BLUE ZONES Healthy Longevity

 ● The five original blue zones–the places in the world with the healthiest, longest-living populations, including Okinawa, Japan; 

Sardinia, Italy; 

Nicoya, Costa Rica; 

Ikaria, Greece; 

and Loma Linda, California.

● The research and identification of the world’s longest-lived and happiest populations. Through our research of these extraordinary cultures of longevity, we have distilled their lessons for living long, vibrant lives into nine simple practices.

1.Ikaria, Greece

Travel to this tiny Aegean island to discover the secrets of residents who live eight years longer than Americans, have half the rate of heart disease and almost no dementia.

The island where people forget to die.

An isolated culture rich in tradition, family values – and longevity.

Today, Ikarians are almost entirely free of dementia and some of the chronic diseases that plague Americans; one in three make it to their 90s. A combination of factors explain it, including geography, culture, diet, lifestyle and outlook. They enjoy strong red wine, late-night domino games and a relaxed pace of life that ignores clocks. Clean air, warm breezes and rugged terrain draw them outdoors into an active lifestyle.

Ikarians have woven the recipe for longevity into their culture and lifestyle. Follow these common practices to cultivate your own centenarian lifestyle.

● Mimic mountain living

The longest-lived Ikarians tended to be poor people living in the island’s highlands. They exercised mindlessly by just gardening, walking to their neighbors house or doing their own yard work. The lesson to us: Engineer more mindless movement into our lives.

● Eat a Mediterranean-style diet

Ikarians eat a variation of the Mediterranean diet, with lots of fruits and vegetables, whole grains, beans, potatoes and olive oil.

Try cooking with olive oil, which contains cholesterol-lowering mono-unsaturated fats.

□ IKARIA,GREECE. HOW IKARIAN CENTENARIANS ATE FOR MOST OF THEIR LIVES:

GRAINS 1%

SWEETS 4%

MEAT 5%

PASTA 5%

FISH 6%

OLIVE OIL 6%

POTATOES 9%

LEGUMES 11%

FRUITS 16%

GREENS 17%

OTHER VEGETABLES 20%.

TOTAL 100%.

●Stock up on herbal

People in Ikaria enjoy drinking herbal teas with family and friends, and scientists have found that they pack an antioxidant punch. Wild rosemary, sage and oregano teas also act as a diuretic, which can keep blood pressure in check by ridding the body of excess sodium and water.

● Nap

Take a cue from Ikarians and take a mid-afternoon break. People who nap regularly have up to 35 percent lower chances of dying from heart disease. It may be because napping lowers stress hormones or rests the heart.

● Fast occasionally

Ikarians have traditionally been fierce Greek Orthodox Christians. Their religious calendar called for fasting almost half the year. Caloric restriction – a type of fasting that cuts about 30 percent of calories out of the normal diet – is the only proven way to slow the aging process in mammals.

● Make family and friends a priority

Ikarians foster social connections, which have been shown to benefit overall health and longevity. So get out there and make some plans.

● Choose goat’s milk over cow’s milk

Instead of cow’s milk, Ikarians use grass-fed goat’s milk. It provides potassium and the stress-relieving hormone tryptophan. It’s also hypoallergenic and can usually be tolerated by people who are lactose intolerant.

The island of long life:

On the Greek island of Ikaria, life is sweet… and very, very long. So what is the locals' secret?

Gregoris Tsahas has smoked a packet of cigarettes every day for 70 years. High up in the hills of Ikaria, in his favourite cafe, he draws on what must be around his half-millionth fag. I tell him smoking is bad for the health and he gives me an indulgent smile, which suggests he's heard the line before. He's 100 years old and, aside from appendicitis, has never known a day of illness in his life.

Tsahas has short-cropped white hair, a robustly handsome face and a bone-crushing handshake. He says he drinks two glasses of red wine a day, but on closer interrogation he concedes that, like many other drinkers, he has underestimated his consumption by a couple of glasses.

The secret of a good marriage, he says, is never to return drunk to your wife. He's been married for 60 years. "I'd like another wife," he says. "Ideally one about 55."

