on Happiness and Longevity:
   "Happiness and laughter and a full, rich, purposeful life and longevity. They're part of the same mix."
   [07:41]

5. Dan Buettner on Albert Lea's Success:
   "Albert Lea has really dropped in the percentages of people with high blood pressure. The same with high cholesterol."
   [42:10]

6. Dan Buettner on Okinawa's Decline:
   "Okinawa is no longer even a Blue Zone. It's been so overridden by junk food and highways that it is now about the least healthy place in Japan."
   [51:06]

7. Dan Buettner on Singapore's Urban Policies:
   "Smart policies... everyone gets 8,000 steps a day without even thinking about it because it's just easier to walk to the subway."
   [50:31]

8. Dan Buettner on Community Wisdom:
   "They are repositories of resilience, of observed human history. They can help us get through the tough times."
   [54:15]

9. Dan Buettner on Personal Longevity:
   "I'm probably a lot younger than my peers. At 63, I'm very healthy... I believe I'm going to hit 100 and I'll be very happy with that."
   [51:37]

---

Conclusion

"Living Longer ... And Better" delves deep into the factors that contribute to longevity in Blue Zones and offers practical insights into how these principles can be applied globally. Dan Buettner's research underscores the impact of environment, community, and lifestyle in shaping our health and lifespan, providing a roadmap for individuals and communities aiming to enhance their well-being and longevity.

Transcript

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[Minouche Zamorodi]

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[Minouche Zamorodi]

And even change you. I literally feel like I'm a different person.

[Dan Buettner]

Yes.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Do you feel that way? Ideas worth spreading from TED and npr. I'm Minouche Zamorodi and I'd like you to meet Loyce.

[Loyce Poche Delahousie]

My name is Loyce pochet Delahouse. I'm 40. I was gonna say 49. I'm 94.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Loyce lives in Broussard, Louisiana and has a very active life.

[Loyce Poche Delahousie]

I think the most important thing is exercise.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

She goes to exercise class for an hour and a half twice a week. She cleans her home, she gardens.

[Loyce Poche Delahousie]

I love working in the yard.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

She also plays cards with friends, goes to mass, and eats lunch with her family.

[Loyce Poche Delahousie]

Important things like going to the beauty parlor and I feel good, you know, I don't feel old. I don't know what old feels like. I just feel like myself. I do have a sister that lived to be 100. And I said, if she can do it, I can do it. So I have six more years to go.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

And Lois just might make it because all those activities are very likely contributing to her longevity. Even more, perhaps, than just having good genes.

[Dan Buettner]

Only about 20% of it is genes. The other 80% is something else.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

This is writer and National Geographic fellow Dan Buettner. For the last 25 years, he's been traveling the world to places where groups of people have lived well into their 90 and beyond.

[Dan Buettner]

We're talking about people who've achieved the health outcomes we want, which is to live a long time largely without disease. And these people do it better than anyone else in the world.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

These tiny towns, neighborhoods even, are referred to as blue zones, Places where the environment seems to facilitate a longer life.

[Dan Buettner]

If you do everything right and you have an average set of GS, you can set your financial plan at age 95.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

But in the US that seems less and less likely. Life expectancy has declined over the past few years. The average American makes it to about 76, Dan thinks they could live far longer.

[Dan Buettner]

The reason that people I found are living a long time is not because they have some magical diet or longevity hack. It's simply because they're avoiding the diseases that foreshorten their lives. They are not dying of dementia, cancer, the GI tract, heart disease, strokes, type 2 diabetes, obesity. @ anywhere that near the numbers we are today, they have the same machines, the same biological machines that we do. They've just managed to expose that machine to an environment that has allowed them to live out the capacity of what we're all given.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

So today on the show, we're spending the hour with Dan Buettner. He takes us around the world to these pockets of vitality. From mountaintop villages in Sardinia, to islands off the coasts of Japan and Greece, and to the Nicoya region of Costa Rica. We'll learn how these places nurtured longevity, why as the modern world encroaches, they may be fading away, and how we can apply Blue Zone wisdom to our own homes and neighborhoods.

[Dan Buettner]

Right now, the vast majority of it is, I argue, your environment, much less than your lifestyle, your environment.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

So Dan Buettner is now a best selling author and his recent Netflix series is called live to 100 secrets of the Blue Zones. But before he was into longevity, Dan was working for National Geographic and always on the hunt for a good story.

