KEBABBLE The secret of Black Sea sexagenarians By Fazile Zahir
FETHIYE, Turkey - Turkey's coastal inhabitants always knew that they had it
good, health-wise, but a study published by Antalya's Akdeniz University this
week made it clear exactly how good. The study found that the average Turk
living on the mountainous Black Sea coast lives five years longer than the
national average of 64 years for a man and 68 years for a woman.
Researchers said that unexpected health benefits of living in the area, such as
the exercise regime necessitated by the rugged terrain and harsh weather
conditions, had led to the results. The runners-up in the longevity contest
were pensioners who had retired to the Aegean and Mediterranean coast, where
4.5 million of Turkey's 9 million elderly citizens live. Turks in the east and
southeast were shown to live the shortest, a figure likely related to the high
poverty rate in the rural region.
Living on a mountain doesn't just benefit Turks. Similar studies have found
pockets of people with longer-than-average lifespans on the Italian island of
Sardinia, Andorra (a landlocked co-principality between France and Spain) and
Athens.
In 2005, The Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health published the results
of a 15-year study on the inhabitants of three villages not far from Athens.
One village was 1,000 meters above sea level, the other two on the plains, and
the inhabitants of all there were mostly farmers. Blood samples taken from the
mountain villagers showed they were at worse coronary risk than the lowlanders,
with higher blood pressure and rates of circulating blood fats for both men and
women. When the death rates were analyzed, however, they revealed that the
mountain village residents lived longer and had rates of death from heart
disease than their peers in the lowlands.
The researchers concluded, like their Turkish colleagues, that the exertion
required to walk uphill regularly on rugged terrain gives the heart a better
work out. They also speculated that living at moderately high altitude produces
long-term physiological changes in the body that enable it to cope with lower
levels of oxygen.
So, if living in the mountains leads to longer life, what is most likely to
shorten it? The Turkish Department of Health commissioned a nationwide study in
2005 to produce statistics for the most common causes of death. At the top of
the grisly top-ten was heart and circulatory system disease.
Number two was cerebrovascular diseases, such as strokes and brain hemorrhages,
while number three was serious respiratory diseases, like chronic bronchitis.
These conditions were also the top three killers in Europe, and in this respect
Turkey's health profile resembled that of developed Western countries.
However, the list also highlighted Turkey's status as a developing country. The
fourth most common cause of death was complications at birth or infection
afterward resulting in maternal deaths. These fatalities reflected the fact
that 27% of Turkish women still give birth at home in unhygienic environments.
Number nine on the list was traffic accidents. But if Turkish figures are
analyzed by age, traffic accidents in the 15-59 age group move up from nine to
three - due in part to a lack of emergency services in many rural areas.
Despite Andorran and Turkish mountain dwellers having longer-than-average
lifespans, there is still a huge difference between the average life expectancy
of 83.5 years for Andorrans and that of 66 for Turks. One factor in this is the
relative wealth of Andorra compared with Turkey. Although Andorra is not as
rich as many other European countries, it does have a public health system
which the World Health Organization ranks as the third-best in the world.
Turkey, on the other hand, spends only some 8% of its gross domestic product on
national health, below the average for a developed country. In 2006, Turkey had
only one doctor for every 700 people, one nurse for every 580 people and one
hospital bed for every 380 people - lower ratios than any nation in Europe.
In Andorra, large public recreation centers are available and free
transportation is provided for the elderly who wish utilize them for exercise.
In the Black Sea mountains, sport and activity are most likely to come from
moving animals from one pasture to another or the back-breaking labor of tea
and hazelnut gathering.
Perhaps another factor enhancing the lifespan of Andorrans is seven centuries
of history without war. "So many years of peace, no army, I think that gives a
lot of peace of mind to people," said Andorran government spokesman Juli
Minoves. "I think there is a psychological factor here, a feeling of safeness
that people start to absorb from the moment they are born."
To the contrary, Turks pride themselves on toughness and a successful military
past, a legacy which perhaps does not lend itself to a stress-free society. It
seems that the Black Sea sexagenarians may have stumbled across a hallowed -
and high-altitude fountain of youth.
Fazile Zahir is of Turkish descent, born and brought up in London. She
moved to live in Turkey in 2005 and has been writing full time since then.
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