Why Do Hunzakuts Live So Long?

The Hunzakuts, the people of the Hunza Valley in Gilgit-Baltistan, are often said to live to extraordinary ages. The honest starting point is that the extraordinary ages were never verified, so the question "why do they live so long?" rests on a shaky premise. This page explains where the claim came from, what the evidence says about the four reasons usually given, and what is genuinely worth taking from the story.

Where the claim came from, and why it does not hold

The story spread widely after the Harvard physician Alexander Leaf described the Burusho people of Hunza as a very aged population in a 1973 National Geographic article. Researchers who study extreme age say that such claims must be checked against documents, for example by linking a birth registration to a death registration. A 2010 paper in Current Gerontology and Geriatrics Research, "Typologies of Extreme Longevity Myths", lists the Hunza Valley among modern examples of a "Shangri-La myth", and reports that in its data the share of age claims that could be validated fell from about 35% at ages 110 to 111 to 0% at 120 or more. A 2025 paper in The Gerontologist by Steven Austad and Giovanni Pes says Leaf "was alas innocent of the long history of age exaggeration" and that his story was "fairly quickly invalidated". We are not saying that individual elders in Hunza are not old. We are saying that there is no reliable documentation of the extreme ages that made the legend famous.

Nor was the valley free of disease. A survey published in 1992 found visible goitre in 61.36% of people in the Gilgit and Hunza area before iodised salt was introduced. For the full evidence, see our daily routine guide.

The four usual explanations, checked

1. Diet

The traditional diet is described as rich in whole grains, fruit, nuts and vegetables. Diets like that are good for health in general. A 2019 Lancet analysis of 185 prospective studies and 58 trials found that people eating the most dietary fibre had a 15% to 30% lower risk of all-cause and cardiovascular death, and of coronary heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and colorectal cancer, than those eating the least. But that is a finding about fibre in general populations, not about Hunza, and no one has measured what Hunza people ate at the time the legend was born.

2. Glacial water

The claim that mineral-rich glacial water is behind long life has no study behind it that we could find. If anything, the evidence points the other way for water quality: a 2025 study of 68 drinking water and vegetable samples from the Hunza and Nagar districts found metal levels for chromium, nickel, cadmium and lead above health-risk thresholds in Hunza. Glacial does not mean pure. We removed the earlier statement on this page that Hunza water is "fundamentally different" and beneficial.

3. Physical activity

Steep terraces and mountain paths mean a lot of walking, which is plausible but not measured. We do not have step counts for Hunza residents. What the wider evidence does show is that activity matters: the WHO says people who are insufficiently active have a 20% to 30% higher risk of death than those who are active, and a 2022 meta-analysis in The Lancet Public Health of 47,471 adults found that those in the top quarter for daily steps, a median of 10,901, had a hazard of death from any cause of 0.47 compared with the lowest quarter, whose median was 3,553. Activity is probably the most valuable part of the story, and you can copy it anywhere.

4. Community and low stress

Strong family and community ties are often cited, and here the evidence is better than you might expect. A 2010 meta-analysis in PLoS Medicine by Julianne Holt-Lunstad and colleagues pooled 148 studies with 308,849 participants and found that people with stronger social relationships had a 50% greater likelihood of survival (odds ratio 1.50), with the strongest effect, 1.91, for broad measures of social integration rather than simply living with others. The authors compared the influence to well-established mortality risk factors. This is a general finding across many countries, not something proven for Hunza, but it is a real reason to look after your relationships as seriously as your diet.

What to take from it

You do not need a legend to justify a healthier life. The evidence supports a handful of ordinary habits: eat plenty of fibre, move most days, keep in touch with people, and do not smoke. The WHO recommends at least 150 to 300 minutes of moderate activity a week, at least 25 g of fibre a day and at least 400 g of fruit and vegetables a day. Apricots, walnuts, herbal tea and honey can be part of that, and our Hunza diet page explains how, but none of them will do what walking, sleep and social ties do.

This page is general information, not medical advice.

Sources

• Leaf A. Search for the oldest people. National Geographic, January 1973.
• Young RD, et al. Typologies of extreme longevity myths. Curr Gerontol Geriatr Res 2010. Austad SN, Pes GM. The validity of Blue Zones demography. The Gerontologist 2025.
• Ali A, et al. J Pak Med Assoc 1992;42(6):138-40. Khatoon N, et al. Environ Geochem Health 2025;47(3):88.
• Reynolds A, et al. Lancet 2019;393:434-45. Paluch AE, et al. Lancet Public Health 2022;7(3):e219-28. WHO physical activity fact sheet.
• Holt-Lunstad J, Smith TB, Layton JB. Social relationships and mortality risk: a meta-analytic review. PLoS Med 2010;7(7):e1000316.