[Dan Buettner]

It's actually my brother Nick who stumbled upon a World Health Organization report in the year 1999 that found that Okinawa, Japan, an archipelago of 161 islands in southeast Asia, were producing a population with the highest disability free life expectancy in the world. So I said, aha. Now this is a good mystery. These people are living long and there's gotta be a reason for it. So Okinawa, it's part of Japan today, But before about 1918, it was called the Rukus Kingdom. So it's actually a completely different population than people in Japan. Even though they live on islands close to the sea, they traditionally have not eaten much or any fish. Instead, they relied mostly on a type of purple potato called emo, full of complex carbohydrates and antioxidants, the same ones that you find in blueberries. They also eat a lot of tofu. And they developed a few social constructs that, you know, at the time, I kind of dismissed them, but evidence has now found are probably better explainers of their longevity than anything else. Number one, they have this vocabulary for purpose and the word ikigai, which roughly means the reason for which I wake up in the morning and interestingly, the Okinawan dialect has no word for retirement. They continue to be engaged with their brains and their bodies and they feel meaning in their life into their 90s or 1000s. And that's been found to add up to eight years of life expectancy over being rudderous in life.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Here's Dan buettner on the TED stage.

[Dan Buettner]

For this 102-year-old karate master, his ikigai was carrying forth this martial art. For this hundred year old fisherman, it was continuing to catch fish for his family three times a week. For this 102-year-old woman, her ikigai was simply her great great great granddaughter. Two girls separated in age by 1001 1/2 years. And I asked her what it felt like to hold a great great great granddaughter and she put her head back and she said it feels like leaping into heaven.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

I watched your recent Netflix series with my 80 year old parents and we loved one particular woman. I think her name was umito Yamashiro. She's 101 in the show and she is just laughing and she can balance this like vase on her head while she's dancing. And she says that she, she doesn't get angry that the secret to living a long time is having fun. It really struck me.

[Dan Buettner]

Yeah, probably not coincidentally, these blue zones, in addition to being the longest live, they're in the top 10 or 20% of the happiest places in the world. So a really nice finding is that the same things that drive a long life also make the journey pleasant and wonderful. They kind of go hand in hand. You can't often separate happiness and laughter and a full, rich, purposeful life and longevity. They're part of the same mix.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Okay, so you spent a lot of time in Okinawa, you learned about how they lived there, and then you decided to go visit Sardinia. Why was Sardinia next?

[Dan Buettner]

We had data for Sardinia. A researcher named Gianni Pes was just beginning to report it in this very obscure journal. Nobody knew about it except for the 108 readers of the Journal of Experimental Gerontology. It was on the other side of the planet and it was producing even more male centenarians than Okinawa was producing. So there are a few unique aspects of the Sardinian longevity phenomenon, but there are more commonalities. So first of all, the Blue zone in Sardinia is only five villages in the Nuoro and Oliastra province. And it was a matriarchal society when the rest of the Mediterranean is patriarchal. And they lived in very steep, rugged terrain. They were largely shepherds, unlike the Okinawans who were largely agriculturalists. But what did they have in common? Well, if you look at dietary surveys over time, if you want to know what a centenarian ate to live to be 100, they were eating a very similar diet, a whole food plant based diet, not sweet potatoes and tofu, but instead they were eating lots of beans and local greens and, you know, some pastas, a lot of bread.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

By the way, you found an amazing correlation between longevity and how steep the people lived up in the mountains. Was it basically the steeper the better?

[Dan Buettner]

Yes. So not the altitude. One of the top correlations was the steepness of the village predicted, making it to 100 more than almost everything else. The other predictor actually was daughters. You had. Turns out the guys who had five or more daughters had the best chance of making it to a hundred.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

And you add that when people do get older, they don't move to nursing homes, which you say can lead to someone dying two to six years earlier than if they live with their family.

[Dan Buettner]

Yes, I believe from having visited the homes of over 300 centenarians, it's because when you're living with your family in a blue zone, you tend to have a responsibility. You're still in charge of the food tradition. You help raise the children. You always have a garden. So their wisdom is honored and put to work, and they have a reason to get up in the morning. They're still engaged with life. And I would encourage people to at least try to bring their aging parents nearby or incorporate them more into their family life. You know, something called the grandmother effect has showed that families with a grandparent in them, their children have lower rates of mortality and grow up healthier.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

You spent time with a woman named Juliana Pisano, who was 101, never married.

[Dan Buettner]

Right. But she had an extended family. And in Sardinia, extended family is almost as important as your immediate family. And her nieces took time, basically a day, a week to come stay with her. Do you enjoy the time you're here or is it work? You know, they weren't, oh, God, I go take care of my aunt. It was, oh, it's my day, I get to spend a day with her. The other interesting aspect of the centenaries I met in Blue Zones, there wasn't a grump in the bunch. And it seemed that possessing a certain likability, being interested and interesting and a certain generosity actually drew people to them.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

I mean, there's something that strikes me about talking about Sardinia and Okinawa is that they're both relatively remote. Is there something to that with blue zones that there is a rhythm to their day that doesn't include a lot of sitting and hearing about how awful climate change is or war is going on or all the things that consume us every day.

