A nation of longest lifespans

Hunza people are famous for their incredibly long lifespans of 120 to 150 years. Hunza valley is in the north of Pakistan 1.5 miles wide and 100 miles long at an elevation of 8,500 feet. Here is a LINK to more detailed information about Hunza. At the age of a 100 Hunzans don't even consider themselves elderly. Men conceive children at 90, and women of 80 look like the American women of 40, but in better physical shape.

The causes of longevity of Hunza people are probably a combination of the following:

• High altitude
• Clean air
• Good water rich in minerals
• Diet
• Lack of food
• No chemicals whatsoever
• Daily walking in the mountains gathering nuts and berries and herding yaks

High altitudes have been found good for the heart, and, according to a study by Colorado School of Medicine the US counties with the highest life expectancy were in Colorado and Utah with the elevation above 5000 feet.

Hunza is surrounded by tall mountains with difficult narrow passes, which is what kept the area isolated and peaceful for hundreds of years. The water is pure, straight from the glaciers and springs without any nasty chemicals. The small area naturally limits the numbers of people and animals it can support, so both populations are kept small.

The diet of Hunza people consists of: whole grains - millet, barley and buckwheat, vegetables, fruit and berries - mostly apricots including seeds, nuts - almonds, hazelnuts and walnuts, dairy - milk, eggs, cheese, yogurt. They eat very little meat, usually only in winter, or if an animal had an accident. They cook meat very thoroughly for many hours, break the bones and eat bone marrow too. They use no artificial fertilizers or pesticides. No sugar, only real wild honey. Their typical summer meal is a salad with a sprinkling of nuts and a piece of bread baked from a stone-ground mixture of fresh grains and seeds with some vegetables and berries added to the dough. Their diet is mostly vegetarian in the summer. In the winter they eat a lot of goat cheese, yogurt, dried apricots with pits, nuts, and drink yak milk. The meat would be: goat, sheep and yak. They drink somewhat muddy glacier water full of minerals. I couldn't find any information regarding whether they have fish in the river. I would imagine, they should, but no one writing of their diet ever mentions fish.

According to all the available information Hunza people have no heart disease and no cancer. The fact that cancer is an unknown disease among the Hunza could be due to the fact that they eat the pits with the fruit. Apricot, peach and cherry pits are very high in vitamin B17, which has been found effective in preventing cancer. And Hunza eat 50 mg of vitamin B17 per day, which is more B17 than an American gets in a year. Millet, buckwheat and macadamia nuts are also rich in vitamin B17, but the apricot and peach seeds contain 2% of the vitamin by weight.

Some of those factors can not be applied to a modern lifestyle of a westerner, but these couple of things we can totally do:

• We can drink good water from glaciers and springs only by doing some research about those water companies, where and how they obtain the water and how they go about bottling it
• We can eat only whole grain breads made from all organic ingredients and unbleached flower
• Switch to goat cheese
• Switch to yak steaks
• We can greatly reduce the amounts of food we eat
• Eat organic fruits, vegetables and berries, and, whenever possible, grow them in our yard
• Eat apricots and peaches with the pits
• Walk a lot every day