Tag: aging

Secret no.12 A loving family’

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Nazar Singh, who died last month in India where he was visiting family, was believed to be Europe’s oldest man. He was though to be 111, though he had no birth certificate.

He told media after his 110th birthday that his longevity was due to good food, good family and happiness. However his fondness for a tot of whisky every night – and perhaps the fact that he was pictured on his birthday with a pint of lager and a whisky chaser – led understandably to the whisky also being cited (we’ve covered whisky in another post).

Nazar was born in the Punjab, India. He navigated two world wars and the independence and partition of India before moving to the UK in 1965. He worked in a foundry in the West Midlands and then moved to Sunderland on retirement. He returned to India in January this year and was being cared for by his two eldest sons.

Plausibility rating: 8 out of 10. We don’t know exactly what food Nazar ate (though we know he drank milk and almond oil}. There is evidence about the beneficial effect of alcohol in moderation but also some that questions it. And he is surely right to emphasise the importance of a loving family to longevity: the absence of strong relationships – whether family or friends – is linked to early death. One study, cited by the Campaign to End Loneliness, says it is the equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Nazar believed that ‘family need to look after elders’, a view that would be popular with the Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, who recently worried in public about the number of ‘lonely funerals’. The latter need not have concerned Nazar: he had 34 grandchildren and 63 great-grandchildren.

Secret no.11 One meal a day

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41415099_e3de17b2ac_oDespite reaching 100 on June 22nd, Mary Williams has the enviable record of only having been to hospital once (after a fall on a bus when she was 94).

Mary lives alone in supported housing but her family flew in from as far away as Australia to celebrate her 100th birthday. She had what sounds like quite a tough live to begin with – born into a workhouse in County Galway, Ireland, and then raised by nuns until she was 16.

Despite this, she’s managed to get to 100. How? She partly puts this remarkable record down to her regime of drinking a pint of warm water, once in the morning and once in the evening. But Mary also says she has another secret, one that might have a bit more going for it: her habit of only eating one meal a day.

Could that really be a factor?

Plausibility rating: 6 out of 10. Keeping hydrated is important but probably not the key to longevity. More possible is the habit of eating just one meal a day: calorie restriction has been shown to increase longevity in mice and other animals, and a serious study on humans – Calerie – is underway. It involves eating 25% less calories, while maintaining adequate nutrition. There’s even a society dedicated to putting it into practice – CR Society International. It says its website is ‘the most important you’ll ever visit’, which is quite some claim.

It may not work of course but as that old joke goes: ‘It’ll probably feel like it’.

photo credit: lunch via photopin (license)

Secret no.10 Two raw eggs

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3870440483_edab3789d8_oEmma Morano is a remarkable 115 years old and lives, alone, in Verbania, northwest Italy. Emma has lived by herself since she left her husband in 1938 because of domestic abuse. Her niece comes by twice a day.

After what is described as a ‘sickly’ childhood, her doctor recommended she eat two raw eggs a day, a regime she’s stuck to ever since. She added the 150 grams of steak after about of anemia. Unusually, she eats little fruit or vegetables which leads her current doctor, Carlo Bava, to observe: “Emma sees to go against everything that could be considered the guidelines for correct nutrition… But she’s gotten this far.”

Another unusual element to her diet is the biscuits and chocolates that her niece leaves out every night and which, by the morning, are always gone. Not bad for a woman whose movements are now limited, whose eyesight is bad and hearing weak.

This nocturnal roaming may be one illustration of Emma’s positive outlook on live, a factor that Dr Bava believes has contributed to her longevity. Indeed when a journalist visited her she burst out into verses of a 1930s Italian love song, lamenting only at the end: “Ahh, I don’t have my voice anymore”.

Dr Bava also believes that genes have played a role in Emma’s longevity, a theory supported by the fact that Emma’s sister lived until 97.

We’ll save our discussion of genes and a positive outlook for another day. And we’ve covered chocolate here. But what about the eggs? Could they have had an effect?

Plausibility rating: 4 out of 10.  Eggs have had a chequered history when it comes to health advice. On the one hand, as EggInfo (the website of the British Egg Information Service) tell us, they are full of nutrients: protein, vitamins D, A, B2, B12, folate and iodine. On the other, for many years we were advised to limit intake to two a week because of fears about cholesterol and heart disease. On that basis, Emma would have been virtually killing herself for nearly a century.

Now however there is no suggested limit on the number of eggs you eat and heart disease is blamed much more on saturated fat than on cholesterol. However before you decide to go out and buy some hens, there are a couple of good reasons for thinking that eggs might not be such an aid to longevity.

There is limited research on eggs and longevity but the main piece isn’t positive. A long-term study of Harvard physicians found that eating up to six eggs a week was fine but more than that increased the risk of death by nearly a quarter.

And In the UK the elderly are still advised to avoid raw or runny eggs because of the risk of salmonella (in truth the risk is minimal if you stick to pasteurised eggs).

On the whole then, while the health concerns about eggs have declined, there’s little to suggest that they are a secret aid to longevity, and too many of them might perhaps have the opposite effect.

All in all, given that we’ve already said bacon isn’t the secret of a long life either, that’s most of the great British breakfast ruled out. Porridge anyone?

photo credit: two eggs via photopin (license)

Secret no.9 Hard work

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You’ve got to like Vera Walsh. Asked what it felt like to be 100 she responded: ‘The same as it did to be 99’. Next question please.

A similar pragmatism is expressed in her ‘secret’ of living a long time: ‘Hard work and having fun. Lots of times you have to make your own fun – that’s the way to go’.

