From Blue To Green…

We sometimes write about supercentenarians, which word is usually used in academia to refer to people who are not merely over 100 years of age, but over 110 years. These people can be found in many countries, but places where they have been found to be most populous (as a percentage of the local population) have earned the moniker “Blue Zones”—of which Okinawa and Sardinia are probably the most famous, but there are others too.

This is in contrast to, for example “Red Zones”, a term often used for areas where a particular disease is endemic, or areas where a disease is “merely” epidemic, but particularly rife at present.

In any case, back to the Blue Zones, where people live the longest and healthiest—because the latter part is important too! See also:

• Lifespan: how long we live
• Healthspan: how long we stay healthy (portmanteau of “healthy lifespan”)

Most of our readers don’t live in a Blue Zone (in fact, many live in the US, which is a COVID Red Zone, a diabetes Red Zone, and a heart disease Red Zone), but that doesn’t mean we can’t all take tips from the Blue Zones and apply them, for example:

• The basics: The Blue Zones’ Five Pillars Of Longevity
• Going beyond: The Five Key Traits Of Healthy Aging

You may be wondering… How much good will this do me? And, we do have an answer for that:

When All’s Said And Done, How Likely Are You To Live To 100?

Now that we’re all caught-up…

The news from the Blues

A team of researchers did a big review of observational studies of centenarians and near-centenarians (aged 95+). Why include the near-centenarians, you ask? Well, most of the studies are also longitudinal, and if we’re doing an observational study of the impact of lifestyle factors on a 100-year-old, it’s helpful to know what they’ve been doing recently. Hence nudging the younger-end cutoff a little lower, so as to not begin each study with fresh-faced 100-year-olds whom we know nothing about.

Looking at thousands of centenarians (and near-centenarians, but also including some supercentenarians, up the age of 118), the researchers got a lot of very valuable data, far more than we have room to go into here (do check out the paper at the bottom of this article, if you have time; it’s a treasure trove of data), but one of the key summary findings was a short list of four factors they found contributed the most to extreme longevity:

1. A diverse diet with low salt intake: in particular, a wide variety of plant diversity, including protein-rich legumes, though fish featured prominently also. On average they got 57% and 65% of their energy intake from carbohydrates, 12% to 32% from protein, and 27% to 31% from fat. As for salt, they averaged 1.6g of sodium per day, which is well within the WHO’s recommendation of averaging under 2g of sodium per day. As a matter of interest, centenarians in Okinawa itself averaged 1.1g of sodium per day.
2. Low medication use: obviously there may be a degree of non-causal association here, i.e. the same people who just happened to be healthier and therefore lived longer, correspondingly took fewer medications—they took fewer medications because they were healthier; they weren’t necessarily healthier because they took fewer medications. That said, overmedication can be a big problem, especially in places with a profit motive like the US, and can increase the risk of harmful drug interactions, and side effects that then need more medications to treat the side effects, as well as direct iatrogenic damage (i.e. this drug treats your condition, but as the cost of harming you in some other way). Naturally, sometimes we really do need meds, but it’s a good reminder to do a meds review with one’s doctor once in a while, and see if everything’s still of benefit.
3. Getting good sleep: not shocking, and this one’s not exactly news. But what may be shocking is that 68% of centenarians reported consistently getting enough good-quality sleep. To put that into perspective, only 35% of 10almonds readers reported regularly getting sleep in the 7–9 hours range.
4. Rural living environment: more than 75% of the centenarians and near-centenarians lived in rural areas. This is not usually something touted as a Blue Zones thing on lists of Blue zones things, but this review strongly highlighted it as very relevant. In the category of things that are more obvious once it’s pointed out, though, this isn’t necessarily such a difference between “country folk” and “city folk”, so much as the ability to regularly be in green spaces has well-established health benefits physically, mentally, and both combined (such as: neurologically).

See: The health benefits of the great outdoors: A systematic review and meta-analysis of greenspace exposure and health outcomes

And showing that yes, even parks in cities make a significant difference:

The association of green space, tree canopy and parks with life expectancy in neighborhoods of Los Angeles

Want to know more?

You can read the study in full here:

A systematic review of diet and medication use among centenarians and near-centenarians worldwide

Take care!

We’ve written before about managing osteoarthritis (or ideally: avoiding it, but that’s not always an option on the table, of course), so here’s a primer/refresher before we get into the meat of today’s article:

Avoiding/Managing Osteoarthritis

When the head gets in the way

Research shows that the problem with recovery in cases of osteoarthritis of the hip is in fact often not the hip itself, but rather, the head:

❝In fact, the stronger your muscles are, the more protected your joint is, and the less pain you will experience.

Our research has shown that people with hip osteoarthritis were unable to activate their muscles as efficiently, irrespective of strength.

Basically, people with hip arthritis are unable to activate their muscles properly because the brain is actively putting on the brake to stop them from using the muscle.❞

~ Dr. Myles Murphy

See: People with hip osteoarthritis have reduced quadriceps voluntary activation and altered motor cortex function

This is a case of a short-term protective response being unhelpful in the long-term. If you injure yourself, your brain will try to inhibit you from exacerbating that injury, such as by (for example) disobliging you from putting weight on an injured joint.

This is great if you merely twisted an ankle and just need to sit back and relax while your body works its healing magic, but it’s counterproductive if it’s a chronic issue like osteoarthritis. In such (i.e. chronic) cases, avoidance of use of the joint will simply cause atrophy of the surrounding muscle and other tissues, leading to more of the very wear-and-tear that led to the osteoarthritis in the first place.

So… How to deal with that?

You probably can exercise

It’s easy to get caught between the dichotomy of “exercise and inflame your joints” vs “rest and your joints seize up”, which is not pleasant.

However, the trick lies in how you exercise, per joint type:

When Bad Joints Stop You From Exercising (5 Things To Change)

…which to be clear, isn’t a case of “avoid using the joint that’s bad”, but is rather “use it in this specific way, so that it gets stronger without doing it more damage in the process”.

Which is exactly what is needed!

Further resources

For those who like learning from short videos, here’s a trio of helpers (along with our own text-based overview for each):

• The Most Underrated Hip Mobility Exercise (Not Stretching)
• Overcome Front-Of-Hip Pain
• 10 Tips To Reduce Morning Pain & Stiffness With Arthritis

And for those who prefer just reading, here’s a book we reviewed on the topic:

11 Minutes to Pain-Free Hips – by Melinda Wright

Take care!