Pod Insights Stuff You Should Know What are Blue Zones? About this episode Blue zones are areas where people supposedly have more 100+ year-olds than average. But is it all based on faulty records?
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1:44 Speaker 00 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.
1:53 Josh Clark? Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. And this is Stuff You Should Know, our episode on Blue Zones, which is not, well, we'll, we'll explain it. It's, it's not immediately apparent what we're talking about. You have to kind of know the ins and outs. And I think that's kind of what we're going to do here is explain the ins and outs of Blue Zones. I don't know why I said all that.
2:18 Speaker 03 Yeah. Well, I mean, I'll just go ahead and tell people right off the bat that a Blue Zone is supposedly an area on planet Earth where people, they have an extraordinary amount, or a higher than average amount, rather, of people that live to be 100 years old.
2:34 Josh Clark? Well, there you go. Now you know the ins and outs of Blue Zones, everybody.
2:37 Speaker 03 But the story behind Blue Zones is what's super interesting, I think. It started,
2:43 Speaker 03 well, we're going to jump back to the 70s at one point, but it started out basically in 2004 when there was a paper that came out that said, hey, there's a large number of centenarians, people that live to be 100, at least, in a small area in the mountains of Sardinia, Italy. And the author of the papers shaded it blue on a map, called it a Blue Zone. And then in 2005, it really picked up steam because there was a National Geographic reporter named Dan, Dan Butner, who wrote an article called "The Secrets of Long Life," in which he talked about Sardinia and his own finding of Okinawa, Japan, and Loma Linda, California, as two more Blue Zones, and was like, hey, what's going
3:26 Speaker 03 on here? We got to figure this out because people there are living longer.
3:30 Josh Clark? Yeah. And the whole premise was, hey, don't you want to live longer? Let's find out what these people's secrets are. Because clearly, if there's a bunch of them clustered together, that means they're all doing something similarly. So let's get to the bottom of this, everybody.
3:43 Speaker 03 Yeah.
3:44 Josh Clark? And the way that he put it, what if I said you could add up to 10 years of your life? A long, healthy life is no accident. It begins with good genes, but it also depends on good habits.
3:56 Speaker 03 Yeah, I mean, I think everyone agrees with that generally.
3:59 Josh Clark? Sure, but one of the reasons why it does seem like there's a set of habits that you can engage in from the Mediterranean lifestyle or the Mediterranean diet to getting out there and walking every day, a large part of that is based on how popular the concept of blue zones became. And you can thank Dan Buettner, I believe his last name is Buettner, like he just blew the whole thing up. And I don't want to say single handedly because there are definitely people working behind the scenes, but he's the one who made it, who introduced it to popular culture.
4:37 Speaker 03 Yeah, for sure. And sort of off the jump here, I want to talk one second about a side article I read in New York Times recently because one of the things that you're going to hear and talk about, or us talk about him talking about, is one of the things you can do to live longer supposedly is tight social networks. I just read a New York Times article last week about super agers. And it's not necessarily people that live to be 100. That's what blue zones is talking about, but it's just people that live into their 80s and 90s without getting dementia. And it was a pretty robust study. They had a large cohort over like 25 years. And they said, some of them drink booze every day. Some of them, they have been smokers, some of them eat a lot of red meat. They said
5:17 Speaker 03 the one single thing that they found in common with all of them was social relationships, active social relationships with people outside of your house and going out and seeing people. They said they tend to be extroverts. So people that go out and socialize with other people was the one commonality between all of them.
5:36 Josh Clark? That sucks.
5:38 Speaker 03 Oh, no.
5:39 Josh Clark? I'm in big trouble, man.
5:40 Speaker 03 We got to get you out, buddy.
5:42 Josh Clark? I guess so. I'm going to have to update my wardrobe.
5:45 Speaker 03 You're like, I'm eating fish and olive oil and walking every day.
5:48 Josh Clark? Doing everything else.
5:50 Speaker 03 I just don't want to talk to anyone but you and me and Momo.
5:52 Josh Clark? I put my hand up by my, my face when I walk past somebody when I'm out walking every day.
5:57 Speaker 03 I thought it was really interesting because, you know, most of us in our Gen X category are dealing with aging parents and. I feel like everyone I know is going through it in some capacity. So I'm just reading a lot about that stuff lately.
6:10 Josh Clark? Oh, that's nice of you.
6:11 Speaker 03 Yeah.
6:12 Josh Clark? Prepping yourself?
6:14 Speaker 03 Prepping myself so I don't do this to Ruby.
6:16 Josh Clark? Nice.
6:17 Speaker 03 You know?
6:18 Josh Clark? Nice. So yeah, tight social networks, that is a big one as far as the blue zones are concerned. And I guess that's the only one that really matters. But they have other stuff too, like you need to have a sense of purpose. And anecdotally, I know that makes sense because a lot of people, I don't know if a lot's the right term, but there are definitely people who die very shortly after retiring.
6:41 Speaker 03 Yeah.
6:42 Josh Clark? And in the United States, your job in a lot of cases is your identity and
6:48 Speaker 03 Yeah.
6:48 Josh Clark? your purpose in life. People are like, family, forget that.
6:53 Speaker 03 Right.