We have plenty of examples of Vera’s hard work – her jobs included long spells in retail – and also of having fun: she was an avid sportsman, taking part in track and field, curling and bowls. ‘I was always involved in sports and I’d advise people to do that and to coach and keep an eye on those people who are learning’.

Vera hit 100 on June 20th in Edson, Canada. She has a little extra advice for would-be centenarians: ‘Be happy. Laugh and the world laughs with you – cry and you cry alone’.

Plausibility rating: 6 out of 10. A famous Stanford Longevity study found that those who were most committed and involved in their jobs lived longer. But a caution here (and the clue is in the title of the study): it followed 1,500 bright, middle-class American kids who tended to go on to be lawyers, doctors and, yes, university professors. Low paid, dull, repetitive or dangerous (self-evidently) work, might not have the same effect. We’ll explore that in more detail later.

Secret no.8 Be happy and enjoy life

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If we envisage living to 100, we probably want to to get there like John Clement. He says he’s so busy he ‘can hardly get through the day’, he tracks his exercise routine with a Fitbit and carries an iPhone 6 (‘I always get the latest one’). And he carves wooden figurines, though he says ‘they’re not very good’.

He’s trying to think of a snappy, one-liner for people who ask him how he’s lived so longer. But he told his local newspaper the real reason: ‘I think life is all what you make of it. If you’re happy and enjoy life, why not live a little longer?”.

John hit 100 in Toledo, where he grew up. A pre-war Cornell engineering student, he was called up as a second lieutenant but spent his war in Michigan, overseeing factories turning out arms. After the war, he ran the family business Bock Laundry Machine Co with this twin brother, Carl. That hit legal difficulties, which John says wrecked the company and him. He retired in 1985 (briefly flirting with real estate but giving up after selling one house).

Plausibility rating: 8 out of 10. If we translate ‘being happy’ into longevity jargon as ‘a high level of subjective wellbeing’, then there seems a pretty strong correlation with longer life. The UK Officeof National Statistics says that it can add four to 10 years to life compared to low levels of ‘subjective wellbeing’. We’ll look at this in more detail in a future post.

Secret no.7 Work less overtime

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Women in Okinawa, Japan, live longer than just about anywhere else in Japan – on average to 87 (and, come on, that’s quite a long way to 100).

Their secret, suggests at least one report, is work-life balance. Women are more likely to be in the workforce than the Japanese average but work fewer overtime hours. How does that play out in longevity? No, I’m not sure either. The report suggests that partners have more time to raise a family and that seems a vaguely plausible reason for the study’s other main finding – that Okinawan women have more children. But longer life? Hmmm.

Plausibility rating: 3 out of 10. Fewer overtime hours by itself seems an unlikely major cause for a longer life. But there are other reasons not to work to hard as the famous quotation, variously attributed to US author Larry Kushner or politician Paul Tsongas, reminds us: ‘No one ever said on their deathbed ‘I wish I’d spent more time at the office’.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/06/24/national/social-issues/women-okinawa-japans-best-recipe-liberty-fertility-longevity/#.VYvwfvlVhBc

Secret no.6 Good food

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Actually, this way to live to 100 is a bit of cheat.

Ruby Byford – better known as Peggy – celebrated her 103rd birthday on 23rd June 2015 in the Colchester care home where she has lived for the past couple of years. According to local media reports Peggy still enjoys walks in the garden. Her family also says she ‘eats for England’ and until recently she had a glass of sherry every day, with champagne at celebrations.

And these comments have, with a little journalistic licence, become the possible secrets for her longevity in the local newspaper report. Peggy appears never to have said them or to have claimed them as the keys to her long life.

So just as reasonably it could have said that a strong family was the key: Ruby has two children, five grandchildren, four great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild. Or an active working life: Ruby and her late husband Edward ran a small bakery and she worked in a pharmacy after the death of Edward 40 years ago.

Feasibility: n/a. Ruby herself doesn’t seem to have attributed her long life to any one factor, which may be very wise of her. If she had, eating well would certainly be a factor in longevity (assuming ‘well’ doesn’t mean ‘too much’) and there is variable evidence about the importance of a small amount of alcohol. Good walks could certainly help. But without Peggy’s blessing, we’ll let this one slide.

http://eadt.co.uk/1.4123844

Secret no.5 Sleep

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5582704539_0e7a834910_bSusannah Mushatt Jones is due to celebrate her 116th birthday on July 6th 2015 – she is officially the world’s oldest person. Her secret, she told the New York Daily News, is sleep. Susannah even offered the reporter a demonstration, laying back in her recliner and pulling a blanket over her head as if for an afternoon nap.

Susannah – known as ‘Miss Susie’ – has sight and hearing problems but is still active and takes just two medications a day.

Though she never married and has no children, Susannah has a remarkable 100 nieces and nephews, to whom she is known simply as T (‘auntie’).

She is a fan of Barack Obama and the New York Daily News suggested that a phone call from the President would make her birthday.

Plausibility rating: 6 out of 10. Susannah’s faith in the longevity powers of sleep is quite well placed. Studies often shown a link between low levels of sleep and incidence of major, life-threatening illnesses such as diabetes, obesity and heart disease. ‘It’s now clear that a solid night’s sleep is essential for a long and healthy life,’ says NHS Choices. The Daily Mirror neatly reported a 2010 study – suggesting a 12% increased risk of death if you get less than six hours sleep – with the headline ‘Not enough sleep leads to a wake’.

However, that study also suggested a link between too much sleep (nine hours or more) and an even higher risk of premature death so it is possible to get too much of a good thing.
photo credit: Sleep via photopin (license)