[Dan Buettner]

Their remoteness does, to your point, afford them a certain insulation from the bombardment of bad news. But more importantly, it's afforded them a insulation from the standard American diet and globalization that has engineered so much physical activity out of our lives. Being remote allows this culture of longevity to incubate and develop apart from what the rest of the country is doing.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

When we come back, a blue zone that's not so remote. We visit Loma Linda, California. I'm Manoush Zamorodi, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from npr. Stay with us.

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[Minouche Zamorodi]

Hey, it's Minouche. Somehow there are only a few weeks left in 2024. What a year it has been. But I'll get right to it. NPR is public media, which means we are here to serve you. Our vision has always been to create a more informed public. It's important for us to make that freely available to everyone. That includes covering communities that haven't always had their voices heard, or communities that used to have more local coverage but have seen that journalism go away. Our work is possible thanks to your listening and your support. On behalf of the whole team at TED Radio Hour, thank you. If you already support our work through NPR or by donating to your local station, know that your generosity fuels everything from breaking news to investigative reporting to weekly shows like ours. And if you haven't made the leap to contributing yet, we hope you will consider joining us this Giving Tuesday. One option is NPR Plus. It's a tax deductible donation that helps make the world a more curious place so you can feel good about your impact. You can also just feel good about you because when you become our sponsor, you get sponsor free listening. You get regular bonus episodes, too. For example, I recently spoke to TED speaker and psychologist Yuko Munakata about brain Hacks to beat procrastination. R& listeners enjoy getting tips and advice directly from TED speakers, but it's not just us. Perks are available for TED Radio Hour and 25 other NPR podcasts. You can join us on Giving Tuesday or today at plus and you can always make a gift at donate.npr.org thank you so much for listening and being here. It's the TED Radio Hour from npr. I'm Minouche Zamorodi. On the show today, a conversation with TED speaker and National Geographic fellow Dan Buettner about Blue Zones, places around the world where people have lived well into their 90s and beyond. We started our show in Okinawa and Sardinia, Blue Zone havens that benefit from being cut off from the world. But the next Blue Zone we'll visit isn't very remote at all.

[Dan Buettner]

They're right off the San Bernardino Freeway in Lomalina, California.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Recently, one of our producers visited the local recreation center there and met one couple taking their regular exercise class.

[Jody Nichols]

I'm Jody Nichols and 78 years old.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Jody Nichols was joined by her husband, Glenn.

[Glenn Nichols]

Glenn Nichols, 94 years old.

[Jody Nichols]

I think he's probably the eldest of our group.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Alongside dozens of other regulars, Glenn and Jody stretched, balanced medicine balls and stomped along with their instructor. But here's what's different about this exercise for seniors. Most of the attendees are part of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, a Christian denomination whose members view their health as sacred.

[Dan Buettner]

They're Living about seven years longer than their North American counterparts. It's not so much Loma Linda, that's a blue zone. It's really the Adventist culture that's a blue zone, the best concentration of which is in Loma Linda. And they look to the Bible to inform their diet. Mostly it's from Genesis. There's a passage where God articulates the diet of the Garden of Eden. Every plant that bears seed and every tree that bears fruit, little or no.

[Glenn Nichols]

Meat, vegetables, fruits, nuts, things like that. That's the original diet according to the Bible.

[Dan Buettner]

And from that they've derived the message that they should be eating a plant based diet and their friends are all eating a plant based diet. So that's probably the biggest driver of the fact that they're living longer again with a fraction of the rate of disease of their neighbors living just a county over who are not Adventists.

[Glenn Nichols]

I've been a vegetarian since I was 19. I never smoked, never drank, I don't use coffee.

[Dan Buettner]

And the reason they can avoid those things better than maybe the rest of us is because they were hanging out with other clean living people who eating plant based foods and supporting each other spiritually. And it becomes easy to fall into the slipstream of that way of life.

[Glenn Nichols]

We have socials at the church, we go to that on Saturday night, play games and socialize. She's more socially active than I am.

[Jody Nichols]

We don't sit in front of the tv. The TV is rarely, rarely on. We play games that keeps our brain, we hope, moving. I think God gave us that community. He wants us to be in community and prayer, not just once or twice a day, but throughout our day.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

I'm really curious about the role of religion for the folks in Loma Linda because how much is organized religion and an affiliation with a group? What impacts longevity, do you think? Or is it belonging and identity that makes people live longer? Or the spirituality connection to a higher power that makes people live longer. Can we tell the difference?

