Mountain living prolongs life in Black Sea region
Reported March 15, 2009
Turkey’s coastal residents have always known that they have it good, and a study published by Antalya’s Akdeniz University this week has made it clear just how good.
On average Turks living on the Black Sea coast live five years longer than inland Turkey’s average of 64 years for men and 68 years for women. Researchers put the health benefits down to the built-in exercise regime necessitated by the rugged terrain and harsh weather conditions. The runners-up in the great longevity contest were those pensioners who had the funds to retire to the Aegean and Mediterranean coasts, where a total of 4.5 million out of the country’s total 9 million elderly live. Not everyone in the survey was so lucky: Those living in the East and Southeast had the shortest life expectancy, which is likely related to disproportionately high poverty in these rural regions.
Living in mountainous terrain doesn’t just benefit Turks; other studies have found pockets of people with longer-than-average life spans in Sardinia, Andorra and Athens. In 2005 the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health published the results of a 15-year study of the inhabitants of three villages not far from Athens. One village was 1,000 meters above sea level, the other two were on the plains, but all of the residents were largely occupied with farming. Blood samples taken from the mountain villagers showed a higher risk for heart disease than lowlanders with higher blood pressure and rates of circulating blood fats for both men and women. However, when the death statistics for the groups were analyzed, they revealed that the mountain village residents (despite being more likely to die from heart trouble) had lower death rates and lower 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 could give the heart a better workout and 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 on a mountain saves you, what is likely to kill you in Turkey? The Turkish Health Ministry commissioned a nationwide study in 2005 to find the 10 most common causes of death in the country. In some ways this grisly top 10 resemble similar European lists: The top cause of death is heart and circulatory system disease. But with one vital difference: Turkish women are more likely to die of heart disease than men. Until this report was published it was assumed that Turkey’s heart disease patterns followed those in Europe. The second most common cause of death was cerebrovascular disease and, again, more Turkish women die of strokes and brain hemorrhages than men. Third on the list were serious respiratory diseases, such as chronic bronchitis. All of these conditions are the greatest European killers, too, and in this respect Turkey’s health profile resembles that of a developed Western country.
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 the death of mothers. These deaths reflect the fact that 27 percent of women in Turkey give birth at home in unhygienic environments with no hospital nearby and no transportation to get them there should something go wrong. Perinatal causes don’t feature in the UK, for example, as a common cause of death. Also in Turkey, diabetes was number eight and traffic accidents were number nine. An English man is almost as likely to die of leukemia as he is of diabetes or from a road accident. If the Turkish figures are broken down further and analyzed by age, traffic accidents in the 15-59 age group move up from the ninth place to a frightening third.
Despite Andorran and Turkish mountain dwellers both having longer-than-average life spans, there is still a huge difference between the average life expectancy of 83.5 years for the Andorrans and that of 66 for the Turks. One factor is, of course, the relative wealth of Andorra compared with Turkey, but Andorra is not as rich as many other European countries where people die younger.
Out on the Black Sea mountains, sport and activity is most likely to come from moving your animals from one pasture to another or the backbreaking labor of tea and hazelnut gathering. Perhaps another factor enhancing the life span of Andorrans is seven centuries of war-free history. Andorran Minister of Public Affairs Juli Minoves Triquell believes this is a key factor: “So many years of peace, no army. I think that gives a lot of peace of mind to people.” His words may be very reasonable; Turks often pride themselves on their war-like demeanor and on their successful military past. This martial legacy does not lend itself to a wholly peaceful, stress-free society. It seems that the Black Sea sexagenarians may have stumbled across the hallowed fountain of youth, but circumstance leaves their cup only half full.