For thousands of years, people have sought the secret to longer, healthier lives. The legendary “fountain of youth” appears in biographical texts of Alexander the Great and is said to have inspired Ponce de Leon’s expedition to Florida to seek such healing waters.

 

When explorer Dan Buettner traveled the globe in 2004 in partnership with National Geographic and the National Institute on Aging, he wasn’t looking for the fountain of youth, exactly. His research focused on identifying the areas where people tend to live longer and studying potential reasons why.

 

Buettner found five such communities where people lived to be 100 years old at a much higher rate than the United States, with significantly lower rates of chronic disease. Loma Linda, California; Sardinia, Italy; Okinawa, Japan; Nicoya, Costa Rica; and Ikaria, Greece; were revealed to be prime prospects for the location of a mythical fountain of youth.

 

As the obesity crisis in the United States reached a fever pitch and the country’s youngest generation faced a shorter life expectancy than their parents, these findings offered hope in turning the tide of chronic disease and poor health.

 

Of course, there is no magic elixir flowing in these five areas, which Buettner dubbed “blue zones.” Instead, he found that these communities generate positive health outcomes simply because their environments and culture make healthy choices easy. Because people spend 80 percent of their lives in the same places, our surroundings have a significant impact on decisions that affect our health, from our eating and exercise habits to how we connect with others and with our greater purpose.

 

You don’t have to move to Okinawa or Ikaria to reap the benefits of a blue zones-influenced lifestyle, though.

 

Buettner’s book, The Blue Zones—Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who’ve Lived the Longest, summarized eight years of longevity research to define how these blue zones support and enable longer, healthier lives for their residents. Buettner’s research serves as the foundation for Blue Zones Project^® by Sharecare, a community-led well-being improvement initiative designed to make healthy choices easier through permanent changes to the built environment, policy, and social networks. Since 2010, Blue Zones Project has partnered with dozens of communities, worksites, and campuses across the United States to make the healthy choice the easy choice wherever their residents live, work, learn, and play.