6:54 Josh Clark? Accounting is my purpose in life.
6:56 Speaker 03 Yeah.
6:56 Josh Clark? And then, once they retire, they don't have any numbers to crunch and they keel over dead. So that, I mean, anecdotally, that definitely makes a lot of sense.
7:05 Speaker 03 Yeah, for sure. But this Nat Geo article that Butner wrote went viral. Butner was basically like, hey, this is it for me. He did a TED Talk and has developed quite a robust cottage industry around blue zones. He's written a lot of books. He's written blue zone cookbooks. There's been a blue zone Netflix series. There are blue zone branded, like he copyrighted the term blue zone.
7:31 Josh Clark? Right.
7:32 Speaker 03 And or trademarked it, rather. And there are skincare products and iced teas and there's hot sauces. And you can do a blue zone retreat or pay monthly for a blue zone app.
7:43 Speaker 03 That's, there's a lot of stuff that he's selling.
7:45 Josh Clark? Yeah, for sure. He, he basically blew it up into a lifestyle brand.
7:51 Speaker 03 Yeah, which is one reason some people have come along and criticized it and said, wait a minute. Is this like real science and real research? Or is this just creating a brand and making money? I mean, not with maybe nefarious intent or anything. But like, let's look at the science and a big person that you're going to hear come up a lot in this is a guy named Saul Justin Newman. And in 2019, he, he put out a statement, basically, that said, hey, I think this is all just bad data.
8:25 Josh Clark? Yeah, he wrote a paper on it essentially.
8:27 Speaker 03 Yeah, like bad record keeping on ages.
8:30 Josh Clark? Yeah. And this is not new. The idea of super agers or centenarians, especially ones clustered together, has been long controversial. Anytime somebody's come along and been like, hey, we found a bunch of people who are living to their hundreds. Let's look at what they're doing. So the rest of us can do that, too. But back in 1973, there was a guy named Alexander Leaf. He was a physician. And he got kind of caught up in this whole thing, just trying to figure it out. And he wrote an article for National Geographic, just like Dan Buettner did in 2004. But this is in 1973. And he went to different parts of the world and where there were anecdotally, I guess, a bunch of centenarians
9:13 Josh Clark? living. And he investigated and he found, yes, there are some groups of people around the world who have some sort of secret to aging late in life because there's a bunch of hundred plus year olds who live in these usually isolated areas.
9:31 Speaker 03 Yeah, but he himself, and credit to Alexander Leaf, he was like, you know what, this all like even this was after the article was published. He didn't just like sit back and collect his million dollar check. And say, oh, I guess that's that. He was like, wait a minute, this like some of this stuff is nagging at me. And doesn't seem to make much sense. So he kind of went back on his own research even. And started looking through these records, basically. And he, in one case, he saw a death certificate of a man who was allegedly 168 years old. And he was like, that's pushing it, I feel like.
10:06 Josh Clark? For sure.
10:06 Speaker 03 And in another area, he met a villager who claimed to be 122. He went back a year later and the guy said he was 134. So he was like, all right, five years later in 1978, he partnered with a couple of other scientists. To sort of get down to the bottom of it all and dug through records in these places and found a lot of like discrepancies where people were off by decades on their actual age. And they reckon that like, I think they're doing this because it brings them a lot of prestige. Instead of being like 80 something years old, they say they're 105. And all of a sudden, they're like the village elder, you know?
10:43 Josh Clark? Right, exactly. But a fraudulent village elder. So essentially, what happened was an outsider, a Westerner, got tripped up into what is probably some, a custom in the area. It's like that people just kind of inflate their ages. And the, like, people like Alexander Leaf are obsessed with finding out exactly how that happens and not stopping to be like, I don't know if this is actually real. But yeah, hats off to Alexander Leaf for going back on his own findings and admitting like, no, this is probably not right. Because they concluded without a doubt that the Ecuadorians in this village of Vilcabamba were fraudulent.
11:26 Speaker 03 Yeah.
11:27 Josh Clark? And he's like, I'm sure that also applies to the other places too. So everybody just forget the article I wrote.
11:32 Speaker 03 Yeah. I mean, that's a, again, hats off because that's a, to put your own name out there is like, hey, I got it wrong. Like, I don't know if I would have done it.
11:42 Josh Clark? Hmm. You don't think so? We do that all the time.
11:45 Speaker 03 Oh, well, that's a good point.
11:46 Josh Clark? Yeah, we correct ourselves.
11:48 Speaker 03 Uh, so we're going to introduce you to a couple of more people that factor in pretty heavily here. In 1999, there was an Italian researcher named Giovanni Pes, P-E-S. Never heard that last name.
11:58 Josh Clark? No.
11:59 Speaker 03 He presented a paper at a demography conference. And then there was a, why is that funny? Because it's a demography conference?
12:06 Josh Clark? Yeah.
12:07 Speaker 03 Party central?
12:08 Josh Clark? Yeah, I can imagine somebody going, what segment of the population here is ready to party?
12:14 Speaker 03 Yeah, or.
12:16 Speaker 03 I wonder if they just stand around at break and look out on the street and they're like, "How many people do you think are over there on that sidewalk?"
12:21 Josh Clark? Is that right? What percentage of those people are smoking Marlboro Lights?
