You might recall this time last year I visited the Blue Zone in Ikaria, where people live a ludicrously long time. No? Well, I spent six weeks on the rugged Greek island with National Geographic, looking at various factors contributing to their abnormal longevity.
To refresh, I found that pork, wine, walking and eating no sugar all play a role. Now, to complete a bit of a circle, I’ve just left Italian island Sardinia, another of the five Blue Zones (the others are Okinawa in Japan, Nicoya in Costa Rica and Loma Linda in CA) and I’m trying to form a picture of what might be contributing to this freaky phenomenon.
Cop this: on an island of about 1.6 million people, 371 (as of last year) are over the age of 100. It’s accepted as a “thing” that islanders have an expression: A Chent’Annos (“May you live to 100”). I should highlight, though, that the phenomenon here applies in particular to men. Yes! Weirder, still!
Having spoken to a bunch of people in the past three weeks of travelling across the island, including through the isolated and largely unvisited interior where most of the centenarians live, I’ve ascertained a few factors. Pretty much all of them are things I bang on about here on this blog as general wellness advice.
Hills.
Sardinia is rugged and mountainous, as is Ikaria. This has meant to get anywhere the locals – mostly shepherds who had to wander after their stock all day – had to hike. Not just walk, but hike, which adds an extra dimension of robustness to things. I posted my thoughts on hiking and healing yesterday.
The wind.
One Sardinian academic believes the wind adds a certain element to the air here. They also attribute the long-living tendencies to the magnetic fields on the island. Everywhere I went folk mentioned the “energy” of the