Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you
Speaker 2: should know. Our episode on blue zones, which is not well,
Speaker 2: we'll explain it. It's not immediately apparent what we're talking about.
Speaker 2: You have to kind of know the ins and outs.
Speaker 2: And I think that's kind of what we're going to
Speaker 2: do here, is explain the ins and outs of blue zones.
Speaker 2: No why I said all that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, I mean I'll just go until people right
Speaker 1: off the bat that a blue zone is supposedly an
Speaker 1: area on planet Earth where people they have an extraordinary
Speaker 1: amount or higher than average amount rather of people that
Speaker 1: live to be one hundred years old.
Speaker 2: Well, there you go. Now you know the ins and
Speaker 2: outs of blue zones everybody.
Speaker 1: But the story behind blue zones is what's super interesting.
Speaker 1: I think it started well, we're going to jump back
Speaker 1: to the seventies at one point, but it started out
Speaker 1: basically in two thousand and four when there was a
Speaker 1: paper that came out they said, hey, there's a large
Speaker 1: number of centenarians, people that live to be one hundred
Speaker 1: at least in a small area in the mountains of Sardinia, Italy,
Speaker 1: and the author of the papers shaded it blue on
Speaker 1: a map called it a blue zone. And then in
Speaker 1: two thousand and five it really picked up steam because
Speaker 1: there was a national geographic reporter named Dan Butner who
Speaker 1: wrote an article called the Secrets of Long Life in
Speaker 1: which he talked about Sardinia and his own finding of Okinawa,
Speaker 1: Japan and Loma Linda, California, his two more blue zones,
Speaker 1: and was like, Hey, what's going on here? We got
Speaker 1: to figure this out because people there are living longer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the whole premise was, Hey, don't you want
Speaker 2: to live longer? Let's find out what these people's secrets are,
Speaker 2: because clearly, if there's a bunch of them clustered together,
Speaker 2: that means they're all doing something similarly. So let's get
Speaker 2: to the bottom of this everybody.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And the way that he put it, what if I said,
Speaker 2: you could add up to ten years of your life.
Speaker 2: A long healthy life is no accident. It begins with
Speaker 2: good genes, but it also depends on good habits.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean I think everyone agrees with that generally.
Speaker 2: Sure, But one of the reasons why it does seem
Speaker 2: like there's a set of habits that you can engage in,
Speaker 2: from the Mediterranean lifestyle or the Mediterranean diet to getting
Speaker 2: out there and walking every day. A large part of
Speaker 2: that is based on how popular the concept of blue
Speaker 2: Zones became. And you can thank Dan Buttener I believe
Speaker 2: his last name was Butner, like he just blew the
Speaker 2: whole thing up and is I don't want to say
Speaker 2: single handedly, because there are definitely people working behind the scenes,
Speaker 2: but he's the one who made it, who introduced it
Speaker 2: to popular.
Speaker 1: Culture, Yeah, for sure. And sort of off the jump here,
Speaker 1: I want to talk one second about a side article
Speaker 1: I read in Times recently, because one of the things
Speaker 1: that you're going to hear talk about or us talk
Speaker 1: about him talking about, is one of the things you
Speaker 1: can do to live longer, supposedly is tight social networks.
Speaker 1: I just read a New York Times article last week
Speaker 1: about superagers, and it's not necessarily people that live to
Speaker 1: be one hundred. That's what blue Zones is talking about,
Speaker 1: but it's just people that live into their eighties and
Speaker 1: nineties without getting dementia. And it was a pretty robust study.
Speaker 1: They had a large cohort over like twenty five years,
Speaker 1: and they said some of them drink booze every day.
Speaker 1: Some of them there have been smokers. Some of them
Speaker 1: eat a lot of red meat. They said. The one
Speaker 1: single thing that they found in common with all of
Speaker 1: them was social relationships. Active social relationships with people outside
Speaker 1: of your house and going out and seeing people. They
Speaker 1: said they tend to be extroverts, so people that go
Speaker 1: out and socialize with other people was the one commonality
Speaker 1: between all of them.
Speaker 2: That sucks. Oh no, I'm in big trouble man. We
Speaker 2: got to get you out, buddy, So I'm gonna have
Speaker 2: to update my wardrobe.
Speaker 1: You're like eating fish and olive oil and walking every day.
Speaker 2: Doing everything else.
Speaker 1: I just don't want to talk to anyone, but yeah,
Speaker 1: and momo.
Speaker 2: I'd put my hand up by my face when I
Speaker 2: walk past somebody when I'm out walking every day.
Speaker 1: I thought it was really interesting because you know, most
Speaker 1: of us in our gen X category are dealing with
Speaker 1: aging parents, and I feel like everyone I know is
Speaker 1: going through it in some capacity. So I'm just reading
Speaker 1: a lot about that stuff lately.
Speaker 2: Oh that's nice of you. Yeah, prepping yourself.
Speaker 1: Prepping myself, so I don't do this to Ruby.
