103-Year Old Englishman Lived a Healthy Lifestyle

http://www.fifetoday.co.uk/fife-herald-news/Cupar39s-oldest-man-is-103.4066249.jp

Cupar's oldest man is 103






Published Date:
08 May 2008
By Liz Rougvie
JAMES Thomson is living proof that a healthy lifestyle is the key to longevity!

For on Sunday he celebrated his 103rd birthday — a milestone he attributes to not smoking or drinking, as well as going out for regular walks.

Sprightly James can still be seen out and about in Cupar on a regular basis enjoying a stroll or sitting in the sun watching the world go by — always smartly dressed with a shirt and tie.

This week he's been busier than usual, with a party at Bathgate Court sheltered housing complex, where he lives, and another at the Age Concern Centre, where he goes for his lunch three days a week.

"That's it for another year," said James afterwards, by now accustomed to the celebrity status that goes with being Cupar's oldest man.

Born in Dirleton, near North Berwick, James moved to Cupar as a young boy and went to Kirkgate and Castlehill schools before leaving to get a job delivering papers for J&G Innes.

He spent a year working with Fishers Laundry before returning to work full-time in the paper shop, where he stayed until 1939.

During the Second World War he joined the Royal Engineers as a truck driver, ferrying prisoners to and from the POW camp at Annsmuir, near Ladybank.

When the war ended, he returned to a job in Cupar repairing buses.

James has remained a bachelor all his life, although he says he 'had his chances'.

He's lived at Bathgate Court for over 11 years, and until very recently was often seen doing his own shopping in the Co-op next door.

Having just acquired an impressive new flat screen TV, he enjoys nothing more than watching football, but goes out most days for a walk.

However he's less than impressed with the world outside, which he says has changed considerably over the years.

He recalled: "My car was my hobby; I used to drive all over Scotland, England and Wales — often hundreds of miles a week.

"But at that time petrol was only 1s/5d a gallon, so you could afford to. Also, the roads weren't nearly so congested and drivers were much more polite!"

James also remembers his youth as being safer than today.

He said: "It was a different world altogether.

"There was drunkenness, but no knives or violence.

"You could leave your door unlocked and go to your bed without any worries."

As far as James is concerned, there's no great mystery to living a long life.

He says: "I have a clean body. I drank beer and smoked when I was young, but gave it up many years ago. I've had a good life."

The full article contains 451 words and appears in n/a newspaper.Page 1 of 1

Last Updated: 08 May 2008 4:32 PM
Source: n/a
Location: Fife

'How to Live to 100'

Copy of this 11-year old article found here:
http://www.bumc.bu.edu/Dept/Content.aspx?DepartmentID=361&PageID=5900

Newsweek
How to Live to 100
Decrepitude isn't inevitable. New research shows we all have the tools to live longer lives and die faster deaths.
June 30, 1997

By Geoffrey Cowley


At 104, Angeline Strandal doesn't place much stock in doctors. "If they start poking around you," she says, "they'll only make you sick." The Massachusetts centenarian does go in for a physical once in a while, but she hasn't been seriously ill since the time she came down with appendicitis--in 1925. "People ask me what I eat," she says. "I'm a vegetarian, more or less. I never smoked. I don't drink either. That's one of my good qualities. And I keep my bedroom window open 365 days a year." Strandal has outlived 11 siblings and a husband, who died back in 1931, but she still cooks every day except Sunday for her 67-year-old daughter and her 69-year-old son. She also catches a daily mass on TV, roots faithfully for the Boston Red Sox and loves nothing more than a good heavyweight fight. "Every day I ask God to give me one more day," she muses. "And believe it or not, he does."

We baby boomers may soon find ourselves emulating Angeline Strandal, or someone like her, as devoutly as we once did Jim Morrison. We've watched our parents or grandparents die in their 70s--often sick, lonely and helpless--and we're beginning to sense that life should be longer and richer than that. "When the boomers started turning 50, it was like the start of the Oklahoma land rush," says Dan Perry, director of the Washington-based Alliance for Aging Research. Surveys by Perry's organization suggest that today's 50-year-olds are suddenly serious about living to 100, and keen to get there in reasonably good health.

"They don't want to spend any time at all in a nursing home," he says. "The fear of losing independence and the ability to fend for oneself is overwhelming."

Well, it turns out we may have a say in the matter. A growing body of research suggests that chronic illness is not an inevitable consequence of aging, as we've long believed, but more often the result of lifestyle choices that we're perfectly free to reject. "People used to say, 'Who would want to be 100?' " says Dr. Thomas Perls, an instructor at Harvard Medical School and director of the New England Centenarian Study. "Now they're realizing it's an opportunity." So are booksellers and magazine publishers. "Live long, die fast," the dust jackets urge us. "Dare to be 100." Many of us will fall short of that number simply through bad genes or bad luck. And high-tech medicine isn't likely to change the outlook dramatically; drugs and surgery can do only so much to sustain a body once it starts to fail. But there is no question we can lengthen our lives while shortening our deaths. The tools already exist, and they're within virtually everyone's reach.

