Can the Sun and Socializing Add Years? Learn English & Find Out!
#EnglishFluency 🌺 In today's British English lesson we savour Spain's fountains of youth and vitality! 🌺
Why not spend an enjoyable 10 minutes of your day and...
- Unravel the "zest for life" habits fuelling 117-year-old María's radiant longevity
- Absorb mesmerizing stories unveiling the Spanish Blue Zones' longevity codes
- Immerse in a content-rich podcast honing English listening prowess
- Gain priceless health wisdom infused into an entertaining narrative
✔Lesson transcript: https://adeptenglish.com/lessons/learn-english-language-living-long-and-healthy-like-spanish-centenarians/
Getting old is a fascination thing. The older you get, the older you want to get.
⭐ Keith Richards
Curious how someone lives past 100? Uncover the secrets of longevity from Spain's centenarians, and see what it might teach us about flourishing healthily into old age while you improve your English fluency.
Join us in an engaging lesson that’s more than just English practice—it’s a glimpse into a life well-lived!
With age, you see people fail more. You see yourself fail more. How you behave is how you prepare for that - those failures.
⭐ Lady Gaga
Stay Curious & Grow - Develop language skills through fascinating topics.
More About This Lesson
Today, our English lesson takes a look at the secrets of Spain's oldest residents, while we improve your English fluency! This unique episode combines valuable life lessons from Spanish centenarians with essential language skills. It's more than just language practice it's fun & interesting language practice.
Age has given me what I was looking for my entire life - it gave me me.
⭐ Barbra Streisand
This English lesson can significantly bolster your fluency:
- Real-life Contexts: Engage with topics like longevity that merge daily vocabulary with interesting facts.
- Vocabulary Enrichment: Learn and use words like "longevity" and "centenarian" in real conversations.
- Listening Skills: Improve your understanding of the British English accent and speech nuances.
- Cultural Insights: Gain insights into Spanish lifestyle, enhancing your cultural understanding.
- Active Listening: Develops attentive listening, critical for spoken language fluency.
- Pronunciation Practice: Hear and mimic accurate British English pronunciation.
- Health Vocabulary: Learn terms related to health and well-being, practical in everyday life.
Life is a journey that must be travelled no matter how bad the roads and accommodations.
⭐ Oliver Goldsmith
This lesson is a different, a better, way of learning any language. By talking about real-life topics using everyday conversational vocabulary and pronunciation you get to immerse yourself in real-world examples of language use. This type of learning better prepares you for actual conversations, the ones you are likely to have in the real world, not a classroom.
Don't miss out on more great English listening podcasts! Follow and subscribe to our Adept English podcast for more insights and improve your English effortlessly. Join our community of learners today!
FAQ
- What is the secret to longevity, according to María Branyas Morera's lifestyle?
Some of the key factors in María's long life include:
- Having a "zest for life" and staying active mentally through activities like reading, knitting, painting and playing music
- Continuing gentle physical activity like walking and gardening into her 90s
- Staying socially engaged by regularly meeting and talking with others
- Being resilient and able to cope with setbacks and loss
- Maintaining good relationships with family and friends
- Why do centenarians in Spain tend to live longer than in other countries?
Some of the reasons cited for the high number of centenarians in Spain include:
- A Mediterranean diet rich in healthy foods
- Living in a warm, sunny climate providing sufficient vitamin D
- Personality traits like intelligence, resilience and altruism
- An active, social lifestyle engaging in hobbies and with others
- How can I improve my English listening skills like in this podcast?
To improve your English listening skills like in the Adept English podcast:
- Listen regularly to podcasts or other audio materials at a level just above your current ability
- Pay close attention and avoid distractions while listening
- Listen for context clues and familiar words to aid comprehension
- Repeat sections out loud to practice pronunciation
- Engage with the content by summarizing, taking notes or discussing it
- What health issues are discussed as preventing people from working in the UK?
The main health issues preventing people from working in the UK are:
- Chronic pain
- Diabetes
- Mental health problems, especially among younger people
- What advice is given for living a long, healthy life?
