The Power of Environment: A Comprehensive Review of the Exposome's Role in Healthy Aging, Longevity, and Preventive Medicine-Lessons from Blue Zones and Cilento.
Level 5 - mechanism / opinion, no new human data
Systematic review and mixed-methods synthesis of observational, ecological, and mechanism-based longevity literature
PubMed 40005049 · doi:10.3390/nu17040722
What was done
Authors conducted a mixed-methods study combining a systematic review of literature from 2003 to 2024 (searched in PubMed, Scopus, and Google Scholar) with a comparative analysis of longevity regions (Blue Zones and Cilento) to evaluate how environmental, microbiome, lifestyle, and resilience factors influence healthy aging.
What was found
The abstract reports no quantitative data, odds ratios, or effect sizes. It qualitatively describes shared patterns across longevity hotspots, including exposure to biodiverse natural environments, plant-based or Mediterranean diets rich in polyphenols and probiotics, regular physical activity, strong social networks, psychological resilience, and gut microbiome mediation of immune-metabolic health.
Why it matters
The review synthesizes multidimensional lifestyle and ecological observations from high-longevity populations into a conceptual exposome framework for healthy aging research.
Limits
No quantitative metrics, sample sizes, or number of included studies are reported in the abstract. Evidence relies on observational and ecological case comparisons in unique geographic cohorts, which cannot establish causality or easily generalize to broader populations.
Cited by
- contradicts Abundance of polyphenols is the singular common dietary factor across long-lived Blue Zone populations.