12:26 Speaker 03 So, in that audience, though, where Giovanni Pezz was presenting a paper, there was a guy named, another demographer, obviously, named Michael Poulin, a French guy. And he had recalled this fiasco in the early 70s, and he was like, "Wait a minute." He's talking about Sardinia, Italy, that, you know, originally the area where Butner wrote the article. Turns out Butner wrote the article about this research on Sardinia
12:53 Josh Clark? Right.
12:54 Speaker 03 that Giovanni Pezz had done.
12:56 Josh Clark? Yeah, so it's very easy to just assume that Dan Butner came along and either piggybacked on Pezz and Poulin's research, or kind of invited himself into their little party. He was actually already looking into this.
13:12 Speaker 03 Yeah.
13:13 Josh Clark? Like, I think as far back as 99, he had set up a project to investigate how Okinawans, who are widely reputed for living into their hundreds, and we should say healthy, not like decrepit old balls of yarn, like these are like healthy people who still move around and do stuff on a daily basis.
13:35 Speaker 03 Yeah.
13:36 Josh Clark? How they were doing that. So, long before Pezz and Poulin put their stuff together, or I guess about the same time, but independently, Butner was doing his own thing too. So he didn't just come along and steal their idea or their research.
13:51 Speaker 03 Yeah, for sure. And as you'll see, they worked together for quite a while after this too. But, um, so Poulin remembered the thing from the 70s, and he was like, "All right, I'm gonna go to Sardinia myself and sort of dig into this." So he did that, started cross-checking birth records and marriage records and anything he could get from archives, you know, in the town or from the church or whatever. And they are the ones, they put X's, when they clustered, they shaded it blue. And they're the ones, Poulin and Pezz in 2000, that coined the term "blue zone", even though, I guess Butner trademarked it, so, I don't know. I'm not sure what happened there.
14:26 Josh Clark? I couldn't find anything about Poulin or Pezz's reaction to him trademarking that.
14:31 Speaker 03 I wonder if it was, "He did what?"
14:35 Josh Clark? So yeah, it's like all the Xs, whenever they confirmed somebody, they started to cluster so much that it just became a blue region. So that, so now Dan Buettner had a name for this idea, this concept that he'd been working on for years. And he, yeah, he took it and ran with it and turned it into that lifestyle brand. Pez and Pouline essentially were like, okay, that's fine. We're gonna stay academic here and, and try to keep studying this. And Buettner would kind of come in and out of their research over the next couple decades.
15:11 Speaker 03 Yeah. And the key thing, as far as the original three places in Buettner's article, like you mentioned, he had already studied Okinawa. He picked up on what Pouline and Pez were doing at Sardinia. But Loma Linda, California is in there. And everyone was like, what the heck is Loma Linda got going on? And just last year, Buettner told the New York Times that Loba Linda was apparently included because the editor at Nat Geo said, we got to get an American blue zone in there.
15:37 Josh Clark? Yeah.
15:38 Speaker 03 Like, this needs to be, I know, it needs to be like, applicable to our readers here. So a lot of critics, of course, are going to come out and say like, that's, that just kind of, that's not science.
15:48 Josh Clark? No, you don't, like editors don't dictate scientific methods or results, right? So, yeah, that's a big criticism. But, and I think also, like, I haven't seen anything that says Pouline or Pez are irritated by, or dislike Buettner, or anything like that. But just looking at the whole thing, thing from the outside, Buettner just keeps attracting just, you know, contradiction or naysayer after naysayer. And Pouline and Pez are like, dude, we're doing like, real science over here. Like, stop giving our work a bad name because you're out there selling Loma Linda because your editor told you to put it into the original article.
16:32 Speaker 03 Right, or selling hot sauce.
16:34 Josh Clark? Yeah, selling hot sauce is another great one. But, so, in, in, I guess, his defense, Buettner said, well, actually, Loma Linda, statistically speaking,
16:45 Josh Clark? People there tend to live anywhere between, I think, four to 10 years more than the average California resident.
16:53 Speaker 03 Yeah.
16:54 Josh Clark? And there's actually a really good reason for that. There's a huge cluster of Seventh Day Adventists there. And you'll remember from our Kellogg Live episode on the Kellogg Brothers, the Seventh Day Adventists kind of inspired them in their health food movement. They don't tend to smoke, or drink, or eat meat. And so he was like, that's great. We're going to include them in there. So it's not like he just threw a dart like the Bay City rollers and picked whatever city that it landed on. Like, there was a reason why. And it turned out to be a pretty good business move because five years ago in 2020, Adventist Health, which is essentially the hospital arm of the Seventh Day Adventists,
17:38 Josh Clark? they bought the Blue Zone trademarks and all of the brand.
17:42 Speaker 03 Oh.
17:42 Josh Clark? They now own it, the Adventists do.
17:45 Speaker 03 Very interesting. All right, I'm going to ponder that. Let's take a break and we'll come back and talk more about Blue Zones.
