Man with cancer given six months to live miraculously survives for 45 years in a blue zone

Finding out that you have a terminal illness with very limited time to live can be devastating, but there are people who decide to spend the life they have left with resilience. Although such conditions cannot be cured, sometimes courage gives people the capability to pull off miracles. Life took a similar turn for 66-year-old Stamatis Moraitis who had terminal lung cancer and was given six months to live by his doctors. However, things turned around unexpectedly when he moved back to his native island in Greece. It all began when Moraitis found it extremely difficult to breathe and got tired faster than usual, prompting him to get a diagnosis from his doctor, as per Business Insider.

The man who had spent most of his life in suburban New York and Florida, decided to move back to his native island of Ikaria in Greece after learning about his cancer so that his family wouldn't have to arrange for an expensive American funeral. He thought of being buried beside the sea on the island, which is halfway between Athens and Turkey. Ikaria is also one of the world's blue zones, a place where people routinely live past 100. Once Moraitis got there, he started to move around, talking to his old friends, and even started growing grapes and olives.

He thought that he wouldn't live to see the vines but would leave them as a memory for his wife. Little did he know that he would live for more than three decades to enjoy the fruits of his labor and grow more of them. Narrating his story to BBC, Moraitis said, "I went to the US, made my family there, I work there, I love the country. But then, after so many years I had a problem breathing." Speaking about moving back to Greece, he added, "We started drinking wine and waiting for the day." He then went on to reveal, "But after a few months, I felt strong. Six months pass and nothing happens. Nine months pass, no death. About 45 years from then and I am still drinking wine and working."

"I am no doctor but I think the wine helped," Moraitis joked. "I've done nothing else, but eat pure food, pure wine, and pure herbs. I am not drinking so much to be an alcoholic but 2-3 glasses every day." He pointed out he doesn't drink commercial wine as it has too many preservatives. He explained how the clean air and atmosphere also helped him a lot. "Here it is clean, you breathe pure oxygen," he says about the place where water is so clean that one can see a dime dropped 20 feet from the top.

Moraitis works in the olive garden and the family uses olive oil for everything while he gets a lot of exercise. Moraitis continued to work in his garden well into his nineties. "Easy or tough, I still have to do it," he told the outlet. In his Netflix docuseries, "Live to 100: secrets of the Blue Zones," Dan Buettner visited the island and explained how the average age in Ikaria was seven years longer than in the US with half the rate of cardiovascular disease. The reason behind the island's unique culture is its isolation caused by the lack of natural ports. Moraitis lived up to the age of 100 or almost hundred and was cancer-free without any treatment, as per Blue Zones.