HEALTHY AT 100 (5 page)

It’s different, unfortunately, in the United States today, a nation in which 565,000 children are killed or seriously injured by their parents or guardians each year.

How much better would life be in the modern world if all children were raised with the kind of respect they are offered in Abkhasia? In Abkhasian schools, children are never made to feel inferior. Ridicule is never used to “teach” children. Scorn and rejection are not part of the curriculum. And neither is any kind of physical coercion.
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Abkhasians are consistently respectful of their bodies and the bodies of others. They never physically punish children, adults, or animals.
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This may help explain why domestic violence is almost entirely unknown in Abkhasia, as is rape.

Friendships are extremely important to Abkhasians. When guests arrive at an Abkhasian home, they are embraced and kissed, and the host makes a circular motion above the guest’s head and says, “Let all the evil spirits who may be hovering around you come to me in-stead.”
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What, then, of the Abkhasian diet?

Thanks to the Dannon yogurt ads, people in the United States and elsewhere often believe that it is the consumption of yogurt which is responsible for the unusually long lives of the Abkhasians and others in the Caucasus. Actually, though, the Abkhasians do not eat yogurt. They drink one or two glasses a day of a fermented beverage called
matzoni
, made from the milk of goats, cows, or sheep. This variety of fermented milk has been used in the Caucasus for centuries, and most likely originated in this part of the world. The traditional Abkhasian diet is essentially lacto-vegetarian, with a rare serving of meat, and with the dairy component consisting primarily of the fermented matzoni.

According to Benet, the Abkhasians usually begin breakfast with a salad of green vegetables freshly picked from the garden. During the spring, it is made up of pungent vegetables such as watercress, green onions, and radishes. In summer and autumn, tomatoes and cucumbers are more popular, while the winter salad consists of pickled
cucumber and tomatoes, radishes, cabbage, and onion. Dill and coriander may be added, but no dressings are used. Many plants that grow wild in Abkhasia also end up in their salads. Breakfasts also often include a glass of matzoni. At all three meals, the people eat their “beloved abista,” a cornmeal porridge, always freshly cooked and served warm.

If they get hungry between meals, Abkhasians typically eat fruit in season from their own orchard or garden. Thanks to the mild climate, fresh fruit is available seven or eight months of the year. During these months, the Abkhasians enjoy large quantities of fruit eaten fresh from the tree or vine. There are cherries and apricots in the spring. Throughout the summer, there are pears, plums, peaches, figs, and many kinds of berries. In the fall, there are grapes and persimmons, as well as apples and pears, both of which grow wild in great abundance. Wild pears are cooked into a thick syrup, with no added sweeteners—something like apple butter. The fruit that is not eaten fresh is stored or dried for winter use. Thus many fruits are used all year round.

With rare exceptions, vegetables are eaten raw, or cooked in only a very small amount of water. Abkhasians do not traditionally eat any fried food. And the freshness of food is considered paramount. Vegetables are picked just prior to serving or cooking, and leftovers are discarded, because food that is not totally fresh is considered harmful. While modern urbanites may scoff at such fastidiousness, there is a good reason for it. Such a heightened concern for freshness ensures that food is never eaten that has become spoiled and might be carrying pathogenic microorganisms. It also guarantees that foods are eaten at the height of their nutritional value, with a minimal loss of nutrients.

Nuts play a major role in Abkhasian cuisine and are the primary source of fat in the Abkhasian diet. Almonds, pecans, beechnuts, and hazelnuts are cultivated, and chestnut trees grow wild and profusely, as do many other wild nut trees. Virtually every meal contains nuts in one form or another.

Abkhasians eat relatively little meat, and when they do, the meat is always from animals who have been healthy and who have been freshly slaughtered. Even then, the fat from the meat or poultry is
never used. When meat is served, even the smallest pieces of fat are removed. The Abkhasians do not care at all for fatty dishes. They also consume no sugar, little salt, and almost no butter.

This may help explain why the average cholesterol level among Abkhasian centenarians is 98.
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This compares extremely favorably to the cholesterol levels common in people in the United States, where nearly everyone’s is over 200, and where until recently levels as high as 250 were sometimes considered “normal.”

One of the most definitive features of the Abkhasian diet is that in comparison with Americans, Abkhasians eat very little. Most Abkhasians consume less than two thousand calories a day, while many people in the United States eat literally twice that much.
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And unlike most of the world, the Abkhasian diet does not change significantly with an increase in wealth. Regardless of how poor or how affluent Abkhasians are, they still consume protein in moderation, fat mainly from nuts, and carbohydrates primarily from vegetables, fruits, and whole-grain cereals such as their cornmeal abista.

In fact, people almost never overeat in Abkhasia, because overeating is considered both socially inappropriate and dangerous.
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This no doubt contributes to the fact that Abkhasians are universally very strong and slender people, with no excess fat on their bodies. They eat slowly and chew thoroughly, savoring each moment and deeply enjoying one another’s company.

When an Abkhasian host invites a guest for dinner, the wording of the invitation says a great deal about the priorities of these remarkable people. The invitation always says, “Come and be our guest.” It never says, “Come for dinner.”
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Of course dinner is served, and it is prepared and shared with joy. But the emphasis is never on the food, but rather on the pleasures of being together. These are a people who relish the joys of friendship above all others.

Of course, people in Abkhasia have always struggled with the trials and crises that exist in all human life. In addition, the modern world has been encroaching in recent years, and there have been particularly challenging events since the breakup of the former Soviet Union
in the early 1990s. I will speak more about these later, but I want to focus now on what those of us in the more modern world can learn from these friendly, long-living, happy, and extraordinarily healthy people.