Speaker 2: Nice, you know nice. So yeah, tight social network site
Speaker 2: is a big one as far as the blue zones
Speaker 2: are concerned, and I guess that's the only one that
Speaker 2: really matters. But they have other stuff too, like you
Speaker 2: need to have a sense of purpose. Anecdotally, I know
Speaker 2: that makes sense because a lot of people I don't
Speaker 2: know if a lot's the right term, but there are
Speaker 2: definitely people who die very shortly after retiring. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: in the United States, your job in a lot of
Speaker 2: cases is your identity and your purpose in life. People
Speaker 2: are like family forget that accounting is my purpose in life,
Speaker 2: and then once they retire, they don't have any numbers
Speaker 2: to crunch and they keel over dead. So that I mean, anecdotally,
Speaker 2: it definitely makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. But this nat Geo article that Butner
Speaker 1: wrote went viral. Buttner was basically like, Hey, this is
Speaker 1: it for me. He did a Ted talk and has
Speaker 1: developed quite a robust cottage industry around blue zones. He's
Speaker 1: written in a lot of books. He's written blue Zone cookbooks,
Speaker 1: There's been a blue Zone Netflix series, there are blue
Speaker 1: Zone branded like he copyrighted the term blue zone or
Speaker 1: trademarked it rather, and there are skincare products and iced teas,
Speaker 1: and there's hot sauces, and you can do a Blue
Speaker 1: Zone retreat or pay monthly for a Blue Zone app.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of stuff that he's selling.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. He basically blew it up into a
Speaker 2: lifestyle brand.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is one reason some people have come along
Speaker 1: and criticized it and said, wait a minute, is this
Speaker 1: like real science and real research or is this just
Speaker 1: creating a brand and making money. I mean, not with
Speaker 1: maybe nefarious intent or anything, but like, let's look at
Speaker 1: the science. And a big person that you're going to
Speaker 1: hear come up a lot in this is a guy
Speaker 1: named Saul Justin Newman, and in twenty nineteen he put
Speaker 1: out a statement basically that said, hey, I think this
Speaker 1: is all just bad data.
Speaker 2: Yeah. He wrote a paper on it essentially.
Speaker 1: That yeah, like bad record keeping on ages.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And this is not new. The idea of superagers
Speaker 2: or centenarians, especially once clustered together, has been long controversial.
Speaker 2: Anytime somebody's come along and been like, hey, we found
Speaker 2: a bunch of people that are living to their hundreds.
Speaker 2: Let's look at what they're doing. So the rest of
Speaker 2: us can do that too. But back in nineteen seventy three,
Speaker 2: there was a guy named Alexander Leif. He was a physician,
Speaker 2: and he got kind of caught up in this whole thing,
Speaker 2: just trying to figure it out, and he wrote an
Speaker 2: article for National Geographic, just like Dan Butner did in
Speaker 2: two thousand and four, but this is in nineteen seventy three,
Speaker 2: and he went to different parts of the world and
Speaker 2: where there were anecdotally, I guess, a bunch of centenarians
Speaker 2: living and he investigated it and he found, yes, there
Speaker 2: are some groups of people around the world who have
Speaker 2: some sort of secret to aging late in life because
Speaker 2: there's a bunch of hundred plus year olds who live
Speaker 2: in these usually isolated areas.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but he himself, in credit to Alexander leaf, he
Speaker 1: was like, you know what this all like? Even this
Speaker 1: was after the article was published. He didn't just like
Speaker 1: sit back and collect his million dollars and say, hell,
Speaker 1: I guess that's that. He was like, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: this like some of this stuff is nagging at me
Speaker 1: and doesn't seem to make much sense. So he kind
Speaker 1: of went back on his own research even and started
Speaker 1: looking through these records basically, and he in one case,
Speaker 1: he saw a death certificate of a man who was
Speaker 1: allegedly one hundred and sixty eight years old, and he
Speaker 1: was like, that's pushing it, I feel.
Speaker 2: Like for sure.
Speaker 1: And in another area he met a villager who claimed
Speaker 1: to be one hundred and twenty two. He went back
Speaker 1: a year later and the guy said he was one
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty four, So he was like, all right.
Speaker 1: Five years later, in nineteen seventy eight, he partnered with
Speaker 1: a couple of other scientists to sort of get down
Speaker 1: to the bottom of it all and dug through records
Speaker 1: in these places and found a lot of like discrepancies
Speaker 1: where people were off by decades on their actual age,
Speaker 1: and they reckon that, like, I think they're doing this
Speaker 1: because it brings them a lot of prestige. Instead of
Speaker 1: being like eighty something years old, they say they're one
Speaker 1: hundred and five, and all of a sudden, they're like
Speaker 1: the village elder, you.
Speaker 2: Know, right exactly, but a fraudulent village elder. So essentially
Speaker 2: what happened was an outsider, a Westerner got tripped up
Speaker 2: into what is probably some a custom in the area.
Speaker 2: It's like that people just kind of inflate their ages
Speaker 2: and the like. People like Alexander Leaf are obsessed with
Speaker 2: finding out exactly how that happens and not stopping to
Speaker 2: be like, I don't know if this is actually real,
Speaker 2: but yeah, hats off to Alexander Leaf for going back
Speaker 2: on his own findings and admitting, like, now, this is
Speaker 2: probably not right because they concluded without a doubt that
Speaker 2: the Ecuadorians in this village of bil Cabamba were fraudulent. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and he's like, I'm sure that also applies to the
Speaker 2: other places too, So everybody just forget the article I wrote.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's a again, hats off, because that's
Speaker 1: to put your own name out there as like, hey,
Speaker 1: I got it wrong, Like I don't know if I
Speaker 1: would have done it.
Speaker 2: You don't think So we do that all the time.
Speaker 1: Oh well that's a good point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we correct ourselves.
Speaker 1: So we're going to introduce you to a couple of
Speaker 1: more people that factor in pretty heavily here. In nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety nine, there was an Italian researcher named Giovanni Pisses
Speaker 1: never heard that last name. He presented a paper at
Speaker 1: a demography conference, and then there was a why Is
Speaker 1: that funny? Is it? Demography conferences?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Party central?
Speaker 2: Yeah. I can imagine somebody going what segment of the
Speaker 2: population here is ready to party?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Or I wonder if they just stand around at
Speaker 1: break and look out on the street and they're like,
Speaker 1: how many people you think are over there on that sidewink?
Speaker 2: People are smoking Marlboro lights.
Speaker 1: So in that audience though, where Giovanni Pess was presenting
Speaker 1: a paper, there was a guy named another demographer, obviously
Speaker 1: named Michael pournin French guy, and he had recalled this
Speaker 1: fiasco in the early seventies, and he was like, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, he's talking about Sardinia, Italy that you know,
Speaker 1: originally the area where Butner wrote the article. Turns out
Speaker 1: Butner wrote the article about this research on Sardinia that
Speaker 1: Giovanni Pest had done.