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21:22 Josh Clark? So Chuck, like I said, Butner and Pest and Poulin all started working together in the early 2000s. And Butner was funded by National Geographic. He was a fellow for them, I think even before he wrote the article for National Geographic. But they started funding expeditions to look for more blue zones. And in the mid 2000s, 2000s, the aughts, I guess, they identified two more, one in Costa Rica on the Nikoya Peninsula, and another one in Ikaria, Greece, which is between Greece and Turkey. It's an island between Greece and Turkey. It looks absolutely amazingly beautiful. But they added them to there because
22:06 Josh Clark? they went and studied the centenarians and said, yep, this qualifies as a blue zone.
22:11 Speaker 03 I was just laughing because I was wondering if the Nat Geo editor was like, I kind of want to retire near Sedona. See if you can find me some olds there.
22:20 Josh Clark? That's right. I heard there's ley lines there.
22:23 Speaker 03 I'm trying to sell the wife.
22:26 Speaker 03 More recently than that, they've added more blue zones besides the area of Costa Rica and Ikaria, Greece. Singapore was added in 2023. That's in the book, Blue Zones: Secrets for Living Longer.
22:40 Josh Clark? Colon, nothing to add here.
22:43 Speaker 03 Martinique in 2023, that was added as well. But this was not Butner. Apparently, Poulin is the one that put that Caribbean island, which is a Department of France, he put that one on the list because there were twice as many centenarians per capita than mainland France. And so they're saying like, they're basically finding these things that happen and saying like, hey, that's, that's a blue zone. We're going to call it that because we made up that name.
23:10 Josh Clark? Yeah, but according to Poulin's very strict definition, there has to be a higher than, than normal or usual percentage of centenarians, people who are over age 100, and that they typically are healthy, active. They're still living life, right? That is the true definition of a blue zone. I get the impression Butner, including with Loma Linda, got a little fast and loose with the definition and that that's a probably a point of contention.
23:42 Speaker 03 Well, they came up with, each of them independently came up of their own list, basically of things to do to live longer. Butner has his, they're called the Power Nine, which is trademarked, and Poulain calls his the Seven Principles. Didn't see if that was trademarked.
23:59 Josh Clark? I don't think so.
24:00 Speaker 03 Yeah, I don't think so either. Here they are. One is move naturally, and that is basically like, you're not going to the gym every day and quote unquote, "working out." You're just, you're moving through the world. You might be herding goats in this village every day, or working in the garden all day long, or just walking back and forth to the village to do your daily trading. They found that if you just move naturally through the world as you age, instead of just sitting on the couch, then you're gonna live longer.
24:27 Josh Clark? Yeah. If you have the same daily routine as Balke Bartokamos, you are probably going to live into your hundreds.
24:36 Speaker 03 Good one.
24:37 Josh Clark? Also, eating meat in very small proportions, or not at all, seems to be correlated with living a long life among Blues owners.
24:47 Speaker 03 Yeah.
24:48 Josh Clark? Usually, essentially plant-based diets, some fish, depending on where you live.
24:52 Speaker 03 Yeah.
24:52 Josh Clark? And then Okinawans are very famous for something called Harahachi Bu, which is the 80% rule, where you eat until you feel about 80% full, and then you stop, which is extremely clever, because you get fuller and fuller after you start to feel full. So that that rounds up to the full 100% of fullness almost every time. Yumi taught me that, and it really works. It's also really difficult to stop eating when you're 80% full, when you're eating processed Western food. It's nearly impossible, but if you can pull it off, you're like, wow, this actually works.
25:29 Speaker 03 You should probably slow down, too. I bet that helps.
25:31 Josh Clark? That's what they say.
25:33 Speaker 03 Because all of a sudden, if you're like me, you're like, oh God, I'm at 105%. I was trying to stop.
25:41 Josh Clark? But also, if you slow down and really like, you can sense the food that you're eating more, you can enjoy it more mindful too. So, I mean, yeah, for sure.
25:50 Speaker 03 Sense of purpose, we talked about, it's called different things in different parts of the world. Costa Ricans call it pura vida.
25:57 Speaker 03 It's basically like, you know, do things that give you joy and like that you want to get out of bed and do.
26:02 Josh Clark? Like accounting.
26:03 Speaker 03 Right, sure, if that's your thing.
26:05 Josh Clark? But yeah, I mean, it could be like a hobby, it can be anything, like just having a reason that you're alive is, is, that's your purpose. I think that's, you gotta have that, man. And I just hate to think that anybody doesn't feel like they have a purpose in life, especially, like, I get it. You go through like chunks of life, like say your early twenties where you're like, oh my God, everybody else is more successful than me. And my life is off the rails already and I'm only 20 years old. Everybody goes through that. So I can, I can see like going through phases where you are lacking purpose or maybe direction is another way to put it. But like later in life, to just feel like you've never had a purpose in life, I can't bear to think that, that people feel like that, that anybody out there does.
26:50 Speaker 03 Yeah, for sure. Stress reduction is another.
26:55 Speaker 03 Reducing stress, I don't know why that's funny, but you know, taking trips with your family, hanging out with your friends. This is kind of what I was talking about earlier with the social interaction.
27:03 Josh Clark? Right.
27:05 Speaker 03 And also get a lot of sleep.
27:07 Josh Clark? Yeah, that's very important too. There was, there's one that Butner lists that, that Pulain doesn't. It's a religious faith. Apparently they interviewed 263 centenarians together and all except five of them belong to some sort of church or religion or a faith-based community.
