I want to ask you something. When was the last time you worked out?
How about doing the simplest things, like walking a distance, delivering a package, or anything that makes your body move?
Like you, I don’t do it a lot. Aside from work and having less me-time, I am always too tired to start or do it again.
There’s a village in Italy located on a hillside, where people move a lot. Their daily routine includes climbing steep areas, often eating bean soup, and living over 100 years.
They are ordinary people without special potions or the latest devices. But here they live in a village where 10 of its roughly 2,300 residents are 100 or older.
What a great life, right?
But what secrets do they hold? Why are the experts so excited to know more about them?
Let’s find out.
Where is This Village Exactly?
This village is Bolotana. It is located on the island of Sardinia in Italy. This is home to around 2,300 inhabitants.
Fox News described the site as a village of unusually high life expectancy. National Geographic reported that researchers, including Blue Zones founder Dan Buettner, consider it a possible new “blue zone.”
In a 2024 count, the village had 10 elders who were already centenarians. This is about 11 times the average in the US and 10 times the average for Sardinia as a whole.
A study published in Frontiers in Aging found that Bolotana’s longevity advantage shows up mostly in women.
Of the women in Bolotana who reach 70, about 13.8% live to 100, compared with about 3.5% in Italy and 3.6% in the U.S., according to Euronews.
Bolotana’s women rank second only to Hong Kong for life expectancy at 70 and for survival from 70 to 100.
To make sure the ages were real, researchers checked birth, death and baptism records. Buettner called them probably the richest centenarian data in the world. That matters, because some researchers have questioned whether the ages in other longevity hotspots were recorded correctly.
A Warning from Experts (Don’t Get Too Excited)
Fox clarifies that the habits they studied don’t guarantee you a long life. Being called a “blue zone” doesn’t mean it’s already a recognized one.
Think of their habits as useful for health and lifestyle.
First Habit: The Villagers Move a Lot
The villagers of Bolotana walk a lot. But they do it without tracking their daily steps.
Blue Zones founder Dan Buettner said the paths are steep, but they mostly walk to other houses, work, cafes, or around town. He calls it “unconscious walking” and says it matters more for longevity than going to the gym.
Even if you don’t work out today but walk a lot, your body benefits from your daily steps. Buettner says people in walkable American neighborhoods live 3 to 5 years longer than people in less walkable ones, although he didn’t point to a specific study.
Inspired by the people of Bolotana, Buettner said that adding more walks to your daily routine improves your life even if you don’t hit the gym a lot. It’s also better than obsessively tracking your daily steps. If you want a place to start, we have a guide on how to lose weight by walking.
Second Habit: They Eat Mostly Plants (Especially Beans)
The villagers’ diet is largely plant-based, built on beans, wheat, vegetables, olives and olive oil, with some cheese and a little meat.
Buettner said about 90% of their diet is plant-based, and they eat complex carbohydrates rather than a lot of protein.
Their breakfast has bread or cheese with olives, paired with a cup of coffee. Lunch is soup full of beans and seasonal vegetables. They eat meat about 5 times a month, usually on special occasions.
They also cook with olive oil from ancient olive trees, while families in the Sardinian highlands traditionally cooked with lard. Researchers are now studying this olive oil because it contains unusually high levels of certain fatty acids. Whether that plays a role in their longevity is still unknown.
Third Habit: Constant Interaction and Bonding
Villagers usually bond more with family, friends, or neighbors. Most women often share meals, participate in community activities, and attend church together.
Buettner has a theory about why the women here do so well. Because Bolotana is partly agricultural, many men are home more often and share the household work, so women carry about half the stress. In the original Sardinian blue zone, which is known for its long-living men, women traditionally carried almost all of it on their own. This is Buettner’s theory, not a proven finding.
It’s more like having someone to sit with you and talk about your worries, which lessens the burden. They treat relationships seriously by caring for each other.
The Best Part? Doing it Genuinely
The villagers aren’t striving harder to become centenarians, doing biohacking, or having a strong gym culture. They are just humans with average genes.
This is about reaping the benefits of a great environment and great lifestyle. The environment plays a vital role in keeping them healthy for longer. You can see similar patterns in other long-lived places, like the Japanese longevity habits we’ve written about.
How to Apply Their Lifestyle?
Is it doable even though we live outside Bolotana? Yes, if you are willing to keep a healthy lifestyle.
From what we’ve learned from their habits, here’s what we can apply to ourselves:
- Walk the short distance instead of driving it.
- Eat bean and vegetable soup at least once a week.
- Change your regular cooking oil to olive oil.
- Interaction + shared meals? Invite your friends, relatives, or someone over for a feast.
- Reach out to someone you haven’t talked to for a while.
- Ask your friends and plan a workout together.
A healthy lifestyle consists of a healthy routine, responsible consumption, maintaining fruitful interactions, and engaging more in physical activity.
Just a Healthy Lifestyle, No Secret Pills
Bolotana villagers don’t have superhuman abilities, take a secret pill, or have special genetics. They live to the fullest, keep a healthy environment, and choose to be healthy.
Their habits don’t guarantee you live past 100, but they do encourage you to make the healthiest choices. Those habits are challenging to maintain, but we can strive to achieve them.
Instead of relying on impossible health goals, let’s learn from the villagers. Let’s be physically active, eat mostly plants, and be more social. That’s what Bolotana hoped we should apply to ourselves.
Which of these 3 habits do you already do?