Italian Blue Zone – The Secret to Living Longer – TED TALK Fascinating
The Secret to Living Longer
Italian Blue Zone
Fascinating
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Susan Pinker is a psychologist, author and social science columnist for The Wall Street Journal. In this TED talk, she suggests after spending a lot of time in the Sardinian Blue Zone, that the key to living a long life is to nurture close personal relationships and face-to-face interactions.
“Here’s an intriguing fact. In the developed world, everywhere women live an average six to eight years longer than men do” she says. However, she points out that in Sardinia, an Italian island located in the Western Mediterranean, men live as long as women. After doing some research, she discovered that their longevity was largely due to their lifestyle. “Genes account for just 25 percent of their longevity. The other 75 percent is lifestyle” she says.
What reduces your chances of dying the most? Susan Pinker highlights that there are two features of your social life that will, in some way, determine how long you will live
The Sardinians are the native people and ethnic group from which Sardinia, a western Mediterranean island and autonomous region of Italy, derives its name.
Average life expectancy is slightly over 82 years (85 for women and 79.7 for men).
Sardinia is the first discovered Blue Zone in the modern world. A Blue Zone is a demographic and/or geographic area of the world where people live measurably longer lives.