There’s no way to avoid death, but it’s possible to delay it, and it seems five places in the world have found the secret to living much longer than most people on the planet.

These are the blue zones, so called because the researchers Gianni Pes and Michel Poulain studied the populations where the oldest people lived and marked them with a blue color on a map.

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In these places, time seems to stand still for the inhabitants, or rather, to lengthen. This is the case of Stamatis Moraitis, a Greek man who started a family in the United States, but received news in 1976 that he had lung cancer and would not live more than six months.

Moriatis, resigned to his fate, decided to return to his birthplace in Greece, one of the blue zones, and devote himself to waiting for death. He spent his days drinking wine and spending time with the community, but nine months passed and the man felt stronger than ever.

The Greek died at the age of 98, 45 years after the diagnosis and the death sentence that came too late. Moraitis attributed his decades of survival to the consumption of pure foods, spices, wine, clean air, and a stress-free life.

Stamatis Moraitis in Greece.

But thanks to the demographic work of Pes and Poulain, we now know their secret in the blue zone.

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These are the five blue zones

The people of Okinawa, in southern Japan, generally remain active well into their nineties. GETTY IMAGES

According to the researchers, after locating these communities, they assembled a team of medical researchers, anthropologists, demographers and epidemiologists to look for evidence-based common denominators across all locations.

The nine secrets of the blue zones