Click to play videoWashington: It's the kind of secret everyone wants to know. How to live a long and healthy life.
New research is focusing on the world's longevity "hot spots" to find out what's working for the people who live there.
In the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica, families are close, hard work is the norm and there's no such thing as retirement.
Evincio is 80 year old but still wakes up every day at 4:30 in the morning to work on his ranch.
Dan Buettner and his research team have found Evincio and other men here 60 and older and are four times as likely to reach 100 than their counterparts in the United States or Europe. Buettner travels to longevity hot spots around the globe. He calls them blue zones.
Because most of longevity is dictated by our lifestyle as opposed to our genes, we believe that by going to these blue zones and methodically looking at what these people do, we could distill out a defacto formula for longevity.
Costa Ricans on the Nicoya Peninsula eat a healthy diet consisting of plenty of vegetables and fruits like papaya and citrus fruits.
The tortillas they eat are made using a special process that takes the husk off the corn and puts more calcium into it, helping to keep bones strong in old age.
Buettner's team has also studied why people live so long in Sardinia, Italy; Okinawa, Japan and Loma Linda, California.
Buettner says the Blue Zones offer a recipe for healthy living that could add eight good years to your life and he offers this advice:
Eat a plant-based diet, mostly plants. number two, regular low-intensity exercise and then number three invest in family and friends.
Buettner hopes the"blue zones" will ultimately teach people how to extend their golden years.
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