Genetics? Up to a point: In the end, longevity is a matter of lifestyle. This is essentially what emerged yesterday from the talk "Okinawa and Sardinia: so far, so close", the debate at the center of the second edition of the Longevity Fest staged in Porto Cervo .
After the success of the first edition, the project conceived and produced by director Pietro Mereu granted an encore developed and coordinated by the Costa Smeralda Consortium and the Agrifood and Territorial Marketing division of Cipnes, as part of a new stage in the regional marketing program " Insula – Sardinia Quality World”. And he did so with an in-depth study whose main theme was the anthropological and cultural analysis of longevity by comparing two of the most important "blue areas" in the world: Sardinia, which, according to Istat data, boasts 677 centenarians ( and of these 75 percent are women) and the island of Okinawa.
Mereu, in the Piazzetta della Marina, was discussed by the founder of the blue zone Gianni Pes , Craig Wilcox , gerontologist and top longevity expert on the island of Okinawa , and the doctor and researcher of the blue zone Giovanni Scapagnini . Moderating the meeting was journalist Eleonora Cozzella , who as a first move introduced the creator of the Longevity Fest, her fellow citizen from Lanusei Mereu. "I am very happy with this edition: if last year the festival was dedicated only to Sardinia, this year it will focus on the meeting between Okinawa and our Island", explained the director before leaving room for the documentary excerpt on the island of Okinawa “Kentannos”.
Next, Professor Pes, who after recalling the discovery and birth of the blue zone in Sardinia, located in particular between Ogliastra and Barbagia, and the birth of an observatory in 2016, specified: "There are four official blue zones including ours: Icaria, a Greek island, an area of Costa Rica, the Nicoya peninsula, and Okinawa”. As for the reasons for Sardinian longevity, Pes added: «More than genetic factors, which influence 6 to 10 percent, the environmental factor matters more, physical activity, diet, social relationships, all factors on which we can act not so much to live long but to live better». In Sardinia, the novelty "is a modification of the geography of longevity", concluded the Gallura doctor, professor at the University of Sassari. "Some municipalities that weren't long-lived twenty years ago seem to have become so now, like Teulada but also Arzachena, here in Gallura".
So Scapagnini. «I deal with nutrition and diet, aspects to focus on because they are transmissible with a certain ease», is the premise. «Equally important are physical activity, which does not refer to sport, which in some ways accelerates aging processes, but to physical activity understood as a non-sedentary lifestyle in the rhythms of nature, and social relationships: a study established that the quality of friendships and marriage are variables that have an impact on brain ageing». Keeping away or limiting so-called negative stress.
However, nutrition is essential. «In co common the blue zones have that the basis of a good aging there is a diet that is based on few calories», reveals Scapagnini. «Also, it's better to add things that are good for you, which is more important than removing the harmful ones. Ok good fats, like Omega 3». Essential polyunsaturated fatty acids, very useful for preventing cardiovascular diseases and some inflammatory diseases. «We find them in fish, which the Omega 3s do not produce, but eat it from algae, in wild pigs and sheep and, therefore, in cheeses». In vegetables, seeds and partly in dried fruit, almonds, pistachios, walnuts and hazelnuts. "They are fats that mediate the inflammatory processes that are responsible for aging," says the doctor.
Meanwhile, Valeria Satta, regional councilor for agriculture, arrives in the square. And Wilcox takes the floor, for the very first time in Sardinia. "The only positive gene underlying longevity is called Fox O," began the Canadian expert. "But this gene - he added - can be activated with lifestyle, because genes work in collaboration with the environment". With a fortified gene, for example, one does not die of cardiovascular disease, which remains the main cause of mortality to this day.
Then, to Eleonora Cozzella's question «what does Okinawa have in common with Sardinia», the American geneticist replies in favor of the public: “Beautiful women”. Then, getting a little more serious, he explained: «They are two islands with a temperate climate, a factor that helps limit joint pain. But most of all – concluded Wilcox – a healthy diet can help: legumes are good, and the balance in introducing a balanced amount of vegetables and meat into the body, and when it is the case, fish too».
