{"id":5442,"date":"2015-08-05T20:16:50","date_gmt":"2015-08-05T20:16:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/?p=5442"},"modified":"2015-08-05T20:16:50","modified_gmt":"2015-08-05T20:16:50","slug":"the-island-of-eternal-life-how-to-live-above-100-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/?p=5442","title":{"rendered":"The island of eternal life: How to live above 100 years"},"content":{"rendered":"

By JAN MOIR: \"Island<\/a>\"Delta<\/a>The island of Ikaria is almost as far east as Greece gets. Here, where the mountains crash into the sea, where the herbs grow wild and the hills are peppered with brightly painted beehives and mottled goats, life is so good \u2014 and the living is so healthy \u2014 that centenarians are commonplace.
\nHere, where the salty wind blows and the local wine flows, the people live longer and better than almost anywhere else on the planet.
\nPeople like Grigoris Tsahas, who has just celebrated his 99th birthday, which almost makes him a minor by Ikarian standards.<\/p>\n

A headstone in the cemetery near his hill village of Madria marks the grave of a woman who was 116 when she died, which Grigoris thinks might be a record, but he is not sure.
\nFrom his house, twice a day he walks the half-mile or so uphill to his local coffee shop (and back), where he likes to talk with friends, drink small cups of Greek coffee and smoke cigarettes. He has, in fact, smoked for more than 70 years. \u2018I don\u2019t think cigarettes are as damaging as they say,\u2019 he tells me, and sparks up another.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s Christina Tsantiri, who will be 101 in June. She drinks a glass of red wine every lunchtime and likes to sit by her balcony window overlooking the port of Evdilos, doing her crochet and enjoying the sea view.
\nEvery chair and sofa in her home has a crochet cover, as do six cushions. She has soft white hair and the sweetest of smiles. She loves it when her grandchildren come to visit. \u2018If someone has a life to live, they will live,\u2019 she says.
\nEvangelia Karnava agrees. She lives in a neat two-bedroom apartment nearby. She is a firecracker; so full of spirit and fun it is impossible to believe she will be 100 in March. \u2018I love your Queen, she had the sense to marry a good Greek man. They are the best in the world! They love women and they love the family,\u2019 she says.<\/p>\n

Evangelia walks to the shops every day in her jacket with a smart fur collar. In the bank, she pays her bills with her e-card, she has her own mobile phone and lives a completely independent life.
\nShe thinks one of the secrets to her longevity is that she doesn\u2019t eat red meat. \u2018Well I do, but I eat only the fat, not the meat itself,\u2019 she says.
\nGeorge Kassiotis will be 104 at the end of this month. His identity card shows that he was born here in 1909, a time when the island did not have roads or electricity.
\nNow living in the island\u2019s capital of Agios Kirykos, with lemon and orange trees in his well-tended garden, he remembers having to walk to school every Monday morning from his village in the mountains; a hike of more than 25 miles. On Fridays, after lodging in town for the week, he would walk all the way back again.
\nToday, he likes to read all the newspapers every morning \u2014 he does not need glasses to do so and barely has a wrinkle. Popping on a hat to go outside and have his picture taken, he asks: \u2018Don\u2019t you have old men like me where you are from?\u2019
\nEvangelia Karnava thinks one of the secrets to her longevity is that she doesn’t eat red meat
\nEvangelia Karnava thinks one of the secrets to her longevity is that she doesn’t eat red meat
\nYes, we do, George \u2014 but perhaps not quite in such numbers or in such splendid health. Ikaria, the legendary home of Icarus whose wings melted when he flew too near the sun, is home to 10,000 Greeks, many of whom live much longer than average \u2014 here or anywhere else.
\nIts reputation as a centre of good health dates back centuries, to when other Greeks would travel here to soak in the hot springs near Therma on the eastern flank of the island.
\nIn more recent times, Ikaria has caught the attention of American longevity expert, Dan Buettner. For more than ten years, with support from the National Geographic Society, he has named the places in the world that have come closest to cracking the secret of eternal life.
\nBuettner\u2019s first so-called Blue Zones were the island of Okinawa in Japan, the town of Loma Linda in California, certain parts of Costa Rica and the hills around the province of Nuoro in Sardinia. Now, after rigorous research, he has added Ikaria to that list.
\nDemographers, experts from the University of Athens and teams of academics and researchers were put to work here for months.
\nBuettner knows very well that when a place is discovered with more than its fair share of centenarians and so starts to draw tourists, truth and fiction can quickly become blurred.
\n\u2018I wanted this study to cut through the stories and establish the facts about Ikaria\u2019s longevity,\u2019 he says. What they discovered was that people on Ikaria were reaching the age of 90 with two and a half times the frequency of Americans. Ikarian men, in particular, are four times as likely to reach 90, often in better health.
\nIkarians also suffered less depression and a quarter of the rate of dementia. \u2018On Ikaria, they stay sharp to the end,\u2019 wrote Buettner in an article for the New York Times.
\nAt almost 100 square miles, the mountainous island is 30 miles off the coast of Turkey.
\nIkarians have tamed the landscape by growing vegetables, grains and grapes in their gardens and on terraces cut into the hillsides. This is important, as locals and experts agree that the most important keys to Ikarian longevity and good health are diet, exercise and wine.
\n\u2018The wine is very important,\u2019 insists everyone on the island. Made from a mixture of red and white grapes, it does not contains any additives or sulphites, but has a very high alcohol content of 16 per cent and sometimes even 18 per cent \u2014 more potent than sherry! However, it\u2019s usually drunk in small but convivial measures, and never without food.<\/p>\n