Speaker 2: Yes, So if it's very easy to just assume that
Speaker 2: Dan Butner came along and either piggybacked on Pess and
Speaker 2: Poulaine's research or kind of invited himself into their little party,
Speaker 2: he was actually already looking into this, Like I think
Speaker 2: as far back as ninety nine he had set up
Speaker 2: a project to investigate how Okinawan's who are widely reputed
Speaker 2: for living into their hundreds, and we should say healthy,
Speaker 2: not like decrepit old balls of yarn, like healthy people
Speaker 2: who still move around and do stuff on a daily basis.
Speaker 2: How they were doing that so long before Pez and
Speaker 2: Poulain put their stuff together, I guess about the same time.
Speaker 2: But independently, Buttner was doing his own thing too, So
Speaker 2: he didn't just come along and steal their their idea
Speaker 2: or their research.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And as you'll see, they worked together
Speaker 1: for quite a while after this too. But so Pooland
Speaker 1: remembered the thing from the seventies and he was like,
Speaker 1: all right, I'm gonna go to Sardinia myself and sort
Speaker 1: of dig into this. So he did that, started started
Speaker 1: cross checking birth records and marriage records and anything he
Speaker 1: could get from archives, you know, in the town or
Speaker 1: from the church or whatever. And they are the ones
Speaker 1: they put x's when they clustered, they shaded it blue.
Speaker 1: And they're the ones Polan and Pass in two thousand
Speaker 1: that coined the term blue zone, even though I guess
Speaker 1: Butner trademarked it. So I don't know. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: what happened there.
Speaker 2: I couldn't find anything about Polan or Pezz's reaction to
Speaker 2: him trademarking that.
Speaker 1: I wonder if it was he did.
Speaker 2: But so, yeah, it's like all the exes. Whenever they
Speaker 2: confirmed somebody, they started to cluster so much that it
Speaker 2: just became a blue region. And so so now Dan
Speaker 2: Buttner had a name for this idea, this concept that
Speaker 2: he'd been working on for years, and he yeah, he
Speaker 2: took it and ran with it and turned it into
Speaker 2: that lifestyle brand. Pez and Poulaine Essentially we're like, Okay,
Speaker 2: that's fine, We're going to stay academic here and try
Speaker 2: to keep studying this, and Bututner would kind of come
Speaker 2: in and out of their research over the next couple decades.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And the key thing as far as the original
Speaker 1: three places in Buttner's article, like you mentioned, he had
Speaker 1: already studied Okinawa, he picked up on what Pulin and
Speaker 1: Pez were doing with sardinia. But Loma Linda, California is
Speaker 1: in there, and everyone was like, what the heck is
Speaker 1: Loma Linda got going on? And just last year Buttner
Speaker 1: told The New York Times that Lobolina was apparently included
Speaker 1: because the editor at nat GEO said, we got to
Speaker 1: get an American blue zone in there, like this needs
Speaker 1: to be I know, it needs to be like applicable
Speaker 1: to our readers here. So a lot of critics, of course,
Speaker 1: are going to come out and say, like, that's that
Speaker 1: just kind of that's not science.
Speaker 2: No, you don't like editors don't dictate scientific methods or results, right,
Speaker 2: So yeah, that's a big criticism. But and I think
Speaker 2: also like I haven't seen anything that says Poulaine or
Speaker 2: Pez are irritated by or just like Buttener or anything
Speaker 2: like that. But just looking at the whole thing thing
Speaker 2: from the outside, Butner just keeps attracting just you know,
Speaker 2: contradiction or naysayer after naysayer, and Plan and Pesz are like, dude,
Speaker 2: we're doing like real science over here, Like stop giving
Speaker 2: our work a bad name because you're out there selling
Speaker 2: Low Melinda because your editor told you to put it
Speaker 2: into the original article.
Speaker 1: Or selling hot sauce.
Speaker 2: Yeah, selling hot sauce is another great one. But so
Speaker 2: in I guess his defense, Buttner said, well, actually, Low Melenda,
Speaker 2: statistically speaking, people there tend to live anywhere between I
Speaker 2: think four to ten years more than the average California resident.
Speaker 2: And there's actually a really good reason for that. There's
Speaker 2: a huge cluster of Seventh Day Adventists there, and you'll
Speaker 2: remember from our Kellogg Live episode on the Kellogg Brothers,
Speaker 2: the Seventh Day Adventists kind of inspired them than their
Speaker 2: health food movement. They don't tend to smoke or drink
Speaker 2: or eat meat, and so he was like, that's great,
Speaker 2: We're going to include them in there. So it's not
Speaker 2: like he just threw a dart like the Bay City
Speaker 2: Rollers and picked whatever city that it landed on, like
Speaker 2: there was a reason why. And it turned out to
Speaker 2: be a pretty good business move because five years ago,
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty, Adventist Health, which is a essentially the
Speaker 2: hospital arm of the Seventh Day Adventists, they bought the
Speaker 2: Blue Zone trademarks and all of the brand. They now
Speaker 2: own it the Adventists.
Speaker 1: Very interesting, all right, I'm going to ponder that. Let's
Speaker 1: take a break and we'll come back and talk more
Speaker 1: about Blue Zones.
Speaker 2: So Chuck, like I said, Butener and Pess and Puline
Speaker 2: all started working together in the early two thousands, and
Speaker 2: Buttener was funded by National Geographic. He was a fellow
Speaker 2: for them, I think even before he wrote the article
Speaker 2: for National Geographic but they started funding expeditions to look
Speaker 2: for more blue zones, and in the mid two thousands
Speaker 2: the aughts, I guess they identified two more, one in
Speaker 2: Costa Rica on the Nikoya Peninsula and another one in Akaria, Greece,
Speaker 2: which is between Greece and Turkey. It's the island between
Speaker 2: Greece and Turkey. It looks absolutely amazingly beautiful. But they
Speaker 2: added them too. There they because they went and studied
Speaker 2: the centenarians and said, yep, this qualifies as a blue zone.
