How To Live To Be 100

[Guest guest]

Sunday, Aug. 22, 2004

How To Live To Be 100

New research suggests that a long life is no accident. So what are

the secrets of the world's centenarians?

By RICHARD CORLISS AND MICHAEL D. LEMONICK

Margaret Dell is 96, but you'd need to check the birth date on her

driver's license to believe it. Sporting a baseball cap with a Harley-

son logo on it, she is the designated driver for her seventy

something friends who no longer feel comfortable behind the wheel.

Last winter a snowfall threatened to keep her from her appointed

automotive rounds. She took a shovel and cleared a path to her car.

Driving keeps Dell young. That and knitting. She constantly knits.

She makes baby booties and caps and blankets for friends and family

whenever a baby arrives—the newborn getting an early blessing from

the ageless. And every month, she donates several blankets to a

charity for unwed mothers. Driving, knitting ... and tennis. She

plays two or three times a week. She has a much younger doubles

partner who " covers the court. I'm a little afraid to run too much

because of the circulation in my legs, " she explains.

When she was in her 80s, she played in a doubles tournament that

required that the ages of both partners add up to at least 100. Her

partner was in his early 20s; they won the tournament.

A lifetime nonsmoker and nondrinker, Dell lives alone in a two-story

house in Bethesda, Md., her bedroom on the second floor. " I could

stay on the first floor, but I try to make myself walk up those

stairs and keep going that way. " She buys her own groceries; don't

even ask if you can shop for her. At home she likes a chicken or

turkey sandwich for lunch. If she eats at the country club after

tennis, she usually finishes only half and saves the rest for dinner.

(The doggie bag is the senior citizen's medical-supply kit.) Driving,

tennis, knitting ... and eating chocolates. She keeps them in a

drawer by her easy chair. " I am very bad about those Hershey Kisses, "

she confesses. " And I love those little Dove ice cream things. I take

one before I go to bed. " That's the only medication Dell will take

without a fight. She's no fan of doctors. Some years back, she took a

fall, and her doctor prescribed an MRI. " I just refused to go, " she

says. " They were having a party. It was my 90th birthday. " And the

party girl left his office. Fortunately, nothing was broken. But Dell

knew that.

More than what she knows, it's how she glows that impresses people.

" She has a light in her eyes that is very alive, alert and

interested, " says Carole Dell. " It radiates over her whole face. Her

face is kind of timeless. It's deeply lined, but she's actually

beautiful. " Spoken like a proud daughter-in-law with 96 reasons to be

proud. Ninety-six and counting.

How does science explain someone like Margaret Dell? How can a woman

closing in on the start of her second century be so robustly, almost

defiantly, healthy, while men and women decades younger are

languishing feebly in nursing homes, plagued with failing bodies and

failing minds and wishing they hadn't been so unlucky as to live so

long?

For most of human history, a long and healthy life has been shrugged

off as a gift from the gods—or maybe the undeserved reward for a

lifetime of plain cussedness. But to gerontologists, the vagaries of

aging have become the focus of intense scientific research.

Scientists are as obsessed with the question of why the superold

survive and thrive as Ponce de Leon was to find the Fountain of

Youth. They want to understand why the Japanese islands of Okinawa

are home to the world's largest population of centenarians, with

almost 600 of its 1.3 million inhabitants living into their second

century—many of them active and looking decades younger than their

actual years. Like weekend visitors on the summer ferry to Martha's

Vineyard, scientists and sociologists clog the boats to Sardinia and

Nova Scotia, Canada, to see why those craggy locales harbor outsize

clusters of the superold. (Gerontologists are not so beguiled by the

Russian Caucasus, where exaggerated longevity claims sparked a series

of Dannon yogurt commercials 30 years ago.)

As well as studying these populations intensively to unlock their

secrets, scientists have also taken a hard look at the very old in

the U.S., most notably in the New England Centenarian Study, led by

Dr. Perls, a geriatrician at Boston University, and in a major

study under way at the National Institute on Aging. While the very

old are happy to offer homespun explanations for their longevity— " I

never took a drink " ; " I drank a shot of whiskey every day " —experts

are trying to unravel and understand the biological factors that

allow some people to reach 100 while others drop off in their 70s or

80s. Researchers are particularly interested in determining which

factors allow up to 30% of those who reach 100 to do so in sufficient

mental and physical health: a whopping 90% of centenarians, according

to Perls, remain functionally independent up to age 92. " It's

not 'the older you get, the sicker you get,' but 'the older you get,

the healthier you've been,' " he says. " The advantage of living to 100

is not so much how you are at 100 but how you got there. "

It's pretty obvious even to nonscientists that how you get there

depends partly on the genes you are born with and partly on lifestyle—

what and how much you eat, where you live and what types of stress

and trauma you experience. How much depends on each factor, though,

was unknown until Swedish scientists tackled the problem in 1998.

