Video Dispatch
Watch the Expedition Unfold.
Travel with us to an isolated Greek island in the Aegean Sea to determine exactly why this place became home to some of the longest living people in the world. Today we see how naps affect longevity.
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Can a mysterious disease help people live longer?
You wouldn't think that a genetic defect could lengthen a person's life. But longevity researchers are beginning to believe it might.
Ten years ago, while studying centenarians in Sardinia, the world's first identified Blue Zone, I noticed that one-quarter of my study subjects had a defect in a gene that governs the development of red blood cells. In Sardinia, only 10% of people have this problem. We scientists call this the "thalassemia trait."
This prompted me to look a little bit deeper into thalassemia trait, which is the most common blood defect in the world. The trait is especially common in Mediterranean countries such as Italy and Greece.
Everyone inherits two copies of the potentially defective gene: one from their mother and one from their father. If both copies are defective, the result is Cooley disease, a very serious anemia that requires blood transfusions. But if only one copy is defective, the person may have no symptoms at all, apart from red blood cells that are abnormally small.
The small size of the cells makes a person’s blood less hospitable to the microorganism that sometimes causes malaria. In the Mediterranean, where malaria used to be very common, having one defective copy of the gene might actually have helped a person live longer. And the fact that so many centenarians in Sardinia carry the trait makes me think that it might even confer other life-lengthening benefits.
Recently, several studies suggested that having thalassemia trait might reduce a person's risk of heart disease. In Sardinia and Greece, heart-attack survivors are less than half as likely to have the trait as people who haven't had a heart attack. It's not clear why the trait reduces a person's risk of heart attack. But I have done studies that showed that people with the trait have lower cholesterol, which could protect them from cardiovascular disease, and thinner blood, which could protect them from blood clots.
Our ongoing Blue Zones Quest in Ikaria may be a good opportunity to test whether the thalassemia trait contributes to longevity. If our research shows that the trait is common among very old Ikarians, the way it is among very old Sardinians, we may go a long way toward proving that this genetic defect is one key to extraordinarily long life.
Yours from Ikaria,
Dr. Gianni Pes
Image Gallery
Our professional photographer, Gianluca Colla, tells the story of Vasili Giakas, age 98 and his wife, Eleftheria. To see the photos larger or read the captions, click on the image.
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The Direct the Team feature is where you vote to tell the team what to do. We only have two weeks to uncover the secrets of longevity in Ikaria. Here are three possible story ideas for the team to uncover.
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Daily Data
Print Daily DataWhat's new with the team today?
Expedition Team Daily Data
Videoagrapher Tom Adair
Name: Tom Adair
Title: Blue Zones Videographer
Age: 46
Pedometer Reading: 6218
Favorite Exercise: Biking
Hours of Sleep Last Night: 3 hours
What I Had to Eat Yesterday
Breakfast - Yogurt, honey, apricots and potatoes
Snack - Wild Mushrooms, fresh eggs and spinach
Dinner - Veggie Moussaka, bread and calamari
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Dan’s Dilemma
Upcoming Weekend
It’s Thursday, and the hard-working Quest team is sleep deprived from the hustle and bustle of an extremely busy first week. A good day of rest and relaxation might really do them good. I have considerd letting them take some time off, even though this might make it tougher for them to produce a strong content for Monday.
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Mystery Photo
What is this?
- Grain grinder
- Medieval torture device
- Fisherman's pulley
It is a Fisherman's pulley
Imagine if your car didn't have wheels. How would you move it from one place to another? That's the dilemma fisherman faced years ago during vicious winter storms, as they tried to protect their boats from being tossed against towering rocks or sucked into the deep blue sea. The locals say it could take as many as six burly men to haul heavy wooden boats safely to shore.
To make the job easier, the device in the photo was used. It's called a Manghano, or a winch. A winch is a towing device dating back to the 16th century. It contains a long rope with one end attached to a crank, and the other that extends to connect to the front of the boat. You turn the crank, making it much easier to pull the heavy contraptions up from the dock.
Now here's an interesting fact about the Ikarian fisherman: even though everyone had their own boat, they all shared one Manghano. When asked why they didn't each buy their own, one local man said "We're a small town, we just don't need that many." That's the way things seem to work here in Ikaria, a island where people only take what they need.
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Use the comment feature at the bottom of this page to ask a question. We will post some of your questions here on the site.
Your Questions Answered
Question: What do you do if a team member gets sick or injured? Do they get flown home and you get someone new or do they stay and finish the Quest?
Question from From Katie
Answer: Luckily, we've never had a team member get sick or injured on a Blue Zones Quest. Luckily, if they do, we always have at least two doctors on the team to help them, treat them and send them home if they need to go. I can tell you another story about illness on an expedition. In 1992-1993 when Dan did Africa Trek the whole team got ill with malaria, dysentery, chiggers and intestinal worms, but they never stopped their mission. Africa Trek was a 11,855 mile bike expedition across the entire continent of Africa. Their hard work and dedication paid off: they received a Guinness World Record for long distance cycling. I would have wanted to give up and go home, but they got treated for their diseases and just kept going.
Answer provided by Amy at Blue Zones headquarters in Minneapolis
Gross & Disgusting
Can you handle it?
What is it?
Answer: Solidified Goat Fat
This is a picture of 45 kg of solidified goat fat. Yuk!
Where did it come from?
On the day after Easter, in the village of Mandria, there is a big feast called a mnemosino (pronounced mnee—MO—see—no), which literally means “memorial service.” Everyone in the village gets together in the community center to eat a meal together and to remember relatives and friends who have died. But, as is typical in Ikaria, they turn everything, even a memorial service, into a party.
When we wandered into the community center courtyard at 2 pm, the party hadn’t started yet. But, we found three men standing around a 50-gallon kettle. When we asked them what they were cooking, they proudly opened the lid and told us that they were boiling five goats that would be served at the mnemosino. The uncooked goats weighed a total of 110 kilograms.
The goats had been been boiling for four hours. The meat was a pale brown color and looked overcooked, but they explained that the goal of boiling the meat was to get rid of all the fat to make it lean and healthy. While the goat was boiling, fat from the meat pooled on top of the broth, and the village chefs took turns skimming the fat into a large storage can. They explained that the goat meat was done when no new fat was accumulating on top of thel broth.
About an hour later, the goats were finally ready! Using a slotted spoon, they strained each piece of meat to get rid of any last drops of fat before transferring it onto large wooden serving crates. The goat-filled crates were weighed, and the boiled meat weighed a total of 65 kilograms.
So, 45 kilograms of the uncooked goat meat was FAT! And, we found it congealing into the thick, yellow pasty lard that you see in the picture.
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