27:29 Speaker 03 Yeah.
27:29 Josh Clark? Surprisingly, most of them were Flying Spaghetti Monster followers. So you might want to look into that for longevity too.
27:39 Speaker 03 Family first is another tenet. You know, live close to your family, care for your old, get together with your family. That's one, so, you know. We're both kind of screwed.
27:51 Josh Clark? Sure.
27:53 Speaker 03 What else? Strong social circles, that's sort of ties into the other things we were talking about. But yeah, you gotta have those strong social ties.
28:03 Josh Clark? What about taking shots?
28:05 Speaker 03 Like, taking a shot at your friend, or taking a shot of whiskey?
28:08 Josh Clark? Taking a shot of booze, doing shots.
28:11 Speaker 03 Well, I mean, you know, they, they, they used to say that a couple of drinks a day, a couple of glasses of wine, like in Sardinia, Italy, is, you know, the kind of thing they do. They have wine with, with food, even during the daytime.
28:24 Speaker 03 They've now kind of gone back and said, no amount of, the World Health Organization at least, saying no amount of alcohol is good for your health. So, that was, that was a disappointing finding.
28:34 Josh Clark? Yeah, that was another one that, that Pouline leaves off of his seven principles.
28:40 Speaker 03 He's French.
28:41 Josh Clark? Yeah, that's really saying something, because they love the wine.
28:44 Speaker 03 I know.
28:45 Josh Clark? They like it to wine.
28:46 Speaker 03 Yeah.
28:48 Josh Clark? So you mentioned Saul Justin Newman, who is the, the leading critic, I guess, of all of this. He says, like, yeah, Butner has turned this into a lifestyle brand, and that smacks of all sorts of, you know, questionable stuff, as far as science goes. He goes even further than that. He says the entire thing is based on a faulty premise, in that there are no blue zones. There are no clusters of centenarians who live in areas and, and live a, a longer life because of these lifestyle decisions and choices and things that they do. That just doesn't exist.
29:28 Josh Clark? That essentially, the people who study this have been misled by their own data, and that that's the, that's what is producing what seems like these blue zones.
29:38 Speaker 03 Yeah, and just in case you're wondering, he's a senior research fellow at the Center for Longitudinal Studies at the University of College of London. And he kind of starts out by saying, like, hey, we noticed one thing.
29:55 Speaker 03 State issued birth certificates are really important. And 82% of the super centenarians, so those are people over 100, were born before they started doing this widely, basically. So if we really had the real birth certificates of these people, that number of people living beyond 100 drops way, way down. Like essentially, everyone's lying about their age.
30:21 Josh Clark? Yeah, or mistaken about their age. But yeah, a lot of people apparently lie about their age. Also Chuck, one of the other things that he pointed out is that if you study areas, especially in developed countries like Italy, England and France, I think he specifically looked at in areas with the biggest clusters of super centenarians. Right? So I guess that's 101 on.
30:47 Speaker 03 Yeah.
30:48 Josh Clark? So those areas also tend to be more poverty stricken. The people have, people living there make lower incomes. They have lower literacy rates, higher crime rates. Very tellingly, fewer 90 year olds, which is a big statistical anomaly, because that suggests that people are just jumping into their hundreds. Who wants to be like, I'm 92, when you could be like, I'm 102, right?
31:13 Speaker 03 Yeah.
31:14 Josh Clark? And that they also have, very paradoxically, lower than average life expectancies. So if you put all that together, like you're like, how is anybody living into their hundreds in these areas? Let alone whole clusters of people living into their hundreds? Don't make sense. I think Saul Newman's quote was, feels hinky.
31:35 Speaker 03 Right, I think so. What he concluded was that in these places that might have high poverty, you're more likely to find what's called pension fraud. So it's family members saying, no, you know, grandpa Chuck is still alive in the back room. Keep those pension checks rolling in. And that's the thing, in 2010, there were more than 230,000 Japanese centenarians who were discovered to be either made up, dead, or missing.
32:06 Josh Clark? Yeah, I think Greece also started investigating their centenarians and ended up finding 200,000 people who no longer were alive. So that's definitely part of it. Another statistical anomaly that he points out that is very suggestive of this whole thing being wrong is that if you look at the birthdays for super centenarians, their birthdays aren't statistically random. They seem to be clustered around the first of the month. There's a much higher, I think a 150% higher chance that a centenarian's birthday is on the first of the month than on the last of the month, which makes zero sense statistically speaking.
32:47 Speaker 03 It's like when I fill out any, like, tell us your age thing, I just go January 1st.
32:52 Josh Clark? Exactly. So do I. We have the same birthday, same fake birthday.
32:57 Speaker 03 That's right. Here's another one, is that, and this is sort of part of the basis of his whole thing, is just that, like, these records are often wrong. They're very, very common. In the United States, and this was in 1960, 66% of non-white females had multiple official ages in the year 1960, and their ages vary depending on what, like, what record you were looking at, whether it was like the DMV, or a marriage certificate, or birth certificate. And 30% of these variations were off by more than a decade.
