NPR has a fascinating article that the island of Icaria (also spelled Ikaria) has the highest percentage of 90-year-olds on Earth. Nearly 1/3 of the people living on Icaria reach the age of 90. The island may be one of Earth's blue zones, "a place where residents have unusually long life spans." Dan Beuttner is also the author of The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who've Lived the Longest.
NPR says researcher Dan Buettner teamed up with AARP and National Geographic to study Icaria. He found the people living there have greatly decreased cancer and heart disease rates. The people living on Icaria do a great deal of walking, own their own gardens and eat lots of olive oil, fruits and vegetables.
Plus, Buettner says, "they have about 20 percent lower rates of cancer, 50 percent lower rates of heart disease and almost no dementia."
Our life spans are about 20 percent dictated by our genes, Buettner says. The rest is lifestyle. People in Icaria live in mountain villages that necessitate activity every day. "They have gardens," he says, for example. "If they go to church, if they go to their friends' house — it always occasions a small walk. But that ends up burning much more calories than going to a gym for 20 minutes a day."
"They also have a diet that's very interesting," Buettner continues. "It's very high in olive oil; it's very high in fruits and vegetables." It's also very high in greens; about 150 kinds of veggies grow wild on the island. "These greens have somewhere around 10 times the level of antioxidants in red wine."
Buettner found that the people of Icaria don't eat a lot of fish despite living so close to the water. However, they do drink lots of herbal teas which Buettner discovered are diuretics that lower blood pressure.
You can find some web resources for Icaria here, here and here. You can find out more information about Earth's blue zones on Dan Buettner's bluezones.com website.
