New Harvard Study: If You Want to Live Longer, Live Like a Mediterranean – Inc.

For the past 10 years, I’ve lived on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. This expat life has plenty of frustrations — missing friends and family, struggling with the language, many long flights toting a grumpy kid — but one thing that’s undeniable is that it’s way easier to live a healthy lifestyle here than back in the States. 

Supermarkets brim with local, fresh ingredients at reasonable prices. A slower pace of life makes it easier to fit in exercise and hobbies. And the tight-knit culture here makes it hard for anyone to become profoundly lonely. Having beautiful beaches nearby certainly isn’t bad for stress levels either. 

All of this might prompt a U.S.-based entrepreneur to reply: Good for you, but what does that have to do with me? American business owners want to live longer, healthier lives and have more energy to devote to their companies and passions. But close to none of them can pick up and move to the Mediterranean. 

Does that mean that folks living in other parts of the world have to just throw up their hands and admire the Mediterranean lifestyle from afar? Not according to a new study from researchers out of Harvard and their Spanish collaborators. The recently published research looking at data on more than 100,000 Britons concluded that even people living in far colder and busier climes can see big health benefits when trying to live like a Mediterranean. 

Britain, with its dreary weather, fish and chips, and more introverted culture (trust me on this one, I lived in London for years too, so I have some basis for comparison) is a long way from sunny Spain and convivial Italy. Can even people in the land of pub food and the stiff upper lip manage to emulate a Mediterranean way of life in such a way that it makes a significant difference to their health? 

To figure this out. the researchers looked at a huge database on the lifestyles of more than 100,000 Brits over the age of 40. How many fruits, veggies, and whole grains did they eat? How much rest did they get? How much social interaction? After giving each individual a MEDLIFE score, which measured how Mediterranean their lifestyle was, the researchers followed how many fell ill and died over a nine-year period. 

It turns out that the benefits of the Mediterranean way of life aren’t confined to the Mediterranean. 

“Participants with higher MEDLIFE scores were found to have a 29 percent lower risk of all-cause mortality and a 28 percent lower risk of cancer mortality compared to those with lower MEDLIFE scores. Adherence to each MEDLIFE category independently was associated with lower all-cause and cancer mortality risk,” reports the study release. 

In other words, the more you adopted a Mediterranean lifestyle, the less likely you were to die during the study period. Living like a Greek really will help you live longer, even if you’re living like a Greek in Glasgow. 

Which might strike some folks as pretty obvious. Certainly, no one is overly shocked that eating healthy food, keeping stress levels in check, and maintaining social ties increases your chances of living a longer, healthier life. So what should entrepreneurs take from this study? 

Perhaps encouragement that geography is not destiny when it comes to lifestyle. Living in a nerve-jangling urban area and among the health horrors of an American supermarket snack aisle can make it feel futile to try and maintain a more laid-back, nourishing approach to life. But this new study underlines that it is possible and that the potential payoff in terms of years of healthy, productive life is potentially vast. 

“This study suggests that it’s possible for non-Mediterranean populations to adopt the Mediterranean diet using locally available products and to adopt the overall Mediterranean lifestyle within their own cultural contexts,” insists lead author Mercedes Sotos Prieto. “We’re seeing the transferability of the lifestyle and its positive effects on health.”