I often wonder how long my life will be. I’m 55 now, so hope to have at least another 30 years, if not more. My beloved grandfather lived to 104, so that bodes well, genetically! But perhaps more important than how long I live is how well I live – staying healthy, active and mentally sharp for as long as possible.

This intriguing question was answered in a fascinating Netflix documentary series I watched recently – Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones. It’s presented by author Dan Buettner, who travels around the world to different ‘blue zones’ – places where there is an unusually high concentration of centenarians – to find out why people live longer there. Buettner visits Okinawa, Sardinia, the Greek island of Ikaria, Nicoya in Costa Rica, Loma Linda in California and ends up in Singapore.

In each of these blue zones people do not just live longer, they live well too. And some live remarkably well – in Costa Rica, he meets a 100-year-old cowboy who looks about 60, but is still working from dawn to dusk. He is so remarkable that the Costa Rican researcher Buettner is working with doesn’t believe him and checks his age on the national register! He is, indeed, 100 – and miraculously young, fit and healthy.

The secrets to living long – and well

In each of these blue zones, there are slightly different factors that help people thrive into old age. In Sardinia, the steepness of your village is key, because it means you are walking up and down steep hills every day of your life. But this is also a theme, because although in Singapore people are strongly encouraged to take daily exercise like walking, cycling and working out by the government, it’s generally the constant, low-level exercise that marks these places out.

Gardening, walking instead of driving, dancing, chopping wood, doing things by hand around the house – this kind of activity is key for longevity. Diet is another theme, even though the particular things people eat vary from place to place. The religious community in California (who are also mad about exercise) are mostly vegetarian. In Costa Rica they eat lots of black beans, in Okinawa it’s a particularly nutritious purple sweet potato, murasaki.

But along with diet and exercise, the most powerful learning for me was that having a sense of meaning, or purpose in their lives was key. Alongside this was the quality of their relationships. In every village, town or city Buettner visits, people live in warm, interconnected webs of relationship. These elderly people are not put in care homes, but kept in their families’ homes, or visited often by people in their community.

Love is the magic ingredient

If I’m honest, this doesn’t surprise me. I have written often in these posts about the importance of (good) relationships for our health. Evolutionarily, this makes sense, because we evolved from a common ancestor with apes like chimpanzees and bonobos. Apes don’t live alone. They live in large, social groups, as did every species of human, including homo sapiens.

This began to change just 10,000 years ago, with the agricultural revolution – and accelerated a few hundred years ago with the industrial revolution. Workers moved away from their traditional rural communities (where they lived in villages full of extended families, much like the blue-zone inhabitants) to live in towns and cities, doing back-breaking shifts in factories before going home to their small, nuclear family, or living alone.

Research increasingly shows us that living alone is not good for us, especially if we are often lonely. So perhaps the most important thing you could do, today and for the rest of your life, is to invest in and improve the quality of your closest relationships. If your family of origin was not a happy one, think about creating a ‘chosen family’ – perhaps your partner and children, friends and neighbours.

The blue zones teach us that eating well, exercising often, maintaining our interests, hobbies and even work well into old age are all crucial ingredients of a long, happy life. But even more important is the quality of our relationships – loving and being loved is the magic ingredient to a rich and fulfilling life.

I hope you find that useful – and do watch the documentary series, it’s fascinating.

Sending you love and warm thoughts ❤️

Dan