They did it by looking at the only set of people who share genes but

not lifestyle: identical twins who were separated at birth and reared

apart. If genes were most important, you would expect the twins to

die at about the same age. In fact, they don't, and the average

difference convinced the scientists that only about 20% to 30% of how

long we live is genetically determined. The dominant factor is

lifestyle.

" You could have Mercedes-Benz genes, " says Dr. Bradley Willcox, of

the Pacific Health Research Institute in Honolulu, " but if you never

change the oil, you are not going to last as long as a Ford Escort

that you take good care of. Those who have healthier genes and live

healthier lives—those guys really survive for a long time. "

Studies of Seventh-Day Adventists in Utah support this finding. Those

unusually clean-living Americans are genetically diverse, but they

avoid alcohol, caffeine and tobacco—and they tend to live an average

of eight years longer than their countrymen. All of this is good

news, with a Surgeon General's warning attached: you can't change

your genes, but you can change what you eat and how much you

exercise. " The lesson is pretty clear from my point of view in terms

of what the average person should be doing, " says Perls. " I strongly

believe that with some changes in health-related behavior, each of us

can earn the right to have at least 25 years beyond the age of 60—

years of healthy life at good function. The disappointing news is

that it requires work and willpower. "

At least that's true for many Americans, whose fat- and calorie-

packed diets and largely exercise-free lives are a prescription for

heart disease and plenty of other ills. For Okinawans, by contrast,

the traditional way of life seems tailor-made for living forever—one

day at a time.

Each day, Seiryu Toguchi, 103, of Motobu, Okinawa, wakes at 6 a.m.,

in the house in which he was born, and opens the shutters. " It's a

sign to my neighbors, " he says, " that I am still alive. " He does

stretching exercises along with a radio broadcast, then eats

breakfast: whole-grain rice and miso soup with vegetables. He puts in

two hours of picking weeds in his 1,000-sq.-ft. field, whose crops

are goya—a variety of bitter gourd—a reddish-purple sweet potato

called imo, and okra. A fellow has to make a living, so Toguchi buys

rice and meat with the profits from his produce.

Since his wife Kame's death seven years ago, at 93, he has done all

the housework himself. He rejected his children's suggestion to come

live with them because, he explains, " I enjoy my freedom. " Although

his doctors insist Toguchi is in excellent health, the farmer takes

no chances. " If he feels that something is wrong, " says his daughter

Sumiko Sakihara, 74, " even in the middle of the night, he calls a

taxi and goes to the hospital. " But he doesn't want the other

villagers to worry, so, she says, " he writes a note explaining where

he is and tapes it to the shutters. "

At 12:30 Toguchi eats lunch: goya stir-fry with egg and tofu. He naps

for an hour or so, then spends two more hours in his field. After

dinner he plays traditional songs—a favorite is Spring When I Was 19—

on the three-stringed sanshin and makes an entry in his diary, as he

has every night for the past decade. " This way, " he says, " I won't

forget my Chinese characters. It's fun. It keeps my mind sharp. " For

a nightcap he may have a sip of the wine he makes from aloe, garlic

and tumeric. And as he drifts off, he says, " my head is filled with

all the things I want to do tomorrow. "

Scientists working for the U.S. National Institutes of Health and

Japan's Ministry of Health have been following oldsters like Toguchi

since 1976 in the Okinawa Centenarian Study (OCS) and they've learned

that he's typical. Elderly Okinawans tend to get plenty of physical

and mental exercise. Their diets, moreover, are exemplary: low in fat

and salt, and high in fruits and vegetables packed with fiber and

antioxidant substances that protect against cancer, heart disease and

stroke. They consume more soy than any other population on earth: 60-

120 g a day, compared to 30-50 g for the average Japanese, 10 for

Chinese and virtually 0 g for the average American. Soy is rich in

flavonoids—antioxidants strongly linked to low rates of cancer. This

may be one of many reasons why the annual death rate from cancer in

Okinawa is far below the U.S. rate.

