Word: orroli
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...just broken her hip, also received a bedside visit and a red rose from the village elder. No one knows better than Giovanni Frau, 111, that passing the century mark is reason to celebrate. But these two most senior of citizens also know that starting your second century in Orroli--a small town in the parched interior of the Italian island of Sardinia--isn't all that unusual. When Frau hit triple digits, in 1990, Vincenza Orgiana, just down the road, was approaching her 106th birthday. Over the past decade, five other Orroli natives (since deceased) have reached...
What makes Sardinia so hospitable to long life? Orroli's young and old alike debate the local secret that keeps people kicking. "It's the air!" insists the cousin of a 97-year-old woman who still makes pasta by hand. It's the homegrown vegetables, says a 96-year-old retired shepherd. Others contend it's the pure groundwater, the close familial bonds that ensure the elderly are cared for, the local penchant for an almost obsessive moderation in all things. Most seem to agree that a daily glass or two of red wine is indispensable. Frau, who turns...
Agostino Vargiu, a restaurateur, has another hypothesis. "The food and the air probably help," Vargiu says. "But the point is that there's very little intermarrying with outsiders here. In Orroli we're all practically relatives. It's in the genes." That same logic--and the same propensity for long life in nearby towns--was what prompted Deiana, with his team of 25 Italian doctors and biologists, to launch a sweeping genetic study of every 100-plus person across the entire island. "You look at a Sardinian phone book, and you see there are relatively few last names," says Deiana...
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