[Dan Buettner]

Well, you cannot. We don't know how to measure spirituality with any accuracy, but we can measure something called religiosity, which is simply measured by how often you show up to a faith based community, whether it be a church, a temple or a mosque. And we know from meta analyses that people who show up four times a month are living four to 14 years longer than people who don't show up. But we don't know if that's because belonging to a faith based community, you're less likely to engage in risky behaviors or if it's because you have a day every week where you're de stressing and thinking about a higher power or if it's because you have a nice social network that you close and play. But we do know that belonging to a faith based community stacks the deck in favor of health and longevity. And by the way, those people who are making it 14 years are inner city minorities. And I argue that one of the best public health interventions we have available to us in most cities is getting young people involved with religious organizations. And I say that not as a religious person myself, I say it, look at the data, you know, I don't know of anything else that can convey 14 extra years of life expectancy, you know, other than, you know, joining up for your temple or mosque or church.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

I mean that's a commitment and a big decision. But then you also, you say that having a handful of nuts every day could give you three extra years.

[Dan Buettner]

That's from the Adventist health study. That's when you follow 103,000 people for 30 years and you find that people who report eating a handful of nuts every day are living two to three years longer than the people who aren't eating nuts.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

You also visited a blue zone, Nicoya, a rural region in northern Costa Rica. And you know, we've heard this for years that in most of the world as income rises, so does life expectancy. But that is not the case in it is one of the poorest regions in a pretty poor country, which is.

[Dan Buettner]

Why we should pay attention to it. This population has the lowest rate of middle age mortality. So they have about a two fold better chance of reaching a healthy age 90 than Americans do. So you know, once again I go there trying to solve a multivariable equation. I just know that this place is producing super long lived people. And we found that the Nicoya Peninsula has very different groundwater than the rest of Costa Rica. It's limestone in Nicoya. And what burbles up through the ground is a type of water very high in calcium and magnesium. So maybe that has something to do with it. The race there is a blend of Spaniards, African Americans and, but mostly Native Americans, the Chorotega people. So maybe it has to do with this particular mix. For most of a centenarian's life, about 80% of their dietary intake came from three foods. They call it the three sisters. Corn tortillas, squash and beans. And those three foods come together in absolutely magical ways. They produce all complex carbohydrates, lots of trace minerals, but perhaps most importantly, all the amino acids necessary for human Sustenance, which is to say it's a whole protein without the saturated fats and the hormones and the other more dangerous aspects of animal based proteins. They have a very strong sense of community. Most of them are very strongly religious. Again, this was a very remote part of the world, so they had to stick together.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

I'm thinking of one of the people that you feature in your Netflix series, a cowboy named Ramiro who really demonstrates how people in Nicoya are biologically younger than people of the same age in other places. The scene starts with him on a horse lassoing some cattle. And it's pretty extraordinary.

[Dan Buettner]

He's amazing. He wakes up every morning about 5am, makes his own breakfast, saddles up his horse and trots across town through a river where he has a number of cattle that just a small herd that he takes care of. And he comes home and takes a nap and gets his lunch together and does it again in the afternoon. And he had the vitality and the physical abilities of a 50 year old. But yet we know, because we could check his birth certificate and his ID, that he was over 100 years old. Amazing. And you know, that's where we want to be. It's at that level of vitality, but also, you know, making it to our hundred and possessing all the wisdom that he did.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

You have said that in the US we hope for health, but we incent for sickness. That kind of bowled me over. How is the approach to healthcare in the US different from Nicoya?

[Dan Buettner]

The Costa Rican government in the 1990s instituted these basic health teams where every single man, woman and child has the right to a visit every year from an ambassador, from this team composed of a doctor, a nurse practitioner, a record keeper, and two of these sort of wandering health ambassadors. And they actually go to your front door, they have your health records. They go in your backyard and look for standing water which could harbor disease bearing mosquitoes. They look in your refrigerator to see what you've been eating, to see look for signs of, you know, chronic disease. And they can catch diabetes or heart disease decades before it shows up in an emergency room. And that's because the government invests in health rather than looks for profit in health. There's free health care for everybody, no matter how poor you are. And it's proactive health care, not reactive health care like we have in the United States. So interestingly, they have about half the rate of middle age cardiovascular mortality. So much better health comes fraction of the rate of what we spend. We spend about $4.4 trillion a year on health care. About 85% of it is on avoidable diseases. And, you know, that's because our health care system only makes money when you get sick.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

All right, let's go to our last blue zone, Ikaria. This is a Greek island close to Turkey. I feel like this one makes sense, right? Greek cuisine is what the Mediterranean diet is modeled after. We hear about that here. But tell us about life in Ikaria, how it's different from the rest of Greece.