33:30 Josh Clark? Yeah. And he also drilled down a little more, and he said, some of these, like, lifestyle claims and diet claims, they're not supported by data. In fact, the Okinawan cohort, they were basically said to have this amazing diet where that's probably a big part of what was helping them live longer. He said, "No, if you ask the government of Japan, people in Okinawa eat the least amount of vegetables of Japanese people as a whole, and they have the highest body mass index." So explain that, Pauline.
34:05 Speaker 03 All right, maybe we should take our second break and see if Pulain responds to your call out.
34:11 Josh Clark? Okay.
34:11 Speaker 03 Yeah, he might give us a ring and we'll be back right after this to finish up on Blue Zones.
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36:54 Speaker 03 All right, so we're back. When we last left you, Newman had sort of launched a, I don't know about an attack, but put out a paper that countered a lot of these claims about Blue Zones being a thing. It's a big splash in the media. And so, Bluezoners got together, and they said, "All right, we're gonna write a letter back to you defending our work. Like, we will not, this will not stand."
37:19 Josh Clark? Yeah, and we should say, Newman doesn't seem to think that Pouline is some hack or liar.
37:26 Speaker 03 Yeah, for sure.
37:27 Josh Clark? Pouline is a well-respected demographer. Instead, I think what Newman is saying is, there are errors in the records that Pouline is using.
37:37 Speaker 03 Right.
37:38 Josh Clark? And once it's in there, when another record gets made from the original record, it gets, it just spreads like a virus, essentially. And so, he's basically saying Pouline is, is using these faulty, these faulty records without realizing it. And so, the, an error introduced into your data would be totally undetectable in that sense. So, he's not attacking Pouline specifically.
38:02 Speaker 03 Yeah.
38:03 Josh Clark? He's saying like, this, the data itself is, is wrong from the get-go.
38:07 Speaker 03 Yeah, which kind of even negates some of the rebuttal, because some of the points of the rebuttal were like, "Hey, we know that there are errors and fraud, but we go through a pretty rigorous verification process, and we think it's statistically sound." Like, in Sardinia, you know, Italy, that was one of the first Blue Zones named. They said, you know, "We have civil databases dating back to 1866. We have church archives. We've got these handwritten records." And we have done full genealogies of entire villages and cross check this stuff. So again, you know, Poulain is trying to do the right thing. But Newman would probably go back and say, yeah, but those original records from 1866 weren't right.
38:49 Josh Clark? Yeah, but then Poulain would counter, yes, I'm not just using one record. I cross verify. So he interviews the centenarians first and their families. That's where he gets the original age. And then he goes back and tries to find any support that he can for that. And he actually came up with a rating system of how like, how quality of verification is.
39:14 Speaker 03 Yeah.
39:15 Josh Clark? I think there's a starring system. There's also like an A++ or something system where like the highest quality verification is the centenarian saying their age. And you've got all these other documents that say the exact same thing. And that they're, you know, a church record is not necessarily going to be based on, you know, a birth certificate or an army registration or something like that. So that's pretty independent. And then he takes it even further and says, you want to do the same thing for the family members, for their parents, for their siblings, and make sure that along the way, somebody with a similar name didn't get mixed up and that that's how their age got older and older and older. He's doing like legit methodology.
40:01 Josh Clark? So it is kind of tough to just kind of dismiss that particular thing. The techniques he has for verifying ages.
40:09 Speaker 03 Yeah, for sure. Another rebuttal was that, hey Newman, a lot of the fraud and errors that you're citing weren't even in blue zones. You're just saying that that happened.
40:22 Speaker 03 You know, I mean, if it's happening elsewhere, it's probably happening in blue zones as well, would be my counter to that. But, you know, that was what they came back with.
40:29 Josh Clark? Well, also in his paper, he does investigate actual blue zones, like the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica. Apparently Costa Rica found out in 2008 that 42% of its population aged 99 or older misstated their age in the 2000 census. And that when they went back and did the math to actually adjust it to reality, the blue zone in Nicoya shrunk by 90%. So he did demonstrate that, yes, these, some of these blue zones are just absolutely wrong.
41:02 Speaker 03 Yeah, um, he, it got a little personal, it feels like, at the end, because they said, "And also, you're not a demographer, and your paper wasn't peer reviewed, or it wasn't published in a peer reviewed journal," that is.
41:14 Josh Clark? And everyone says your breath stings.
41:16 Speaker 03 Right, and you, sir, are a nitwit.
41:19 Josh Clark? Right, although, he, he was working at the Center for Longitudinal Studies. By definition, he was a professional studier of studies, and going back and recreating studies to find out how valid they were. So, he might not have been a demographer, but he was definitely qualified to evaluate the quality of a study, for sure.
41:41 Speaker 03 Yeah, absolutely. Um, Dave helped us with this, and he found a New York Times article from 2024, and this kind of, I think, for me, kind of makes a lot of sense. It was from, it was a quote from Dr. Nir Barzagli, is, I guess, how you pronounce it?
41:56 Josh Clark? Sure.
