INSIGHTS | 32. Living to the Age of 100.

New study from Sweden sheds interesting light on mainstream medical markers of health.

Article: Blood biomarker profiles and exceptional longevity.

Photo by Stephen Walker on Unsplash

I was recently watching a documentary series on the infamous ‘Blue Zones’ of the world. Blue zone was coined by researchers who explored parts of the world in which a higher than expected proportion of a local population lived to the age of 100 (centenarians).

The original blue zone was a province in Sardinia, Italy (Nuoro). Others were subsequently added:

• Okinawa Prefecture, Japan

• Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica

• Icaria, Greece

• Loma Linda, California

Truth be told, I find Loma Linda to be a tad unconvincing, but this is purely based on what I saw in the documentary - so it’s a rather uninformed position.

Most of the time when people are having debates about blue zones, and how it is these people live to 100, they argue over diet. Some use it as an opportunity to shill vegetarian diets.

In my opinion, diet is not the most important element of the blue zone life.

Murata et al

The article linked above involves an analysis of a cohort of patients that have been previously followed as part of the Apolipoprotein Mortality Risk (AMORIS) cohort.

This cohort includes over 800,000 people from Sweden who had regular check-ups and blood markers drawn from 1985 to 1996. Because of Sweden’s ability to log and track their populations health, AMORIS has enabled longitudinal follow-up on the health status of these people until the year 2020.

In their sub-analysis, Murata et al included those born between 1893 to 1920. These participants were between the age of 64 to 99 years at the time of their blood measurements.

Murata et al included 44, 636 participants in their final analysis.

• 13.1% died before the age of 80

• 47.6% died between 80 and 90

• 36.6% died between 90 and 100

• 2.7% lived over the age of 100