Speaker 1: I was just laughing because I was wonder if the
Speaker 1: NAT Geo editor was like, I kind of want to
Speaker 1: retire near Sedona. See if you can find me some
Speaker 1: olds there.
Speaker 2: Is right, I heard there's lay lines there.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to sell the wife. More recently than that,
Speaker 1: they've added more blue zones. Besides the area of Costa
Speaker 1: Rica and Akaria, Greece, Singapore was added in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: That's in the book Blue Zones Secrets for a Living
Speaker 1: Longer Colon.
Speaker 2: Nothing to add here.
Speaker 1: Martinique in twenty twenty three that was added as well.
Speaker 1: This was not Butner. Apparently Poohlin is the one that
Speaker 1: put that Caribbean Island, which is a department of France.
Speaker 1: He put that one on the list because there were
Speaker 1: twice as many centenarians per capita in mainland France. And
Speaker 1: so they're saying like they're basically finding these things that
Speaker 1: happen and saying like, hey, that's a blue zone. We're
Speaker 1: gonna call it that because we made up that name.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but according to Poohland's very strict definition, there has
Speaker 2: to be a higher than normal or usual percentage of
Speaker 2: centenarians people who are over age one hundred, yeah, and
Speaker 2: that they typically are healthy actor yeah, yeah, they're still
Speaker 2: living life, right, That is the true definition of a
Speaker 2: blue zone. I get the impression. Butner is including with
Speaker 2: low Melinda got a little fast and loose with the definition,
Speaker 2: and that that's probably a point of contention.
Speaker 1: Well, they came up with, each of them independently came
Speaker 1: up of their own list basically of things to do
Speaker 1: to live longer. Bututener has his. They're called the Power Nine,
Speaker 1: which is trademarked, and Pounland calls his the Seven Principles.
Speaker 1: I didn't see if that was trademarked. I don't here, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think so either. Here they are one is
Speaker 1: moved naturally, and that is basically like you're not going
Speaker 1: to the gym every day and quote unquote working out.
Speaker 1: You're just you're moving through the world. You might be
Speaker 1: herding goats in this village every day, or working in
Speaker 1: the garden all day long, or just walking back and
Speaker 1: forth to the village to do your daily trading. They
Speaker 1: found that if you just move naturally through the world
Speaker 1: as you age, instead of just sitting on the couch,
Speaker 1: then you're going to live longer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you have the same daily routine as Balki Bartakamus,
Speaker 2: you are probably going to live into your hundreds.
Speaker 1: Good one.
Speaker 2: Also, eating meat in very small proportions or not at all,
Speaker 2: seems to be correlated with living a long life among
Speaker 2: blues owners. Yeah, usually essentially plant based diets, some fish,
Speaker 2: depending on where you live.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then Okinawan's are very famous for something called Harahachi boo,
Speaker 2: which is the eighty percent rule where you eat until
Speaker 2: you feel about eighty percent full and then you stop,
Speaker 2: which is extremely clever because you get fuller and fuller
Speaker 2: after you start to feel full, so that that rounds
Speaker 2: up to the full hundred percent of fullness. Almost every
Speaker 2: time you taught me that, and it really works. So
Speaker 2: it's really difficult to stop eating when you're eighty percent full,
Speaker 2: when you're eating processed Western food, it's nearly impossible. But
Speaker 2: if you can pull it off, you're like, wow, this
Speaker 2: actually works.
Speaker 1: You should probably slow down to a bit that helps.
Speaker 1: That's what they say, because all of a sudden, if
Speaker 1: you're like me, you're like, oh, oh god, I'm in
Speaker 1: one hundred and five percent.
Speaker 2: Right, let's try to stop. But also if you slow
Speaker 2: down and really like you can sense the food that
Speaker 2: you're eating more, you can enjoy it more mindful too.
Speaker 2: So I mean, say, for sure.
Speaker 1: Since a purpose we talked about, it's called different things
Speaker 1: in different parts of the world, be coustor Weekns call
Speaker 1: it pura vida mm hmm. It's basically like, you know,
Speaker 1: do things that give you joy and like that you
Speaker 1: want to get out of bed and do.
Speaker 2: Like accounting, right, sure, if that's your thing, But yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean it could be like a hobby, It can
Speaker 2: be anything like just having a reason that you're alive.
Speaker 2: Is that's your purpose? I think that's you got to
Speaker 2: have that, man, And I just hate to think that
Speaker 2: anybody doesn't feel like they have a purpose in life,
Speaker 2: especially like I get it, you go through like chunks
Speaker 2: of life, like say your early twenties where you're like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, everybody else is more successful than me,
Speaker 2: and my life is off the rails already and I'm
Speaker 2: only twenty years old. Everybody goes through that, so I
Speaker 2: can see like going through phases where you are lacking
Speaker 2: purpose or maybe direction is another way to put it.
Speaker 2: But like later in life, to just feel like you've
Speaker 2: never had a purpose in life. I can't bear to
Speaker 2: think that people feel like that that anybody out there does.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, stress reduction is another reducing stress. I
Speaker 1: don't know why that's funny, but you know, taking trips
Speaker 1: with your family, hanging out with your friends is kind
Speaker 1: of what I was talking about earlier with the social interaction, right,
Speaker 1: and also get a lot of sleep.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's very important too. There was there's one that
Speaker 2: Buttener lists that that Poulane doesn't. It's a religious faith.
Speaker 2: Apparently they interviewed two hundred and sixty three centenarians together,
Speaker 2: and all except five of them belonged to some sort
Speaker 2: of church or religion or faith based community.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Surprisingly, most of them were flying spaghetti Monster followers, So
Speaker 2: you might want to look into that for longevity too.
