# Blue Zones vs. Australia: Are We Missing the Key to Longer Life?

An episode of [Project 100 with Mark Bouris](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1767053714), 14 Nov 2024, 8:48.

Audio: https://p.podderapp.com/2544644999/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/2fb3740d-3436-44af-8cc0-a91900716aa5/05ac4e52-79fb-46b8-849c-b305000bd6d0/b8a9d3a1-ff56-4dfd-9cfd-b305000c225c/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=ef13e652-7a19-41fd-9d0f-b305000bd6dc

The full podcast with Dr Lindsay Wu is out now! In the latest Project 100 episode, I sit down with Dr. Lindsay Wu, Senior Research Fellow at UNSW and head of the Laboratory for Ageing Research, to explore where Australia stands globally, how we measure up to these so-called longevity hotspots, and whether these Blue Zones are legitimate. Follow Project 100 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/project100/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: This whole concept of blue zones. I mean, I wouldn't
[0:04] Speaker 1: mind talking about blue zones for a moment. I don't
[0:06] Speaker 1: know why they call the blue zones for a start,
[0:08] Speaker 1: Why it's blue. I guess as somebody's come up with
[0:12] Speaker 1: a clever idea.
[0:13] Speaker 2: Places near the ocean.
[0:16] Speaker 1: Line, Is that right? I think they are actually and
[0:19] Speaker 1: hours in Japan for any of the ocean, Ikorea, in Greeces,
[0:23] Speaker 1: and island in the Mediterranean, the Italian one, which the
[0:26] Speaker 1: name avoids me at the moment, is near the sea.
[0:30] Speaker 1: So these so called there's one in the United States,
[0:33] Speaker 1: So the so called blue zones. What do you think
[0:36] Speaker 1: about these generalizations that we keep hearing about.
[0:39] Speaker 2: Yeah, so the first thing I'd say is everyone has
[0:41] Speaker 2: their own favorite hypothesis about what's going on. Yeah, And
[0:44] Speaker 2: I don't hold any strong opinions either way. But the
[0:46] Speaker 2: one that I always like to throw out that's just
[0:48] Speaker 2: to sort of stir the pot a bit, is that
[0:50] Speaker 2: it happens to be that these places that have extreme
[0:52] Speaker 2: longevity also have extremely high rates of welfare fraud and
[0:56] Speaker 2: poor record keeping. So it may be the case that
[0:58] Speaker 2: all these people who are supposedly living a very long
[1:00] Speaker 2: time are just taking over their mum's or dad's ID
[1:03] Speaker 2: to collect welfare checks.
[1:04] Speaker 1: Oh wow, So that's.
[1:05] Speaker 2: Actually an extremely well characterized association, so you know, interpret
[1:09] Speaker 2: it with a bit of course.
[1:10] Speaker 1: In other words, the reason why in this particular village
[1:14] Speaker 1: there are twenty five people who have allegedly lived past
[1:17] Speaker 1: one hundred years of age, it's because they're dead anyway,
[1:20] Speaker 1: and no one's actually known about it, and the kids
[1:22] Speaker 1: are now recorded as being that person because they get
[1:25] Speaker 1: a welfare check on top of their own welfare check.
[1:28] Speaker 2: I mean, there was this I saw this report that
[1:30] Speaker 2: in Japan, if you go through the welfare rocket records,
[1:32] Speaker 2: there are supposedly all these people still alive who are
[1:34] Speaker 2: one hundred and twenty something years of age, right.
[1:36] Speaker 1: Which is probably impossible.
[1:37] Speaker 2: Right, It's clearly that the record keeping hasn't kept up
[1:40] Speaker 2: to date.
[1:41] Speaker 1: That's very interesting.
[1:42] Speaker 2: So it's sort of a but but I didn't want
[1:47] Speaker 2: to put an entirely dampener on the idea of these
[1:49] Speaker 2: blue zones though. I was just throwing it up to
[1:51] Speaker 2: stir the pot a bit.
[1:52] Speaker 1: Yeah, but by the way, we need to be critically
[1:56] Speaker 1: examined these things, because we're all might not also will
[2:00] Speaker 1: be chasing the Holy Grail and may not even exist
[2:03] Speaker 1: in terms of one hundred and twenty years anyway.
[2:05] Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, but what they, I suppose all do
[2:08] Speaker 2: have in common is some pretty obvious aspects of their lifestyle.
