Check out the photos too, they look remarkably young for their ages.

The secret of long life: Sardinia

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2007050151,00.html

THERE is snow on the mountains but 81-year-old Gonaria Deledda is outside in just a housecoat, woolly tights and slippers vigorously scrubbing her stove pipe.

I feel tired out just watching her. But by local standards in this corner of the Mediterranean she’s still a youngster.

Welcome to Silanus, a village on the Italian island of Sardinia, where residents are THREE TIMES more likely to reach their 100th birthday than just about anywhere else in the world.

Sprightly Gonaria looks all set to join them and says: “If I stop working my whole body will stop. Work keeps me going. That, the clean air and plenty of beans and red wine.”

She has spent her life tending her sheep, donkeys and olive trees, often walking more than six miles a day. Her eldest brother lived to 101 but she is the last remaining of her five siblings. Her husband died 11 years ago

ISilanus is at the heart of a region where more than 20 people per 100,000 live to be 100. The UK average is just seven per 100,000.

Entering the village is like stepping back 50 years. The air is crisp, the only sound is the odd battered Fiat whizzing past.

Until recently there were no shops. Today there is a tobacconist, a grocer and four bars. But you won’t find a restaurant or a gym.

At the 2002 census there were 222 centenarians in Sardinia out of a population of just 1.6 million. Antonio Todde — who was the world’s oldest man until his death at 112 in 2002 — lived near Silanus.

Until three years ago the village — population 2,400 — boasted five centenarians and today there are many more people in their late 90s. It intrigues scientists but locals say the reason is simple — hard work, peasant food, optimism and family.

Sardinians are famously tough and said to be so fierce that not even invading Romans could subdue them. Until the 1960s malaria was endemic on the island and it is thought that those who survived are now super-resistant to illness.

Scientists at the island’s University of Sassari say that, over time, inbreeding has created a special genetic trait that 80 per cent of islanders now have.

That genetic difference — known as the M26 marker found in the Y chromosome in the body’s cells — may be another reason for the locals’ long lives.

The university’s Professor Luca Deiana says: “Sardinia is the only place where the mortality rate of men over 85 is less than that of women. We believe there is a strong genetic influence. Stress is low and the diet is based on vegetables, pulses, grains, a small amount of meat and red wine.”

At 85, Pietrino Cappai can still nimbly climb the steep steps to the square. With a toothy grin he says: “I started work on my family’s land when I was six, walking more than eight miles a day.

“I drink a glass of red wine with meals and until a couple of years ago went to my vineyard every day. If my hands were strong enough I’d still go today.”

Next I meet Silanus’s oldest resident, 104-year-old Teresa Morittu, who devoted her life to raising eight children with hubby Tommaso.

She says: “I’ve always eaten plenty of vegetables and pulses. Meat was for special occasions and we only ate pasta on a Sunday.

We worked hard and the air is clear. Here you have a beautiful life. I enjoy life and I hope to go on a lot longer.”

Widowed in 1960, Teresa is now cared for by her daughter, Pasqualina Cappai, 69 — there are no nursing homes here.

The first time she went to hospital was at 70 with kidney stones. At 102 she fell and broke her leg but, after three days in hospital, she demanded to be taken home.

Pasqualina recalls: “Although she had to rest we could barely keep her in bed. And her eyesight is better than mine.”

Finally Mayor Luigi Morittu, 51, explains the village’s fame: “We grow the best olive oil in Sardinia, our wines are packed with goodness and our diet is based around sheep, not cows, so it is lower in cholesterol.

“The head of every family had land to produce everything and it was all organic. We were poor but the essentials of life were available and we didn’t need more.”

Luigi blames the arrival of an industrial area at nearby Ottana in the 1960s for a decline in this age-old culture. But the situation is reversing and he hopes the area’s secret will continue for his twin sons Giordano and Enrico, five.

He says: “We are returning to our origins. This is the land of the old and now we are looking back to the mountains for our children.”

Before leaving, I stop at Bar Centrale for a glass of fabled local red wine and a last breath of mountain air. I hope some of the magic has rubbed off on me.