Tsahas is known at the cafe as a bit of a gossip and a joker. He goes there twice a day. It's a 1km walk from his house over uneven, sloping terrain. That's four hilly kilometres a day. Not many people half his age manage that far in Britain.

In Ikaria, a Greek island in the far east of the Mediterranean, about 30 miles from the Turkish coast, characters such as Gregoris Tsahas are not exceptional. With its beautiful coves, rocky cliffs, steep valleys and broken canopy of scrub and olive groves, Ikaria looks similar to any number of other Greek islands. But there is one vital difference: people here live much longer than the population on other islands and on the mainland. In fact, people here live on average 10 years longer than those in the rest of Europe and America – around one in three Ikarians lives into their 90s. Not only that, but they also have much lower rates of cancer and heart disease, suffer significantly less depression and dementia, maintain a sex life into old age and remain physically active deep into their 90s. What is the secret of Ikaria? What do its inhabitants know that the rest of us don't?

The island is named after Icarus, the young man in Greek mythology who flew too close to the sun and plunged into the sea, according to legend, close to Ikaria. Thoughts of plunging into the sea are very much in my mind as the propeller plane from Athens comes in to land. There is a fierce wind blowing – the island is renowned for its wind – and the aircraft appears to stall as it turns to make its final descent, tipping this way and that until, at the last moment, the pilot takes off upwards and returns to Athens. Nor are there any ferries, owing to a strike. "They're always on strike," an Athenian back at the airport tells me.

Stranded in Athens for the night, I discover that a fellow thwarted passenger is Dan Buettner, author of a book called The Blue Zones, which details the five small areas in the world where the population outlive the American and western European average by around a decade: Okinawa in Japan, Sardinia in Italy, the Nicoya peninsula in Costa Rica, Loma Linda in California and Ikaria in Greece.

Tall and athletic, 52-year-old Buettner, who used to be a long-distance cyclist, looks a picture of well-preserved youth. He is a fellow with National Geographic magazine and became interested in longevity while researching Okinawa's aged population. He tells me there are several other passengers on the plane who are interested in Ikaria's exceptional demographics. "It would have been ironic, don't you think," he notes drily, "if a group of people looking for the secret of longevity crashed into the sea and died."

Chatting to locals on the plane the following day, I learn that several have relations who are centenarians. One woman says her aunt is 111. The problem for demographers with such claims is that they are often very difficult to stand up. Going back to Methuselah, history is studded with exaggerations of age. In the last century, longevity became yet another battleground in the cold war. The Soviet authorities let it be known that people in the Caucasus were living deep into their hundreds. But subsequent studies have shown these claims lacked evidential foundation.

The village of Evdilos on the north of Ikaria.

Since then, various societies and populations have reported advanced ageing, but few are able to supply convincing proof. "I don't believe Korea or China," Buettner says. "I don't believe the Hunza Valley in Pakistan. None of those places has good birth certificates."

However, Ikaria does. It has also been the subject of a number of scientific studies. Aside from the demographic surveys that Buettner helped organise, there was also the University of Athens' Ikaria Study. One of its members, Dr Christina Chrysohoou, a cardiologist at the university's medical school, found that the Ikarian diet featured a lot of beans and not much meat or refined sugar. The locals also feast on locally grown and wild greens, some of which contain 10 times more antioxidants than are found in red wine, as well as potatoes and goat's milk.

Chrysohoou thinks the food is distinct from that eaten on other Greek islands with lower life expectancy. "Ikarians' diet may have some differences from other islands' diets," she says. "The Ikarians drink a lot of herb tea and small quantities of coffee; daily calorie consumption is not high. Ikaria is still an isolated island, without tourists, which means that, especially in the villages in the north, where the highest longevity rates have been recorded, life is largely unaffected by the westernised way of living."

But she also refers to research that suggests the Ikarian habit of taking afternoon naps may help extend life. One extensive study of Greek adults showed that regular napping reduced the risk of heart disease by almost 40%. What's more, Chrysohoou's preliminary studies revealed that 80% of Ikarian males between the ages of 65 and 100 were still having sex. And, of those, a quarter did so with "good duration" and "achievement". "We found that most males between 65 and 88 reported sexual activity, but after the age of 90, very few continued to have sex."

