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The Sardinian blue zone reveals factors of healthy longevity
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Sardinia is an island 120 miles west of Italy - Getty Images
Dan Buettner had already been a world traveler, long-distance cyclist, and a travel writer, when he decided to explore several regions of the world where living to 100 was the norm. The result of his explorations is his book, “The Blue Zone: Lessons for Living Longer from the People who’ve Lived the Longest.”
Although it is recommended that you read Buettner’s book to fully experience its impact, Sardinia, Italy can act as a model, embodying the major factors of longevity found in the other blue zones.
Buettner found Sardinia thanks to the previous work of an Italian doctor and medical statistician, Gianni Pres, and to Dr. Michel Poulain, a Belgian demographer, who accurately documented the centenarians’ ages (those born between 1880 and 1900) in Sardinia.
Knowing only that there were centenarians in Sardinia, Buettner and his team of translators, set out to find out why these people lived such healthy, vigorous long lives.
Sardinia is an island located 120 miles west of mainland Italy, population 1.6 million. When nations tried to subjugate Sardinians, they took to the mountains, banded together and toughened themselves by strengthening family bonds and social values.
Prosperity came to Sardinia in the late 1940s when The Rockefeller Foundation financed an effort that wiped out malaria, and a post-war economic boom in Italy brought jobs and paved roads. In the town of Barbagia, Sardinia, Buettner interviewed seventeen centenarians, eight men and nine women.
Centenarians in Barbagia are celebrities – calendars in taverns feature a “Centenarian of the Month.” One feisty centenarian, Guiseppe Mura, 102, lives in a 19th century whitewashed home that he shares with his 65-year old daughter, Maria.
The day that Buettner interviewed Guiseppe, his son, Giovanni, stopped in for a visit. Father and son were both dressed in the daily uniform of the Sardinian peasant – shepherd’s caps, wool suit coats, and black boots.
“These men are from America,” Maria shouted in her father’s ear. “They’d like to interview you for National Geographic Magazine.”
“Fine with me,” Guiseppe snapped, “but if they want money, tell them they can go to hell.”
When both Maria and Giovanni burst out laughing at their father’s comment, Buettner learned that a biting sense of humor was characteristically Sardinian.
Buettner discovered that Guiseppe worked steadily his whole life, putting in 16-hour days, first as a farmer and then as a shepherd. His routine rarely varied. He started work at first light, came home, took a nap, and then spent an hour or two in the late afternoon with his friends in the village square. He’d then return to the fields until dark.
Throughout his life, Guiseppe’s diet consisted largely of fava beans, pecorino cheese, bread, and meat as he could afford it, which was rarely in the early days. Maria estimated that her father drank a liter of Sardinian wine every day of his adult life, and more during festivals, when he tended to be the life of the party.
Next: more on the Sardinian blue zone
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