Blue Zones: The Secret of Longevity in Sardinia

There’s a small cluster of mountain villages in the middle of Sardinia where turning 100 isn’t a miracle, it’s just something that happens often enough that nobody blinks. Sardinia’s Blue Zone, tucked into the Gennargentu massif in the provinces of Nuoro and Ogliastra, was the first place in the world to earn that name, and it’s still one of the only ones where the numbers actually hold up under scrutiny. Here’s why, and what life is actually like in these towns. Where Sardinia’s Blue Zone actually is The term “blue zone” comes from a research project that started in the late 1990s. A Sardinian doctor, Gianni Pes, and a Belgian demographer, Michel Poulain, investigated why certain Sardinian villages had unusually high numbers of centenarians. They verified every claimed age against civil registry records back to 1866, church records further back, and genealogical reconstructions. The highest-longevity municipalities were circled in blue ink on the map, hence the name. The first official Blue Zone was defined in 2004, and others followed later in different parts of the world, including Okinawa, Ikaria, Nicoya and Loma Linda. The area involved covers around 15 villages, including Arzana, Baunei, Talana and Urzulei, all part of the...