About Those Blue Zones – Watts Up With That?

News Brief by Kip Hansen — 22 January 2025 —  750 words/3 minutes

Here’s the pop science lede:  “Imagine living to be over 100 with literally no health problems. You’re still able to walk around your neighborhood or work in your garden, your memory is in-tact enough to recall your favorite childhood memories, and you’re not taking any medications whatsoever.”

What’s new? 

A new study into the concept of Blue Zones, or regions in which there seems to be a higher percentage of people living to advanced ages,  was first posted to the preprint archive in March 2024  by Saul Justin Newman, a senior research fellow at the University College London Center for Longitudinal Studies.  A full-text copy is available on bioRxiv, The preprint server for biology.  The title of the new paper gives away its content:  Supercentenarian and remarkable age records exhibit patterns indicative of clerical errors and pension fraud.

Dr. Newman received the 2024 Ig Nobel Prize in Demography for his work. 

The subject of Blue Zones became a hit ‘field’ of popular science when a book titled “The Blue Zones: 9 Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who’ve Lived the Longest” was published  in 2012 by  Dan Buettner.  As recently as 2023, Buettner was still working the idea and  co-produced a TV mini-series documentary: Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones.   And, of course, Buettner has made the idea into a business.

And what are those lesson for living longer?

According to our friend Perplexity (moderately useful when she is in her right mind):

“People in Blue Zones live long lives by following habits that promote physical health, mental health, and social connections. These habits include:

Plant-based diet: Eating a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes provides essential nutrients and fiber.

Physical activity: People in Blue Zones incorporate exercise into their daily lives through walking, gardening, and other chores. They also try to stand more and limit time spent in front of screens.

Stress management: People in Blue Zones have developed practices and rituals to reduce the effects of stress.

Moderate alcohol consumption: Drinking alcohol in moderation, especially red wine, can have health benefits.

Sense of purpose: Having a strong sense of purpose can improve quality of life and motivate healthy behavior.

The 80% rule: Eating fewer calories may help with longevity.

Getting enough sleep: Getting good sleep can protect against a variety of health issues.

Building strong connections: People in Blue Zones value building strong connections with others.”

And all of those traits [except “plant based diets” if it is taken to mean eating no meat] are fine ideas and maybe many of us would benefit from incorporating more of them more often in our lives. 

But do the people living in regions classified as so-called Blue Zones actually live exceptionally long lives by keeping those habits?

Not according to Newman:

The following quote is from Newman’s preprint paper.  It is a very thorough deep dive into the demographics of the “Blue Zones” and the claims made for longevity.

“The observation of individuals attaining remarkable ages, and their concentration into geographic sub-regions or ‘blue zones’, has generated considerable scientific interest. Proposed drivers of remarkable longevity include high vegetable intake, strong social connections, and genetic markers.” 

“Here, we reveal new predictors of remarkable longevity and ‘supercentenarian’ status. In the United States supercentenarian status is predicted by the absence of vital registration. In the UK, Italy, Japan, and France remarkable longevity is instead predicted by regional poverty, old-age poverty, material deprivation, low incomes, high crime rates, a remote region of birth, worse health, and fewer 90+ year old people.”   

But, but, but….?

Saul Newman bares all in a 20 January 2025  OpEd in the New York Times titled  “Sorry, No Secret to Life Is Going to Make You Live to 110”. 

The OpEd is well worth your time if you are interested in how decades of seemingly careful science on Blue Zones has led to results which are imaginary or just “wished to be true”.  At 1600 words, it is a seven minutes read.

But, Newman handily sums it up for us with this:

“After years of open criticism, basic problems [of longevity research] remain unexplained. Instead, the science of extreme longevity continues as an immense joke.”

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Author’s Comment:

Most people seems to want to live to advanced ages, and in the news there is one guy who wants to live forever (or at least “not die”).

I have been writing about Nutritional Epidemiology and its efforts to find diets that will make people live longer (or something…).  

The mini-science-field of extreme longevity and Blue Zones operates on those same erroneous methods which attempt to find “the secret to long life”. 

I’m with Newman, as science, it is “an immense joke.”

You may know of other fields  whose Popular Science manifestations are also immense jokes. 

Thanks for reading.

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