Researchers have always been fastinated with the longevity of the Blue Zones, areas around the world with a high percentage of people over 90 years old or even even 100 years old.
They consider these areas to be the Living Labs on Longevity.
In his book called The Blue Zones, Dan Buettner identified 5 Blue Zones:
- (a) Icaria, an island in Greece
- (b) Sardinia in Italy
- (c) Okinawa in Japan
- (d) Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica
- (e) Loma Linda in California
Dan Buettner also came to the conclusion that the longevity of the people in the Blue Zones is because of 9 factors which he named the Blue Zone Power 9 (Refer to the diagram below)
This article focuses on the category "Move naturally" at the bottom of the circle in the diagram above.
Refer to the following parts for further explanation of the Blue Zone Power 9: Part 1 - "Connect" (Social interaction)
Part 2 - "Down shift"
Part 3 - "Purpose"
("Down shift" and "Purpose" are unter the category "Right Outlook")
For this article, we are focusing on 2 areas in the Blue Zones. Each of these 2 areas has it's own reason that cause it's people to "move naturally" contributing to their longevity. These two areas are Sardinia in Italy and Icaria in Greece.
1. Sardinia - mountainous / steepness of the region
(a) The secret to Sardinians' long life is the subject of study of a project called AKeA - an acronym for "A kent' annos," a traditional toast in the Sardinian culture that means "May you live to be 100 years."
The leading researcher, Luca Deiana from the University of Sassari in northwest Sardinia, found that genetics play a key role, observing that it is generally in the central-eastern mountainous region that longevity is most common.
Here's the map of Sardinia, showing how mountainous the region is.
As you can see, Sardinia is indeed a mountainous region with some areas reaching more than 1000m (1 km) high!
Here are some pictures of the mountains:
The people in Sardinia actually have to carry out their livelihood in the mountainous area, rearing sheep and other animals and planting crops
That's the secret to longevity in Sardinia. The people of Sardinia do not conciously exercise. They exercise when they carry out their daily activities and work.
(b) Of course you cannot move to Sardinia in order to be healthy.
Here are some activities you can carried out to "move more" :
(i) Hiking
(ii) Walking
(iii) Gardening
(iv) Bicycling
2. Icaria (or Ikaria) - dancing & laughing
(a) For Sardinia, it's the steep mountainous nature of the land that force the people to
move more.
How about Icaria? What causes the Icaria people to move more contributing to their longevity?
The photos below show the activities of the Icaria people during their leisure time.
As you can see, they are exercising when enjoying themselves - dancing, laughing, playing and listening to music.
Like the people of Sardinia, the people of Icaria do not conciously exercise by going to the gym or walking.
Exercise is normally associated with effort - no pain, no gain. However for the people of Icaria they exercise when they carry out the recreational activities like dancing.
In other words, they are burning calories, reducing stress and getting the release of happy hormones (dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin and endophin) in the fun way.
All of the above benefits contribute to their longevity
(b) How about us not in Icaria? We can try to carry out physical activities involving "moving" that we enjoy like joining dancing clubs.
Kevin Wong is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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