Of these lessons, 3 of the 9 had to do with socialization/relationships (#7: belong to a spiritual community, #8 make family a priority, #9 find the right tribe). In 2008, the article became a book, Blue Zones, and in it, Buettner distilled 9 lessons for promoting health, happiness, and longevity. These five regions included: Okinawa, Japan Sardinia, Italy Nicoya, Costa Rica Icaria, Greece and the Seventh-Day Adventist population in Loma Linda, California (USA). In 2005, National Geographic published a cover story by Dan Buettner, an author and educator who defined five seperate geographic regions where people lived longest and healthiest lives. Babies’ brains need constant touch, cuddling, and rocking, and without that, they will exhibit “failure to thrive.” The Blue Zones Study The authors found that physical affection is needed to stimulate the immune system and the production of growth hormone, and without this, babies’ bodies will start shutting down. Orphans left in such institutions will develop behavioral and psychological problems and lose IQ points the longer they stay in the orphanage. And half of the remainder will develop mental illness. In a study discussed in the book Born for Love by Bruce Perry and Maia Szalavitz, about a third of babies placed in the barest orphanages, where they receive little to no affection or touch, will literally die. They depended on each other and formed tight-knit relationships with everyone in the community, a factor which proved more potent than even diet or wealth in keeping them alive. In other words, the Rosetans kept each other alive. Every family home consisted of three generations, nobody was marginalized. No one was lonely or too unhappy or stressed. Researchers who studied the Rosetans concluded that the Rosetans’ traditional, cohesive family and community relationships were sustaining them. So how did they manage to stay so freakishly healthy and long-lived? They also faced the stress of discrimination from their neighbors. Rosetans smoked poisonous cigars, drank wine freely, worked in toxic environments, cooked their sausages in lard, and ate cheeses loaded with the worst kind of cholesterol. In the 1960s, doctors found that a close-knit homogenous Italian-American community in Roseto, Pennsylvania, had an unusually low mortality rate from myocardial infarction (heart attack), compared to neighboring communities. One sentence does not an article make, however, so allow me to elaborate, with the help of some anecdotes and scientific studies: The Long-Lived Pennsylvanian Pioneers Here it is: If you want to kill yourself without actually doing yourself bodily injury… I can answer the question from the headline in one sentence. “Close-up of wilting rose flowers” by Silvestri Matteo on Unsplash
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