At 63 years old, American journalist and producer Dan Buettner boasts of leading a healthy and balanced life. And he attributes it to the teachings of people who live in the oldest areas of the world. “They are inspiring people,” this explorer and member of National Geographic tells La Vanguardia from Miami in this Zoom interview. Buettner has been getting to know them in recent years as part of the research of his blue zones project, five points on the planet that have people who live longer and in good health than the average life expectancy of their country and many of them become centenarians.
Almost a dozen books have been born from his work - The Secret of the Blue Zones (Grijalbo) has been translated into Spanish - and a television series broadcast by Netflix, Living 100 Years: The Secrets of the Blue Zones. For years, Buettner has been advising cities to apply the principles of fostering social relationships, living in walkable communities, and keeping the mind busy and the body active to achieve increased life expectancy. To live longer, the important thing, concludes Dan Buettner, is that we learn to make the activities that promote longevity spontaneous and that we live in an environment conducive to this type of life, like the Sardinians of the Ogliastra region, who climb and They go down the steep streets of the town and with this they stay in shape.
You are one of the people who knows the most about longevity in the world.
Of some aspects of longevity, but not of the branches that study genetics and biology. My thing is to identify how certain communities manage to live as long as possible and understand what they do and what they have done over time.
And how did you become interested in the subject?
Well, I owned a company that was dedicated to solving ancient mysteries and in 1999 I read a report from the World Health Organization that said that Okinawa, Japan, had the highest life expectancy in the world and I thought that knowing why was a good mystery to solve. I went to Okinawa and that's how it all started, and since then it has become a passion.
What has changed in your life after these experiences with long-lived people?
I have become a vegetarian, I rarely eat processed food, and I abandoned sports competition and intense training, even though I was a cycling ultra-marathon runner and held three world records. Now I ride a bicycle to go shopping at the grocery store, as a way to get around, I take walks on foot, and I have also discovered the enormous power of social interactions when trying to add years to life. I spend several hours a day socializing with friends, something that at first seemed like a marginal factor, and now I see it as an essential ingredient in the recipe for a long life.
So your research has had a big impact on your lifestyle?
Yes, I am 63 years old and I am very healthy, I have a normal weight, my arteries are immaculate according to my doctor, I have no hypertension problems, as far as I know I do not have any disease, and I try to live the same way as the people I have studied in the last 20 years.
What are the keys to living longer, according to what you have seen in the blue zones?
In my opinion there is no magic recipe. It's about making small improvements in your life and applying them for years and decades. And I have also come to the conclusion that trying to pursue health and longevity through diets or exercise programs ends in failure the vast majority of the time. This Western idea of pursuing happiness fails: what works is that you transform your environment, that you adopt healthier behaviors. People say, 'hey, I'm getting fat,' and they decide to run, change their diet and eat more vegetables, but 98% fail in less than a year. On the other hand, in blue zones people eat correctly, move all at the same time and socialize, and they do so not consciously but because their behaviors are in line with their environment.
Isn't it necessary to go to the gym or be rich?
Life expectancy in Spain is three or four years higher than that of the United States and I have lived in Seville, Córdoba and Andújar and their lifestyle fit perfectly with that of the blue zones because until recently people went walking everywhere, to the supermarket, to their favorite cafe... they took a nap, they went out and met their friends, they socialized and spent a lot of time talking... the predominant diet was the Mediterranean, which we all know is highly advisable. But the American diet and lifestyle arrived... Spain has the skeleton of a blue zone, it is a very advisable type of environment for a blue zone, if it is able to maintain the Spanish lifestyle that was predominant before the 90's and which has begun to be lost in recent decades.
Why didn't you choose blue zones in Spain?
Look, I know the Alpujarras and it is a region very similar to the five blue zones, in fact, we could go to many places in Spain and find similar stories, but when it came to writing the book and making the Netflix series we had limitations on the number of places we could visit and we selected those where we found extraordinary stories. But there are certainly several areas in Spain that could be blue zones.
Do you know that the oldest person in the world today, Maria Branyas, is Catalan and 116 years old?
Yes, I had found out. It's from a rural area of Spain, right?
He lives in a city of 36,000 inhabitants called Olot, an hour and a half from Barcelona.
Well, she is one case in a million. To be more exact, one in every hundred million. That lady belongs to a type of people who benefits from a certain 'genetic lottery'. She is partly a result of the Spanish lifestyle, but she also has superior genes for longevity. In reality, if you have good genes and do things well, she can aspire to live 95 years... if you don't smoke, if you don't gain weight, if you don't eat a lot of 'ham' or lard, unhealthy things. Being centenarians is a genetic dream for a huge part of the population.
In the series some centenarians speak, but the majority are octogenarians or nonagenarians
People over 100 years of age have a lot of fascination, but the important thing is that they are sources of inspiration. Journalists ask about centenarian people and their secret, but that is not the right way to approach the topic. The right way is to find a population that is capable of producing more centenarians, that is capable of promoting more life expectancy, that has fewer older adults with age disabilities, and find out what that population does. You kiss a lot of frogs until you find the princesses but when you find them, thus, by telling the story of those people, you are actually explaining the history of that population.
Is living more about keeping your mind busy and your body active?
Yes, it is a good summary, but the what is not as relevant as the how. People know that they have to be active, but if they have to propose it, they will fail. The important thing is how you are going to be active, it is not about going to the gym, but that you live in a walkable community, it is about having friends whose idea of leisure is something active, it is about, if you can afford it, cultivating and take care of a garden, which in Spain you can do all year round, all those activities that are done without realizing it are the ones that are worth it.
Should it be a pleasure and not an obligation?
That helps, of course. Above all, healthy food should be a pleasure. But the decisive thing is that we must act without realizing that we are doing it. People who live in blue zones get active every twenty minutes not because they intend to but because they walk everywhere, they work taking care of their garden, they do household chores. They don't even think they have to be active! And that should not be a problem for the Spanish. The problem is that more and more are looking towards the American lifestyle model. And it turns out that in the United States 75% of people are obese or overweight, and they move, we move by car.
A mission in life is also important, it is deduced from watching the series.
Yes, a lot, in Japan they call it ikigai and in Costa Rica they call it a life plan. To live long you have to have a clear idea of where we are going, no one achieves a long life without a purpose. And people who have a plan in life are more likely to eat well. And to live longer, partly also because they do not suffer the stress of waking up every day and feeling that your life does not have much meaning.
What is the most surprising or wonderful thing you have seen on your trips to the blue zones?
Probably, eating healthy is cheap. In the United States we usually think, when we talk about eating healthy, that many people cannot afford it, and that is why it was a surprise to discover that the main ingredients in the diets of the places where people live the most are beans, rice, vegetables, corn, sweet potatoes…cheap food really. And that carbohydrate diet is what works for those communities.
And it also talks about the presence of wine.
I am not going to be the one to question the research that says that alcohol is unhealthy at any level of intake, but I can assure you one thing and that is that people who live in the blue zones drink and that in the Mediterranean more than 80 % of people who reach the age of ninety or older say they drink a glass of red wine every day.