[Dan Buettner]

Ikaria is again very hilly, arrives abruptly out of the Aegean Sea. There were no natural ports, so it was largely overlooked by western civilization. You can see from Ikari, you can see Samos, where Epicurus and Pythagoras lived and created the foundations of western civilization. But yet Ikaria, you know, nobody really stopped there much. So you don't see the whitewashed villages like you see in the rest of Greece. The villages are away from the sea, almost hidden sometimes in like these sort of craters. And they're scattered. You often don't even see a town square. That's because they were in perpetual threat of pirates. As a result, they had to stick together socially. But every family had its own garden and its own little vineyard. So instead of relying on, you know, the farmer to create all the food for the village, everybody created their own food. So they're all actively growing food, actively growing grapes for their wine there and staying more physically active. They didn't have money for coffee for the most part, so they drank these herbal teas at higher rates than the rest of Greece. And the herbal teas were made of oregano, rosemary, a catnip and a sage. I had these herbal teas sent to the University of Athens and analyzed, and it turns out they were all antioxidants or anti inflammatory and in most cases also mild diuretics which lower your blood pressure. So, you know, one of the reasons these people are living longer might be because they're drinking these herbal teas all the time and have a lower inflammation load or fewer vascular strokes because they have lower blood pressure going back to.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

The enjoying the pleasantries of life. And another liquid that we have to talk about, which is alcohol. The sad headlines in the United States have recently been a rather definitive conclusion that the best amount of alcohol to drink is no alcohol. But that is not the case in Ikaria.

[Dan Buettner]

Right. Except for the Adventist who shun alcohol. In every blue zone they're drinking. And I'm very well aware of the epidemiology studies, but it's not definitive in my mind. Alcohol Or a little bit of wine in blue zones bring people together socially. In Ikaria, I just read a survey of 90 year olds and 90% of them reported drinking every day. They suffer a fraction of the rate of heart disease, a fifth the rate of dementia as we do in the United States. So I know for sure that making it into your 90s or hundreds and having a modest amount of alcohol every day are not mutually exclusive.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

So is a low rate or even no rate of dementia common in blue zones?

[Dan Buettner]

It's low rate everywhere. What people don't often realize is whether it's heart disease, type 2 diabetes, many cancers or dementia or metabolic syndrome, they're all driven by the same factors. Lack of physical activity, eating a standard American diet, loneliness, social isolation, lack of purpose, exposure to contaminants. The same factors drive all of these chronic disease that are killing us and costing us trillions a year. And so yes, in blue zones they live a long time and also suffering a fraction of the rate of dementia for the same reasons.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

I had always thought that dementia was just inevitable, that when you got really old, that was just another the brain begins to atrophy.

[Dan Buettner]

It does. But there was a recent article in the Journal of American Medical association that showed that at least 40% of dementia or Alzheimer's is avoidable. And all I have to do is point to ikaria, population of 10,000 people, where they have 20% the rate of dementia that we have in the United States. We only found three mild cases of dementia on the entire island. And it just to me shows that we should be beating dementia not by looking for the cure, but by investing in prevention.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Another thing you say that works as prevention is love. You talk about a couple who met later in life. She was divorced, he was widowed. And when they met, they were really open to embarking on another chapter of life together.

[Dan Buettner]

That was a beautiful love story. First of all, it's never too late to find love. When my first wife passed away, I had lost my appetite to live. I wouldn't talk, I wouldn't laugh, I wouldn't eat. I fell to pieces. She brought me back. When I was looking at him, something was tickling. I married my first husband at 16. I had a gloomy life but you have made me complete and I have forgotten the past. This great story of how Paniotis actually invites his girlfriend out on their first date. And he sets up this picnic on a blanket with a bottle of wine overlooking this beautiful scene of the Aegean. And they made out on their first date. And you know, when I visited them. They're canoodling. And you could see very clearly when we visited him, he was in his 90s. He was not moving as fast anymore. But you could see this beautiful symbiosis between the two of them living a life of love and social connectedness and eating good food and taking care of each other. And it, you know, it underscores the central premise of Blue Zones, which is this brand of longevity not only offers us another decade or so, but the journey is fun and loving and purposeful and connected and close to nature. And it's just a beautiful way of living life.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

In a minute. Can Blue Zones be created, manufactured, even? Dan heads to the middle of America to find out. Stick around. I'm Minouche Zamorodi, and you're listening to the TED radio hour from NPR.

