I Tried "Blue Zone" Habits for a Month to Boost Healthspan and Longevity—Here's What Habits Were Actually Sustainable

Spend enough time on Longevity Tok, and you’ll soon stumble across the Blue Zones: the five regions said to have the highest concentration of centenarians anywhere in the world.

Since the term was first coined in 2000, when demographer Michel Poulain and epidemiologist Gianni Pes drew circles on a map of Sardinian villages in blue pen, they’ve become quite famous - studied for the biological and lifestyle factors which contribute to their population’s long and healthy lives. It led to the creation of the Power Nine - nine common lifestyle habits said to be shared by these five populations, and which many have sought to live by in an effort to age well.

I’m one of those people. I try to stay active every day, invest in my close relationships, eat a mostly plant-based diet (more on this later), and if I’m honest, I’ve taken the existence of the blue zones at face value for some time. It makes sense that the people of Okinawa, Japan; Ikaria, Greece; Sardinia, Italy; Nicoya, Costa Rica; and Loma Linda, California - with their lack of big city energy and pollution - would hold the secrets to ageing well, doesn’t it?

As it turns out, though, the research on the Blue Zones is built on some pretty shaky data. In fact, UCL researcher Dr Saul Newman won the Ig Nobel Prize in 2024 for his preprint paper debunking their entire existence. That paper has still not been published, but it does create a question mark over the reality of the Blue Zones.

So, with all that in mind, should we still be trying to live by the Power Nine habits? To find out, I spoke to leading longevity researchers, before drawing my own conclusions about which habits made a genuine difference to my wellbeing.

For more healthy ageing tips, check out our guides to strength training for longevity, how to protect your bone health and why we shouldn’t forget about our creative health. On the flip side, we’ve also got a candid guide to the longevity trends experts say you can skip.

I Tried Blue Zone Living: My review

What are the Power Nine Blue Zone habits?

Coined by explorer and National Geographic journalist Dan Buettner, the Power Nine are nine lifestyle principles said to contribute to the long, healthy lives of Blue Zone populations.

1. Build movement into your day-to-day life
2. Identify your purpose
3. Reduce stress
4. Eat to 80% fullness
5. Eat a mostly plant-based diet
6. Drink a glass of red wine a day
7. Seek out community and create a sense of belonging
8. Prioritise your family
9. Invest in friendships.

Importantly, longevity doctor Dr Rhea Kotecha says the Blue Zones themselves don’t need to exist for her to believe in the power nine. “The scientific community isn’t really divided on the habits; it’s divided on the data,” she explains. “Most of the behaviours stand up perfectly well on their own evidence, with or without the villages.”

Elliott Roy-Highley, medical director at preventative health studio Unbound, agrees. “We should promote these habits on their own scientific merits and drop the Blue Zone scaffolding.”

Are there genuine benefits to the Power Nine Blue Zone habits?

Without the Blue Zone branding, what’s so good about these nine principles?

Well, according to Dr Kotecha, it’s the ease with which we can integrate them into our lives that makes them so powerful. “These habits can be built into the architecture of life, without having to white-knuckle them through a strict regime,” she says. “Given that most health advice fails because nobody can keep it up, the power nine provides an important solution.”

Roy-Highley concurs. “Moving naturally, eating plants, developing routines to reduce daily stress, staying socially connected, finding purpose, eating moderately and prioritising loved ones - these have all been shown to be robust components of preventive and lifestyle medicine across numerous studies,” he explains.

Connection to others is particularly underrated, says Dr Kotecha. “We know from research that chronic loneliness carries a mortality risk roughly equivalent to smoking fifteen cigarettes a day - that’s not a sentence most people expect to read.”

Are there any risks to the Power Nine Habits?

Whilst by and large, the power nine principles are sound, both experts say that science has debunked the idea of ‘wine at five’.

“This is the one item where the recommendation now runs against the evidence,” says Roy-Highley, who points out that drinking alcohol increases the risk of over 200 conditions, including seven types of cancer. “The apparent protective effect of light drinking on overall mortality largely disappears once studies correct for the fact that many 'non-drinkers' are former drinkers who stopped because they were unwell,” he explains.

