IF you want to keep your heart younger for longer, you should adopt the diet and lifestyle of an Amazonian tribe according to a new study.

Research published in the Lancet found that the Tsimane people - a forager-horticulturalist population of the Bolivian Amazon - have the lowest reported levels of vascular ageing for any population yet studied.

The arteries of a tribesman aged 80 were found to be the same vascular age as an average American man in his fifties, based on a measure of how "furred" their artery walls were with plaque. The build up of these fatty deposits is known as coronary atherosclerosis, or "hardening of the arteries", and is the main cause of coronary heart disease.

Rates of coronary atherosclerosis are five times lower among the Tsimane people than the US population, and heart attacks are rare. Their heart rate, blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood glucose are also low.

The findings were unveiled yesterday at the American College of Cardiology conference.

Co-author of the study, Professor Hillard Kaplan of the University of New Mexico, said: “Their lifestyle suggests that a diet low in saturated fats and high in non-processed fibre-rich carbohydrates, along with wild game and fish, not smoking and being active throughout the day could help prevent hardening in the arteries of the heart."

The Tsimane people live a subsistence lifestyle that involves hunting, gathering, fishing and farming, with men spending an average of six to seven hours of their day being physically active and women around four to six hours hours.

Their diet is largely based on fibre-rich, non-processed carbohydrates including rice, plantain, corn, nuts, fruits and manioc - a South American starchy root vegetable, also known as cassava. Protein constitutes just 14 per cent of their diet and comes mainly from animal meat, with fat also accounting for another 14 per cent - equivalent to an estimated 38 grams of fat each day, including 11g saturated fat and no trans fats.

Smoking is also rare in the Tsimane population.