The Ikarian diet is local, seasonal and natural. A Carrefour supermarket opened on the island three years ago, but very little processed food is consumed by the older set. They don\u2019t eat much meat, with goat being preferred to lamb when they do.
\nA typical breakfast would be tea made with wild herbs and bread with local honey, plus olives and cheese. The main meal of the day is lunch: typically vegetables with pulses or beans, plus wine and bread, followed by a siesta. The light evening meal is similar to breakfast.
\nOf prime importance in the local diet is horta, a generic name for a selection of wild plants picked from the hillsides and made into salads in summer, or boiled and dressed with olive oil and lemon in winter.
\nThe water the leaves are cooked in is drunk with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice. Bitter but not unpleasant, you can feel it sluicing through your body like a cleansing tide.
\nOne night on Ikaria I had two piping hot cups of horta soup \u2014 the next day, I felt wonderful.
\nThat was at the house of Katerina Karoutsou, an 85-year-old widow whose hair is jet black and who still makes spaghetti by hand, rolling pasta dough on a paddle-shaped board. \u2018We\u2019ve never had the dried stuff,\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n

In her simple house with a log fire roaring in a medieval-looking hearth, she showed me the bucket of freshly picked horta \u2014 a mixture of dandelion, wild sorrel, chicory and fennel leaves, plus other plants I couldn\u2019t identify.
\nDinner was horta, pasta, wild mushrooms from the hills and a bowl of sour, freshly harvested olives \u2014 in this form, they are particularly rich in anti-cancerous properties.
\nI noticed that the women around the table all had beautiful complexions, with one 58-year-old revealing she had never put anything on her flawless, peachy skin except soap, water and the occasional splash of fresh lemon juice.
\nHer skincare routine extended only to a little olive oil rubbed on her lips if they got dry. She was one of Katerina\u2019s nine children, all of them born in the room next door with no drugs or anaesthetic, just the ministrations of a local midwife.
\nPerhaps the key to Ikarians’ longevity is that you can’t get anywhere on the island without climbing a steep hill
\nPerhaps the key to Ikarians’ longevity is that you can’t get anywhere on the island without climbing a steep hill
\nIn those days, all babies on the island were weaned on kourkouti, which consists of flour browned in a pan over the fire to which water and milk (\u2018and an egg if we were lucky\u2019) were added.
\nKaterina got electricity only in 1973 \u2014 and it would take another ten years for the whole island to be plugged in.
\nBack in the coffee shop, with its shelves of shampoo, ouzo and biscuits, Grigoris Tsahas wonders if the fabled longevity might die out with his generation.
\nHe has four children, four grandchildren and four great-grand- children. \u2018If they want to live as long as me, they have to take care of their food and nutrition. But they want to eat all this stuff,\u2019 he says, waving at jumbo packets of crisps for sale.
\nMeanwhile, the news about magical Ikaria is spreading. The New York Times, BBC and CNN have all been here to report on the island. Of course, not all the centenarians want to speak to the media while others, like Grigoris, just love the attention.
\n\u2018It is nice to be famous,\u2019 he says, dapper as a bell boy in a hand- knitted jumper and jaunty scarf.
\nHe has a thick head of white hair and is about 5ft. He\u2019s been in hospital only once, to have his appendix out, and has had many jobs.
\nHis favourite was in the Thirties, as a muleteer. He would drive his mules to the port, load them up with charcoal from the ships, then drive them back over the hills. Today, he still harvests his own olive trees. \u2018I love life here. This is what I am doing to survive. I stay positive,\u2019 he says.
\nEvangelia Karnava tells a different story. \u2018My life has been very tough,\u2019 she says.