Life expectancy in the United States has nearly doubled since Angeline Strandal was a kid--from 47 years to 76 years. And though centenarians are still rare, they now constitute the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. population. Their ranks have increased 16-fold over the past six decades--from 3,700 in 1940 to roughly 61,000 today. And the explosion is just getting started. The Census Bureau projects that one in nine baby boomers (9 million of the 80 million people born between 1946 and 1964) will survive into their late 90s, and that one in 26 (or 3 million) will reach 100. "A century ago, the odds of living that long were about one in 500," says Lynn Adler, founder of the National Centenarian Awareness Project and the author of "Centenarians: The Bonus Years." "That's how far we've come." If decrepitude were an inevitable part of aging, these burgeoning numbers would spell trouble. But the evidence suggests that Americans are living better, as well as longer. The disability rate among people older than 65 has fallen steadily since the early 1980s, according to Duke University demographer Kenneth Manton, and a shrinking percentage of seniors are plagued by hypertension, arteriosclerosis and dementia. Moreover, researchers have found that the oldest of the old often enjoy better health than people in their 70s. The 79 centenarians in Perls's New England study have all lived independently through their early 90s, taking an average of just one medication. And when the time comes for these hearty souls to die, they don't linger. In a 1995 study, James Lubitz of the Health Care Financing Administration calculated that medical expenditures for the last two years of life--statistically the most expensive--average $22,600 for people who die at 70, but just $8,300 for those who make it past 100.

These insights have spawned a revolution in the science of aging. "Until recently, there was so much preoccupation with disease that little work was done on the characteristics that permit people to do well," says Dr. John Rowe, the New York geriatrician who heads the MacArthur Foundation's Research Network on Successful Aging. Over the past decade, Rowe's group and others have published hundreds of studies elucidating the factors that help people glide through their later years with clear minds and strong bodies. The research confirms the old saw that it pays to choose your parents well. But the way we age depends less on who we are than on how we live--what we eat, how much we exercise and how we employ our minds.

The Magic of Exercise

Suppose there was a potion that could keep you strong and trim as you aged, while protecting your heart and bones; improving your mood, sleep and memory; warding off breast and colon cancer, and reducing your overall risk of dying prematurely.

Respectable studies have shown that exercise can have all those benefits--even for people who take it up late in life. Experts now agree that most of the physical decline that older people suffer stems not from age but from simple disuse. When we sit all day, year after year, our bones, muscles and organ systems atrophy. But exercise can preserve and even revive them.

When Dr. Ralph Paffenbarger started tracking the health of 19,000 Harvard and University of Pennsylvania alumni back in the early 1960s, many experts thought vigorous exercise was downright dangerous for people over 50. But by monitoring the volunteers' activity levels and health status over the years, the Stanford epidemiologist turned that wisdom on its head. In a landmark 1986 study, Paffenbarger showed that the participants' death rates fell in direct proportion to the number of calories they burned each week. Those burning 2,000 a week (roughly the number it takes to walk 20 miles) suffered only half the annual mortality of the couch potatoes, thanks mainly to a lower rate of heart disease.

The alumni study wasn't set up to gauge the benefits of any particular exercise regimen, but subsequent studies have shown that different activities bring different rewards. Everyone now agrees that aerobic exercise preserves the heart, lungs and brain. And researchers at Tufts University have recently shown that weight lifting can do as much for the frail elderly as it does for high-school jocks. When Dr. Maria Fiatarone got 10 chronically ill nursing-home residents to lift weights three times a week for two months, the participants' average walking speed nearly tripled, and their balance improved by half. Two had the audacity to throw away their canes.

Miriam Nelson, another Tufts researcher, has since shown how a series of simple strength-training exercises could help keep women from resorting to canes in the first place. She recruited 40 volunteers--all past menopause, none taking estrogen--and split them into two groups. Half continued life as usual, while the other half went to Tufts twice a week to pump iron. Over the course of a year, the women in the control group suffered a predictable loss of bone density, but the weight lifters enjoyed slight increases. They didn't lose weight (that wasn't the goal), but they lost fat, and many ended up measurably stronger than their daughters, who were 30 to 40 years younger. Dorothy Barron, who was 64 when she joined Nelson's experiment, says the experience not only remodeled her body but gave her more energy and confidence than she had had since her youth. Five years later, she still lifts weights--and she has added power walking, horseback riding and white-water rafting to her hobbies. When people ask why she pushes herself so hard, she replies, "I'm too old not to."

