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Dan Buettner
THE BLUE ZONES: LESSONS FOR LIVING LONGER FROM THE PEOPLE WHO'VE LIVED THE LONGEST Washington, D. C. National Geographic. 2009. 277 pp. ISBN 10: 1426204000 ISBN 13: 9781426204005 Reviewed by Patrick Killough I. biblio.com Would you recommend this book to other readers? Yes, probably I would: * * * * 10/27/2009 Dan Buettner's THE BLUE ZONES is sub-titled LESSONS FOR LIVING LONGER FROM THE PEOPLE WHO'VE LIVED THE LONGEST. With support extending over years from NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC magazine, Buettner assembled star teams of linguists, anthropologists, medical doctors, reporters, psychologists and others. They visited and interviewed hundreds of people 90 years and older residing in pinpointed areas in four countries: Italy/Sardinia, Okinawa/Japan, Loma Linda/California/USA and Costa Rica. After hearing in October 1999 a scientific paper describing the high percentage of centenarians in the Ogliastra district of Sardinia, skeptical Belgian demographer Dr Michel Poulain took action (26 ff). Beginning in 2000 Poulain made ten visits to Sardinia. When he found an area with phenomenally high numbers of age-validated 100-year olds, Poulain circled it with blue ink on a map. Hence, the now universally accepted name "Blue Zone" for centenarian-dense locales. Dan Buettner is a rare popularizer. Many, perhaps most, popularizers of scientific theories and expeditions simply describe or summarize the work of others. Buettner does plenty of that. In addition, remarkably he has himself done, inspired and led an enormous amount of interviewing of the aged in various parts of the world. He has raised funds and public awareness of the existence of at least four Blue Zones and probably inspired a younger generation as well as a now heavily supportive AARP to probe why in certain areas so many people live to 90 and beyond before becoming seriously diminished in their ability to work, relate to others and be content. Buettner also flagged his rich web site http://www.bluezones.com. The book is a quick, easy read. It concludes with nine generalizations from the life styles of the four geographic areas studied. Readers are invited, for example, to adapt what they like from insights of the Seventh Day Adventists clustered in Loma Linda, California. Ditto from Okinawan gardeners, pious Costa Ricans and Sardinian shepherds. A diet rich in nuts is recommended, with kind words as well for Sardinian red wine, Cannonau, rich in flavonoids good for your heart. If I have one complaint about THE BLUE ONES, it is a serious one. In a book focused on tiny, not well known areas in four widely scattered parts of the globe, there are NO MAPS! The author teaches us readers demographics, health, psychology, how to interview. He scatters black and white photos and sidebars throughout his text. But Dan Buettner does not bother to show us precisely where thousands of the centenarians interviewed reside and are busy on their stationary bikes, receiving friends in the afternoon, confessing their sins or playing with their great, great grandchildren in houses shared by their 75 year old children. A friendly hint at no charge to editors of the next edition of a pretty good book! -OOO- http://www.biblio.com/books/254596681.html ==-=-=-= II. bn.com HEADLINE: Want to burn 490 calories/hour? Then walk like an aged Sardinian shepherd! Reviewer's rating of THE BLUE ZONES: * * * * REVIEW: Barbagia, a part of Northwest Sardinia's Ogliastra district, begets contented, admired 100-year olds as few other places on Earth. There are several speculative reasons why. The landscape is steep and not ultra-productive. What was the obvious profession? Shepherding. "The
work was neither stressful nor strenuous, but it did require miles and
miles of walking a day. " (p.
60)
Today's centenarian shepherds suffer fewer than half the fractures of their age mates in other parts of the island. Application to 21st Century Americans who want to live longer? "Walking
five miles a day or more pdrovides the type of low-intensity exercise
that yields all the cardiovascular benefits you might expect, but it also has a
positive effect on muscles and bones -- without the joint-pounding
damage caused by running marathons or triathlons."