Speaker 1: Family first is another tenant. You know, live close to
Speaker 1: your family, care for your old get together with your
Speaker 1: family one. So you know, we're both kind of screwed. Sure,
Speaker 1: what else, strong social circles That sort of ties into
Speaker 1: the other things we were talking about. But yeah, you
Speaker 1: got to have those strong social ties. What about taking shots,
Speaker 1: like taking a shot at your friend or taking a
Speaker 1: shot of whiskey.
Speaker 2: Taking a shot of booze, doing shots.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, you know, they they used to say
Speaker 1: that a couple of drinks a day, a couple of
Speaker 1: glasses of wine, like in Sardinia, Italy is you know
Speaker 1: the kind of thing they do. They have wine with
Speaker 1: food even during the daytime. They've now kind of gone
Speaker 1: back and said no amount of the World Health Organization
Speaker 1: at least saying no amount of alcohol is good for
Speaker 1: your health. So that was that was a disappointing finding.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was another one that Pooh that Pooh Lane
Speaker 2: leaves off of his seven principles.
Speaker 1: He's French.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's really saying something because they love the wine.
Speaker 2: I know they like the wine. Yeah, So you mentioned
Speaker 2: Saul Justin Newman, who is the leading critic, I guess
Speaker 2: of all of this. He says like, yeah, Buttener has
Speaker 2: turned this into a lifestyle brand and that smacks of
Speaker 2: all sorts of you know, questionable stuff as far as
Speaker 2: science goes. He goes even further than that. He says
Speaker 2: the entire thing is based on a faulty premise and
Speaker 2: that there are no blue zones. There are no clusters
Speaker 2: of centenarians who live in areas and live a longer
Speaker 2: life because of these lifestyle decisions and choices and things
Speaker 2: that they do. It just doesn't exist. That essentially the
Speaker 2: people who study this have been misled by their own
Speaker 2: data and that's what is producing what seems like these
Speaker 2: blue zones.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and just in case you're wondering, he's a senior
Speaker 1: research fellow at the Center for Longitudinal Studies at the
Speaker 1: University of College of London, and he kind of starts
Speaker 1: out by saying, like, hey, we noticed one thing. State
Speaker 1: issued birth certificates are really important, and eighty two percent
Speaker 1: of the super centenarians, and those are people over one
Speaker 1: hundred were born before they started doing this widely basically,
Speaker 1: so if we really had the real birth certificates of
Speaker 1: these people, that number of people living beyond one hundred
Speaker 1: drops way way down, Like essentially everyone's lying about their age.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or miss mistaken about their age, but yeah, a
Speaker 2: lot of people apparently lie about their age also, Chuck.
Speaker 2: One of the other things that he pointed out is
Speaker 2: that if you study areas, especially in developed countries like Italy, England,
Speaker 2: and France. I think he specifically looked at in areas
Speaker 2: with the biggest clusters of super centenarians, right, so, yeah,
Speaker 2: I guess that's one hundred and one on. Yeah, So
Speaker 2: those areas also tend to be more poverty stricken, the
Speaker 2: people have people living there make lower incomes, they have
Speaker 2: lower literacy rates, higher crime rates, very tellingly fewer ninety
Speaker 2: year olds, which is a big statistical anomaly because it
Speaker 2: suggests that people are just jumping into their hundreds. Who
Speaker 2: wants to be like, I'm ninety two when you could
Speaker 2: be like I'm one hundred and two, right, Yeah, And
Speaker 2: that they also have very paradoxically lower than average life expectancies.
Speaker 2: So if you put all that together, like you're like,
Speaker 2: how is anybody living into their hundreds in these areas,
Speaker 2: let alone hold clusters of people living into their hundreds
Speaker 2: don't make sense. I think Saul Newman's quote feels hinky.
Speaker 1: Right, I think so. What he concluded was that in play,
Speaker 1: in these places that might have high poverty, you're more
Speaker 1: likely to find what's called pension fraud. So it's family
Speaker 1: members saying, no, you know, Grandpa Chuck is still alive
Speaker 1: in the back room, keep those pension checks rolling in,
Speaker 1: and that's the thing. In twenty ten, there were more
Speaker 1: than two hundred and thirty thousand Japanese centenarians who were
Speaker 1: discovered to be either made up, dead or missing.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think Greece also started investigating their centenarians and
Speaker 2: ended up finding two hundred thousand people who no longer
Speaker 2: were alive. So that's definitely part of it. Another statistical
Speaker 2: anomaly that he points out that is very suggestive of
Speaker 2: this whole thing being wrong is that if you look
Speaker 2: at the birthdays for super centenarians, their birthdays aren't statistically random.
Speaker 2: They seem to be clustered around the first of the month.
Speaker 2: There's a much higher, I think of one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty percent higher chance that a centenarian's birthday is on
Speaker 2: the first of the month than on the last of
Speaker 2: the month, which makes zero sense statistically speaking.
Speaker 1: It's like when I fill out any like tell us
Speaker 1: your age thing, I just go January.
Speaker 2: First, exactly, So do I we have the same birthday,
Speaker 2: same fake birthday.
Speaker 1: That's right. Here's another one is that And this is
Speaker 1: sort of part of the basis of his whole thing
Speaker 1: is just that, like, these records are often wrong. They're very,
Speaker 1: very common in the United States, and this was in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty. Sixty Six percent of non white females had
Speaker 1: multiple official ages in the year nineteen sixty and their
Speaker 1: ages vary depending on what, like what record you were
Speaker 1: looking at, whether it was like the DMV or a
Speaker 1: marriage certificate or birth certificate. And thirty percent of these
Speaker 1: variations were off by more than a decade.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And he also drilled down a little more and
Speaker 2: he said some of these lifestyle claims in diet claims,
Speaker 2: they're not supported by data. In fact, the Okinawan cohort
Speaker 2: are they were basically said to have this amazing diet
Speaker 2: where that's probably a big part of what was helping
Speaker 2: them live longer. He said, no, if you've asked the
Speaker 2: government of Japan, people in Okinawa eat the least amount
Speaker 2: of vegetables of Japanese people as a whole, and they
Speaker 2: have the highest body mass index. So explain that, Poulane.