[Becca Anderson]

Support for the following message come from LinkedIn Ads. With LinkedIn Ads, you can reach professionals relevant to your business, target them by job title, industry company and more by launching your next campaign with a free $100 ad credit at LinkedIn.com results, terms and conditions apply. This message comes from Greenlight. Parents rank financial literacy as the number one most difficult life skill to teach with Greenlight, the debit card and money app for families, kids learn to earn, save and spend wisely. Get started [e-mail] NPR this message comes from NPR sponsor ServiceNow, the AI platform for business transformation. AI is only as powerful as the platform it's built into. Enter ServiceNow. It puts AI to work for people across your business, providing intelligent tools to help remove frustration and supercharge productivity. And all of that is built into a single platform you can use right now. That's why the world works with ServiceNow. Learn more at servicenow.com AI for people.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

This message comes from NPR sponsor Viking, committed to exploring the world in comfort. Journey through the heart of Europe on an elegant Viking longship with thoughtful service, destination focused dining and cultural enrichment on board and on shore. And every Viking voyage is all inclusive with no children and no casinos. Discover [e-mail] it's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Anouche Zamorodi. And on the show today, TED speaker and National Geographic fellow Dan Buettner. Dan has spent decades researching the blue zones of the world, very different places with surprisingly similar habits. For example, the oldest people in these areas just keep moving all day long instead of exercising.

[Dan Buettner]

They live in places where every time they go to work or a friend's house or out to eat occasions a walk, they have Gardens out back. They knead bread by hand and grind corn by hand. So my team figures they're moving every 20 minutes or so.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Naturally, people in blue zones have a.

[Dan Buettner]

Sense of purpose, Ikigai or plan de vida, like in Costa Rica.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

They have regular spiritual rituals.

[Dan Buettner]

The Adventists pray, Costa Ricans, Icarians take a nap. The Okinawans have ancestor veneration.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

They eat simple plant based diets.

[Dan Buettner]

Whole grains, greens and garden vegetables, tubers like sweet potatoes, nuts. And the cornerstone of every longevity diet is beans. And if you're eating a cup of beans a day, it's probably worth about four years of life expectancy over unhealthier sources of protein.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

And perhaps most importantly, they put an.

[Dan Buettner]

Enormous emphasis on their family over their work or their hobbies. So they keep aging parents nearby, they invest in their spouse and they invest in their children. They tend to belong to a faith based community. All but about five centenarians I met said that they believed in a God of some sort and showed up. And finally, they tend to have carefully curated immediate circles. They surround themselves with people who care about them on a bad day and reinforce healthy eating or some sort of an active hobby. So that when they get together with their friends, they're doing healthy things instead of unhealthy things. And those are, whether you're in Asia or Europe or Latin America, you see these same things happening over and over and over again.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

I'm guessing that the vast majority of people hearing what you have to say, they're intrigued by this idea of changing themselves, of changing their own community. You know, I would love to move to Ikaria. Cannot. But you are actually trying to create blue zones out of places that are not blue yet.

[Dan Buettner]

Yes. The big insight, which took me about eight years to realize, is that health and longevity aren't something we pursue very successfully, but it very successfully ensues from the right environment. In other words, people in blue zones are living a long time because they live in surroundings that nudge them into doing the right things and avoiding the wrong things for long enough so they don't develop a chronic disease.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

And you actually started a company to try and replicate these habits in places that are not blue zones, but where you think they could become blue zones. For example, Albert Lee, Minnesota, it's about a town of 18,000 people. And you started working there in about 2009.

[Dan Buettner]

Yeah.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Tell us what you did.

[Dan Buettner]

So in 2009, I started a pilot project in a place called Albert Lee, Minnesota, with the idea of instead of trying to convince an entire city to change Their behaviors. I would recruit the best experts in changing the environment of a city, changing the policies, the restaurants, the grocery stores, the workplaces, the schools, the churches, and even people's homes to engineer their unconscious decisions to be incrementally better every single day for years and then measure the outcome. And remarkably, it worked fantastically. Albert Lee got a makeover.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

The first community in the country to be a certified blue zones community.

[Dan Buettner]

City leaders are holding a meeting about.

[Becca Anderson]

How friendly Albert Lee is to pedestrians.

[Dan Buettner]

Restaurants in Albert Lee added healthier menu options. People pledged to eat less fast food, kids walk to school, walking, more socializing.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Better diet, happier, longer life.

[Dan Buettner]

Albert Lee has really dropped in the.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Percentages of people with high blood pressure. The same with high cholesterol.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Residents report their overall well being, Sense of community and sense of purpose is up.

[Dan Buettner]

So many people report that they are thriving.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

What happened? What did you do?

[Dan Buettner]

First, we found food policies that favored healthy food over junk food and junk food marketing. We found policies that favored the pedestrian, the cyclist over the motorist. And we found policies that favored the non smoker over the smoker. And then through a consensus process, we helped city council evaluate each one for effectiveness and feasibility. And then once they identified some politically expedient policies, we got them to implement several of them. The big one in Albert Lee is they were about to widen their main street and draw more traffic from the interstate. And we convinced them to actually, instead of widening the street, widening the sidewalks and taking that street widening money and putting a walking path around the adjacent lake and also put in about three miles of sidewalks to connect every neighborhood to downtown. And lo and behold, once you invited pedestrians to walk downtown, downtown filled up. And it not only increased the number of amount of physical activity people got by, we calculate between 15 and 20%. Downtown became a vibrant place. People were sitting at the local cafes and, and visiting the local marketing. So it created this virtuous circle.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

I have to say, part of me is surprised because I think, you know, the places where you did research, blue zones, these were habits that had been around for centuries. I mean, isn't it really hard to change people's habits that quickly?