(p. 60) So, Americans, walk like a Sardinian shepherd. Burn 490 calories per hour. Forget the sheep. Forget any loneliness of the long distance runner. Adapt the ideas you for longevity from Sardinia. These also include drinking two liters (!) day of Sardinia's famous dry red wine called Cannonau. Similar tales of long, happy living are told by author Dan Buettner of rare centenarian rich "blue zones" in Costa Rica, Okinawa and Loma Linda, California (where Seventh-day Adventists cluster around their famous university and health research center). Buettner tells their stories in THE BLUE ZONES: LESSONS FOR LIVING LONGER FROM THE PEOPLE WHO'VE LIVED THE LONGEST (2008). For seven years National Geographic magazine sponsored Buettner and various cameramen and scientific specialists he assembled as they studied latter-day fountains if not of eternal youth, at least of graceful, happy, low-stress aging. Some oldsters surveyed drank goat milk, others wine. Some were shepherds. Some were gardeners. Some lived under the same roof or close to four more generations of descendants. Some lived in an Adventist retirement community replete with family-oriented Sabbaths, weights and stationary exercise bikes. All had a zest for living, lived to help others, and not just their great grandchildren. From their widely scattered lives and different life styles, Dan Buettner in THE BLUE ZONES draws nine general cross-cultural conclusions on how to live long, healthy lives. You are urged to pick the easiest ones first and spend seven to 12 weeks forming the new habits that make each one effective. Practices commended range from eating more nuts, drinking a glass or two of red wine daily, and going to church at least once a month, through writing your own personal mission statement, to cutting back on eating meat. The book is an easy, fairly convincing read. Its one glaring blunder is absence of maps. The author describes four widely separated areas of the world. He brings their denizens to three-dimensional life through words and black and white photos. He strews informational side bars throughout the book. He devotes a page to "Illustration Credits." Yet he can't make room for four maps! The book is inspirational and will no doubt be followed by more books by Buetner or others discovering, probing and drawing applications from more and more Blue Zones on our globe. Buettner's book is a good first word. I predict, however, that it will soon be eclipsed by others still to come and will not be a permanent addition to many libraries. -OOO- 10/27/2009 III. amazon REVIEW TITLE: Add Ten Years to Your Life: Give up meat and smoking; eat nuts; exercise; stay thin. RATING of THE BLUE ZONES: * * * * Let me first get past the one thing I find inexcusable In Dan Buettner's THE BLUE ZONES. I refer to the book's total absence of maps. The author writes at great length about places in the USA, Italy, Japan and Central America that I have never been near. The countries? Okay, I've been to three of them. But northwestern Sardinia? Hard to find longevity pockets on Okinawa? A part of Costa Rica only now being discovered by pioneering tourists? The closest I have been to Loma Linda, California is the LA airport on international flights to places like Viet-Nam. Is it too much to ask for four measly maps from an author who gives a page of credits to his photographers? Who scatters info sidebars like Johnny Appleseed's apple trees along the western trails? I think not. There, that is out of the way. As I write, Tuesday October 27, 2009, amazon.com carries 57 reader reviews of THE BLUE ZONES: LESSONS FOR LIVING FROM THE PEOPLE WHO'VE LIVED THE LONGEST. This is beyond doubt a popular book. Moreover, THE BLUE ZONES deserves not only popularity but respect. The author sets out to discover and then personally explore "blue zones," a handful of places on our globe where statistically improbable concentrations of people 100 years old live and have grown up into healthy, happy old age. He might have contented himself with reading the available scientific and speculative writings on this subject. He might have, but he did not. Dan Buettner went hands-on into his four chosen blue zones. He also persuaded the National Geographic Society to pay for much of what he did. Buettner captured the interest of AARP. He persuaded busy doctors, statisticians, journalists, psychologists, linguists, gerontologists and others to go with him and work long days in generally out of the way places. He describes their teamwork enthusiastically. He cites their opinions at length. Don't be misled by its breezy, chatty mode of presentation. This is a serious book. There is, be it admitted, a lot of speculation in it, usually presented as conversations with author Buettner or overheard by him. Here is an example. One of the Buettner teams spent weeks in Loma Linda, California among its very large concentration of health worshipping Seventh-day Adventist Christians. Their respected university and its research arm have studied Adventist health practices for decades. One ongoing project, AHS-2, covers 97,000 cases. That's breadth and rigor! Buettner called on two of the academicians behind the work: Drs Gary Fraser and Terry Butler. He then shared with us readers some of their reflections on AHS-1 and AHS-2 work to date in the form of a dialog between the two. How many years will good health practices add to your life? --
"First, vegetarian
status will get you about two years,' Fraser said."
