100 is the New 65: Living Longer and Better

(Editor’s Note: we are pleased to bring you this arti­cle thanks to our col­lab­o­ra­tion with Greater Good Mag­a­zine).

100 is the New 65
— Why do some peo­ple live to 100? Researchers are try­ing to find out, reports Meera Lee Sethi, and they’re dis­cov­er­ing how we might live bet­ter lives, not just longer ones.

Will Clark, 105, recently bought a van for a 5,000-mile road trip across the Midwest with his wife, Lois, who is 102.

Will Clark, 105, recent­ly bought a van for a 5,000-mile road trip across the Mid­west with his wife, Lois, who is 102.

Elsa Brehm Hoff­mann loves bridge and is always ready for a par­ty. Rosa McGee enjoys singing hymns to her­self all day long. Will Clark makes a mean spaghet­ti and meat­balls. What con­nects these three? They belong to the sin­gle fastest grow­ing seg­ment of the Unit­ed States pop­u­la­tion: peo­ple over a hun­dred years old.

Hoff­mann, McGee, Clark, and the near­ly 100,000 oth­er cen­te­nar­i­ans in the U.S. pro­vide inspi­ra­tion to the rest of us. But they also pro­vide researchers with a tan­ta­liz­ing puz­zle: Why do some peo­ple live so long? For years, med­ical researchers have been study­ing this select group, iden­ti­fy­ing some key fac­tors to a long life. Now, a grow­ing body of research is sug­gest­ing that longevi­ty isn’t just linked to good genes and a healthy lifestyle; it’s also tied to cul­ti­vat­ing a pos­i­tive, resilient atti­tude toward life. These results val­i­date a sim­ple idea: that cen­te­nar­i­ans can teach us how to live not just longer lives, but bet­ter ones.

At the fore of this research is the New Eng­land Cen­te­nar­i­an Study (NECS), which has enrolled more than 1,500 cen­te­nar­i­ans from around the world over the past 15 years. The study’s direc­tor, Thomas Perls, says these par­tic­i­pants dis­pel the belief that the old­er some­one gets, the sick­er he or she becomes. Instead, he says, “the old­er you get, the health­i­er you’ve been.” In oth­er words, peo­ple who demon­strate excep­tion­al longevi­ty tend to have had a life­long his­to­ry of good health.

Indeed, peo­ple who die in their 70s or 80s are plagued by degen­er­a­tive ill­ness­es in the years before their death; in con­trast, Perls has found that near­ly two thirds of cen­te­nar­i­ans either delay the onset of dis­eases such as heart dis­ease, stroke, and diabetes—or escape them alto­geth­er. Plus, a sub­stan­tial pro­por­tion of cen­te­nar­i­ans who sur­vive such age-relat­ed ill­ness­es do so with­out devel­op­ing phys­i­cal dis­abil­i­ties, enabling them to remain social­ly, men­tal­ly, and phys­i­cal­ly active. As a result, in a cul­ture that roman­ti­cizes youth, Perls argues that cen­te­nar­i­ans embody “a thor­ough­ly opti­mistic view of aging”—one that shows that pro­long­ing life and enjoy­ing it go hand-in-hand.

How do they do it?

To reach 100, research sug­gests that it def­i­nite­ly helps to have the right genes. Longevi­ty clus­ters in fam­i­lies; Perls has doc­u­ment­ed as many as eight sib­lings in one gen­er­a­tion who lived to 100. He’s also found that the chil­dren of cen­te­nar­i­ans have only one-third the risk of dying from can­cer as the rest of us, and one-sixth the risk of dying from heart dis­ease. Although spe­cif­ic genet­ic mech­a­nisms behind long life are noto­ri­ous­ly dif­fi­cult to prove, there is some evi­dence that cen­te­nar­i­ans may be less like­ly to pos­sess spe­cif­ic genet­ic vari­a­tions that pre­dis­pose peo­ple to prob­lems like car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease, dia­betes, and high cho­les­terol. Perls is cur­rent­ly study­ing the entire human genome, search­ing for genet­ic vari­a­tions asso­ci­at­ed with oth­er dis­eases that cen­te­nar­i­ans lack, as well as vari­a­tions that may active­ly pro­mote longevity.

