Italians Reveal Secret to Longevity
ANDERSON: Welcome back with us. It is 51 minutes past 7:00, ten to 8:00 effectively in the UAE. Welcome back. I'm Becky Anderson. So you want to live a long life, right? Exercise, clean diet, and managing stress are usually good places to start, aren't they? But after this next story you may want to add relocation to the list. Tthis small Italian town south of Naples seems to have mastered the art of aging. Ben Wedeman visited to try and crack its secret.</s>BEN WEDEMAN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Giuseppe is 94 years old. He still tends his own garden, still hangs out with the younger guys and watches their card game and still enjoys the company of the opposite sex. "I noticed," he says, "that also that is indispensable. It makes you happy, more cheerful." Does it still work, I ask? "Yes," he says. "Once it really worked." Giuseppe lives in the southern Italian town of Acheroli (ph), where one in ten residents is more than 100 years old, where living well beyond the already impressive average Italian life span of 82 is the norm. Earlier this year, Rome's Satience (ph) University and the University of California-San Diego launched a study to see why people here live so long and so strong. It was in the villages along this coast that American nutritionist Ansel Keys (ph) identified what is now known as the Mediterranean diet. (inaudible), a spring chicken at 79, was Keys' cook and now runs a restaurant specializing in that diet -- fresh herbs, vegetables, fruit, and fish, all local. "Because we eat natural things," she says, "things that we grow, we know what's there." Researchers are particularly interested in rosemary, which they suspect helps circulation to the brain and might explain why Alzheimer's is rare here. Obviously, diet has a lot to do with the longevity of local residents, but clearly there are other factors. There's no pollution, they are right by the sea, the weather's very nice, and there are almost none of the stresses of modern life. Antonio celebrated his 100th birthday recently. He attributes his long life to, in his words: "this beautiful woman, the woman of my life." Amina, a spry 93, continues to write poetry and recite it from memory, this one dedicated to Antonio. "And I became," so her poem concludes, "the bride of this fisherman." You can't quantify it, but love also plays a role. Ben Wedeman, CNN, Italy.</s>ANDERSON: Well, as you saw there, age is just a number. And as most of us would like to stay young at heart, in tonight's Parting Shots we meet a photographer who reflects on how old the elderly will be aging well, actually feel.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I firmly believe no matter how old you are, at some point in your life, you realize you're older than you feel. I was at my father's house, and he had a friend of his over, an actor who was also a World War II vet. He was about to turn 80 and was talking about how it didn't make sense to him that he could possibly be 80 years old. I was approaching my 40th birthday and i had the same feeling. Everybody I think has an idea of themselves at a certain age in their lives, be it just graduating from college or just having your first child. There's an age that kind of sticks with you. When you start reaching milestones of 30, 40, 50, 80, you can't fathom that. So I think the images are a universal concept. My name is Tom Hussy (ph). And these are my parting shots.</s>ANDERSON: And for more stories just like that which our team here at Connect the World around the world are working hard to get to, and many other captivating pieces we bring to you every day, I really urge you to use your Facebook page, Facebook.com/cnnconnect and Have your say and be part of what we do on a daily basis here at CNN. I'm Becky Anderson. That was Connect the World. From the team working with me in Abu Dubai and those around the world, we thank you for watching. Do stay with us. CNN of course will continue after this short break. END