[Dan Buettner]

Absolutely. Blue zones, there's zero habit modifications. Nobody there is trying to change their behavior. They are just living the life that their environment makes easy, accessible and affordable. So what I try to do is again reverse engineer, try to bring the environmental components of blue zones to American cities. And we've now done it in 72 cities. And every city we've worked in, we've seen the BMI Drop. In other words, the obesity rate goes down and people report higher levels of life satisfaction. Not because we try to change their minds, that we do a little bit, but because we change their environment to make the healthy choice, the easy choice.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

So 15 years later, after you started this experiment in Albert Lee, Minnesota, are they keeping it up? Has this been a long term change? Are people living longer there?

[Dan Buettner]

So they continue to do the blue zone work. Their ranking in Minnesota has continually gone up as a healthier city. They've reported a drop in healthcare costs by about 30% for city workers. And they continue to do the same work that we instituted in 2009. But in more contemporary times. Fort Worth, Texas, a city of a million people. After five years doing our blue zone project, they report obesity has gone down, physical activity has gone up, and they report healthcare cost savings of about a quarter of a billion dollars a year. I would say projected healthcare cost savings of about a quarter of a billion dollars a year occasioned by our work.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

I mean, people in the US don't like being told what to do.

[Dan Buettner]

Right.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

It's un American. So you're almost doing it to the point where they don't even realize that their lifestyle is changing.

[Dan Buettner]

Right. We never tell people what to do. We don't tell city councils what to do. We show city councils policies that have worked elsewhere to produce a healthy community and then we evaluate it for effectiveness and feasibility in their community and they choose. So we're not coming in with, you know, you gotta tax sodas. We come that evidence based things that we know if you make a city walkable and bikeable, we know that physical activity will go up to, by up to as much as 20%. And we can show them how to do that if they want to do that. You know, in the Netflix documentary series, I profiled Singapore.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Yeah.

[Dan Buettner]

In my lifetime, their life expectancy has gone up over 20 years. They now produce the longest lived, healthiest people on the planet. How does Singapore achieve that?

[Jody Nichols]

We don't have natural resources. People are our natural resource. Singapore works on nudges. There's a war on diabetes, for instance. In Singapore, people are taking too much sugar, they eat the wrong foods. So what do we do? What does the government of Singapore do? They try to help you help yourself.

[Dan Buettner]

And it's not because they have great diet plans and exercise programs. It's because they have systematically gone through, through and made the healthy choice easier, cheaper, more accessible. And lo and behold, it produced a manifestly healthier environment and healthier people.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

I mean, the key thing that's different about Singapore. Is the government there? Yes, it's a democracy, but also has autocratic tendencies, very strict rules of behavior. Is that the quickest way to get people fall in line? I mean, I remember living in New York City and the Mayor Bloomberg trying to tax sodas and people were up in arms. You know, like we can die by any method we choose to. You know, you can't tell us how to do that.

[Dan Buettner]

Okay. Bloomberg effectively got rid of trans fats from the New York diet, which saved countless lives from cardiovascular disease. Who misses that trans fat right now? Probably nobody. The fact that New York is so bikeable and walkable was largely due to Bloomberg's policies. And that means people are getting unconscious physical activity that they wouldn't otherwise be getting. Which, you know, one of the quickest ways to raise your life expectancy is if you're sedentary is just walk 20 minutes a day. It's worth about three years of life expectancy. That's all Singapore has done. Smart policies. For example, as we talked about earlier, we know that people who live at home, older people who live at home, have higher life expectancies than those warehoused and retirement homes. Well, Singapore doesn't tell you you have to keep your aging parent living with you, but it does give you a tax break if they live with you or even live nearby because they know their kids are going to take care of their parents if they're nearby.

[Unnamed Speaker]

They are quite happy that I'm here and I'm quite happy to be here. My grandchildren. I took the opportunity to give them tuition in mathematics because I.

[Dan Buettner]

So you're their tutorial.

[Unnamed Speaker]

I'm quite good in mathematics and in return they will help me with my computer because I'm a computer idiot.