41:56 Speaker 03 He's the director of the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and he was like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, eat all these good foods, stay physical, supportive friends and family, like, I think we can all agree that you'll live longer." But, his quote is, "Are the concepts of blue zones consistent with what we know about aging? Absolutely. But the blue zones themselves and the theories behind them have not necessarily been validated scientifically. It's not a study, it's an observation. It's an observation which is consistent with what we think we know about aging." And that's kind of where I landed, was like, just say, say that, say, "Hey, we've noticed this really interesting thing, and these are the commonalities for people that live
42:37 Speaker 03 longer in these areas," rather than trying to say, like, "This is a blue zone, and this is the data and the science behind it," you know?
42:45 Josh Clark? Yeah, there have been plenty of studies on blue zones and blue zone inhabitants. There's a, um, this kind of meta-analysis that was published in 2022, The American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine, by Magdalene et al. I still don't know what "et al." means, but you know what it generally means by context, right?
43:06 Speaker 03 And others, I think?
43:07 Josh Clark? Sure.
43:08 Speaker 03 Yeah.
43:08 Josh Clark? Sure. But it examined essentially each of those lifestyle, you know, power nine or seven principles. And the studies that support those. And there have been like really granular studies. They they referenced some that studied elderly Ikarians. Remember Ikaria Greece was one of the blue zones. Studied their grip strength. Studied their flow mediated dilation, which is a marker of the health of your endothelial cells, which make up the lining of your blood vessels. Like, people have really studied this. And a lot of those studies have come back and been like, yes, these people have better than average grip strength. Their flow mediated dilation is off the charts. You've never seen anything like it.
43:52 Josh Clark? Everybody says it's just amazing.
43:56 Josh Clark? So there has, there have been studies that support it. It's just like, I think people, people brush it off because it is very easy to brush off. I kind of landed where you did, where if you take it as a whole.
44:08 Speaker 03 Yeah.
44:09 Josh Clark? It does seem to be great, you know, great indicators, great ideas of how to live. But the science is being conducted. It's just not there where somebody's like, yes, definitively, these are right. And these aren't right, too.
44:24 Speaker 03 Yeah, for sure. As far as Butner and Poulain, they both agree that they they think that blue zones are disappearing like quickly. And like, there won't be any at a certain point. Which is, I thought people were living longer, so I was kind of curious about that. But they're finding fewer centenarians in Okinawa and other places. And they they say it's the widespread adoption of Western diet. Newman came back, I feel like every time they, like, he's got a Google alert set for these guys.
44:54 Josh Clark? Yeah.
44:55 Speaker 03 Newman came back and said, and I tend to agree with him here. He's like, that doesn't make any sense to me. He's like, are all these 80 year olds suddenly giving up a lifetime of healthy eating habits and going to McDonald's?
45:05 Josh Clark? Right.
45:06 Speaker 03 Just doesn't make sense. So he goes back again to the record keeping and saying it was it was never that to begin with.
45:13 Josh Clark? Right. He, yeah, it doesn't, it just doesn't. Yeah, it doesn't track. So if they do exist, though, one thing that Butner and Pulein definitely agree on is, and actually Newman too, is that they're, they're not going to find anymore. And the ones that do exist are going to shrink out to basically nothing. It's just different explanations of why that is. But you can kiss blue zones goodbye, basically.
45:40 Speaker 03 Yeah, well, you found some interesting stuff on genetics, too, because that's kind of the one thing we haven't talked about is diet, exercise, being around your family and all that stuff is great, but genetics like probably have to play a part, right?
45:51 Josh Clark? Well, yeah, they found, you would think so for sure. And they have found some stuff that says, like, yes, this, these genes definitely do appear in certain populations more than others. Like, the Sardinians have a gene that makes them bitter supertasters, I think, and it's related to a lower fat intake, like you avoid fats. So that's something.
46:16 Speaker 03 I think it's associated with, like, living longer, that specific gene.
46:19 Josh Clark? Right. So that makes a lot of sense. Okay, that would definitely help you live longer. But then there's other contradictory evidence that that is kind of confounding.
46:29 Speaker 03 Yeah, I think people 110 years or older, wow, in Okinawa, they had a slightly increased likelihood of possessing a gene variant that makes them more likely to develop Alzheimer's compared to, I think it was in Greece, that part of Greece that had the gene that supposedly protected against Alzheimer's. And they found the opposite to be true in Okinawa.
46:54 Josh Clark? Right. And yet they're both blue zone, super centenarian areas. Yeah. So, yeah. But surely it does have to play some sort of role. And I think in that original paper, Pez and Pulein speculated that inbreeding in that area of Sardinia was responsible for creating these essentially protective traits.
47:18 Speaker 03 There you have it.
47:18 Josh Clark? Either way, the Sardinians were like, please, what are you doing?
47:23 Speaker 03 Yeah, stay out of our business. Let me drink my lunch wine in peace.
47:27 Josh Clark? Well, supposedly, there are plenty of areas in the world to contact Butner and Poulannan are like, "Hey, make sure you put us down as a blue zone because it attracts a lot of like healthy lifestyle tourists."
47:41 Speaker 03 Yeah, for sure. And again, I mean, I don't know why this bugs me a little bit more than usual. I think it's great that they put out like tips for living longer. But there's something about like when it's marketed and branded that kind of, I don't know.
47:58 Josh Clark? I get you for sure.
47:59 Speaker 03 You know what I mean?
