Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones is a brief explanation of what Dan Buettner learned from his studies of longevity in areas around the world known for long, healthy lives. Those areas are called blue zones.
In Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones, we travel with Buettner to areas around the globe where blue zones exist. He asked questions about how the people lived and combined what he learned into useful information that could be applied elsewhere.
Most of what he learned are things we’ve known and been told already. Stay active, maintain friendships and family ties, eat less meat and more whole grains, have a good attitude toward life.
In the blue zones, people were forced to live that kind of life by their environments. They grew their own food, took care of their housework, raised animals, cooked with fresh ingredients. Those sorts of places are disappearing in the modern world. Everything is mechanized, packaged, fast.
Our environment no longer supports healthy living.
What Buettner showed was that communities, states, and entire countries had ways to create environments that could be naturally healthy again. A few simple changes and nudges from leaders and governments could mean better food, healthier lifestyles, and longer healthy lives free of disease.
There were myriad examples of how to do this. Here are a few. Make sure every neighborhood had sidewalks leading to the center of town. Make cars exorbitantly expensive while increasing easy access to pubic transportation. Making sure every restaurant offered healthier choices. Limiting the amount of sugar that could go into soft drinks. Building parks and community gathering spaces. Building community gardens. Putting gardens and trees on rooftops. Offering financial incentives to help elder family members live with or close to family. There are others as well.
Just like switching from fossil energy to green energy is possible with the right steps, switching from unhealthy environments to healthy ones is entirely possible with the proper will and incentives.
I hope everyone will watch this 4 part series on Netflix. It’s so simple and obvious how lives could be better and healthier. If we know the steps and agree it’s a worthy goal, we can make it happen.