Blue Zone Barbagia: Why So Many People Live to 100 Here
In a handful of mountain villages around the Gennargentu, people reach 100 years old three times more often than in the rest of Sardinia – a puzzle scientists have been studying for over 20 years.
Where the name "Blue Zone" comes from
The term goes back to the 2004 AKEA demographic study ("A Kent'Annos," Sardinian for "to a hundred years"). The researchers involved marked the villages with especially many centenarians on a map in blue ink – the blue circles gave rise to the now world-famous term "Blue Zone," today used for several longevity regions around the globe. The Barbagia was one of the very first such zones.
Six villages, one massif
Affected are around six villages in the Barbagia and Ogliastra around the Gennargentu massif, with about 40,000 residents combined – traditionally mostly shepherds and farmers who stay physically active even into old age. In a historical analysis, the AKEA researchers found 91 centenarians among roughly 18,000 people born between 1880 and 1900 – about three times the Sardinian average.
What research suspects
There's no single explanation – studies usually point to an interplay of several factors: the traditional plant-based diet with plenty of flatbread, legumes, and moderate but regular consumption of Cannonau red wine (more in our article on Sardinian wines), lifelong physical activity in mountainous terrain, strong family and village ties, and an especially stable genetic baseline due to the geographic isolation of the mountain villages.
Genetic isolation as a key factor
Because the mountain villages of the Barbagia experienced almost no immigration for centuries, geneticists consider the region's genetic population structure exceptionally homogeneous and well-suited for study – one reason the Barbagia remains a target of numerous international longevity and gene studies, as our article with facts about Sardinia also briefly touches on.