Author: Dan Ellerhorst

Our fifth Pacesetter presentation for 2024 was titled Blue Zones and was given by Gene Dionne at the Landsdowne Arms pub in Highlands Ranch. Gene gave an introduction to the 2 TED videos that he had chosen for the day titled “How to Live to !00+” by National Geographic’s Dan Buettner and “The Secret to Living Longer May be your Social Life”  by Susan Pinker. The essence of the first video was the summary of the factors important on living long lives, the most important being the top 2 in the list below. This list was derived from a study of 3 communities across the globe whose populations enjoyed long lives, many in their 90s and several in their 100s. 

The second video described the lifestyles of the residents of a remote mountainous area called Villa Grande on the island of Sardinia, a small island 200 miles off the west coast of Italy, where the residents have 6 times the number of Centenarians than the people on the Italian mainland and 10 times the number in North America. Susan Pinker searched for the reasons and found that 25% was due to genes and 75% to lifestyle, which supported the top 2 factors the chart shown by Buettner (social integration and close relationships). The video showed several interesting examples of  residents with longevity in this Blue Zone. The people in this village never were left to solitary lives, they interacted with their relatives and other residents on a daily basis, throughout their lives. 

Gene also had on display about 10 books he and his wife had accumulated in their study of longevity in their own lives and recommended to the audience. Gene also fielded several Qs from the attendees and several mentioned personal experiences that has affected their lives. Matt Grogan noted that both of the videos shown are free and available online, as well as many other related TED videos by using the YouTube search feature. 

Here are the Youtube links for the two presentations mentioned above.