But long life isn’t just a lucky break. Sci­en­tists’ best esti­mate, large­ly based on a land­mark Swedish study of iden­ti­cal and fra­ter­nal twins, is that genet­ic fac­tors account for only 20 to 30 per­cent of a per­son­’s lifes­pan. Envi­ron­men­tal and behav­ioral fac­tors dic­tate the oth­er 70 to 80 percent.

Much of what researchers know about how to reach extreme old age sounds like basic pub­lic health advo­ca­cy: Don’t smoke. Drink in mod­er­a­tion. Eat healthy. Exer­cise reg­u­lar­ly. “What we can do to live longer is no secret,” says Peter Mar­tin, who directs the Geron­tol­ogy Pro­gram at Iowa State Uni­ver­si­ty and was a key con­trib­u­tor to a study of cen­te­nar­i­ans in Geor­gia, the Geor­gia Cen­te­nar­i­an Study, which ran from 1988 to 2006.

But what is new is the grow­ing evi­dence that our per­son­al­i­ties affect our longevi­ty. It’s easy to know what it takes to stay healthy. More dif­fi­cult is believ­ing we have the pow­er to con­trol our lifes­pans, mus­ter­ing the will to make good choic­es, and sim­ply lov­ing life enough to make long-term invest­ments in our health. “It’s per­son­al­i­ty,” says Mar­tin, “that turns these things on.”

Though every cen­te­nar­i­an is unique—they vary wide­ly in terms of edu­ca­tion, socioe­co­nom­ic sta­tus, reli­gion, and ethnicity—Martin reports that, as a group, they exhib­it a dis­tinct con­stel­la­tion of per­son­al­i­ty traits. For instance, they tend to dis­play rel­a­tive­ly high lev­els of what psy­chol­o­gists label “competence”—the abil­i­ty to achieve goals—and “con­sci­en­tious­ness,” or self-dis­ci­pline. These qual­i­ties may make it eas­i­er to fol­low through on the healthy habits the rest of us resolve to keep each New Year’s Eve but aban­don by the end of January.

It’s amaz­ing how cog­nizant they are of the need to exer­cise and not just leave it to chance or nature,” says Lynn Peters Adler, who runs the Nation­al Cen­te­nar­i­an Aware­ness Project, an advo­ca­cy group that cel­e­brates the plea­sures and accom­plish­ments of aging. “One woman I know walks a mile every morn­ing, no mat­ter the tem­per­a­ture.” This may sound like a strict and drea­ry reg­i­men, but Adler notes that there’s an excit­ing rea­son for it: This woman loves hik­ing the Grand Canyon, which she has done near­ly a dozen times since her 75th birthday.

Mar­t­in’s research sug­gests that cen­te­nar­i­ans also seem to be more inclined to embrace new skills and expe­ri­ences, defy­ing the stereo­type of the elder­ly as stuck in their ways. Will Clark is liv­ing proof. Now 105, he just acquired his first com­put­er, which he uses to email friends and to research authors and golfers in which he’s inter­est­ed. He’s even tak­en to Googling fam­i­ly mem­bers. “I can’t believe the things you can call up on this gad­get,” chuck­les the for­mer den­tist and mil­i­tary man.

Elsa Hoffmann, 102, with her great granddaughters.

Elsa Hoff­mann, 102, with her great granddaughters.

Elsa Hoff­mann, 102, epit­o­mizes two oth­er traits cen­te­nar­i­ans dis­play at rel­a­tive­ly high lev­els: extra­ver­sion and trust. “I love peo­ple and I like to find out their inter­ests in life,” she says. “We get to be inti­mate almost when we meet.” Hoff­man­n’s sched­ule includes lunch dates, the­ater out­ings, fundrais­ers, shop­ping excur­sions, bridge and gin tour­na­ments, and—every year for the past few years—a cruise with fel­low coun­try club members.

