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StillnessHealth fact

Studies of places with unusually many very old people, the so-called Blue Zones, have found recurring habits such as plant-rich diets, daily movement and close social ties, but they have not established a proven recipe for long life.

Health science

Health

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The idea began in Sardinia. In the early 2000s the researchers Michel Poulain and Gianni Pes mapped villages in the island's mountainous Nuoro province where unusually many people, especially men, reached 100, circling them on the map in blue ink. In 2005 the writer Dan Buettner popularised the name in a National Geographic cover story on Sardinia, Okinawa in Japan and Loma Linda in California; the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica and the Greek island of Icaria were added later. Critics point out that habits are tangled up with genes, healthcare and migration, and that some age records are unreliable: Okinawa's family registers were largely destroyed in 1945 and rebuilt afterwards. In 2024 the researcher Saul Newman won an Ig Nobel Prize, a satirical award for research that first makes people laugh and then think, for showing that many record ages come from places with poor birth records.

Türkçe oku
“Mavi Bölgeler”, çok yaşlı insanların alışılmadık sıklıkta görüldüğü yerlere verilen addır. Buralarda yapılan araştırmalar bitki ağırlıklı beslenme, gündelik hareket ve güçlü sosyal bağlar gibi ortak alışkanlıklar buldu; ama uzun ömrün kanıtlanmış bir reçetesini ortaya koyamadı.

Fikir Sardunya'da doğdu. 2000'lerin başında araştırmacılar Michel Poulain ve Gianni Pes, adanın dağlık Nuoro ilinde pek çok kişinin, özellikle de erkeklerin 100 yaşına ulaştığı köyleri haritada mavi mürekkeple işaretledi. 2005'te yazar Dan Buettner, National Geographic'in kapak konusu olan yazısında bu adı yaydı; yazıda Sardunya'nın yanında Japonya'daki Okinawa ve Kaliforniya'daki Loma Linda vardı. Kosta Rika'daki Nicoya Yarımadası ile Yunanistan'daki İkarya Adası listeye sonradan eklendi. Eleştirmenler, alışkanlıkların genlerden, sağlık hizmetlerinden ve göçten ayrı düşünülemeyeceğini, bazı yaş kayıtlarının da güvenilir olmadığını belirtiyor: Okinawa'nın nüfus kütükleri 1945'te büyük ölçüde yok olmuş, sonradan yeniden oluşturulmuştu. Araştırmacı Saul Newman, rekor yaşların çoğunun doğum kayıtlarının zayıf olduğu yerlerden geldiğini gösterdiği için 2024'te Ig Nobel Ödülü'nü aldı; bu mizahi ödül, insanı önce güldüren sonra düşündüren araştırmalara verilir.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Blue zone
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English quotation books have called this an “Arabian proverb” since at least the 1860s; Tryon Edwards's A Dictionary of Thoughts (1891) is one, but these books give no Arabic original, so the label is best taken loosely. The idea is widely shared: good health gives people the strength to plan and to recover from setbacks. Turkish says “Her şeyin başı sağlık”, health comes first, and when a glass breaks people say “Sağlık olsun”: never mind, as long as everyone is well.

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In studies that compare meals with the same number of calories, the higher-protein version usually keeps people satisfied for longer, although the effect is modest. One reason is that protein prompts the gut to release more of the hormone PYY, which tells the brain that food has arrived; a 2006 study led by Rachel Batterham at University College London found the strongest PYY response after high-protein meals. Another is that the body works harder to process protein: a 2004 review by the Maastricht University physiologist Klaas Westerterp reports that digesting and using it burns 20 to 30% of its calories, against 5 to 10% for carbohydrate and up to 3% for fat. UK guidance puts adults' needs at about 0.75 g of protein per kilogram of body weight a day, around 45 g for women and 56 g for men, and average intakes are well above that.

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The fibre we eat comes from plant foods: fruit, vegetables, wholegrains, beans and lentils, nuts and seeds. Meat, fish, eggs and dairy naturally contain none.

Fibre is the part of plant food that our digestive enzymes cannot break down. Much of it comes from the walls of plant cells, which give stems, peel and seeds their structure. Animals do not make these substances, so meat, fish, eggs and milk contain none. Mushrooms, which are fungi rather than plants, also supply a little fibre from their own cell walls. Nutritionists divide fibre into two kinds. Soluble fibre, found in oats, barley, apples and beans, dissolves in water in the gut, can form a gel and helps lower cholesterol. Insoluble fibre, in wholegrains, brown rice, nuts and the skins of fruit and vegetables, adds bulk and helps food pass through. Once fibre reaches the large intestine, gut bacteria ferment part of it into short-chain fatty acids, compounds that feed the cells lining the bowel.

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In a 2009 study at Pennsylvania State University, Julie Flood-Obbagy and Barbara Rolls gave 58 adults an apple, apple sauce or apple juice 15 minutes before lunch, each with the same weight and calories. After the whole apple, people felt fuller and ate about 15% fewer calories across the starter and lunch together than on days with no starter. Juice did not have that effect, even with the apple's fibre added back. A larger Harvard analysis of about 187,000 American health professionals, published in the BMJ in 2013, found that people who ate more whole fruit, especially blueberries, grapes and apples, were less likely to develop type 2 diabetes, while those who drank more fruit juice were slightly more likely to. Long-term observational studies like this show a link rather than proof of cause, but the two kinds of evidence point the same way.

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