Some of the key advice for living a long, healthy life includes:
- Maintaining an active mind through reading, hobbies and learning
- Staying socially engaged by regularly meeting with others
- Continuing gentle physical activity as much as possible
- Having resilience and ability to cope with challenges
- Nurturing strong family and friend relationships
Immerse yourself in the vibrant Spanish 'blue zones' where centenarians thrive, savouring their zest for life while sipping this English lesson like a fine Spanish wine. Let the flavors of longevity linger as you absorb valuable language and lifestyle wisdom, uncorking secrets to robust minds and bodies.
Most Unusual Words:
- LONGEVITY: Living for a long time.
- PNEUMONIA: A serious sickness in the lungs.
- ENGAGEMENT: Getting involved or being part of something.
- CENTENARIAN: A person who is 100 years old or more.
- ZEST: Enthusiasm or excitement about life.
- ALTRUISTIC: Caring about other people and helping them.
- RESILIENCE: The ability to handle problems and bounce back from setbacks.
- SOCIALISING: Meeting and talking to other people regularly.
- CHRONIC: Lasting for a long time, especially about sickness.
- DIABETES: A health condition where the body cannot properly use sugar.
Most Frequently Used Words:
| Word | Count |
|---|---|
| People | 17 |
| About | 9 |
| Means | 8 |
| María | 7 |
| Years | 7 |
| These | 7 |
| Other | 6 |
| English | 6 |
| Branyas | 6 |
| Person | 5 |
Listen To The Audio Lesson Now
Transcript: Learn English and How to Live Over 100 Years
Secrets to Longevity: Learn from Spanish Centenarians
Hi there. What do you think is the age of the oldest person in the world currently? So today we’re talking about what the lifestyles of Spain's oldest residents can teach us about living a long time - longevity, in other words. That’s LONGEVITY - that just means ‘living a long time’. An interesting topic while you do your English language listening practice. So how old do you think the oldest person in the world is? Well, the answer - María Branyas Morera is aged 117. She’s the oldest person in the world at the moment and yes, you heard that correctly - she’s 117 years old and the last person alive who was born in 1907! How does a person get to be that old and still healthy? Well, scientists are always interested in those places in the world where people tend to live for a long time - they call them ‘blue zones’. And scientists study people’s diet and lifestyle in those ‘blue zone’s to try and learn the secrets. And recently Spain has been attracting attention for just that reason - so many people in Spain who live beyond the age of 100! What’s gong on? What’s their secret? This comes meanwhile at a point in time where the UK government is trying to address the problem of why so many people, especially young people in the UK aren’t working, because they’re ill! We are a sickly nation - so what can we learn from the Spanish people, like María Branyas Morera who live well past 100 years and live it well?
Hello, I’m Hilary, and you’re listening to Adept English. We will help you to speak English fluently. All you have to do is listen. So start listening now and find out how it works.
Longevity in Spain
So this was an article published this in The Spectator called ‘Why Spaniards Live For So Long’ - the link is in the transcript. When you read about the later life of María Branyas Morera, it just makes you smile! She’s been living in a nursing home since she was 93 because she got pneumonia - that’s PNEUMONIA. Very serious anyway, but especially for someone of 93. But 24 years later, she’s still living in the same home. She must be one of the longest serving residents in that nursing home. She also survived COVID in 2020 - and she played the piano until she was 108 years old! Her early life was difficult though. She was born in California in 1907, but her Spanish parents decided to move back to Spain in 1915 - and her father died on the boat travelling there. María herself suffered injury on that trip, as she lost hearing on one ear when she fell from one deck of the boat to another. María Branyas Morera married in 1931 and had 3 children of whom two are still alive - and one died falling off a tractor in 2019, aged 86. But her daughters are 91 and 80 years old. So of course, longevity runs in families - there are genetic factors at work here. María Branyas Morera worked as a nurse, in the Spanish Civil War and she worked alongside her husband, who was a specialist in trauma, until he died in 1976.
📷
A person walking on a bad road, in harsh terrain. Learn English while exploring longevity.
