By study­ing the world’s Blue Zones–“com­mu­ni­ties whose elders live with vim and vigor to record-setting age”–Dan Buet­tner and team dis­cov­ered a set of com­mon behav­ioural traits in their subjects.

In his TEDxTC talk Buet­tner dis­cusses what he dis­cov­ered to be the myths of liv­ing longer and the nine com­mon diet and lifestyle habits of those who live to be active at 100+:

  • Exer­cise Nat­u­rally: They don’t con­sciously exer­cise — rather, daily phys­i­cal exer­cise was a nat­ural part of their lives (walk­ing, using stairs, cycling for trans­port, etc.).
  • Down­shift: They live a sim­ple life.
  • Have a Pur­pose: Know­ing and act­ing with pur­pose and hav­ing a higher goal leads to around a seven year increase in life expectancy.
  • Mod­er­ate Alco­hol Intake: I’ve dis­cussed this at length before.
  • Plant-Based Diet: Not a veg­e­tar­ian diet, but a largely plant-based one.
  • No Overeat­ing: They avoid overeat­ing, typ­i­cally by using ‘nudges’.
  • Friends and Fam­ily First: They typ­i­cally think of their close friends and fam­ily first.
  • Belong to a Faith-Based Com­mu­nity: Belong­ing to a faith-based com­mu­nity, and meet­ing on aver­age four times a month, can add four to four­teen years to one’s life. Does this exclude athe­ists? I don’t see why a human­ist com­mu­nity that meets the same rules (meet­ing reg­u­larly) would be different.
  • Belong to the Right ‘Tribe’: They sur­round them­selves with the ‘right’ peo­ple. By doing so they pre­vent get­ting bad habits through social net­work effects (also dis­cussed pre­vi­ously).

via David DiS­alvo