But it's not just what Okinawans eat; it's how much. They practice a

dietary philosophy known as hara hachi bu—literally, eight parts out

of 10 full. Translation: they eat only to the point at which they are

about 80% sated. That makes for a daily intake of no more than 1,800

calories, compared to the more than 2,500 that the average American

man scarfs down. And as scientists have learned from lab animals, the

simple act of calorie restriction can have significant effects on

longevity.

Aging Okinawans also have a much lower incidence of dementia—

Alzheimer's or other forms of senility—than their U.S. and European

counterparts do. Part of that may also owe to diet; it's high in

vitamin E, which seems to protect the brain. But perhaps just as

important is a sense of belonging and purpose that provides a strong

foundation for staying mentally alert well into old age.

Okinawans maintain a sense of community, ensuring that every member,

from youngest to oldest, is paid proper respect and feels equally

valued. Elderly women, for example, are considered the sacred keepers

of a family's bond with the ancestors, maintaining the family altars

and responsible for organizing festivals to honor them. OCS data show

that elderly Okinawans express a high level of satisfaction with

life, something that is not as true in Western societies, where rates

of suicide and depression are high among the elderly.

Need convincing evidence that our modern lifestyle can shorten lives?

Look what happens when Okinawans move permanently off the island.

They pick up the diet and cultural behaviors of their adopted country—

and within a generation, their life-spans decrease and their rates of

cancer and heart attack zoom. Even on the island, young males are

following the seductive, virulent American style and renouncing imo

for hamburgers. " Okinawan male life expectancy used to be No. 1 in

Japan, " says Dr. Makoto Suzuki, leader of the study of Okinawan

elders. " It started to decline 10 years ago and hit 26th out of 47

prefectures in the 2000 census. I expect it to decline even further

in the next census. "

Oldsters in Sardinia, another wellspring of longevity, have many

similarities to their Okinawan counterparts—except that the Sardinian

ratio of centenarians is about equal for men and women (in most

societies, 100-plus females outnumber males by 3 or 4 to 1).

They maintain very active lives and powerful social networks;

extended family and friends are available to share troubles and take

some of the emotional burden out of life. Says researcher Gianni Pes,

part of a team from Sardinia's University of Sassari, which is

studying the group: " The 100-year-olds are less depressed than

average 60-year-olds. "

That makes perfect sense to Leonard Poon, director of the University

of Georgia Gerontology Center. Since 1988 he has studied American

centenarians—he calls them " expert survivors " —and compared them to

people in their 80s ( " master survivors " ) and to relative youngsters

in their 60s. Poon found that out of 16 personality traits, the

experts exhibited four coping mechanisms. First, he

says, " centenarians are more dominant. They want to have their way, "

and they are not easily pushed around. Many are characterized

by " suspiciousness. They do not take information on the superficial

level " but will question an issue and think it through. They tend to

be practical rather than idealistic. And in their approach to life,

they are likely to be more relaxed. In other words, they are strong

but not inflexible characters.

Poon also determined that people whose age reaches three figures tend

to have a high level of cognition, demonstrating skill in everyday

problem solving and learning. That's another reason exercise is

important: to keep plenty of blood flowing to the brain as well as to

stay in shape. Many of his subjects aren't rich; some of them have

homes with mud floors. But they make good out of making do. " Many

have their own gardens, " he notes. " They can their own vegetables.

They're living down to earth. "

Like the Okinawans, Sardinians and Nova Scotians, the U.S.

centenarians enjoy a strong social-support system. Few Americans live

in a village anymore, but having outlived family and friends of the

same age, the superold find new helpers and confidants among people

younger by a generation or more. It might be someone to help with

groceries or car trips or simply a sympathetic voice on the other end

of the line. Maintaining a connection with the world, with younger

people, keeps their outlook youthful.

