Want to reach 100? Just do whatever you want…
…and hope for the best.
The latest suggestion is that nothing much that you can do matters—although of course it’s best not to off yourself prematurely if you want to reach three figures. One thing that might help would be if you could pick your parents, because genes seem to be most important thing of all in the big crapshoot of long life.
That doesn’t mean that if your ancestors are long-lived, you will be, too. It just means you have a greater chance of it. And it also means that even a lot of clean living (as clean living is defined today, which is different than it was defined yesterday and different than it will be defined tomorrow) won’t necessarily do much for you if your goal is to be a centenarian.
However—at least, according to the article—if you want to live to 80 or so and you don’t have the greatest genes, be prepared to toe the line:
Barzilai said that it would be wrong to forego health advice with the assumption that your genes will determine how long you will live. For the general population, there is a preponderance of evidence that diet and exercise can postpone or ward off chronic disease and extend life. Many studies on Seventh Day Adventists ”” with their limited consumption of alcohol, tobacco and meat ”” attribute upward of 10 extra years of life as a result of lifestyle choices.
Then again, there’s something about this paragraph that fills me with glee:
Researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have found that many very old people ”” age 95 and older ”” could be poster children for bad health behavior with their smoking, drinking, poor diet, obesity and lack of exercise.
I’ve got a mother who’s very close to being a centenarian at 97, and a father who died rather young. When I look at what my mother did right or wrong, I can’t say anything stands out too much. She smoked heavily till her early forties, and then she quit cold turkey. She ate whatever she pleased, and a lot of what she pleased was sweets and meat. She was thin in her youth and a tiny bit overweight in middle age, but always looked good and always was roughly average in weight. She exercised by playing tennis maybe once or twice a week when the weather was nice, which was less than half the year. She quit doing that when she was 83, because her vision was getting bad. She drove practically everywhere. She and my father liked to ballroom dance. They had a lot of friends and a vast social network, but they drank hardly at all (imbibing that supposedly-good-for-you-red-wine only a couple of times a year). She was a tremendous worrywart.
Does that sound like a recipe for extreme longevity? Well, it turned out to be. And her genes, although good, gave only a slight hint of the great longevity to come. Her parents died at the ages of 80 and 83 (ripe old ages but nothing special), and her maternal grandparents (the only grandparents she knew) were 83 and 93 when they went.
The latter—the outlier at 93—was my great-grandfather. Here he is around the year 1915, holding my toddler mother:
At the time he was probably about 63. He looks older to me, although he’s a handsome man. He still had 30 more years of life in him, and didn’t look all that different in his 90s than he does in this photo.
As for my mother, she looks pretty different in her 90s. But then, it’s been almost 100 years for her between then and now.
It was this grandfather of hers who said, in his later years (according to her report), “It’s hard being the last leaf on the tree.” Indeed, as my mother has learned, it is. Although she’s very glad to still be alive (and we are very glad to have her), extreme old age is most assuredly not for sissies.
I saw him once before,
As he passed by the door,
And again
The pavement stones resound,
As he totters o’er the ground
With his cane.They say that in his prime,
Ere the pruning-knife of Time
Cut him down,
Not a better man was found
By the Crier on his round
Through the town.But now he walks the streets,
And he looks at all he meets
Sad and wan,
And he shakes his feeble head,
That it seems as if he said,
“They are gone!”The mossy marbles rest
On the lips that he has prest
In their bloom,
And the names he loved to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb.My grandmamma has said–
Poor old lady, she is dead
Long ago–
That he had a Roman nose,
And his cheek was like a rose
In the snow;But now his nose is thin,
And it rests upon his chin
Like a staff,
And a crook is in his back,
And a melancholy crack
In his laugh.I know it is a sin
For me to sit and grin
At him here;
But the old three-cornered hat,
And the breeches, and all that,
Are so queer!And if I should live to be
The last leaf upon the tree
In the spring,
Let them smile, as I do now,
At the old forsaken bough
Where I cling.
[NOTE: Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., who wrote “The Last Leaf” when he was a young man, lived to be 85, dying in 1894:
Towards the end of his life, Holmes noted that he had outlived most of his friends, including Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. As he said, “I feel like my own survivor… We were on deck together as we began the voyage of life… Then the craft which held us began going to pieces.”
Holmes’ equally famous son, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., lived to be 93, like my great-grandfather.]
My father died just shy of 84, his brother was 87, their father 86, and my mom will be 88 in February.
Oh, boy. Looks like I get to live in interesting times. And lots of it.
Pass the bacon, will ya?
And to quote my mom: getting old is hell.
