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Definition
The term Blue Zone (BZ) refers to a rather small, homogenous geographical area where the population shares the same lifestyle and environment and its exceptional longevity has been scientifically proven. To date, four regions have been identified around the world as possessing the requirements to achieve Blue Zone status. They are located in Okinawa, Sardinia, Costa Rica, and Greece.
Blue Zone or, to be precise, Longevity Blue Zone (LBZ) is a term coined in 2000 by the Belgian demographer Michel Poulain and the Italian physician Gianni Pes in the context of age validation of centenarians in Sardinia, and it was used for the first time in 2004 in an article published in Experimental Gerontology (Poulain et al. 2004). Initially the term was given to a mountainous area located in the central-eastern part of the Mediterranean island of Sardinia, where the two scholars had found a population with exceptional longevity. Although longevous...
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Pes, G., Poulain, M. (2016). Blue Zones. In: Pachana, N. (eds) Encyclopedia of Geropsychology. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-080-3_144-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-080-3_144-1
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