[2:12] Speaker 2: So they lead stress free lives. They tend to be
[2:14] Speaker 2: in beautiful locations, strong community people get regular sleep and
[2:19] Speaker 2: healthy diets. Yeah, I mean, none of this is rocket science.
[2:22] Speaker 1: You know, I think you're right about the stress free
[2:23] Speaker 1: bit because like, you know, we sit here in Australia,
[2:26] Speaker 1: you and I sitting here right now. We're in the
[2:28] Speaker 1: middle of Dalinghurst. You know, there's traffic outside. We both
[2:32] Speaker 1: take transport to work either we are you know, we
[2:34] Speaker 1: don't work from home. We either travel by probably transport
[2:38] Speaker 1: that we drive. Both cases a lot of traffic. Then
[2:41] Speaker 1: there's a lot of people, Like in those small villages,
[2:44] Speaker 1: there's not a lot of people. There's a lot of
[2:46] Speaker 1: people who can annoy the shit out of you as well.
[2:49] Speaker 1: You live a stress I live a stressful life in
[2:52] Speaker 1: my work environment because it's extraordinarily competitive in the work environment.
[2:57] Speaker 1: I work in my day to day job post this stuff, this,
[3:00] Speaker 1: this stuff is like unbelievably fun to me, Like this
[3:05] Speaker 1: amazing fun for me compared to what I do day
[3:07] Speaker 1: to day. So I live like a high level of stress,
[3:12] Speaker 1: a high level of cortisols being flushed through my system,
[3:15] Speaker 1: like from the moment I wake up literally to the
[3:18] Speaker 1: moment I go to bed at night, all of which
[3:21] Speaker 1: sort of probably has a toll on my system, including
[3:25] Speaker 1: my energy levels, you know, Like, I can't imagine that
[3:32] Speaker 1: my mitochondrial system is working efficiently if it's getting flushed
[3:37] Speaker 1: with stress hormones all the time, you know. Like, So, therefore,
[3:43] Speaker 1: to some extent our punch on for chasing these otherwise
[3:49] Speaker 1: unreachable blue zones around the world, maybe we should stop
[3:53] Speaker 1: talking about that, yeah, because I mean, how we going
[3:57] Speaker 1: to make Yeah, none one there may not be for
[4:00] Speaker 1: the reason you mentioned before, or at least not as
[4:06] Speaker 1: whole as we are led to believe that there's going
[4:09] Speaker 1: to be pockets of them, which you know, you can
[4:12] Speaker 1: you can poke holes at in a statistical sense, because
[4:15] Speaker 1: there's some error in the statistics. Therefore, what should we
[4:21] Speaker 1: be chasing here in Australia. What should we be sort
[4:24] Speaker 1: of aspiring to? I mean, you know, I.
[4:28] Speaker 2: Mean, there are some practical things that are being pushed
[4:30] Speaker 2: at the moment in older cares. So you know, I
[4:31] Speaker 2: mentioned you mentioned resistance training, and people seem to think
[4:35] Speaker 2: that that stops at a certain age that you can
[4:37] Speaker 2: get away without, you know, lifting weights. But you know,
[4:40] Speaker 2: old frail people in a nursing home lifting weights is
[4:43] Speaker 2: fantastic for their health. There's very strong data, you know,
[4:46] Speaker 2: some of this data was from the University of Sydney
[4:48] Speaker 2: just over across town, showing that you know, older people
[4:51] Speaker 2: lifting weights leave, you know, have incredible health benefits beyond
[4:57] Speaker 2: just muscle mass, you know, some other things. There's intergenerational living.
[5:01] Speaker 2: So the idea of you would have seen this ABC
[5:03] Speaker 2: series where little kids spend time in nursing homes again
[5:08] Speaker 2: has fantastic impacts on the older people, benefits that far
[5:11] Speaker 2: exceed anything we could hope to achieve with the drug.
[5:14] Speaker 2: There are many lifestyle changes we couldn't make today at
[5:18] Speaker 2: scale for the care of older people that would improve
[5:20] Speaker 2: their lives.
[5:20] Speaker 1: What about people in their middle age? When I say
[5:23] Speaker 1: middle aged between forty and sixty, I mean what should
[5:26] Speaker 1: they be doing to prepare themselves because I can't imagine
[5:29] Speaker 1: if between forty and sixty, so in other words, maybe
[5:31] Speaker 1: they've had their family, they don't need protein as much.
[5:35] Speaker 1: They're sort of past that sort of ego period where
[5:38] Speaker 1: they've got to look cut and all that sort of stuff,
[5:40] Speaker 1: and they maybe are eating a greater amounts of carbs
[5:44] Speaker 1: compared to protein. They start to sort of lose their
[5:48] Speaker 1: way a little bit. What should those people be thinking about?
