Living Healthy to 100
By Dan Buettner,
AARPmagazine.org
A remarkable group of
centenarians living on Costa
Rica’s Nicoya Peninsula share
their secrets.
It was sunrise in the village of
Hojancha when Tommy Castillo and
I mounted a pair of bikes and
whizzed downhill from his pink
wooden house into the steamy
Costa Rica morning.
Our route took us by the town
clinic, past a mechanic where
the rhythm of local cowboy music
blared into the street from
tinny speakers. With truants’
delight, we swooped down another
hill past the village school,
and from there, the houses
thinned out. On one side of the
road, buildings gave way to a
wall of jungle. The road dipped
to where the pavement bridged a
creek and continued up a steep
incline. Tommy, wearing a
white-toothed grin and a Yankees
baseball cap, stood up hard on
his pedals and pulled ahead of
me. I was breathing heavily.
Sweat trickled down my back.
Off the main road, our wheels
traced parallel ruts past a
horse barn and a vegetable
garden. The track ended in a
clearing with a raised chicken
coop, a tin-roofed wooden house,
and a woodshed stacked high with
split logs. Out front, a woman
wearing a bright pink dress,
hoop earrings, and carnival
beads vigorously swept the
jungle floor, sending up a dust
cloud. Behind her, a few long
golden pencils of light angled
through the trees.
“Hola, Mamá!” shouted Tommy as
he dismounted his bike. Tommy’s
mother—Francesca “Panchita”
Castillo—dropped her broom in
surprise and gleefully greeted
her son with an embrace, then
turned to me. “OyEEE, God
blesses me!” she exclaimed in
Spanish. “I have foreign
visitors!” Then she hugged me.
She took us both by the hand and
led us to her porch, where she
jumped up on a bench and dangled
her legs in the air. It was only
7:30 a.m., but Panchita was
ready for her midmorning break.
She’d been up since 4:00 and had
already knelt next to her bed to
say her morning prayers; fetched
two eggs from the chicken coop;
ground corn by hand; brewed
coffee from well water drawn
from the limestone bedrock
beneath her house; made herself
a breakfast of beans, eggs, and
tortillas; split wood; and,
using a machete almost as tall
as her five-foot frame, cleared
the encroaching bush around her
house. She asked if she could
prepare breakfast for us. “No,”
said Tommy, who was sweating
lightly under his baseball cap.
“I’m not hungry.”
“Oh, you know better,” Panchita
scolded. “Let me make you some
eggs.” And she jumped off the
bench.
“No, no, Mamá,” Tommy said,
shifting uncomfortably on his
bench. “I’m fine.”
Panchita pulled herself back up
and now began to stroke Tommy’s
knee. “How is your leg, my son?”
A few days earlier he had
injured it working around the
house.
“Mamá, I’m fine, please!” he
said, grimacing. As the scene
unfolded, I sat by and smiled to
see an exchange between a loving
mother and a son who didn’t want
to be embarrassed in front of a
new friend. Under the
circumstances, I could see
Tommy’s point. He was, after
all, an 80-year-old man and a
great-grandfather. His mother,
Panchita, had recently
celebrated her 100th birthday.
Hojancha, where they live, has
one of the healthiest,
longest-lived populations on the
planet—a place where sons can
take their time growing up.
Costa Rica's Blue Zone
I first learned of Costa
Rica’s remarkable centenarians,
such as Panchita, after
publishing my 2005 National
Geographic article, “The Secrets
of Long Life,” in which I’d
identified three regions of the
world—Okinawa; Sardinia; and
Loma Linda, California—where
people live longer than anywhere
else, areas that came to be
known as Blue Zones. I was still
curious to locate more of the
world’s undiscovered Blue Zones.
So, using my experience as the
founder of Quest Network, which
has created more than a dozen
interactive global expeditions
for an online audience of 12
million students in 80,000
classrooms, I put together a
research team to investigate a
promising group of villages on
the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa
Rica. According to our findings,
another potential Blue Zone
might exist there. After a
preliminary trip to Nicoya to
interview a random sample of at
least 20 people over 90 years
old, to get a feeling for their
lifestyles, and to verify their
ages in the national archives,
we realized we needed to take a
second, bigger trip—one with a
larger research team and a plan
to explore further why these
people were living so long.
When I returned to Nicoya in
January 2007, I came armed with
a plan and a team of experts. We
set up our headquarters at
Dorati Lodge, located on the
forested edge of Hojancha, near
Nicoya’s core. Its open-air
dining pavilion—a sheltered,
bush-flanked slab of
cement—became our regular
meeting spot. Each night we’d
create reports and short videos
so we could examine our
findings.