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Does sunshine help you live longer?
So there are apparently about 20,000 people over the age of 100 in Spain, many of them still enjoying good health. We all perhaps want to live to a ‘ripe old age’, but only if we’re in good health. We know that it’s partly in the diet - we’re learning a great deal at the moment about how what you eat makes a massive difference to your health, especially your long-term health. I’m sure that a bit of Spanish sunshine and a warm climate helps,. Not the shortage of vitamin D that we all have in the UK for example! But researchers have been trying to identify whether there are types of personality, or traits, aspects of personality that these very old people have in common. Talking to a number of centenarians - that’s CENTENARIAN and it just means ‘someone aged 100 or more’ - researchers identified what they called ‘zest for life’. ‘Zest’, ZEST means ‘enthusiasm’, ‘the want to do things’ - and ‘zest’ also means the coloured bit of a lemon or orange skin. So it’s something ‘quite strongly flavoured’ that carries into the term ‘zest’ meaning ‘zest for life’. Knitting, sewing, painting, playing a musical instrument, reading a lot - these are the things that are important when you’re very old. Reading seems to be particularly important. It’s unlikely that if you live beyond 100 that you retain your absolute physical fitness. But reading allows you to know the world, continue to learn about the world from the comfort of an armchair. Your body may be frail, but your mind can still be active and carry on with reading and learning. Having said all that though, doing some kind of physical activity appears also to be important too. These long-lived people may not be running marathons, but they do continue walking or doing gentle exercise like gardening, at least into their 90s. The other thing which seemed to be really important - socialising. Meeting and talking regularly with other people - this was really important and motivating to these centenarians. I think that’s one mistake we make in this country. Many old people here live alone and are lonely. They lack contact and socialising with other people. Staying sociable and socialising regularly seems to help the brain stay active.
Qualities like altruism and resilience may help you live longer
A couple other things the researchers identified. Living a long time is very much helped by having intelligence - probably not surprising. It’s also more likely where people are ‘altruistic’ - that’s ALTRUISTIC. It’s an adjective and if you are ‘altruistic’, it means ‘you are motivated to look after other people, you like helping people’. That’s ‘altruistic’ and the noun is ‘altruism’. And then something called ‘resilience’, RESILIENCE. I’ve talked before about this word. It means ‘the ability to cope with problems, manage setbacks’. If you’re ‘resilient’, you deal with things, you manage them emotionally - and you carry on as before. I guess if you’ve got to 117 years old, there will have been traumas, bad events - and lots of loss in your life. Your children may well have got old and died themselves by the time you get to that great age! But the ability to be ‘resilient’ is part of it - you accept the situation and work round it. Another thing - good relationships with family and friends are also really important, which makes sense. And the ‘sting in the tail’ - only one in five of these Spanish centenarians are men, so you’ve a much greater chance of living past 100 years if you’re a woman. I don’t know the reasons for that, but it would be interesting subject to look into!
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Do we have an opposite effect happening in the UK?
Here in the UK, we do need quite urgently to learn from these sorts of examples, I think. In the UK news this week - the government wants to tackle - that means ‘address the problem of’ - the number of people who are sick, ill and as a consequence who don’t work. Reading about this in the BBC news - again the links are in the transcript - some of this problem seems to be because of long NHS waiting lists. You have to wait for healthcare in the UK. So in some areas of the country, you can wait a very long time to be seen by a specialist doctor. But on the whole the article suggests, people are dealing with three different categories of health problem in the UK and this is what stops them from working. The first is chronic pain, the second reason is diabetes and the third is mental health problems. These are all cited as the reasons why huge numbers of people in the UK don’t work. And interestingly, amongst the young, it’s mental health problems that make up the biggest number of people who don’t work. I think this is also an interesting topic to look at in a future podcast, especially at why so many young people in the UK have mental health problems. Apart from the suffering that this means, it’s bad for the UK economy to have so many people not working!
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So the UK is a nation with a very high sickness record. And perhaps we need to learn from people like the centenarians in Spain, people like María Branyas Morera
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- Maria Branyas
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