[Dan Buettner]

Computer idiot, I love that. So yet another two way street. I mean they do heavily tax cigarettes because you know, their minister of health has shown that cigarette smoking is bad for people and it's bad for the economy. So lo and behold, lowest smoking rates. They wanted to get people on their feet and lessen the traffic problem. So they heavily tax gasoline and cars. But as a result, they've taken that money and invested in a very clean, fast, efficient, safe, air conditioned subway system that's no more than about 300 yards from anybody's home. So guess what? Everybody gets 8,000 steps a day without even thinking about it because it's just easier to walk to the subway than to get in your car and you know, muscle through traffic to get places.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

The original blue zones that you visited you know, you've been researching them for 20 years now. Have they? Are they delighted by their status as Blue Zones? Are they committed to protecting that? Or are they finding that scripture, green time and fast food and sedentary habits are infiltrating them as well.

[Dan Buettner]

Mostly the latter in Blue Zones. As soon as the McDonald's and the pizza Huts arrive, they start going to those places and eating the same junk food we eat. You know, as soon as that way of eating arrives, you can already see their longevity disappearing. Okinawa, I would say, is no longer even a Blue Zone.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Oh, wow.

[Dan Buettner]

It's been so overridden by junk food and highways that it is now about the least healthy place in Japan, which is just a tragedy. And yeah, there are individuals that want to preserve, but there's not enough collective will to hold back the corrosive influences of the American way of living and modernization.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

I have to finish with asking about you, Dan. How old are you?

[Dan Buettner]

I'm 104. No, I mean, I'm 63.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

63. And how long do you expect to live? What is your biological age?

[Dan Buettner]

I'm probably a lot younger than my peers. At 63. I'm very healthy. I don't, I don't know of any health problems. I live in a Blue Zone neighborhood, so I live at the southern tip of South Beach. It's a very walkable neighborhood. I have very easy access to healthy food. I live in a place where it's very social. I know all my neighbors. Plus I look out of my window and I see the ocean. And every morning I wake up and I swim to the place where I get my cup of coffee. So I believe I'm going to hit 100 and I'll be very happy with that.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

I mean, there is a real aversion to being old or growing old in the United States, a fear of being irrelevant or infirm and a burden. I feel that that needs to change too. This idea that being older is not a terrible thing, but something like you hope for.

[Dan Buettner]

Yes. You know, in America we tend to celebrate youth. And if you look at advertising, it's almost always young people who we aspire to and beauty and anti aging industry. In Blue Zones. The older you get, the more honored you are, the more distinguished you are. The biggest day of your life in okinawa is your 96th birthday. In Sardinia, I met this centenarian named Rafaela who was 106. And every day at 3 o'clock she'd go out and sit on her porch, which was right in the path of kids getting out of school and kids would line up to just have Raphaela touch their forehead for a second, give them a little blessing. So kids grow up with the idea that their grandmothers are treasures and their grandfathers are treasures. And they really are. The definition of wisdom is knowledge plus experience. People are in their 90s and hundreds. They're repositories of resilience, of observed human history. They can help us get through the tough times. They can help raise our children. They can help get through depression in many ways because they've experienced it and worked their way out of it and survived. And we ought to be turning to these treasures more so than AI or some new technology to solve our problems. There's a lot of wisdom looking backwards that we forget about.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

That's Dan Buettner. His Netflix show is called live to 100 secrets of the Blue Zones. He's also written several books, including a cookbook called the Blue Zone Kitchen. You can see his ted [e-mail] thank you so much for listening to our show today. This episode was produced by Rachel Faulkner White and Fiona Guerin. It was edited by Sanaz Meshkanpour, James Delahousi and me. A special thank you to James Grandma Loyce Poche de la Housi for sharing her thoughts at the beginning of the show. Thanks also to Rana Anfarad and Hassan Agdam for their voices as well. Our production staff at NPR also includes Katie Monteleone, Harsha Nehada and Matthew Cloutier. Irene Noguchi is our executive producer. Our audio engineers were Robert Rodriguez, Gili Moon and Margaret Luthar. Our theme music was written by Ramtin Arablouei. Our partners at TED are Chris Anderson, Michelle Quint, Alejandra Salazar and Daniela Balorzo. I'm Anoush Zamirodi and you've been listening to the TED Radio Hour from npr.

[Becca Anderson]

Support for this podcast and the following message come from Ford Senior Director Becca Anderson shares the meaning of the Ford Power Promise.

[Unnamed Speaker]

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[Becca Anderson]

To learn how ford is supporting EV drivers, go to FordPowerpromise.com or your local Ford dealer. See Dealer and the Battery Electric Vehicle Warranty Guide for limited warranty details.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

This message comes from NPR sponsor Comcast. Every day, thousands of Comcast engineers and technologists put people at the heart of everything they create. Like Kunle, a Comcast engineer with two teenage boys at home, Kunle thinks about the generation that he is building technology for. This continues to inspire him and his team to build a fast and reliable in home wi fi solution for millions of families like his so everyone can work, learn and play together under one roof. Learn more at ComcastCorporation combination.