After dinner the first night, I
gathered the team and presented
the plan to them. “We’ll have
two teams,” I began. “One team
will find and interview as many
of Nicoya’s elderly as possible.
As results come in, that team
will report back to the rest of
us on the elders’ general
condition, what they eat, and
any other practices that occur
with regularity. The rest of us
will be charged with finding
people who fit the longevity
profile and interviewing them to
get their stories.”
The days of our expedition
unfolded with satisfying
progress. We’d wake each morning
at 7:00 and gather in the dining
pavilion, where we’d take
breakfast and then disperse: one
team to conduct interviews; the
other, to track down more
verified centenarians from a
list provided by the University
of San José. Just before sunset
the teams would return, flush
with some new discovery, and
converge in the dining pavilion.
After dinner each team member
shared his or her findings with
the rest of the group.
Panchita's Story
One night toward the end of
the expedition, it was my turn
to stand up and present a report
to the team. I told them about
Panchita. In many ways she
represented everything I’d
learned so far about Nicoyan
longevity: successful
centenarians here were
religious, family-oriented,
unconcerned with money, flexible
but ultimately decisive, and
consummately likable. I clicked
through pictures of Panchita
chopping wood, clearing bush
with a machete, and walking
through town in her bright pink
dress and carnival beads. I told
everyone that of the 200
centenarians I have interviewed
around the world, Panchita was
the most extraordinary. “You’ve
got to introduce me to her,”
said our team psychologist,
Elizabeth Lopez, who had a
special interest in well-being.
“I’ve done 20 interviews so far,
and I’ve never seen anyone like
her.”
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Panchita lived just a few
hundred yards from the Dorati
Lodge, so Elizabeth and I left
the next morning on foot. We
walked past the howler monkeys
in the mango trees overhead,
then out the driveway, and into
the village of Hojancha.
Elizabeth had read an article in
the Costa Rican newspapers about
the Blue Zone project and,
having recently retired from the
World Bank, was looking to get
involved with something new. She
turned out to be a godsend. A
Costa Rican native, she spoke
fluent Spanish and thus served
as a perfect liaison between our
team and the interviewees.
Moreover, she could help expand
our research questionnaire to
include a way to measure
psychological factors—such as
happiness and faith levels—in
long-lived people. As we walked,
I asked her what she was
finding.
“Dan, these Nicoyans are so
incredible,” she answered. “They
are so positive and so devoted
to their families. All but one
of the 33 Nicoyans we have met
live with their family.”
Elizabeth was looking at me,
gesticulating as we walked.
“They have a wonderful support
network. They also tend to have
a large number of visitors that
they receive almost every
afternoon, which is both a
physical and psychological
safety net.”
We walked over the same bridge
that Tommy and I had biked over
a few days earlier.
At Panchita’s house we loudly
called out for her. She pushed
open a wooden shutter and, when
she recognized me, raised her
hands in unmitigated joy. She
hurried out into the courtyard
to hug both of us. “Panchita,” I
said in a raised voice (she is
partially deaf and blind), “this
is Elizabeth. She’s a scientist
from San José. She wants to
visit with you.”
“Oooo!” she whooped. “Of course.
Come sit down.” She was wearing
a festive frilly dress like the
one she had worn the first time
I met her, but this time it was
green instead of pink. Long
green earrings dangled from her
ears, and she had pulled back
her gray-tinged hair with a
rhinestone-studded comb. She led
us to the two wooden benches
that line her porch.
Elizabeth quickly established a
rapport with Panchita and asked
her about her life as a child
and young woman. Panchita told
her she was a descendant of a
Cuban revolutionary hero and
that she had had a beautiful
childhood.
“In those days there were no
roads in Nicoya,” she said. “My
father owned a guesthouse, and
occasionally mule trains would
come by. I woke up at 3:00 each
morning to make coffee and
tortillas for the men who stayed
overnight. I took care of my
parents.” Then, turning to me,
she scolded congenially, “It’s
like this, Papi.” She always
called me Papi, a term of
endearment. “Those who honor
their parents are rewarded by
God.”
Panchita eluded direct
questioning about her marriage,
but we do know that she raised
her four children mostly by
herself. The family all lived
with Panchita’s parents until
they died; then Panchita
inherited their farm. There, the
family grew most of their own
food. Whenever they needed salt
or sugar, Panchita would walk 18
miles into town and back to get
it. “Life was hard those days,
Papi.”
Once—when she was a mere 70—she
was bathing in a river when she
noticed a man was watching her.
“I rapidly put on my clothes and
picked up a stick,” she said,
swinging an imaginary limb over
her head. “And then I chased him
down and almost beat him to
death.” She finished the story,
and her mood turned wistful.