Speaker 1: All right, maybe we should take our second break. See
Speaker 1: Pooline response to your call out. Okay, yeah, he might
Speaker 1: give us a ring and we'll be back right after
Speaker 1: this to finish up on blue zones. All right, so
Speaker 1: we're back. When we last left you, Newman had sort
Speaker 1: of launched a I don't know about an attack, but
Speaker 1: put out a paper that countered a lot of these
Speaker 1: claims about blue zones being a thing. It's a big
Speaker 1: splash in the media, and so Blues owners got together
Speaker 1: and they said, all right, we're going to write a
Speaker 1: letter back to you defending our work like we will
Speaker 1: not this will not stand.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we should say Newman doesn't seem to think
Speaker 2: that Poolene is some hack or liar.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, Poline.
Speaker 2: Is a well respected demographer instead. I think what Newman
Speaker 2: is saying is there are errors in the records that
Speaker 2: Poulaine is using, right, and once it's in there, when
Speaker 2: another record gets made from the original record, it gets
Speaker 2: it just spreads like a virus essentially, And so he's
Speaker 2: basically saying Polaine is using these this faulty, these faulty
Speaker 2: records without realizing it, and so that an error introduced
Speaker 2: into your data would be totally undetectable in that So
Speaker 2: he's not attacking Pouline specifically, yeah, saying like this the
Speaker 2: data itself is wrong from the get go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which kind of even negates some of the rebuttal,
Speaker 1: because some of the points of the rebuttal were like, Hey,
Speaker 1: we know that there are errors in fraud, but we
Speaker 1: go through a pretty rigorous verification process and we think
Speaker 1: it's statistically sound. Like in Sardinia, you know Italy, that
Speaker 1: was one of the first Blue zones named. They said,
Speaker 1: you know, we have civil databases dating back to eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty six, we have church archives, We've got these handwritten records,
Speaker 1: and we have done full genealogies of entire villages and
Speaker 1: cross check this stuff. So again, you know, Poulin is
Speaker 1: trying to do the right thing. But Newman would probably
Speaker 1: go back and say, yeah, but those original records from
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty six weren't right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But then Pooline would counter, yes, I'm not just
Speaker 2: using one record. I crossed verify, so he Yeah, interviews
Speaker 2: the centenarians first and their families. That's where he gets
Speaker 2: the original age. And then he goes back and tries
Speaker 2: to find any support that he can for that, and
Speaker 2: he actually came up with a rating system of how
Speaker 2: like how quality of verification is. I think there's a
Speaker 2: starring system. There's also like a A plus plus plus
Speaker 2: or something system where like the highest quality of verification
Speaker 2: is the centenarian saying their age, and you've got all
Speaker 2: these other documents that say the exact same thing, and
Speaker 2: that there, you know, a church record is not necessarily
Speaker 2: going to be based on you know, a birth certificate
Speaker 2: or an army registration or something like that. So that's
Speaker 2: pretty independent. And then he takes it even further and says,
Speaker 2: you want to do the same thing for the family members,
Speaker 2: for their parents, for their siblings, and make sure that
Speaker 2: along the way somebody with a similar name didn't get
Speaker 2: mixed up, and that that's how their age got older
Speaker 2: and older and older. He's doing like legit methodology, So
Speaker 2: it is kind of tough to just kind of dismiss
Speaker 2: that particular thing, the techniques he has for verifying ages.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. Another rebuttal was that hey, Newman a
Speaker 1: lot of the fraud and errors that you're citing weren't
Speaker 1: even in blue zones. You're just saying that that happened,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, if it's happening elsewhere, it's probably
Speaker 1: happening in blue zones as well. Would be my counter
Speaker 1: to that, but you know that was what they came
Speaker 1: back with.
Speaker 2: Well. Also in his paper, he does investigate actual blue
Speaker 2: zones like the Nakoya Peninsula and Costa Rica. Apparently, Costa
Speaker 2: Rica found out in two thousand and eight that forty
Speaker 2: two percent of its population age ninety nine or older
Speaker 2: misstated their age in the two thousand census, and that
Speaker 2: when they went back and did the math to actually
Speaker 2: adjust it to reality, the blue zone in Nikoya shrunk
Speaker 2: by ninety percent. So he did demonstrate that, yes, these
Speaker 2: some of these blue zones are just absolutely wrong.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he got a little personal, it feels like, at
Speaker 1: the end because they said, and also, you're not a demographer,
Speaker 1: and your paper wasn't peer reviewed or it wasn't published
Speaker 1: in a peer review journal that is.
Speaker 2: And everyone says, your breath stings.
Speaker 1: Right, and your user are a nitwit.
Speaker 2: Right. Although he was working at the Center for Longitudinal
Speaker 2: Studies by definition, he was a professional studier of studies
Speaker 2: and going back and recreating studies to find out how
Speaker 2: valid they were. So he might not have been a demographer,
Speaker 2: but he was definitely qualified to evaluate the quality of
Speaker 2: a study for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely. Dave helped us with this, and he found
Speaker 1: a New York Times article from twenty twenty four and
Speaker 1: this kind of, I think for me, kind of makes
Speaker 1: a lot of sense. It was from It was a
Speaker 1: quote from doctor nir Barzilai is I guess how you
Speaker 1: pronounce it. Sure, he's a director of the Institute for
Speaker 1: Aging Research at the album of Einstein College of Medicine.