With so much evidence that lifestyle is the key to healthy aging, it

might be tempting to ignore the role of genes altogether. That would

be a mistake. Brothers of centenarians are 17 times as likely to live

to 100 as are people without 100-year-olds in the family, while

sisters of centenarians are 8.5 times as likely to live into their

second century. Given statistics like that, says Winifred Rossi,

director of the National Institute on Aging's study on exceptional

survival, " we are interested in looking for some kind of genetic

component to longevity. " Her approach is to look at family members,

especially the children, of centenarians. Says Perls, who does

similar research: " Kids of centenarians who are in their 70s and

early 80s are very much following in the footsteps of their parents,

with a 60% reduced risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes. They

are the model for successful aging and a great group to study. "

Indeed, despite what the Swedish and Adventist studies suggest,

there's evidence that in some families, at least, genes exert pretty

powerful effects on life-span. The centenarians registered in the New

England Centenarian Study, for example, showed no consistent patterns

in diet, exercise or healthy habits that could explain their extended

years. About 20% had smoked at some point in their lives, and some

had eating habits that should have made them obese or unhealthy but

somehow did not. At least 10% to 15% had a history of heart disease,

stroke or diabetes for more than 20 years. Something in that group's

genes was protecting them from succumbing to diseases that had felled

the average American decades earlier. " These people still get to

100, " says Perls. " They seem to have a functional reserve or adaptive

capacity that allows them to get disease but not necessarily suffer

from it. The key seems to be resilience. "

Some of that resilience may be linked to human leukocyte antigen

(HLA) genes, a group clustered on chromosome 6 that affects

vulnerability to such autoimmune diseases as lupus, rheumatoid

arthritis and multiple sclerosis. Centenarians living in Okinawa, for

example, have variants of HLA that tend to protect against those

diseases. Perls has found a region on chromosome 4 that centenarians

and their siblings and children in the U.S. seem to have in common

and that sets them apart from shorter-lived individuals. The finding

has not yet been replicated by other groups, but Perls expects to

publish a paper in the next month detailing his results.

What exactly that stretch of DNA does remains to be discovered, but

it may be a key not just to long life but also to the resilience

found among U.S. centenarian-study participants, with their 20%

smoking rate and imperfect eating habits. That group may be

especially genetically blessed, and researchers are eager to tap its

secrets.

We certainly need them. For as medical science adds years to our

collective lives, we chip away at them by doing things—stewing at our

desk jobs, eating fatty processed foods, blowing a gasket in a

freeway traffic jam, exercising no more than our fingers at the

computer—that centenarians can't imagine. Most of them were born into

an America as remote from today's metaphorically as the craggy

villages of Sardinia, Okinawa and Nova Scotia are geographically. In

the early 1900s people walked miles to work not by choice but out of

necessity; cars were still a luxury. People tilled the fields because

their farmer parents needed cheap help. People ate what they grew

because it was there. Most labor was manual then, and most nutrients

were natural. Preserved food was what Aunt Maud sealed in a jar.

Tobacco and alcohol were available, but most of today's centenarians

didn't indulge to excess.

They trigger our awe and our nostalgia as representatives of a

flinty, hardscrabble culture that hardly exists today. They lived out

a parable of man at one with nature. They used their bodies as they

were designed and programmed over the millennia: for walking, for

working, for being fed from the earth's natural bounty. It makes one

wonder whether the next generation of oldsters will last quite as

long. They will need not just the luck of the genetic draw but also

the strength to renounce the lure of fast-food days and couch-potato

nights that add yards of butt lard and shorten life-spans by years.

Will Americans in the supersize age resolve to go medieval on their

own bodies? It would help, if they want to live to 100. As Poon says

of his research pools, " I don't have any fat centenarians. " And if

research really does extend life by a vigorous couple of decades, the

new millions of centenarians will need a support system that spreads

beyond family and friends to include a hugely expensive Social

Security and Medicare apparatus. The coming gerontocracy won't come

cheap.

But that's for the future. Any child of today who hopes to live into

the 22nd century without the aid of medical miracles should look to

the past, and consider the lessons today's centenarians took from the

19th century. There's a poetry of common sense in their scheme for

immortality. Eat sensibly. Keep walking. Keep knitting. If you can't

keep friends, make new ones. Plan so much invigorating work that

there's just no time to die. And no regret when you do.

[Guest guest]

Hi All,

See:

carbohydrate

<biochemistry> Very abundant compounds, usually an aldehyde or ketone

derivative of a polyhydric alcohol, particularly of the pentahydric

and hexahydric alcohols. They are so named because the hydrogen and

oxygen are usually in the proportion to form water with the general

formula Cn(H2O)n. The most important carbohydrates are the starches,

sugars, celluloses and gums.