Not long ago, I unconsciously equated aging with the loss of mental agility, sensory acuity, physical limberness, sexual desire, and a host of other human abilities. I thought it almost certain that we will all become more frail and disease-prone as we get older. I thought that the best we could do was to be satisfied to accept these “inevitable” losses with dignity. But the more I have learned from the people of Abkhasia, the more hopeful I have become. They seem to suggest that there might be another possibility for us entirely. If we choose wisely, maybe we, too, can live long lives in good health and spirits. Maybe our wisdom years can, after all, be rich with vitality, joy, and fulfillment. Particularly when, as we shall now see, the Abkhasians are far from the only culture representing this fascinating possibility.

T
he second people famous for their longevity and health who were visited and studied by Dr. Alexander Leaf for
National Geographic
were the Vilcabambans.

Vilcabamba is a small, extremely inaccessible town tucked away in Ecuador’s Andes mountains. Perched serenely at an altitude of some 4,500 feet, the Vilcabamban valley is not far from the Peruvian border, and about a hundred miles inland from the Pacific Ocean. In the language of the Inca Indians, Vilcabamba means “Sacred Valley,” and there is indeed something magical about the place. For one thing, the climate could hardly be more benign. With an average year-round temperature of 68 degrees and almost no seasonal variation, Vilcabamba is an idyllic land of lush, subtropical agriculture where a wide variety of grains, fruits, and vegetables can be easily cultivated, and many grow wild for the picking.

In 1981, the physician and medical journalist Morton Walker conducted a series of studies of Vilcabambans’ health and wrote effusively of what he found:

In the Western Hemisphere, a place exists where degenerative diseases seldom if ever affect the population. The people have no heart disease, no cancer, no diabetes, no stroke, no cirrhosis, no senility, no arteriosclerosis, nor any other morbid conditions connected with an interruption in blood flow that are commonly responsible for illness, disability, and death among industrialized people. Since they don’t die of degenerative diseases, the inhabitants of this place are able to live the full complement of mankind’s years—more than a century.…

Vilcabamba is a veritable paradise on earth.…Over the years the Sacred Valley has been variously called “The Land of Eternal Youth,” “The Valley of Peace and Tranquility,” and “The Lost Paradise.” It has been given these labels because of the valley’s solitude, serenity, clean air, dazzling sun, nearly constant blue sky, pure mineral drinking water, helpful neighbors, lack of illness, and a kind of ubiquitous beauty that penetrates to one’s soul and provides a sense of well-being.
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Dr. Leaf, ever the careful scientist, was not inclined to use such lyrical prose. But he was impressed by the considerable number of active oldsters whose lifestyles he and his medical associates were able to examine. These included a 103-year-old woman whom Leaf watched thread a sewing needle without the aid of eyeglasses, and a 95-year-old woman he found happily at work in the local bakery. After examining the elderly woman in the bakery, Leaf commented, “Her health through her long life has been excellent. She has a good heart and is in excellent condition.”
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Vilcabamba first began to come to international attention in 1954, when a U.S. physician, Eugene H. Payne (clinical investigator for Parke Davis Pharmaceuticals), wrote a
Reader’s Digest
article saying he had found little or no evidence of cardiac or circulatory diseases in the area.
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A year later, another American doctor, Albert Krammer, went to
Vilcabamba to recuperate from a heart attack, then returned home feeling “better than I could ever remember.”
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He described his experience in a series of widely read articles. Soon stories were becoming common of heart patients from Mexico and Japan who after a few weeks in the valley found themselves bounding up steep mountains.

In 1956, a very elderly Vilcabamban named Javier Pereira, said to be 167, was brought to New York City and presented to the public by the owners of the syndicated newspaper feature “Believe It or

Not.”
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Before long, serious scientists began to investigate. In 1969, a team of Ecuadorian physicians headed by Dr. Miguel Salvador, a Quito cardiologist, undertook one of the first major studies of the health of people living in Vilcabamba. Salvador and his team studied 338 Vilcabambans and found that they were free not only of arteriosclerosis and heart disease, but also of cancer, diabetes, and degenerative diseases such as rheumatism, osteoporosis, and Alzheimer’s. The researchers called the general standard of fitness among the old “amazing.” The Vilcabamban valley, the Ecuadorian doctors concluded, somehow provided immunity to the physical problems that shorten lives elsewhere.
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In the 1970s, a British gerontologist named Dr. David Davies made four separate visits to the valley, studying the health of the old people and their way of life. In a series of articles published in scientific journals and in a book he wrote for the public titled
The Centenarians of the Andes
, he asserted that the elders of Vilcabamba

may die as the result of an accident, or from a sickness introduced by visitors from the outside, but never from the major killing diseases that afflict the rest of the world.
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After Dr. Leaf’s article extolling the health and longevity in Vilcabamba was published in
National Geographic
in 1973, the elders of Vilcabamba were beset by a swarm of gerontologists and other researchers who were examining their teeth, eyes, and ears, measuring their blood pressure, and connecting them to cardiac and chest monitors.

The scientists took samples of their hair, saliva, and urine, took notes on their diet, and interviewed them about their sex lives.

In 1978, the National Institute of Aging and the Fogerty International Center for Advanced Study in Health Science cosponsored an international conference focused on the health of the elderly in Vilcabamba. Dr. Leaf was co-chairman of the event, which included scientists, physicians, and researchers from Japan, Canada, France, Ecuador, and the United States, all of whom had worked in Vilcabamba. The participants agreed that the over-seventy population in Vilcabamba had spectacular cardiovascular health, including almost no incidence of high blood pressure and only one-third of the cardiac abnormalities usually found in the same age categories in developed nations. Researchers linked the Vilcabamban elders’ extraordinary cardiovascular health with their leanness, their diet, their low cholesterol levels, and their high levels of physical ac-tivity.
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