Lived as though there were no end
life brings death to crippled men
gratefully.
Lived as though life begins
upon the shore where it ends
gratefully.
My family tree is loaded with nonagenarian forebearers.
But then puberty always comes late for us.
We run a slower clock.
At some point the DNA will out — and the secret known.
Well, it looks as if you have your mom’s eyebrows, as far as I can tell.
Humor!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0zSB2WEtwU&feature=related
Dust in the Wind.
Curtis:
Vanderleun featured a terrific amateur high school video from the 70s with that song as the soundtrack a while back. I did a cursory search but can’t find it at the moment.
As for longevity, I’m adopted, so I don’t know what kind of genes I have. I’m more than halfway to 100 now, and so far so good.
I’ve always loved that photo of your mother and her grandfather. Cute baby/toddler, distinguished older gentleman, just really nice.
Twenty two years to go and counting. Like Satchel Paige, I’m not looking back because someone (like the grim reaper) might be gaining on me.
What’s going to be really odd is when old people remenisce about sexting their sweety and recalling the rap tune “pop dat p***y” was their song. 🙂
Well, as an 80+ dear friend of my says, “Getting old sucks, but it beats the heck out of the only alternative!”
I’m off to Chicago in a few days to visit my 100 year old grandmother (100 on Tuesday). She can’t see very well, can’t hear very well, can’t walk very well, and complains about all the aches and pains and lack of independence. She also misses all of her old friends who died before her, too. She’s run out of money and is in the Catholic home on their good graces and a social security check, and no one ever goes to visit her anymore.
And yet, she’s alive and taking it all in even at this advanced age. She loves to talk about her great great grandchildren even if she mixes up their names and loves to play cards with her new friends at the home.
Really, really old age is definitely tough to go through, but I’m hoping I’ll have that opportunity.
Life is always good.
There is an industry–publish shocking new info about whatever the population is or is supposed to be doing–that actually makes a lot of money on telling us to stop one thing and do another. And they are supported by people who are personally invested for personal reasons in telling others what to do.
And they are supported by people who want to think they have control over their lives and so need to believe that this is bad and that is good.
Problem is, once that’s settled, there’s nothing more to say, all the books and articles are published, the intrusive regulations in place. Now what?
They start over.
Everything is either good for you or bad for you and they switch every two years.
So if you do what you want, you’ll average out okay, even if the foregoing pests are correct, which they cannot by definition be more than half the time.
So, SCROOM.
kind of makes one realize that as in russia, the medical profession became a tool of politics and political social engineering… even though many doctors never eralized it, or if they did, opposed it.
its not worth my time to explain, show, illustrate, and such… as we are married to those ways as normal, and so, we love our various introduced cancers…
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Both my grandmothers lived to be 99. Each died a few weeks short of 100. One was a tiny thin woman who lost half her lung to TB at the age of 45. The other was overweight with years of congestive heart failure problems. Both grandfathers died much younger than the norm. My father lived to age 84 and my mom will soon be 89. (btw my mom remembers her grandfather living to age 105. He sat by the stove sipping whiskey and eating mints. Lol)
As for me. My aim is to live as healthy as I can. The rest is up to the gods of life. (so to speak). We only have control over so much. I can’t be bothered to fret about what might happen.
The last few generations of my ancesors lived into their 80’s and 90’s, some healthy, some not so. Curiously, in my direct lineage, my ancestors all married and bore their first children in mid to late 20’s instead of the norm of 17-20.
Fruit fly research has shown that by delaying when the fruit flies breed, in five generations lifespan of the fruitfly can be doubled. (Why anyone would want long lived fruitflies…) I suspect that that lesson can be applied to humans.
Statistically, blacks die younger than whites- statistically, they breed sooner. Non-college educated whites die sooner than college educated whites- they breed sooner. Whites, overall, die sooner (but not by much) than Asians- they breed sooner (but not by much).
Just saying, you know, maybe there is a relationship. Anyone elkse think so?
My great grandfather lived to be 101 and he smoked tobacco and ate whatever he wanted. My BIL watched his weight, ate healthily and died at 63. When people tell me being overweight will kill me I have four words for them: Marlon Brando and Ted Kennedy.
Both lived as long as I care to, and neither were healthy specimens.
Instalanche!
I remember reading in the Austin American-Statesman, decades ago, a short article about a fellow who had just had his 100th birthday. The reporter asked the almost-obligatory question, ‘To what do you attribute your longevity?’ or words to that effect; and I nearly fell out of my chair laughing when I read the answer: “Jack Daniels and good cigars.”