Man given six months to live in 1976 survived another 45 years after moving to ‘blue zone’ island where people have been scientifically proven to live longer
- Stamatis Moraitis lived to 45 years after being told he only had nine months left
- He said that his survival after the cancer diagnosis was due to living in a blue zone.
- “I’m not a doctor, but I think the wine helped,” he joked in a 2013 interview.
A man ‘cheated death’ for almost 45 years after being given just 9 months after a cancer diagnosis and said it’s all because he lives in a ‘blue zone’.
Doctors told 98-year-old Stamatis Moraitis in 1976 that he had only six to nine months to live after being diagnosed with lung cancer.
After years of working and raising a family in the US, Mr. Moraitis made the decision to return home to Ikaria because a US funeral would be too expensive.
He decided to return to his native island to ‘start drinking wine and wait for the day’ when death knocked on his door.
Doctors told Stamatis Moraitis (pictured) in 1976 due to his lung cancer diagnosis, but he lived another 45
Mr. Moraitis’ native home, the Greek island of Ikaria, known as the “island where people forget to die”, also known as the blue zone.
After his return to Ikaria, months passed and Mr. Moraitis felt that he was getting stronger as time went by.
After passing the nine-month marker, he realized he might have more life to live, and he was right.
He lasted 45 years after his cancer diagnosis, dying at the age of 98, although he contests the age of 102, in 2013.
joked with him BBC: ‘I’m not a doctor but I think the wine helped.’
Moraitis said that he survived so long because he only consumed pure food, herbs and wine, clean air and a stress-free life.
The tiny Greek island of Ikaria, coined the “island where people forget to die”, is also known as the “blue zone”, with residents living on average 10 years longer than the rest of Western Europe, one of whom is Mr. Moraitis, who cheated death for decades.
Moraitis attributed his decades of survival to the consumption of pure food, herbs, wine, clean air, and a stress-free life.
He even refused to drink commercial wine, taking his own to places that didn’t have local wine, because he claimed there were “too many preservatives.”
The Greek island is not the only ‘blue zone’ in the world according to UniLadthere are other places where people statistically live longer.
However, the investigation of the National Library of Medicine shows that a person’s life expectancy largely depends on the way they lead their lives, with only 20% of a person’s genetics contributing to their life expectancy.
Although people who live in “blue zones” live statistically longer and are less likely to have serious illness later in life than other people in the world, health line he claims it’s because they have healthier diets as a result of locally produced foods that are regularly recommended by doctors.
The tiny Greek island of Ikaria (pictured), 30 miles off the Turkish coast, isn’t the only blue zone in the world whose list includes the island of Sardinia, Okinawa, and others.