***
-- 'Second, we found that nut eaters also had a two-year advantage, which seemed to relate largely to heart disease.' *** -- 'Third is being a smoker,' added Fraser. 'Or even a past smoker, as we found among the Adventists. If you have ever been a smoker, it has a moderately strong impact on lung cancer and some impact on heart disease.' -- 'Fourth is physical activity,' he continued, 'which again accounted for an extra couple of years. ... most of this benefit comes from modest but regular physical activity. It really flattens out once you get to the marathoner level, which is not necessary for longevity.' *** -- 'The fifth and final recommendation is to maintain fairly normal body weight.'" (pp. 132f). Although grounded in published works as well as the hundreds of interviews by Buettner teams, the longevity wisdom presented throughout THE BLUE ZONES is often attractively and popularly presented along the lines of the example above. Everyone of the 57 amazon.com reader reviews is different. Each took something unique to himself from a first reading. I, too, learned three new Japanese phrases bearing on long life that will stay with me. I was also intrigued by the early history of Seventh-day Adventism in the United States. I resolved to read a good biography of Adventist prophetess Mrs Ellen G. White and of John Harvey Kellogg whom Mrs White put through medical school and then in charge of the hydrotherapy clinic she had founded in Battle Creek, Michigan in 1866. Coincidentally, my wife and I will be in two weeks at an Adventist conference center near Chattanooga where we can once again ply the staff with health and now longevity questions. This is a very good book with something for everyone. The author did not set out to write yet another WEIGHTWATCHERS book or focus on diet. He wanted to meet real, living centenarians from around the world and find common denominators in why they had lived so long, purposefully and contentedly. Diet and exercise turned out to be part of the answer. But so were religion, love of family, sociability and a positive world view. Dan Buettner did not force his findings into a pre-conceived politically correct Procrustean bed. He came, he saw, he reported. Better than most people I have read who have made similar attempts. -OOO- Your Tags: longevity, national geographic, religion, blue zones, seventh-day adventists IV. epinions 10/28/2009 TITLE: "Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be..." REVIEWER'S RATING OF THE BLUE ZONES: * * * * REVIEW BODY: Popularizers more often do no more than make the work of their betters more widely known. Their betters may be too busy doing science or medicine or original research to rethink, simplify, popularize their results down to the level of the masses. But good stories deserve telling in fresh ways and that is where popularizers come in. Dan Buettner is a famous popularizer and a darn good one. That's one reason his 2008 work, THE BLUE ZONES: LESSONS FOR LIVING LONGER LIVES FROM THE PEOPLE WHO'VE LIVED THE LONGEST, adorned the New York TIMES best seller list. Buettner has the common touch. He brings ordinary 100 year old people in four different parts of the globe to pulsating, three dimensional life. To do so he first draws upon the work of others: e. g. , the barely remembered 1958 work by Philip Wagner, NICOYA: A CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY. But Buettner doesn't stop there. He absorbs Wagner and incorporates his insights of half a century earlier into his own original research into the still only lightly visited Nicoya Peninsula of Costa Rica. With funding from the National Geographic Society in Washington, D. C. Dan Buettner assembled research teams to visit Sardinia, Okinawa, Loma Linda, California and Costa Rica. These larger areas had smaller, concentrated pockets called "blue zones," chock full of contented people a hundred years old and older. Buettner wanted to see them, hear them tell their own stories. He would test whether lessons could be drawn for us stressed, burnt out Americans how to slow our headlong race to early, unhealthy deaths. At book's end, Dan Buettner distills nine "lessons" for aging happily and healthily. There are readers (not I) who wished he had skipped all that led up to those conclusions. Who cares about Sardinian shepherds who drink red wine? What are Okinawan vegetable and herb gardens to busy Americans? The Costa Rican men centenarians were sexual tomcats in their youth. Their lifestyle is not typical of their fellow countrymen. Loma Linda Seventh-day Adventists