The secret to living longer may be your social life

Here's an intriguing fact.

In the developed world,

everywhere, women live an average
of six to eight years longer than men do.

Six to eight years longer.

That's, like, a huge gap.

In 2015, the Lancet published an article

showing that men in rich countries

are twice as likely to die as women are

at any age.

But there is one place in the world

where men live as long as women.

It's a remote, mountainous zone,

a blue zone,

where super longevity

is common to both sexes.

This is the blue zone in Sardinia,

an Italian island in the Mediterranean,

between Corsica and Tunisia,

where there are six times
as many centenarians

as on the Italian mainland,

less than 200 miles away.

There are 10 times as many centenarians

as there are in North America.

It's the only place where men
live as long as women.

But why?

My curiosity was piqued.

I decided to research the science
and the habits of the place,

and I started with the genetic profile.

I discovered soon enough

that genes account for just
25 percent of their longevity.

The other 75 percent is lifestyle.

So what does it take to live
to 100 or beyond?

What are they doing right?

What you're looking at
is an aerial view of Villagrande.

It's a village at the epicenter
of the blue zone

where I went to investigate this,

and as you can see, architectural beauty

is not its main virtue,

density is:

tightly spaced houses,

interwoven alleys and streets.

It means that the villagers' lives
constantly intersect.

And as I walked through the village,

I could feel hundreds
of pairs of eyes watching me

from behind doorways and curtains,

from behind shutters.

Because like all ancient villages,

Villagrande couldn't have survived

without this structure,
without its walls, without its cathedral,

without its village square,

because defense and social cohesion
defined its design.