Forget Stair Masters, spandex, pricey gym memberships, and the latest yoga-pilates hybrid. The perfect workout for adding years to your life could be something you’re already doing every day: work.

In Nicoya, work is a way of life. One centenarian we met prayed every night before bed that “the dead souls rest in peace and the live ones have the energy to work.” Where else in the world do people pray to work?

I struck off into the village of Hojancha to see if the way people work here is different from the way we do it (or, in many cases, avoid it) at home. At high noon, it was blindingly bright and sweltering — too hot, I worried, to find people outside hard at work. But within just a few minutes, I came across a schoolyard, where a teacher balancing on a step-ladder was tirelessly beating mangoes down from a tree with a long broom. Across the street, a mechanic, up to his shoulders in paint flecks, was hand-sanding the finish off a rickety old pickup. And down the block, a father and son duo were laying gravel for a new driveway.

The first thing you notice here is that people don’t use appliances or “energy saving” shortcuts. When you think of it, machines and electronics get in the way of doing many sorts of productive physical activity. In this respect, Nicoyans have a huge advantage over Americans. For starters, cars are expensive, so the streets are full of commuters on foot or bicycle. Instead of lawnmowers, people use machetes to landscape their yards. They grind corn by hand for their tortillas. Even kids work. I met a six-year-old immersed in what looked like play — until I realized the “toy” in his hand was actually a huge knife. He was using it to hack into the young coconuts his older brother was tossing from the top of the family’s palm tree.

For decades, doctors have known that a sedentary lifestyle can take years from your life. Still, the average American spends less than 19 minutes a day exercising, compared to 101 in the car, and 170 watching television. Is it any wonder our inactivity is a key factor in four of the six top causes of death---diabetes, cancer, stroke and heart disease---leading 250,000 of us to an early grave each year?

While experts have long understood the health benefits of regular high-intensity aerobic exercise, they’re just starting to recognize what people here in Nicoya have known for centuries: daily moderate-intensity activities — like walking or doing physical chores around the house — can be just as valuable to your health. Dr. Harvey B. Simon, professor at Harvard Medical School and author of The No Sweat Exercise Plan, credits moderate exercise with fighting age-related diseases like hypertension (lowering blood pressure as much as 20 points), stroke (up to 34 percent), dementia (15 to 50 percent), diabetes (16 to 50 percent), fractures (40 percent) and breast cancer (up to 30 percent). And to put the term “moderate” in perspective, Simon cites studies such as one that found gardening one hour a week lowers the risk of sudden cardiac death by 66 percent. Another study found walking at least a mile a day reduces the risk of heart disease by 82 percent over a ten year period.

Simon coined the concept “cardiometabolic exercise” (CME) to help moderate exercisers understand how their daily activity levels stack up. His CME system plots common activities on a points scale, with 150 daily points the optimal level for general health and gradual weight loss. While “shaking mangos from tree” was unfortunately not included in Simon’s CME scale, common activities like 30 minutes of digging in a garden (190 CME points), dusting (75 points), and heavy cleaning (150 points) show how even the most everyday tasks can provide considerable health benefits.

Work very likely plays a key role in this region’s longevity. After administering a Physical Performance Test to every single living centenarian in the Nicoya’s Blue Zone, our science team has found that Nicoyan centenarians are 35 percent more physically fit than Sardinian centenarians — the world’s other longevity all stars. Centenarians here have never belonged to a gym; they don’t own a Stair Master. But they all worked hard their whole lives. Wouldn’t it be convenient if work were a key ingredient in the longevity formula? After all, what could be better than an exercise plan you don’t even know you’re on?

Work hard, live long,
Eliza