“Oh, Papi,” she said finally.
“That was a very bad thing. I
had to ask the priest for
forgiveness. But still, God
blesses me.”
Later in our conversation her
normally festive demeanor turned
serious again. She put her hand
on my arm; she had an endearing
habit of gently, instinctually
touching people to make a point.
I looked down at her hands—the
long, smooth fingers and neatly
trimmed nails. She wore a dented
silver band on her ring finger.
“They killed my son,” she said,
fixing me with a brown-eyed
gaze. The lines in her lightly
creased face reflected the
sadness of a 50-year-old
tragedy. “When he was a
beautiful 20-year-old man, he
got into a stupid fight with a
friend, and he killed my son.”
She sat silent for a minute, her
legs still swinging back and
forth. “God does everything for
a reason,” she resumed brightly.
Then, with the optimism
characteristic of many
centenarians, she concluded, “I
am a blessed woman today.”
Elizabeth turned to me and
smiled in a way that said: “See
what I mean?”
Late in the morning the neighbor
boy, ten-year-old Luis, arrived,
as he does each day, to help
Panchita catch her free-range
chickens and put them in the
coop. Later, her 31-year-old
neighbor, Carmen Gómez, stopped
by to help Panchita sweep her
floors. “I don’t come here
because I have to,” she told me
when I asked. “Panchita has a
way of making my day happier.
Everyone in Hojancha loves her.”
At noon Panchita told me it was
time to make lunch. Elizabeth
and I followed her into the
kitchen of her simple house. The
room was spare and pleasant: a
small, well-lit space with two
windows that opened to the yard,
a small pantry, a wood counter,
a soapstone sink with running
water, and a small refrigerator.
A bowl of bananas and papayas
sat on the counter for easy
access, and everything
else—beans, onions, garlic,
greens, corn, which all required
preparation—remained out of
sight.
Panchita still cooked on a
wood-burning fogón, the
traditional clay oven of the
Chorotega, the indigenous people
who inhabited Nicoya before the
Spanish arrival in 1522. She
moved slowly and deliberately,
heating up beans and seasoning
them with garlic and onions.
From an earthen pot she scooped
out grayish corn that had been
soaking in lime hydrate
overnight, rinsed the kernels,
and ground them into dough. She
patted out tortillas and roasted
them over the open fire. She
melted a dollop of lard on an
iron griddle and fried eggs.
Finally she cut paper-thin
slices of fresh cheese—an
impressive feat given the fact
she could barely see the cheese,
much less her fingers.
In about 30 minutes she
presented us with lunch—small
portions of beans, corn
tortillas, and one egg on a
small plate. The serving looked
huge, but it amounted to about
half of what you’d get if you
ordered the breakfast special at
your local diner. “Food gives
life!” she shouted and told us
to sit down and eat. I felt both
humbled and privileged to be
served a meal prepared by a
centenarian. But after much
polite arguing, I managed to
convince Panchita that she and
Luis should eat the meal.
Elizabeth and I had lunch
waiting for us back at the
Dorati Lodge.
On our walk back, I told
Elizabeth I agreed with her
observations about faith and
longevity. Panchita’s faith was
amazing—her unwavering belief
that no matter how bad things
got, God would take care of
everything. Thinking back, I
realized that most of the 200
centenarians I had met believed
in a similar guiding power. I
asked Elizabeth if faith really
has a profound impact on
longevity.
“Absolutely,” she said. “When my
team was doing our interviews, I
noticed that when you ask the
most highly functioning seniors
how they are, they always say,
‘I feel good...thanks to God.’
Yet they may be blind and deaf
and their bones hurt.
Psychologists call this an
external locus of control. In
other words, they tend to
relinquish control of their
lives to God. The fact that God
is in control of their lives
relieves any economic,
spiritual, or well-being anxiety
they might otherwise have. They
go through life with the
peaceful certitude that someone
is looking out for them.” I had
heard of a study that echoed
these findings: the researchers
looked at participants who
attended religious services once
a month or more. Over seven and
a half years the researchers
found they had up to a 35
percent reduced risk of death.
Later in the afternoon Elizabeth
visited Panchita and asked her
more questions. At dinner that
night Elizabeth shared a special
moment with me. “I was alone
with this lovely, magical
person,” she began. “She doesn’t
live in a nice home. She’s so
poor yet so satisfied with what
she has. There was a total
acceptance. But I wanted to help
her anyway. So I handed her 20
dollars.”
“And...what happened?” I asked.
“She told me, ‘I had no money to
buy food. But I knew that God
would provide,’ squeezing my
arm. ‘And now He has.’ ” |
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