are, admittedly, Americans. But at their best they eschew tobacco, spirits and hamburgers. How un-American is that! How can four widely scattered sets of weirdos be relevant to all us Faustian American 21st century strivers? I first read into Buettner's description of lifestyles of geographically isolated, old timey Sardinians and Okinawans who had aged happily and healthily. I found myself asking: but did any of these desperately poor shepherds and farmers accomplish anything great or original? Did any at least go to college? Not that I remember. And what American does not ask more of life? Things became different in the third group studied: the 100-year olds among the several thousand Seventh-day Adventists clustered in and near Loma Linda, California. These Americans shared much with the other three groups (including Costa Ricans): love of family, a strong religious faith, temperate diets, active work, a sense that they are needed by and important to others, the habit of hanging out with friends and peers very much like themselve. But Adventists were also achieving Americans. One Loma Linda still practices open-heart surgery at age 91. At 91 retired registered nurse Marge Jetson looked back on a life in which she worked to put her husband through medical school. Nowadays, widowed and living in Linda Valley Villa, a typical day begins with 15 minutes riding a stationary bicycle at between 25 and 30 miles an hour. Then come complex sets of exercises with five pound weights. My hunch is that author Dan Buettner pins his hopes on high-achieving American Adventists as the closest models he can present to non-Adventist Americans. Thus he and his medical sources in Loma Linda stress that many Adventists there are former smokers, that not all are vegetarians, that not all are teetotalers. Buettner himself seems drawn to Adventist achievers. He presents (p. 137) a nearly full page photo of pioneering Adventist Mrs Ellen G. White. He tells at some length her story and that of her ailing husband, or sea Captain Joseph Bates and other Adventist founders. Ellen White had visions from God. She believed that God wants people to be healthy. She decided that modern medicine is good and that good doctors are produced by great educations. With that in mind she put young John Harvey Kellogg through medical school and later in charge of a health spa she had created in Battle Creek, Michigan. Do you like your breakfast corn flakes? Thank the Kelloggs and, behind them, Ellen G. White. THE BLUE ZONES makes people think. Its author appears on Oprah's show and Good Morning America. Dan Buettner's is lauded by Dr Mehmet Oz. Some people kick smoking or become vegans after reading it. It is definitely worth reading at least once. I do not myself plan to read it twice because I suspect that it will soon be surpassed either by Buettner himself or others discovering new Blue Zones in Outer Mongolia or Bhutan or the Bronx. There will be new science on aging, fresh theories of whether genes account for more than 25% of againg gracefully. And on and on. What I will do is read into Buettner's well selected bibliography of books and articles, especially the history of Seventh-day Adventism. In less than two weeks my week and I will be back for our second elderhostel at Adventist Cohutta Springs conference center near Chatanooga. This time, as an experiment, I have signed up for vegetarian meals! What bothers me about THE BLUE ZONES. It has no maps and it needs them. The author loves the word "preventative." What is wrong with "preventive?" For some wider, in places more combative perspective on aging, read Robert Browning's RABBI BEN EZRA, to include Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be, The last of life, for which the first was made: Our times are in His hand Who saith 'A whole I planned, Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!' Over to you. Age serenely and healthily. Start your own Blue Zone! Thanks for reading. -OOO- PROS: Tells why some people live to 100 and beyond in decent health with positive attitudes. CONS: The book needs at least four maps. It has none. Some science. Too much speculation. BOTTOM LINE: THE BLUE ZONES ends with nine lessons from four widely scattered concentrations of centenarians. Try them! From going to church more often through staying slim to eating more nuts. http://www.epinions.com/reviews/Book_The_Blue_Zones_Lessons_for _Living_Longer_from_the_People_Who_ve_Lived_the_Longest _Dan_Buettner =-=-=-=-=-=-= http://www.patrickkillough.com/books/buettner_bluezones.html file: buettner_bluezones |