\n\u2018There were times when there was a lot of poverty and starvation. The war years here were the worst.\u2019
\nShe married in 1942 and had her first child, a baby girl, the following year \u2014 but she had nothing to feed her with.
\nShe remembers going to the military chief on the island and asking for a spoonful of sugar for her baby. She was informed that the provisions were for the soldiers only and turned away.
\nHer baby died of starvation, as did another daughter a year later.
\nWho can imagine the heartaches that lie behind the gaily painted blue doors in these picturesque little villages \u2014 but Evangelia was not broken. \u2018No, I had strength. I believe in God,\u2019 she says.
\n\u2018I will be 100 in March, but I still feel as if I am 20 years old. I have three children, seven grandchildren, four great-grandchildren and a great-great-grandchild will be born at Easter. I can\u2019t wait.\u2019
\nGeorge Kassiotis, 103, lives with his second wife. He believes his generation is special
\nGeorge Kassiotis, 103, lives with his second wife. He believes his generation is special
\nShe serves her guests choc ices and glasses of Tia Maria and reveals that she does all her own housework and shopping. \u2018Every year I do more, not less,\u2019 she says.
\nShe has never been in hospital. \u2018No doctors, no aches and pains,\u2019 she says. Her only difficulty is that she is almost blind in one eye.
\n\u2018So every day before I go to the shops I pray to St Paraskevi, the patron saint of eyes, that I will not trip on the cobbles.\u2019
\nHer advice for living long?
\n\u2018The thing is, whoever wants to live many years must work hard. You must not get sleepy. To be active is the key.\u2019
\nGeorge Kassiotis would agree. At the age of 103, he lives with his second wife Voula in Agios Kirykos.
\nOn the sofa behind him are thick files stuffed with all his current projects. He has just written to the prime minister to lobby for Greek flags to be flown on all ships returning to port.
\nA former officer in the cavalry, he saw action in Albania and worked as a financier.
\nGeorge believes that his generation is special. The ones that came before didn\u2019t have enough olive oil, the ones that came after had too many bad things. By contrast, his hardy lot are preserved in the organic aspic of a special age, with stoic attitudes.
\n\u2018Since I was a child, my breakfast has been orange juice, a raw egg, spoonful of honey and tahini. Then I have a cup of coffee. I don\u2019t smoke. I drink wine, but not in the morning.
\n\u2018I don\u2019t feel old, I don\u2019t feel young, I just feel good. My mind is terrific, my legs not so good, but you have to keep going on.\u2019
\nPerhaps that is the key. The vegetables and the fresh air help, of course, as does never being able to get anywhere on the island without climbing a steep hill. The flesh has to be willing, but in the end it is the spirit that counts.
\nThat, and the ability to live a simple life and live it well.<\/p>\n

Source: http:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By JAN MOIR: The island of Ikaria is almost as far east as Greece gets. Here, where the mountains crash into the sea, where the herbs grow wild and the hills are peppered with brightly painted beehives and mottled goats, life is so good \u2014 and the living is so healthy \u2014 that centenarians are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5443,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[23],"tags":[346,345],"class_list":["post-5442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news","tag-greece","tag-ikaria"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Island-of-Eternal-lfe.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4oswh-1pM","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5442"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5442\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5444,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5442\/revisions\/5444"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}