Show Notes
Okinawa is one of the world's 'Blue Zones', areas in which people live unusually long lives... or so we've heard. It's even been described as the 'land of the immortals'.
In this first episode of Blue Zones: Revisited, we ask just how unusual Okinawa's population really is, consider whether purple sweet potatoes might be the secret to a long life, and take seriously the advice of 99-year-old Fumi Chinen who says 'if anyone ever gives you something and tells you it's healthy, don't eat it.'
Further Reading:
Calorie consumption in Afghanistan
Adult BMI in Japan's 47 prefectures
Middle-aged and elderly hikikomori
Support for aging hikikomori
Ikigai and retirement
Elderly population of Fukushima
Fukushima population statistics
Last Fukushima town reopens
World record centenarian beauty adviser
Elderly population of Chernobyl
Exceptional Longevity in Okinawa: A plea for in-depth validation
Declining Longevity Advantage in Okinawa
More from Blue Zones: Revisited
After visiting Blue Zones all over the world, today, we're visiting our home country, Australia. Not because Australia has been declared a secret seventh Blue Zone, but because, months after the first six episodes of this podcast dropped, an Australian researcher, Saul J. Newman, has been awarded an Ig Nobel Prize... for debunking the Blue Zones phenomenon.
Singapore is Live to 100's evidence that a Blue Zones approach can work in a modern city-state. But just how well does Singapore meet the Blue Zones definition - and, after exploring six different 'Blue Zones', three of which do not contain higher-than-average concentrations of centenarians, one of which was based on faulty data, and one of which isn't even a geographical zone, what does this phrase even mean? Furthermore, how well can these lessons be applied to completely different countries, cultures, and climates?
Nicoya, Costa Rica is, according to Dan Buettner, home to the 'most extraordinary centenarians on the planet'. One which, for many years, he contends, went unnoticed because researchers couldn't believe the residents of 'such a poor country' could possibly live past 80, let alone 100.
Ikaria, Greece might not have gotten a big feature in the first edition of the Blue Zones book, but it certainly made a splash in the second edition - and the Live to 100 Netflix series. After all, who doesn't associate the beautiful blue Mediterranean sea and sky with a healthy lifestyle?
Loma Linda, California is the long-awaited American Blue Zone... or is it? Not only does it turn out to be not so 'blue' (we don't see a single centenarian), but it's not even really a 'zone' - at least in a geographical sense.