They are classified into mono, di, tri, poly and heterosaccharides.

The smallest are monosaccharides like glucose whereas polysaccharides

such as starch, cellulose or glycogen can be large and indeterminate

in length.

> > >

> > >

> > > Rod: How can that be? The Okinawans practically live on

> > > their high starch sweet potatoes. Jeff recently posted a

> > > study wherein the longest lived peoples ate more legumes than

> > > the shorter lived populations. Legumes are high starch.

> > >

> > >

[Guest guest]

Checking the aflatoxin in feeds because I wondered if animal feed is human quality.

I found this thing on cats:

http://www.purina.com/institute/news.asp?article=458

I know this sounds silly, but when I read the article it sounded a lot like humans. Purina is actually engaged in making cats live longer and healthier.

I sent an email to check what "aflatoxin safe" means on the bagged corn label. The feed guy said that humans can eat the whole corn - it is that clean. So maybe someone is working the problem of aflatoxin in meat animals. Or they worry that people buy the corn and grind it, being the only easy source of whole corn to individuals.

Regards.

----- Original Message -----

From: Rodney

Sent: Monday, January 17, 2005 2:34 PM

Subject: [ ] Re: How to live to be 100

Hi JW:Here is one Cornell document on aflatoxin. But it is not the same one I saw before. Here is an excerpt:"In Raw Agricultural Products:Aflatoxins often occur in crops in the field prior to harvest. Postharvest contamination can occur if crop drying is delayed and during storage of the crop if water is allowed to exceed critical values for the mold growth . Insect or rodent infestations facilitate mold invasion of some stored commodities.Aflatoxins are detected occasionally in milk, cheese, corn, peanuts, cottonseed, nuts, almonds, figs, spices, and a variety of other foods and feeds . Milk, eggs, and meat products are sometimes contaminated because of the animal consumption of aflatoxin-contaminated feed. However, the commodities with the highest risk of aflatoxin contamination are corn, peanuts, and cottonseed.In Processed Foods:Corn is probably the commodity of greatest worldwide concern , because it is grown in climates that are likely to have perennial contamination with aflatoxins and corn is the staple food of many countries . However, procedures used in the processing of corn help to reduce contamination of the resulting food product . This is because although aflatoxins are stable to moderately stable in most food processes , they are unstable in processes such as those used in making tortillas that employ alkaline conditions or oxidizing steps . Aflatoxin-contaminated corn and cottonseed meal in dairy rations have resulted in aflatoxin M1 contaminated milk and milk products , including non-fat dry milk , cheese , and yogurt ."Here is the link to it: http://www.ansci.cornell.edu/plants/toxicagents/aflatoxin/aflatoxin.html#Occurencehttp://snipurl.com/biwkRodney.

[Guest guest]

I watched the show. The message seemed to be: have a good diet, exercise

regularly, and keep socially active. None of the centenarians or 90+ guests

were particularly thin. Maintenance of a normal weight seemed to be important.

Calorie restriction did not seem to be an important factor.

Many of the featured people had a book to sell or were marketing some product.

Tony

>

> The tv show " The Doctors " will explore this theme today. If you miss it you

> can probably catch it on the web. Jack La Lane fans: take note - the

> preview says he will be a guest on today's show.

>

[Guest guest]

Hi Tony:

" None of the centenarians or 90+ guests were particularly thin. Maintenance of

a normal weight seemed to be important. Calorie restriction did not seem to be

an important factor. "

Perhaps the explanation might be that very very few people now aged 90+ have

ever heard of caloric restriction. Nor ever been told about the effects on

lifespan of 30% CR in monkeys, or 40% CR in mice or fruit flies. They are now

90+ because of the degree of restriction (not huge) they have experienced during

their lives.

For most people it is not easy to remain slim. If that previous generation or

two had known about it, and if some of them had made the effort to restrict a

little more, perhaps they would have had plenty of 100+ people to put on the

show instead?

In my view, the caloric restrictors in our generation, and the next one, will

provide a significant number of 110 year olds for the equivalent TV show run in

2060.

Just my take. Of course, as always, I may be mistaken.

: ^ )))

Rodney.

> >

> > The tv show " The Doctors " will explore this theme today. If you miss it you

> > can probably catch it on the web. Jack La Lane fans: take note - the

> > preview says he will be a guest on today's show.

> >

>