Speaker 1: And he was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, eat all these
Speaker 1: good foods, stay physical, supportive, friends and family. I think
Speaker 1: we can all agree that you'll live longer. But his
Speaker 1: quote is, are the concepts of blue zones consistent with
Speaker 1: what we know about aging? Absolutely, But the blue zones
Speaker 1: themselves and the theories behind them have not necessarily been
Speaker 1: validated scientifically. It's not a study, it's an observation. It's
Speaker 1: an observation which is consistent with what we think we
Speaker 1: know about aging. And that's kind of where I landed.
Speaker 1: Was like, just say that, say Hey, we've noticed this
Speaker 1: really interesting thing, and these are the commonalities for people
Speaker 1: that live longer in these areas, rather than trying to say, like,
Speaker 1: this is a blue zone and this is the data
Speaker 1: and the science behind it. You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there have been plenty of studies on blue zones
Speaker 2: and blue zone inhabitants. There's a this kind of meta
Speaker 2: analysis that was published in twenty twenty two the American
Speaker 2: Journal of Lifestyle Medicine by Magdaleni at All. I still
Speaker 2: don't know what at all means, but you know what
Speaker 2: it generally means by context.
Speaker 1: Right, and others I think, sure, yeah, sure.
Speaker 2: But it examined essentially each of those lifestyle you know,
Speaker 2: power nine or seven principles and the studies that support those.
Speaker 2: And there have been like really granular studies. They referenced
Speaker 2: some that studied elderly Akarians remember Akaria, Greece was one
Speaker 2: of the blue zones, studied their grip strength, studied their
Speaker 2: flow mediated dilation, which is a marker of the health
Speaker 2: of your endothelial cells, which make up the lining of
Speaker 2: your blood vessels. Like, people have really studied this, and
Speaker 2: a lot of those studies have come back and been like, yes,
Speaker 2: these people have better than average grip strength. Their flow
Speaker 2: mediated dilation is off the charts. You've never seen anything
Speaker 2: like it. Everybody says it's just amazing, So there has
Speaker 2: there have been studies that support it. It's just like
Speaker 2: I think people people brush it off because it is
Speaker 2: very easy to brush off. I kind of landed where
Speaker 2: you did where if you take it as a whole, Yeah,
Speaker 2: it does seem to be great, you know, great indicators,
Speaker 2: great ideas of how to live. But the science is
Speaker 2: being conducted. It's just not there where somebody's like, yes,
Speaker 2: definitively these are right, and these aren't right too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. As far as Butner and Pulan, they
Speaker 1: both agree that they think that blue zones are disappearing
Speaker 1: like quickly and like there won't be any at a
Speaker 1: certain point, which is I thought people were living longer,
Speaker 1: so I was kind of curious about that. But they're
Speaker 1: finding fewer centenarians in Okinawa and other places, and they
Speaker 1: they say it's the widespread adoption of Western diet. Newman
Speaker 1: came back. I feel like every time they like, he's
Speaker 1: got a Google alert set for these guys. Yeah. Newman
Speaker 1: came back and said, and I tend to agree with
Speaker 1: him here, He's like, that does it make any sense
Speaker 1: to me? He's like, are all these eighty year olds
Speaker 1: suddenly giving up a lifetime of healthy eating habits and
Speaker 1: going to McDonald's. Right, just doesn't make sense. So he
Speaker 1: goes back again to the record keeping and saying it
Speaker 1: was it was never that to begin.
Speaker 2: With, right, He Yeah, it doesn't. It just doesn't. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it doesn't track. So if they do exist, though, one
Speaker 2: thing that Bautener and Pulane definitely agree on is uh
Speaker 2: and actually Newman too, is that they're they're not going
Speaker 2: to find anymore and the ones that do exist are
Speaker 2: going to shrink out to basically nothing. It's just different
Speaker 2: explanations of why that is. But you can kiss blue
Speaker 2: zones goodbye, basically.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well you found some interesting stuff on genetics too,
Speaker 1: because that's kind of the one thing we haven't talked
Speaker 1: about is diet, exercise, being around your family and all
Speaker 1: that stuff is great, but genetics like probably have to
Speaker 1: play a part, right.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, they found you would think so for sure,
Speaker 2: And they have found some stuff that says like, yes, this,
Speaker 2: the genes definitely do appear in certain populations more than others,
Speaker 2: like the Sardinians have a gene that makes them bitter
Speaker 2: super tasters I think, and it's related to a lower
Speaker 2: fat intake, like you avoid fats, so that's sensing.
Speaker 1: I think it's associated with like living longer that specific gene.
Speaker 2: Right, So that makes a lot of sense. Okay, that
Speaker 2: would definitely help you live longer. But then there's other
Speaker 2: contradictory evidence that is kind of confounding.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think people one hundred and ten years are older. Wow.
Speaker 1: In Okinawa they had a slightly increased likelihood of possessing
Speaker 1: a gene variant that makes them more like likely to
Speaker 1: develop Alzheimer's compared to I think it was in Greece,
Speaker 1: that part of Greece that had the gene that supposedly
Speaker 1: protected against Alzheimer's, and they found the opposite to be
Speaker 1: true in Okinawa.
Speaker 2: Right, and yet they're both Blue Zone super centenarian.
Speaker 1: Yeah, therea is.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So yeah, but surely it does have to play
Speaker 2: some sort of role. And I think in that original paper,
Speaker 2: Pas and pooh Land speculated that inbreeding in that area
Speaker 2: of Sardinia was responsible for creating these essentially protective traits.
Speaker 1: M There you have it.
Speaker 2: Either way, the Sardinians were like, please, what are you doing?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's out of our business. Let me drink my
Speaker 1: lunch wine and peace.
Speaker 2: Well, supposedly, there are plenty of areas in the world
Speaker 2: to contact Buttener and pooh Land and are like, hey,
Speaker 2: make sure you put us down as a blue zone
Speaker 2: because it attracts a lot of like healthy lifestyle tourists.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And again, I mean, I don't know
Speaker 1: why this bugs me a little bit more than usual.
