6:30 AM. Alarm rattles silence and sleep.
I want to weep. I want to sleep!
For a week.
Instead, boys and dogs will rise. Daily marathon
will begin.
Mid-afternoon, sometime between work, laundry, dinner
prep, dog-walk, school pick-up line, and volleyball cheers I will long for a
nap.
48 hours ago, I'd have guzzled a cup of coffee.
But today I just might take that nap.
Because I discovered Ikaria.
It's an island
some 30 miles off the western coast of Turkey.
An island where citizens reach the age of 90 at 2
1/2 times the rate that Americans do - men reach 90 at four times the rate of
American men.
An island that native Stamatis Moraitis returned to in
his mid-60s, so he could be 'buried with his ancestors in a cemetery shaded by
oak trees that overlooked the Aegean Sea'. Told by nine American doctors that he
had only months to live with advanced lung cancer, Moraitis journeyed home and altered
his lifestyle. Each day he "... 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."
Without surgery, chemotherapy, or drugs, Moraitis,
now 97, has remained cancer-free.
Ilias Leriadis, one of Ikaria’s few physicians, explains
the astounding ease of Ikaria. “We wake up late and always take naps," he
says. "I don’t even open my office until 11 a.m. because no one comes
before then.....When you invite someone to lunch, they might come at 10 a.m. or
6 p.m. We simply don’t care about the clock here.”
Or Cash.
Or Creature Comforts.
Simply stated, Ikarians care about each other. Leriadis
compares his island to the near-by island of Samos.
"There they are much
more developed. ...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.”
Ikarians love their Mediterranean diet - comprised
of homegrown produce, local sour dough bread, olive oil, fish, goat milk, and
honey. They drink coffee and local “mountain tea,” moderate amounts of alcohol
and wine, and 'end-of-the-day cocktails' made from wild herbs that double as
medicine.
But diet alone isn't affording Ikarians health, happiness
and longevity. Dan Buettner has studied populations of the long-lived for
nearly a decade. In his article The Island Where People Forgot to Die, he writes: "If you pay careful
attention to the way Ikarians have lived their lives, it appears that a dozen
subtly powerful, mutually enhancing and pervasive factors are at work. It’s
easy to get enough rest if no one else wakes up early and the village goes dead
during afternoon naptime. It helps that the cheapest, most accessible foods are
also the most healthful — and that your ancestors have spent centuries
developing ways to make them taste good. It’s hard to get through the day in
Ikaria without walking up 20 hills. You’re not likely to ever feel the
existential pain of not belonging or even the simple stress of arriving late.
Your community makes sure you’ll always have something to eat, but peer
pressure will get you to contribute something too. You’re going to grow a
garden, because that’s what your parents did, and that’s what your neighbors
are doing. You’re less likely to be a victim of crime because everyone at once
is a busybody and feels as if he’s being watched. At day’s end, you’ll share a
cup of the seasonal herbal tea with your neighbor because that’s what he’s
serving. Several glasses of wine may follow the tea, but you’ll drink them in
the company of good friends. On Sunday, you’ll attend church, and you’ll fast
on Orthodox feast days. Even if you’re antisocial, you’ll never be entirely
alone. Your neighbors will cajole you out of your house for the village
festival to eat your portion of goat meat."
Consider it the "It Takes a Village" approach
to health, happiness, and longevity.
Reset, anyone?
Laugh, dear Reader, but I read Buettner's article at
dawn yesterday morning, and cringed when I noticed myself - and many people I
know - in quotes attributed to Thea Parikos. Born in Detroit to an American
father and an Ikarian mother, Parikos moved to Ikaria after she and her husband became
parents. “I was not unhappy in America,” she told Buettner. “We had good
friends, we went out to dinner on the weekends, I drove a Chevrolet. But I was
always in a hurry.”
Gulp.
Like Leriadis, Parikos thinks of her hometown as an
'us' place, focused on family and friends more than wealth. “People ... are very self-sufficient...
We may not have money for luxuries, but we will have food on the table and
still have fun with family and friends.
Buettner believes that the key component to Ikarians'
longevity might be more about social structure than diet and exercise - the centerpieces
for improving health in America.
"The big aha for me... is how the factors that
encourage longevity reinforce one another over the long term," Buettner
writes. "For people to adopt a healthful lifestyle, I have become
convinced, they need to live in an ecosystem, so to speak, that makes it
possible. As soon as you take culture, belonging, purpose or religion out of
the picture, the foundation for long healthy lives collapses."
The Election of 2012 looms. We've heard unceasing
rhetoric about our country being an ‘us’ place, rather than a 'me' place.
Economically speaking.
But as Scott Shane laments in The Opiate of American Exceptionalism, no candidate has even begun to mention the aspects of the American 'Ecosystem'
that hamper health and longevity. No candidate has dared remind the electorate
that:
The U.S. ranks 2nd
of thirty-five economically advanced countries with 23.1% of children under the
age of seventeen living in poverty.
The U.S. ranks
14th in the
percentage of 25-to-34-year-olds with a higher education.
The U.S. ranks 28th in
life expectancy and 11th in happiness.
The U.S ranks lower than 48 countries and
territories in infant
mortality, and trails most of Europe, Australia and Canada in social
mobility.
Still, we top the list in small arms ownership, incarceration
rates (blowing away Russia, Cuba, Iran and China); in obesity,
and in energy use
per person (doubling the consumption of Germans).
Teacher Mark Rice, who writes the blog Ranking America, offers a
sobering analysis, “Sure, we’re No. 1 in gross domestic product and military
expenditures... but on a lot of measures of quality of life, the U.S. ranking
is far lower."
In 1992, Bill Clinton won the Presidency by
reminding American voters: "It's the Economy, Stupid."
Since then It's
the Economy, Stupid, It's the Economy, Stupid has been burned into our
brains.
And reflected in our votes and motivations.
Might it be time for a reset?
Two of my
dearest friends - who dutifully served this country for more than twenty years
in the armed forces - shocked me last weekend with talk about relocating. They aren't looking for a
different town, city, or state to call home. They're looking for a different country.
An environment less hurried, stressful, complicated,
divided.
To many, a place like Ikaria sounds pretty ideal.
To me, an America that considers supplanting
"It's the Economy, Stupid!" with "It's Health, Happiness, and Longevity,
Partner!" sounds even better.
Reset.