48:00 Josh Clark? Yep, I'm with you, man. Although if you live the blue zone lifestyle and you're loving life, hats off to you.
48:08 Josh Clark? Trademark Adventist Health. Since Chuck laughed a second ago, that's a traditional trigger for listeners, yeah.
48:20 Speaker 03 That's right. This is about circular economy and us complaining about appliances not lasting long. Hey, guys, I have something to say about this. One thing that people should do is maintenance on the products that they buy.
48:34 Josh Clark? Yeah, it's true.
48:35 Speaker 03 The fact that Chuck hates washers and dryers is because a lot of times products break down due to a lack of maintaining and caring for these products. I'm a home improvement contractor and I can't tell you how many times I've moved appliances to see the total lack of care that these products go through. It's not just washers and dryers, but most things in your home that you buy, people fail to, one, read the instructions and two, read how to care for the products. Yeah, I just throw this stuff away.
48:57 Josh Clark? That's a good point, though.
48:58 Speaker 03 A lot of things these days require you to clean, maintain them so they do last longer. Take, for example, the clothes washer. It has three different, our clothes washer has three different small filters that need to be cleaned out once a month.
49:09 Josh Clark? What?
49:10 Speaker 03 Jeez. And if you don't, eventually it'll break down the washer. My point being, if you take just a little time and save and read those manuals, you'll help them last longer and you won't have to throw away stuff that breaks and wears down.
49:23 Speaker 03 I love the episode and I do 100% agree that products are made to be thrown out and replaced. I just wanted to add that it is up to us as consumers to do our best to keep the products that we buy running the best that we can. That's my two bits. That is from Justin and Justin, you are so right. And I shamefully never ever maintain much of anything like that.
49:44 Josh Clark? That's funny that Justin wrote that in because just yesterday I was cleaning the evaporator condenser coils, I can't remember, some coils on my fridge.
49:54 Speaker 03 Okay.
49:54 Josh Clark? And.
49:55 Speaker 03 Wow, look at you.
49:56 Josh Clark? Well, my fridge is not working very well, so I was really hoping that this was the problem. Bob Vila said it was probably going to be the problem.
50:03 Speaker 03 Oh, Bob.
50:04 Josh Clark? But in that same article that on Bob Vila's website, he says that you should do that, you should clean and dust your refrigerator's coils every three months.
50:15 Speaker 03 Those are on the back of the fridge, right?
50:16 Josh Clark? Yeah, or they're in the front bottom, but and they make brushes, I got brushes for it and everything. They make the whole thing easy, but I'm like, I have, this is the first time I've ever done anything like this. And I've had plenty of fridges, so it makes me wonder how much longer other fridges could have lasted, you know?
50:35 Speaker 03 I'm sure that's true, but oh, boy, I don't want to see what's under and behind my fridge at this point. It's scary.
50:42 Josh Clark? Well, I'm going to go look for the filters in my washing machine that I never knew existed. Cause I kind of, I get jazzed by that kind of thing, but at the same time, I'm like.
50:50 Speaker 03 Me too.
50:51 Josh Clark? After a while, you're like, I'm tired of doing this.
50:54 Speaker 03 I change my air filters and things.
50:56 Josh Clark? Good for you.
50:57 Speaker 03 In my HVAC.
50:58 Josh Clark? You mean, I looked at a house once and these two dudes owned it. And I was like asking where the, the air handler was and, and the guy didn't know. And I was like, you know, where you put the air filter? He's like, I don't think our system uses air filters. And I was like, dude. And we drove past the house the next day and there was a HVAC truck in the driveway. So I guess I turned them on to the existence of their air filters.
51:25 Speaker 03 That's great. Yeah, I actually do mine myself because it's not too hard, but yeah, yeah. That's as far as I go and I should go further for sure.
51:32 Josh Clark? Are you cleaning out your drain lines? That's another big one.
51:35 Speaker 03 Drain line for what?
51:37 Josh Clark? For your HVAC. The little, the little white PVC line that's like running from your air handler where you put the air filter.
51:45 Speaker 03 Huh?
51:46 Josh Clark? There's a, there's, so this is, this drains the condensation from your air handler.
51:50 Speaker 03 Okay.
51:51 Josh Clark? And you should use about an eighth of a cup of just regular old simple green.
51:57 Speaker 03 Oh, okay.
51:57 Josh Clark? Mix in with a gallon of water, get yourself a funnel, pour it in there, let it come out the bottom. You do that once a month during the hot months and it will keep your, um, your drain line from getting clogged up with gunk.
52:10 Speaker 03 Yeah, and, and I'm shamefully lazy about anything like that. I'm so bad at maintenance.
52:16 Josh Clark? I'll come over and show you, it'll be fun. We'll make an afternoon of maintaining stuff around your house. You buy the subs, though.
52:22 Speaker 03 Yeah, I was about to say, I'll bring the subs, you bring the simple green and we'll party.
52:26 Josh Clark? All right, man, that sounds like a great idea. Well, thanks for this, Justin. You really just kicked off a new tradition for me and Chuck. Monthly, I would say. Uh, and if you want to be like Justin and kick off a new monthly tradition for me and Chuck, you can send us an email, too. Send it off to [email protected] .
52:47 Speaker 00 Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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