Dr Kotecha also makes a caveat to the idea of plant-based diets. “We want to build a plant-forward plate, rather than just empty it of meat,” she says. “Protein, B12, iron and vitamin D are all essential, especially in anyone past menopause. Without them, you trade one longevity-related problem for another.”

As such, both suggest using the power nine as guidelines, rather than strict rules. “Remember that having a multigenerational household, a walkable neighbourhood, and a supportive community aren’t always personal choices,” says Roy-Highley, who points out that these are often determined by societal structures beyond our control.

“One benefit of the Blue Zone framing is the recognition that the secret to longevity may not just be what the individual does, but also how the places, systems, and people around us create the right environments for living well for longer,” he concludes.

I Spent a Month Living By The Blue Zone Habits—Here’s What Actually Made a Difference

As the daughter of a Greek dad, I’ve been raised with the majority of the Power Nine Blue Zone habits built into my way of life. Plants have always made up the majority of our diet (I even had a six-year stint as a vegetarian), while moving my body every day and investing consistently in my family and friends are non-negotiables for my physical and mental health.

It means that, for the most part, this past month has been less about introducing new habits, and more about becoming conscious of what the habits I already rely on actually provide me with.

That said, there have been some important changes in the last month, predominantly relating to the 80% rule, finding my purpose and reducing my stress. Ahead, I outline how changes in these three areas have affected my health and happiness.

The 80% rule

I’m not afraid to say that over the years, I’ve had a very chequered relationship with food. I know many women will relate. I’ve cycled through various restrictive diets and iterations of trying to shrink my body, which, to this day, means that I struggle to tune in to my own internal cues of hunger and fullness. I’ll often find myself pushing myself to extreme hunger only to then eat way past fullness, as if in fear that I’ll never see food again.

All that made the idea of eating to 80% pretty daunting. I never want to slip back into restriction, so setting myself rules on the amount I could eat triggered initial alarm bells.

What I quickly discovered, however, is that when you remove rules about snacking between meals or coming back for seconds later if you’re still hungry, eating to 80% fullness isn’t a problem. It leaves you feeling less sluggish after a meal, less bloated or uncomfortable and actually encourages you not to allow yourself to reach the point of extreme hunger before eating.

Finding purpose

What can I say - I’m just a girl in my late twenties. Of course I struggle with my sense of purpose. Is my job meaningful enough, am I missing out by not being in a relationship, will I want a family one day, should I be travelling the world? These questions swim around my head almost daily.

And while I can’t tell you that I’ve got anywhere close to answering them in the last month, I have spent more time thinking about my passions, what I’m good at, and what makes life worthwhile. Things I’ve come up with include:

• raising awareness for women’s health through my job as a journalist
• giving people a safe, supportive space to move their bodies through my run club
• making time to expand my horizons by reading, researching topics I don’t know about and connecting with new people and perspectives

While I think this is probably a lifelong project, I’d highly recommend setting some regular time aside to think about your purpose - at the very least, it makes you feel like you’re getting closer to it.

Reducing stress

I’m naturally quite highly strung, which means I get stressed easily (yes, I’m an eldest daughter). Deadline pressure, too many emails, change of plans, a frosty text from a friend; these are all things which can set my brain whirring, and not in a good way.

My goal this month wasn’t to force permanent calm - it’s unrealistic and would just make me more stressed. Instead, it was to pay more attention to how my body felt under stress, to communicate it with those around me, and to carve out small moments of calm between the chaos of work, socialising and travel.

For me, that looked like eight hours of sleep, morning and evening reading, journaling, regular yoga and weekly therapy. These are just what works for me; for you it might look different, but I truly believe that tuning into your body, however you choose to do it, is the first step to managing stress. It takes practice, but trust me, it’s so worth it.

The verdict

Whether the Blue Zones exist is up for debate, but after this month, I honestly don’t think it matters. Like the experts, I’m fully on board with the idea that these nine habits are good principles to live by. Whether they really determine how long we’ll live, I can’t say, but they’ve certainly made my life feel better, and that’s really as much as we can hope for.

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