Though she derives bound­less joy from all this social activ­i­ty, it also hap­pens to be good for her: A con­sid­er­able body of epi­demi­o­log­i­cal research has linked low lev­els of social con­nec­tion with high­er risks for mor­tal­i­ty. (See Jill Sut­tie’s Greater Good arti­cle this month for more on the cog­ni­tive ben­e­fits of social connection.)

But even when life isn’t all about world trav­el and intel­lec­tu­al dis­cov­ery, cen­te­nar­i­ans still seem to have a leg up on the rest of us: Their results on per­son­al­i­ty tests show that they may be bet­ter equipped to han­dle dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tions with­out lit­er­al­ly wor­ry­ing them­selves to death. Rosa McGee, for instance, has lived through can­cer, the death of her hus­band of 25 years, and a foot con­di­tion that ren­ders her essen­tial­ly home­bound. Yet her daugh­ter Clara Jean describes her per­son­al­i­ty sim­ply as “sweet­ness. She nev­er fuss­es, nev­er argues, nev­er com­plains. It’s a con­tent­ment that is beautiful.”

Indeed, research also shows that cen­te­nar­i­ans are more like­ly than younger adults to engage in “cog­ni­tive cop­ing,” using men­tal strate­gies to tack­le dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tions. Mar­tin says he has seen cen­te­nar­i­ans take a vari­ety of approach­es to com­bat­ing stress and neg­a­tive emo­tions. Some write poet­ry about the lone­li­ness of old age or the mis­ery of ill­ness; oth­ers replace lost phys­i­cal pur­suits with men­tal ones, like read­ing, or take com­fort in deep reli­gious beliefs.

None of these cop­ing strate­gies are par­tic­u­lar­ly inno­v­a­tive. But Perls, Mar­tin, and their col­leagues argue that they can add up to a life­time’s worth of healthy stress-man­age­ment. Cen­te­nar­i­an research shows that avoid­ing anx­ious or neu­rot­ic behav­ior may not only help us increase our lifes­pans but bet­ter enjoy those extra years.

A high­er bar for aging

Giv­en how “fan­tas­ti­cal­ly well” he has seen his study par­tic­i­pants doing in the lat­er stages of their lives, Perls is frus­trat­ed by what he sees as our cul­ture’s obses­sion with youth. He laments the fact that “we have an entire indus­try that tries to stop aging—it’s all nonsense.”

Leonard Poon, who heads the Geor­gia Cen­te­nar­i­an Study and is a pro­fes­sor of pub­lic health and psy­chol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Geor­gia, says it’s not just pop­u­lar cul­ture but politi­cians who are short-sight­ed in this regard. Poon bemoans the lack of con­gres­sion­al sup­port for the fields of geron­tol­ogy and geri­atrics. “The White House Con­fer­ence on Aging is held every 10 years to get grass­roots rec­om­men­da­tions,” explains Poon. “In the last one, Pres­i­dent Bush did not show up.”

Their lack of polit­i­cal clout is iron­ic; in his inter­views with cen­te­nar­i­ans, Mar­tin has found that many are acute­ly inter­est­ed in pol­i­tics, and love dis­cussing issues like the nation­al debt. He says this vig­or­ous involve­ment in com­mu­ni­ty life is a joy that old age shares with youth.

But there are also new joys that take shape as one gets old­er. There is, for instance, the plea­sure of what Mar­tin calls “weav­ing your own life sto­ry and mak­ing sense of why we’re here.” It’s a plea­sure that McGee clear­ly enjoys when she talks about her role orches­trat­ing a year’s sup­ply of food for a church in Mex­i­co, and that Hoff­mann feels when she fix­es bro­ken toys for her great-grand­chil­dren and speaks to ele­men­tary school­child­ren about her life’s expe­ri­ences. And there is, still, the plea­sure of explo­ration. Clark rev­eled in it recent­ly, when he bought a van and went on a 5,000-mile road trip across the Mid­west with his wife, her­self 102.