[5:51] Speaker 1: Because they want to they want when they get eaty,
[5:53] Speaker 1: they want to be in good shape.
[5:54] Speaker 2: Yeah, good question. So the safest answer I can give
[5:57] Speaker 2: is to maintain that muscle mass, to continue to do
[5:59] Speaker 2: reason training and exercise. That's the safest answer because you know,
[6:03] Speaker 2: diet is debatable and not necessarily always achievable, and you
[6:10] Speaker 2: know people doing exercise have immediate benefits and feel good.
[6:13] Speaker 1: So it looks like the non negotiables exercise, that's right. Yeah.
[6:16] Speaker 1: So like so of the three, I mean we go
[6:20] Speaker 1: four strategies, I guess it's you know, purpose and community.
[6:23] Speaker 1: Let's call that one strategy. You've got to have a
[6:25] Speaker 1: purpose in a community. One thing is for sure about
[6:27] Speaker 1: the blue zones I call blue zones, they're all got
[6:29] Speaker 1: Community is a big part of that. And purpose within
[6:32] Speaker 1: the community, in other words, I've got a role. Yeah,
[6:34] Speaker 1: and I'm either the grandfather or you know, my job
[6:37] Speaker 1: is I going to take the rubbish out every whatever.
[6:40] Speaker 1: But I've got this purpose community. Let's let's that's one
[6:43] Speaker 1: and that's probably there's no dispute on that one. The
[6:46] Speaker 1: second strategy has to be around what I eat. But
[6:49] Speaker 1: the strategy around our food intake it seems to be
[6:53] Speaker 1: a little bit difficult. We're not sure how much protein,
[6:56] Speaker 1: how much you're an example given before rice, et cetera.
[7:00] Speaker 1: What type of proteum or type of rise? You know,
[7:02] Speaker 1: how often a day, what time of day. That's a
[7:05] Speaker 1: bit confusing. The third strategy would be sleep. You know,
[7:08] Speaker 1: you've got to get your rest. You must sleep, that's right,
[7:11] Speaker 1: Which is quite funny because like when I was in
[7:14] Speaker 1: my twenties, you were nearly a superhero if you could
[7:19] Speaker 1: live on four or five hours sleep at night.
[7:21] Speaker 2: That's right.
[7:22] Speaker 1: Now.
[7:22] Speaker 2: I don't think that's changed. You know, people still take
[7:25] Speaker 2: that attitude really and you know the unfortunate part about
[7:27] Speaker 2: the importance of sleep, that's not unfortunate. Sleep is great,
[7:31] Speaker 2: but you know, society can't function without shift workers. There
[7:35] Speaker 2: are certain occupations that we just need to keep society
[7:37] Speaker 2: ticking over.
[7:38] Speaker 1: Well, those poor buggers might not make it though. That's
[7:40] Speaker 1: the problem. Yeah, it's if they're sleep deprived.
[7:43] Speaker 2: That's right. That's right. So you know, I guess that
[7:45] Speaker 2: means they need to take extra care of their health
[7:47] Speaker 2: later in life, not maintain that lifestyle. Yeah, you know, forever,
[7:52] Speaker 2: and we need to compensate them.
[7:53] Speaker 1: Well I guess, well, I hope we do, because we're
[7:57] Speaker 1: taking something quite important away from them, right that they
[8:00] Speaker 1: probably don't even realize. And the four strategy therefore, which
[8:04] Speaker 1: seems to be the one that is not negotial, and
[8:08] Speaker 1: that's your fitness program, your strategy around exercise. So we've
[8:15] Speaker 1: got exercise, sleep, nutrition, purpose, and community, which is just
[8:21] Speaker 1: one those four things. They're pretty simple.
[8:25] Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right.
[8:26] Speaker 1: And they're obvious sort of thing, that's right.
[8:28] Speaker 2: I Mean some people look in on the aging research
[8:31] Speaker 2: field and they want to look at what they can
[8:33] Speaker 2: do now, and they see it's these obvious things that
[8:34] Speaker 2: their grandparents could have told them about, and they're like, well,
[8:37] Speaker 2: this isn't a field of research, this is not serious.
[8:39] Speaker 2: But you know, that's where we're out at the moment
[8:42] Speaker 2: for being able to give advice to people, those old
[8:46] Speaker 2: school advice that their grandparents would have had

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