Speaker 1: I think it's great that they put out like tips
Speaker 1: for living longer, but there's something about like when it's
Speaker 1: marketed and branded that kind of I don't know.
Speaker 2: I get you for sure, you know what I mean. Yep,
Speaker 2: I'm with you, man. Although if you live the blue
Speaker 2: Zone lifestyle and your love and life to talk to you, Yeah,
Speaker 2: trademark evan to health. Since Chuck laughed a second ago,
Speaker 2: that's a traditional trigger for listener man, that's right.
Speaker 1: This is about circular economy and us complaining about appliances
Speaker 1: not lasting long. Hey, guys have something to say about this.
Speaker 1: One thing that people should do is maintenance on the
Speaker 1: products that they buy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1: The fact that Chuck hates washers and dryers is because
Speaker 1: a lot of times products break down due to a
Speaker 1: lack of maintaining and caring for these products. I'm a
Speaker 1: home improvement contractor and I can't tell you how many
Speaker 1: times I've moved appliances to see the total lack of
Speaker 1: care that these products go through. It's not just washers
Speaker 1: and dryers, but most things in your home that you buy.
Speaker 1: People fail to one read the instructions and two read
Speaker 1: how to care for the products. Yeah, I just thought
Speaker 1: that's the way. That's a good point, though, a lot
Speaker 1: of things need to require you to clean maintain them
Speaker 1: so they do last longer. Take for example, the clothes washer.
Speaker 1: It has three different Our clothes washer has three different
Speaker 1: small filters that need to be cleaned out once a month.
Speaker 1: What cheez, And if you don't, eventually it'll break down
Speaker 1: the washer. My point being, if you take just a
Speaker 1: little time and save and read those manuals, you'll help
Speaker 1: them last longer. And you want to have to throw
Speaker 1: away stuff that breaks and wears down. I love the episode,
Speaker 1: and I do one hundred percent agree that products are
Speaker 1: made to be thrown out in replace. I just wanted
Speaker 1: to add that as up to us as consumers to
Speaker 1: do our best to keep the products that we buy
Speaker 1: running the best that we can. That's my two bits.
Speaker 1: That is from Justin and Justin, you are so right,
Speaker 1: and I shamefully never ever maintain much of anything like that.
Speaker 2: That's funny that Justin wrote that in because just yesterday
Speaker 2: I was cleaning the evaporator condenser quotes, I can't remember
Speaker 2: some coils in my fridge, okay, and look at you. Well,
Speaker 2: my fridge is not working very well. So I was
Speaker 2: really hoping that this was the problem. Bob Vila said
Speaker 2: it was probably going to be the problem. But in
Speaker 2: that same article that on Bob Vila's website, he says
Speaker 2: that you should do that. You should clean and dust
Speaker 2: your refrigerator's coils every three months.
Speaker 1: Those are in the back of the fridge, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or they're in the front bottom, but they make brushes.
Speaker 2: I got brushes for it and everything that make the
Speaker 2: whole thing easy. But I'm like I have this is
Speaker 2: the first time I've ever done anything like this, and
Speaker 2: I've had plenty of fridges, so it makes me wonder
Speaker 2: how much longer other fridges could have lasted.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm sure that's true, but oh boy, I
Speaker 1: don't want to see what's under and behind my fridge
Speaker 1: at this point. It's scary.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm going to go look for the filters in
Speaker 2: my washing machine that I never knew existed, because I
Speaker 2: kind of I get jazzed by that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: But at the same time, like me, after a while,
Speaker 2: you're like, I'm tired of doing this.
Speaker 1: I changed my air filters and things. HVAC.
Speaker 2: You mean. I looked at a house once and these
Speaker 2: two dudes owned it and I was like asking where
Speaker 2: the air handler was and the guy didn't know, and
Speaker 2: I was like, you know where you put the air filter.
Speaker 2: He's like, I don't think our system uses air filters.
Speaker 2: And I was like, dude, And we drove past the
Speaker 2: house the next day and there was an HVAC truck
Speaker 2: in the driveway, so I guess turned them onto the
Speaker 2: existence of their air filters.
Speaker 1: That's great. Yeah, I actually do mind myself because it's
Speaker 1: not too hard. But yeah, yeah, fir sure, that's as
Speaker 1: far as I go, and I should go further, for sure.
Speaker 2: Are you cleaning out your drain lines?
Speaker 1: That's another big one, uh drain line for what.
Speaker 2: For your HVAC the little the little white PVC line
Speaker 2: that's like running from your air handler where you put
Speaker 2: the air filter. Huh, there's a there's so this is.
Speaker 2: This drains the condensation from your air handler. And you
Speaker 2: should use about an eighth of a cup of just
Speaker 2: regularly simple green mix in with a gallon of water,
Speaker 2: get yourself a funnel, pour it in there, let it
Speaker 2: come out the bottom. You do that once a month
Speaker 2: during the hot months, and it will keep your drainline
Speaker 2: from getting clogged up with gunk.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I'm shamefully lazy about anything like that. I'm so
Speaker 1: bad at maintenance.
Speaker 2: I'll come over and show you. It'll be fine. We'll
Speaker 2: make an afternoon of maintaining stuff around your house. You
Speaker 2: buy you with subs.
Speaker 1: Though, Yeah, I was about to say, I'll bring the subs,
Speaker 1: you bring the simple green, and we'll party.
Speaker 2: All right, man, that sounds like a great idea. Well,
Speaker 2: thanks for this, Justin, you really just kicked off a
Speaker 2: new tradition for me and Chuck monthly, I would say.
Speaker 2: And if you want to be like Justin and kick
Speaker 2: off a new monthly tradition for me and Chuck, you
Speaker 2: can send us an email to send it off to
Speaker 2: stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Should Know
Speaker 2: is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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