Lessons in Ageing - Week 9

Truth be told, I way more concerned about my first working shift starting this afternoon (even though it’s training), than I am about the excellence of this posting. So, let’s see where this goes.

One of the most interesting interviews of recent months was presented by a BBC reporter who traveled to the island of Icaria. Ikaria is a small island of the east coast of Greece in the Aegean Sea (http://bit.ly/16DEI19 ). Its name derives from the well-known tale of Daedalus and Icarus in Greek folk mythology. Icarus was his son who flew too close to the sun (not following the elder’s wisdom imparted before the flight; perhaps demonstrating immature prefrontal lobe development and the resulting lack of executive function J). The sun’s heat melted the wax holding his feather wings together and Icarus fell from the sky into his namesake, the Icarian Sea (it is a subdivision of the Aegean Sea, which is a subdivision of the Mediterranean Sea. http://bit.ly/16DEzL9).

The interview lead me to an excellent, expanded New York Times (NYT) article, by author Dan Buettner (Blue Zones, http://amzn.to/16DG6RF ) presenting a more complete and nuanced view of the longevity of the Icarian population. Between the BBC interview and NYT article several interesting features of the Icarian lifestyle emerged.

The leading figure of both accounts is a local named Stamatis Moraitis, an Icarian who emigrated to the U.S. A Greek WW2 veteran, married with 3 children, he was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1976 and given 9 months to live. Because funerals were cheaper on Icaria, he returned to Icaria to die. Quoting from the NYT article, “Moraitis and Elpiniki moved in with his elderly parents, into a tiny, whitewashed house on two acres of stepped vineyards near Evdilos, on the north side of Ikaria. At first, he spent his days in bed, as his mother and wife tended to him. He reconnected with his faith. On Sunday mornings, he hobbled up the hill to a tiny Greek Orthodox chapel where his grandfather once served as a priest. When his childhood friends discovered that he had moved back, they started showing up every afternoon. They’d talk for hours, an activity that invariably involved a bottle or two of locally produced wine. I might as well die happy, he thought.

In the ensuing months, something strange happened. He says he started to feel stronger. One day, feeling ambitious, he planted some vegetables in the garden. He didn’t expect to live to harvest them, but he enjoyed being in the sunshine, breathing the ocean air. Elpiniki could enjoy the fresh vegetables after he was gone.

Six months came and went. Moraitis didn’t die. Instead, he reaped his garden and, feeling emboldened, cleaned up the family vineyard as well. Easing himself into the island routine, he woke up when he felt like it, worked in the vineyards until midafternoon, made himself lunch and then took a long nap. In the evenings, he often walked to the local tavern, where he played dominoes past midnight. The years passed. His health continued to improve. He added a couple of rooms to his parents’ home so his children could visit. He built up the vineyard until it produced 400 gallons of wine a year. Today, three and a half decades later, he’s 97 years old — according to an official document he disputes; he says he’s 102 — and cancer-free". 

He never went through chemotherapy, took drugs or sought therapy of any sort. All he did was move home to Ikaria.” He simply resumed the island’s lifestyle and today at 97, is cancer free. He returned to the states several years ago to consult with his doctors, but they were all dead. So, what are the differences?

First, there’s no time pressure or stress. There are no clocks or wrist watches on the island, if one is to be found, it doesn’t work or is inaccurate. Scheduled appointments may be kept on either side of a 6 hour time window; no one minds, because that’s just the way it is. The local doc doesn’t open his office until 11a, because no one arrives earlier. Midday napping is endemic. Did I mention there’s no stress?

Note his reconnection to spirituality, mentioned by our text as an important facet of healthy ageing. And, the reconnection to extended family and friends; allowing for extended interactions which strengthen socialization and personal support mechanisms – both crucial in healthful ageing. People are not isolated with digital addictions, but rather are constantly going to each other’s homes and gathering at local cultural/religions functions. Social cognition is positive; replete with positive feelings and satisfying self-esteem.   Extended community: a proven additive to health and longevity.

Geography is notable in the island’s health promotion as it is mostly up and down, and that, fairly steep. Note that his vineyard and olive trees necessitated “stepped” farming techniques. That requires constant physical exertion to navigate anywhere on the island, and this is by foot; thereby adding constant movement and exercise in the daily routines. Life on the island is anything but sedentary; fitness centers would quickly be in bankruptcy.

Their diet is very much Mediterranean, including beans, fresh greens, fish and red meat only about 5 times a month. The local sourdough bread is well lubricated with home-pressed olive oils, hummus and wines. Honey is the staple sweetener, with varieties not found elsewhere; sugar – not so much! They consume many varieties of local teas produced from the local flora; and with the honey are also a part of the folk medicinal regimens. It seems they may have fewer free radicals and the shortening of their telomeres is certainly forestalled.

In juxtaposition is the island of Samos, a short distance away. From the NYT article, “Just 15 kilometers over there is a completely different world. There they are much more developed. There are high-rises and resorts and homes worth a million euros. In Samos, they care about money. Here, we don’t. For the many religious and cultural holidays, people pool their money and buy food and wine. If there is money left over, they give it to the poor. It’s not a ‘me’ place. It’s an ‘us’ place.” Such is life on Icaria.

There is so much more in the article, however it is clear older Icarians have well developed personal integrity with little despair (Erickson). There is little despair over the trajectory of one’s life on Icaria. It seems “retirement” is not known, but rather a continual readjustment of one’s activities based on functionality, but always useful. Are they creative? Well, the text defines it as “…the ability to produce work that is novel, high in demand and task appropriate”. The nonagenarians mentioned in the article remain extremely creative by that yardstick. Wisdom? You bet! Their life education and experiences are of a kind our culture is not familiar with, but obviously of a higher order, if quality and length of life are considerations. I don’t believe I read about any depression/anxiety/mental issues.

I could prattle on about the Icarians vis-à-vis our text, but I think you get the drift. I’ll close with an extended quote by Buettner in the NYT article, “During our time on Ikaria, my colleagues and I stayed at Thea Parikos’s guesthouse, the social hub of western Ikaria. Local women gathered in the dining room at midmorning to gossip over tea. Late at night, after the dinner rush, tables were pushed aside and the dining room became a dance floor, with people locking arms and kick-dancing to Greek music.

Parikos cooked the way her ancestors had for centuries, giving us a chance to consume the diet we were studying. For breakfast, she served local yogurt and honey from the 90-year-old beekeeper next door. For dinner, she walked out into the fields and returned with handfuls of weedlike greens, combined them with pumpkin and baked them into savory pies. My favorite was a dish made with black-eyed peas, tomatoes, fennel tops and garlic and finished with olive oil that we dubbed Ikarian stew.

Despite her consummately Ikarian air, Parikos was actually born in Detroit to an American father and an Ikarian mother. She had attended high school, worked as a real estate agent and married in the United States. After she and her husband had their first child, she felt a “genetic craving” for Ikaria. “I was not unhappy in America,” she said. “We had good friends, we went out to dinner on the weekends, I drove a Chevrolet. But I was always in a hurry.”

When she and her family moved to Ikaria and opened the guesthouse, everything changed. She stopped shopping for most groceries, instead planting a huge garden that provided most of their fruits and vegetables. She lost weight without trying to. I asked her if she thought her simple diet was going to make her family live longer. “Yes,” she said. “But we don’t think about it that way. It’s bigger than that.”

Worthy of reflection is the quote-closer – “It’s bigger than that”.

And that, is where this post went J G'day to all.