What We Can Learn About Relationships from the Blue Zones

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Read time: 6 minutes

Today at a glance:

• Topic: Why people in blue zones live longer

• Tactic: Live closer to your loved ones

• Quote on who to surround yourself with

• Today's Finds: 📺, 🎞, 📰

• Commitments: 🤝

These days, the two things that come to mind when trying to live a longer life are probably diet and exercise. (Unless you’re one of those wellness influencers that firmly believes in drinking breast milk). 

It's why people….

1. Cycle through every diet fad from Atkins to Paleo to Keto to intermittent fasting.

2. Pair it with whatever the "in" workout is dating back to Aerobics with Jane Fonda to shake weights to CrossFit to joining whichever fitness cult class you subscribe to today (my current favorite is Conbody).

3. Create anti-aging companies like Blueprint where the CEO, Bryan Johnson, has an actual age of 46 but a biological age in his early 20s—through a $2 million workout and diet routine, of course.

But the truth is, even the absolute perfect diet and workout routine won’t necessarily increase how long you live on its own—nor does it have the biggest impact on longevity.

Relationships and our sense of purpose actually does. We know this because of the blue zones—the regions in the world where people live consistently longer lives than the typical life expectancy. These are the homes to the highest concentration of centenarians (people living over 100).

Dan Buettner has studied these blue zones deeply and what he's found are a unique set of similarities in each. Despite these regions being located in dramatically different locations, each had the following:

When each of these was studied for lowering mortality risk, relationships (romantic, friends, connection to community) surprisingly had the largest impact:

• Diet: 30% reduction

• Exercise: 20-40% reduction

• Relationships: 45-50% reduction

So let's understand how people in blue zones are fostering a deeper sense of connectedness resulting in longer lives, and how we can make changes to do the same.

Why People in Blue Zones Live Longer

I’ll be focusing on the relationship side of things, but I’ll also link to more info so you can learn about the diets, exercises, and other habits that promote long living in the blue zones.

• Okinawa, Japan: Worlds longest living women

• Sardinia, Italy: World's longest living men

• Loma Linda, California: A group of Americans living 10 years longer

• Nicoya, Costa Rica: Where biological age can be 10 years less than actual age

• Ikaria, Greece: The island where people forget to die

Okinawa, Japan

Outside of having the longest living women on the planet, some unique attributes of Okinwans are that they have lower rates of cancer, heart disease, and dementia than Americans. 

Beyond a strong dedication to family and friends, Okinawans pair together in social groups called “moai.” These are lifelong circles of friends that support each other into old age. Each moai contributes financially to a shared bucket in case someone falls ill. Beyond that, this moai provides both emotional support during difficult times and social activities like dancing, chatting, and singing together often. All of this helps people in these groups know there is always someone there for them.

Sardinia, Italy

Sardinia has both the longest living men and nearly 10x more centenarians per capita than America.

People here have such a strong sense of putting family first (both living nearby and caring for each other into old age), that there are no nursing homes in the blue zone regions. Time is often spent side by side cooking, eating, walking, attending church or doing other activities they enjoy. Overall, the families suffer lower rates of depression, suicide, and stress.

Beyond families, it’s a ritual for people in the community to gather in the street or at cafe’s each afternoon to laugh and tell stories. It creates a natural third place where people have a sense of community.

Loma Linda, California

This is the only blue zone in America and the people often live ~10 years longer than the rest of the country. Many of the members here are part of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church where a sense of family and camaraderie are heavily emphasized. 

The community, formed around church, creates consistent social connections through weekly activities like pickleball, volunteering and their 24 hour sabbath on Saturday’s which prioritizes spending time with family and camaraderie with others in the community.

Nicoya, Costa Rica

While average income is amongst the nation’s lowest, lifespan is amongst the world’s highest. It’s even common to find biological age being 10 years younger than actual age would suggest in Nicoya.

The sense of family and neighborhood is extremely high in Nicoya. Centenarians are known to live with their families for their entire lives (children, grandchildren, etc.) who provide support as well as a sense of purpose. Beyond that, neighbors often check in on one another and spend time daily to chat, listen, and laugh. 

Ikaria, Greece

Ikaria is a very isolated island which forced a strong sense of community amongst its inhabitants. It’s why friends and family are an obvious priority, and people feel very socially connected to all others in the community.

It’s common for the community to come together for Panagiria, which are local feasts that turn into all night parties where people from age 14 to 90 are coming together to connect, dance, laugh and have fun.

You may be overwhelmed by all of this information wondering, well I can’t pick up my life and move to a Blue Zone—am I going to die young?

Well, while all of this is not directly applicable to us, we can still learn from this by improving our social connectedness, knowing now the impact it can have on our longevity.

Two of my biggest takeaways are:

1. Longevity can be joyous. It doesn’t have to feel like a chore, which can quickly become the case when trying the different fad diets and exercise routines. Although these are still a very important part of living longer!

2. Finding your community and making activities with them a consistent part of your routine for a long time plays a huge impact on our longevity. 

There are certain ways we can begin to replicate this in our daily lives.

Tactic: Live Closer to Your Loved Ones

1. Move closer to people that matter

I’m not telling you to uproot your current situation this second, but it should be a major consideration whenever you are making a move—to a new city or within your current one. There are obviously certain constraints out of our control, but the impact of living near happy friends, siblings or family are shockingly positive. Studies show living within one mile of them increases your probability of being happy by 25%. 

In fact, this was a difficult but rewarding choice that I experienced personally. From 2017-2019, I was living in Charlotte, North Carolina for the first time. I made many close friends but lived far away from my girlfriend, immediate family and extended family in New York. While living in Charlotte, I sacrificed around 9 out of 10 of the frequent little and big moments my loved ones would have regularly—anniversaries, family gatherings, birthdays, new cousins being born. Moving back to NYC in 2019 impacted me in a way I couldn’t have imagined. I lived with my girlfriend and we were 40 minutes from both our immediate and extended families. Overnight, I 10x’d the experiences I got to share with them and the ripple effects have been less drinking, more focus on health, and an overall happier life. I don’t think I can ever move again as a result (but in the best way possible!).

2. Set recurring get-togethers for your group

When I first moved back to NYC, a group of six of my friends from college wanted to figure out how to see each other more regularly while balancing busy jobs. We decided to each take turns organizing a dinner every two weeks. Each time a different person would have to figure out availability, pick a spot, and bring everyone together. It was a great way to split the effort of organizing while ensuring we spent time together regularly.

There are thousands of variations of this. So find your group, figure out a few common interests, and start getting things on the calendar.

Quote on Who to Surround Yourself With

Today's Finds:

📺 Live to 100 - Secrets of the Blue Zones (2.5 hour Netflix limited series): If you found the concept of blue zones interesting and want to dive deeper into the other lifestyle habits that impact how long we live, I highly recommend this four part series.

📰 The Tail End by Tim Urban (5 min read): Famous article from Tim Urban where he shows the human lifespan visually based on how many “X” we have left (months, years, Superbowls, winters, etc.) It emphasizes why living in the same place as the people you love matters (largely because of how much additional time and experiences you get to spend with them).

🎞 1 minute Instagram Reel showing a convo between Dan Buettner (blue zones expert) and Simon Sinek on how happiness starts with friends, the amount of hours that happy people are connecting socially per day, and its impact on longevity ⬇

simonsinek

View more on Instagram

Best of luck building,

Devin