In a small village called Nas at the western end of Ikaria's north shore is Thea's Inn, a bustling guesthouse run by Thea Parikos, an American-Ikarian who returned to her roots and married a local. Ever since Buettner set up with his research team here a few years back, Thea's Inn has been a sort of base camp for anyone looking to study the island's older population.

It's a good introduction to Ikarian life, if only because the dining table always seems to bear a jug of homemade red wine and dishes made from garden-grown vegetables. Whatever household we enter over the next four days, even at the shortest notice, invariably produces the same appetising hospitality. Yet Ikarians are far from wealthy. The island has not escaped the Greek economic crisis and around 40% of its inhabitants are unemployed. Nearly everyone grows their own food and many produce their own wine.

There is also a strong tradition of solidarity among Ikarians. During the second world war, when the island was occupied by the Italians and Germans, there was substantial loss of life through starvation – some estimates put the death toll at 20% of the population. It's been speculated that one of the reasons for Ikarians' longevity is a Darwinian effect of survival of the fittest.

After the war, thousands of communists and leftists were exiled to the island, bringing an ideological underpinning to the Ikarians' instinct to share. As one of the island's few doctors told Buettner, "It's not a 'me' place. It's an 'us' place."

Nearly all elderly Ikarians have a story of suffering, though few are keen to tell it. Kostas Sponsas lost a leg in Albania, when he was blown up by a German shell. He was saved by fellow Ikarians, without whose help he would have died from loss of blood. "'Be strong,' they told me," he says. "'Have courage!'"

He turns 100 this month and is more mobile than many younger men with two legs. Each day he pays a visit to the office of the shop he set up decades ago. "If I feel tired, I read. It rests my mind."

He was determined not to get depressed after losing his leg as a young man, instead remembering his grandfather's advice. "He used to say to me, 'Be grateful that nothing worse has happened.'"

In terms of longevity, it was wise counsel. Depression, sadness, loneliness, stress – they can and do take a decade off our lives. Sponsas's own tips for a long life are that he never eats food fried with butter, always sleeps well and with the window open, avoids eating too much meat, drinks herb tea – mint or sage – and makes sure to have a couple of glasses of red wine with his food.

Sponsas's son, a large middle-aged man with a broad smile, is with him when I visit, fixing a broken door. Family is a vital part of Ikarian culture and every old person I visit has children and grandchildren actively involved in their lives. Eleni Mazari, an estate agent on the island and a repository of local knowledge, says, "We keep the old people with us. There is an old people's home, but the only people there are those who have lost all their family. It would shame us to put an old person in a home. That's the reason for longevity."

Evangelia Karnava, 97, at her home in Evdilos.

Sponsas agrees: "To have your family around you makes you feel stronger and more secure."

Just a minute's walk from his house in the picturesque port of Evdilos is the spotless home of Evangelia Karnava. In Ikaria, if you ask people their age, the answer they give is the year they were born. Karnava, a tiny but formidable woman, was born in 1916. She radiates a fierce energy, gesticulating like a politician on the stump. She lost two baby girls to starvation during the war but she's not someone haunted by tragedy. Instead, she speaks of her three children, seven grandchildren, four great-grandchildren and her great-great-grandchild. "I'm going to live to be 115," she tells me. "My grandmother was 107."

She certainly looks as if she's fit for a good few years yet. She cleans her own flat and goes shopping every day. What's her secret? She pours out glasses of Coca-Cola for her guests. "I can't live without it!" she says.

2.Loma Linda, California

Pull off the San Bernardino freeway east of Los Angeles and you’ll encounter a community of Adventists teaching us new lessons about the power of faith, friendship and fruit.

3.Sardinia, Italy

Visit this Mediterranean island—home to the greatest concentration of male centenarians in the world—and you’ll discover healthy lifestyles that have not changed much since the time of Christ.

4.Okinawa, Japan

Touch down on these South Pacific islands and you’ll meet residents – including the world’s longest-lived women – eating three foods that could help every American live longer.

5.Nicoya, Costa Rica

Grab a bike and pedal along a path on this Pacific coast peninsula and you’ll find colorful houses, exotic fruits and residents twice as likely as Americans to reach a healthy age 90. Is it something in the water?