Ris­ing life expectan­cy rates mean that most of us will live longer than pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions. What remains in ques­tion is the qual­i­ty of life we’ll have at 80, 90, or 100. Mar­tin con­tends that the answer lies in the atti­tude we cul­ti­vate in our younger years. “Imag­ine that you’re 95,” he says. “You can’t see, you can’t hear, you’re lone­ly and depen­dent on oth­er people—and it’s because of the anx­ious, dis­agree­able atti­tude you had all your life.”

On the oth­er hand, he says, devel­op­ing a pos­i­tive atti­tude towards life while we’re young, though chal­leng­ing at times, can set us up to be hap­py, healthy, and inde­pen­dent in old age.

In oth­er words, aging well isn’t just a project for the elder­ly. It’s some­thing we can work toward our entire lives.

For our par­ents, the stan­dard was aging grace­ful­ly,” says Adler. “The bar has been raised. Let’s aspire instead to age excellently.”

– Meera Lee Sethi is a Chica­go-based free­lance writer who reports on cur­rent issues in bio­med­i­cine, pub­lic health, social psy­chol­o­gy, and neu­ro­science. She is a con­tribut­ing edi­tor for Utata.org. Copy­right Greater Good. Greater Good Mag­a­zine, based at UC-Berke­ley, is a quar­ter­ly mag­a­zine that high­lights ground break­ing sci­en­tif­ic research into the roots of com­pas­sion and altruism.

Relat­ed arti­cles by Greater Good Magazine:

3 Comments

  1. Sharon on November 9, 2009 at 2:58

    See more about exu­ber­ant Elsa on ElsasOwnBlueZone.com and in the new book release of the same name. She inspires oth­ers and enjoys life dai­ly at 102. Be wowed!



  2. Warren Cook on November 10, 2009 at 6:07

    The heart of this arti­cle, I believe, is that most of these 100-year-olds are not only in good health but also are still very much enjoy­ing life. Maybe opti­mism is the mag­ic bul­let that keeps us going. Per­haps we can will our­selves into a cen­tu­ry of liv­ing. Dr. Thomas Perls has become the go-to expert on suc­cess­ful aging with his New Eng­land Cen­te­nar­i­an Study. A few years ago he co-wrote Liv­ing to 100, an infor­ma­tive and inspi­ra­tional book that explored the lives of more than 150 cen­te­nar­i­ans and includ­ed many anec­dotes. He also has a Liv­ing to 100 Life Expectan­cy Cal­cu­la­tor that gives an esti­mate of how many years you might live.

    John Rob­bins, the cel­e­brat­ed speak­er and human­i­tar­i­an, has also writ­ten about cen­te­nar­i­ans. In his book, Healthy at 100, he detailed his stud­ies on four very dif­fer­ent cul­tures that pro­duce some of the world’s old­est and health­i­est peo­ple and how exam­ples of their lifestyles can influ­ence and improve our own. John Rob­bins is the keynote speak­er at Live to 100, our upcom­ing con­fer­ence Feb­ru­ary 20–21, 2010 at the Hyatt Regency, San Fran­cis­co Air­port. John will talk on his exten­sive research into the char­ac­ter­is­tics of healthy aging and that it is not just diet and exer­cise that help peo­ple to live to 100, but also the ben­e­fi­cial pow­er of love and connections.



  3. Jenny Brockis on December 6, 2009 at 6:06

    The key mes­sage com­ing out of this arti­cle seems to be that these 110year olds are full of life. They have main­tained a curios­i­ty for new chal­lenges and expe­ri­ence joy and fun in all they do. In oth­er words they get on with it. No thoughts about being too old or too any­thing else for excus­es. Inspiring.



About SharpBrains

SHARPBRAINS is an independent think-tank and consulting firm providing services at the frontier of applied neuroscience, health, leadership and innovation.
SHARPBRAINS es un think-tank y consultoría independiente proporcionando servicios para la neurociencia aplicada, salud, liderazgo e innovación.

Top Articles on Brain Health and Neuroplasticity

Top 10 Brain Teasers and Illusions

Newsletter

Subscribe to our e-newsletter

* indicates required

Got the book?