Tag: longevity

Secret no.16 A good doctor

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3373106750_2ddd4772d9Centenarian Lilian Grundy doesn’t think she’s particularly old – she has an older sister-in-law in Australia who’s 104 and a younger sister who’s also still going strong.

Her life has taken in running a fish and chip shop, being a Citizen Advice Bureau adviser and – during the war – seeing a doodlebug hit her home town, Oldham. Her husband, Harry, died in 1970 and Lilian has no children.

The key to her longevity, she thinks, is being able to follow good medical advice: “I must have a good doctor. I think my secret really must be that I do what I’m told. If the doctor tells me to do something, I do it.”

So, is she right about her doctor being the key to her long life?

Plausibility rating: 7 out of 10. At first it seems obvious that medical care has played the most significant role in increasing life expectancy but in fact it’s a surprisingly contentious claim. Some historians argue that it is public health issues – clean water, better housing, the decline of smoking, safer food, workplaces and homes – that have played the larger role. Certainly life expectancy grew rapidly in the 19th century, ahead of the great medical advances of the 20th century such as antibiotics. And there were marked falls in life expectancy, particularly for men, from 1914-1919 and 1939-1945 so clearly non-medical factors have played a role too (think of that doodlebug from Lilian’s life history). In fact, one thorough study of the subject credited medical care with just 50% of the increase in life expectancy since 1950.

But what we’re interested in is the growth in the number of the oldest old and especially those who reach 100. Surely the main reason for the increase in centenarians is our ability to keep alive for longer people with multiple long-term conditions? Well, yes and no. A major study of Okinawans, who have more than twice the rate of centenarians of the US population, cites a range of factors that includes public health infrastructure, housing, income, and nutrition as well as access to better medical care.

So it looks as though Lilian’s longevity secret is part of the answer but not the whole answer.

photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/8404611@N06/3373106750″>Nurse</a&gt; via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a&gt; <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/”>(license)</a&gt;

Secret no.15 Water from a wishing well

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3304915442_aa97907234_o100-year-old Thelma Arnold isn’t sure why she’s lived so long but she has a suspicion: she once visited a wishing well in Fort Lauderdale and drank two scoops of water. ‘I didn’t think it did anything, but here I am,’ she told her local newspaper. ‘For some reason, I’m still here’.

Tragically, though, this isn’t Thelma’s only brush with the supernatural. She recalls seeing her parents with her two-year-old brother and thinking: ‘I’ll never see him again’. He drowned the same day.

Thelma’s mother moved in with her for a while before passing away at the age of 83 and today her grandson lives with her. He is one of five grandchildren, five great-grandchildren and five great-great-grandchildren.

Thelma worked as a waitress and a shop assistant, walking to work for years until she passing her driving test at the age of 60.  She thought she’d failed: ‘I was riding along nice when the man said make a right turn and I made the prettiest left turn you’d ever seen. I pleaded poverty and he passed me.’

At 100, she remains mentally alert, reading the newspaper every day and still enjoying watching the TV (recalling that her father regarded the TV as ‘evil’).

Plausibility rating: 1 out of 10. There really is nothing remotely scientific that could support Thelma’s theory. To be fair, that’s as much as there is for homeopathy, which nonetheless supports a multi-million pound industry. But if we’re going to follow the evidence we have to mark this all the way down to one.

Secret no.14 Yoga

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103-year-old Lil Hansen is clear that yoga is key to her long life – and not just practicing it. Every Wednesday, Lil drives to her local senior centre and leads 30 other seniors in their yoga class. As Vickie Collins, director of the Michigan centre, says ‘Reaching 103 is amazing, but reaching 103 and still driving and doing yoga is truly amazing.’

Lil herself is more self-effacing: ‘I make it up as I go,’ she says. ‘As long as they enjoy it, I will enjoy doing it. They’re not ready to get rid of me yet, so I have to stick around for a while.”

Her class has been running for 30 years, taking a break only last year as Lil recovered from a fall in which she broke her hand, knee and foot. She also credits yoga with helping her recover.

Plausibility rating: 5 out of 10. Lil is by no means alone in claming yoga as one of the keys to longevity. We can dismiss some of the more outlandish claims – of yogi who lived to over 200, or even 300, years old – but there is plenty of evidence that yoga has a positive effect on aspects of physical health such as balance and flexibility.

Practitioners of yoga also talk about effects on mental heatlh such as stress, depression and anxiety, and one study by Richard Brown and Patricia Gerbarg suggests that yogic breathing (pranayama) could potentially have a positive effect on factors associated with longevity. One 92-year-old yogi says ‘Take it from me, a regular, dedicated yoga practice is the key to a long and health life.

Overall, though, there’s surprisingly little hard evidence that yoga improves lifespan (more on this in a later post here). But here’s the thing: people don’t practice yoga because they want to live longer, they do it because they want to live better. If they get a few extra years, that’s a bonus. And, as we’ve seen before, having a motivation, any motivation – whether it’s taking a yoga class or teaching one – can be more important than its precise nature.

As Lil says of her teaching: ‘It makes me get up in the morning.’

Secret no.13 Bacon

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1444659348_d8f95a9ccaWe’ve met the remarkable Susannah Mushatt Jones before, when she was quoted as saying that ‘sleep’ was the key to her longevity. But as she turned 116 on July 7th, and remained the world’s oldest woman, she apparently told a reporter that there was another factor: bacon.

Every morning, it’s reported, she has four rashers of bacon with eggs and a sign in her kitchen says: “Bacon makes everything better.”

So –  assuming she really did say it – is that the secret of a life that started in Alabama as one of 12 children picking crops, before moving to New York as a nanny?

Plausibility rating: 2 out of 10. Let’s be honest, bacon really is not the key. In fact there’s research to suggest that processed meats like bacon are actually a risk factor for longer life, not a likely way of achieving it. Most recently the World Health Organisation advised that 50g of processed meat daily was enough to increase the risk of colorectal cancer by 18 percent. That’s half of what Susannah’s been eating every day.

All in all, if you want to take Susannah’s advise her original ‘secret’ – sleep – is probably a better bet.

photo credit: latest bacon breakfast via photopin All rights reserved by the author

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