Dear Friends,

Sergei and Valya at a river iceberg – June, 2013

You have not heard from us for almost a month because all three of us have been traveling deep in North East Siberia. This region is called Yakutia and it is famous for its record number of centenarians, people over 100 years old.

Yakutian centenarians are protected by their local government and it is generally prohibited to visit them for an interview. It took us many months of negotiations and lots of paperwork in order to obtain the official permission along with the addresses of four centenarians. However, they so much enjoyed our visits that we were granted an opportunity to meet many more of them.

We traveled to many villages, some very distant. Most days we spent 18 hours in the Jeep-like Russian car. The roads were extremely bumpy because the ground is permanently frozen in this part of Siberia. Yakutia is officially the coldest populated place on Earth.

The average temperature in the winter in Yakutia is -58°C (−72 °F). For this reason, no fruits and almost no vegetables grow in Yakutia during its short summer. All the water, gas, and sewer pipes have to be run above the ground with a thick layer of isolation materials. All the buildings are built on special stilts. We found ourselves wondering how people can survive in such an extreme climate and even live to be over 100 years old?

We wanted to visit the homes of centenarians and research their secrets. Sergei and Valya videotaped almost a hundred hours of interviews and took hundreds of photos. We also took samples of the water Yakutians drink. We are expecting the results of the water tests to arrive this week.

On the above photo you may see two centenarians and some 90+ years old neighbors, along with their children and grandchildren. They are holding the paintings made by one of the centenarians this year. Most centenarians we met live a creative life and completely serve themselves. We saw a 105-year-old woman who sews daily and threads her sewing needle with thread without the aid of glasses.

We have gathered important data, which sheds more light into the understanding of the key factors that help sustain vibrant health.

To avoid mistakes in our conclusions, we are going to look through all of our materials before we release any more details. So please be patient and you will hear from us soon.

Sergei’s New Book is Here

We have just received Sergei’s book “Wild Edibles” this week and he became so excited that he decided to sign all 470 copies of the pre-orders!!!

We have so far shipped the first 200 autographed books with a complimentary DVD inside. All of the orders will leave our office before the end of this week.

As the postage went up, we are shipping domestic books by media mail ($2.98) International orders will also be shipped this week.

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