Eating to Nourish Long Life

We all know that living on fat, salt and empty calories can have a range of nasty consequences, from obesity and impotence to hypertension and heart disease. Yet we seem to forget that there are other ways to eat, and that people who adopt them stay younger longer. George and Gaynel Couron will never forget that lesson. The Sacramento, Calif., couple gave up eating meat back in the early 1920s, when they became Seventh-day Adventists. They eventually strayed from the church and its dietary edicts, but they returned to both in 1943, when George suffered a heart attack. Today he's 100 years old, and Gaynel is 98. They've been married for 81 years and have 14 kids ranging in age from 58 to 80. They have slowed down a bit (they're not planning any more children), but George still takes great delight in growing and eating his own tomatoes, melons, beets, squash and black-eyed peas. As he puts it, "We're still perking along." No one can say exactly what role food has played in the Courons' good fortune, but the age-reversing effects of a plant-based diet are not in question. In controlled studies, San Francisco cardiologist Dean Ornish has shown that a diet based on low-fat, nutrient-rich foods not only prevents heart disease--the Western world's leading cause of early death--but can help reverse it. And other studies suggest that dietary changes could virtually eliminate the high blood pressure that places 50 million older Americans at high risk of stroke, heart attack and kidney failure.

"Hypertension is not an inevitable part of aging," says Dr. Boyd Eaton, an Atlanta-based radiologist who has written extensively on nutrition and chronic illness. "It's a disease of civilization." You wouldn't know that from watching people age in this country. Hypertension afflicts a third of all Americans in their 50s, half of those in their 60s and more than two thirds of those over 70. But preindustrial people don't follow that pattern. Whether they happen to live in China or Africa, Alaska or the Amazon, people in primitive settings experience no change in blood pressure as they age, and the reason is fairly simple: they don't eat processed foods. Dr. Paul Whelton of Tulane University's School of Public Health has spent the past decade tracking 15,000 indigenous Yi people in southwestern China. As long as they eat a traditional diet--rice, a little meat and a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables--these rural farmers virtually never develop hypertension. But when they migrate to nearby towns, their blood pressure starts to rise with age. "Their genes don't change when they move," Whelton says. "Their diet does."

What makes processed food so harmful? Salt is one key suspect. When you subsist mainly on fresh plant foods--as our ancestors did for roughly 7 million years--you get 10 times more potassium than sodium. That 10-to-one ratio is, by Eaton's reasoning, the one our bodies are designed for. But salt is now showered on foods at every stage of processing and preparation (a 4-ounce tomato contains 9 mg of sodium, 4 ounces of bottled tomato sauce nearly 700 mg), while potassium leaches out. As a result, most of us now consume more salt than potassium. "Modern humans are the only mammals that do that," says Eaton, "and we're the only ones that develop hypertension." Correcting that imbalance takes some effort, but it doesn't require moving to the bush. In fact a recent clinical study suggests that dietary changes can reduce blood pressure as markedly as drug treatment, and can produce results in as little as two months. In the study (known as DASH, or Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension), researchers at several institutions placed volunteers on one of three diets. Those on a low-fat menu that included 10 daily servings of fresh fruits and vegetables, plus two servings of calcium-rich dairy products, reduced their systolic and diastolic readings by 5.5 mm and 3.0 mm, respectively. And those suffering from hypertension got reductions of twice that magnitude. "We suspected this was possible," says nutritionist Eva Obarzanek of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, the federal agency that sponsored the study. "Now we know the size of the effect."

Researchers have since shown that a simple potassium supplement can bring similar if less dramatic benefits. That's worth knowing, but keep in mind that potassium is just one of countless age fighters found in real food. The antioxidant vitamins in a tomato or a green leaf can help boost immunity and slow the corrosion of aging cell membranes, and the B vitamins may help protect your heart. By eating plants, you also bathe yourself in cancer-fighting phytochemicals, bone-saving calcium and the fiber needed to maintain the colon and modulate blood sugar. Best of all, you can down them by the bushel without getting fat.

Staying Connected and Engaged

Exercise and good food may help keep you going, but successful aging is also a psychological feat. Loneliness, for example, can speed your demise no matter how conscientiously you care for your body. "We go through life surrounded by protective convoys of others," says Robert Kahn, a University of Michigan psychologist who has studied the health effects of companionship. "People who manage to maintain a network of social support do best." One study of elderly heart-attack patients found that those with two or more close associates enjoyed twice the one-year survival rate of those who were completely alone.

Companionship aside, healthy oldsters seem to share a knack for managing stress, a poison that contributes measurably to heart disease, cancer and accidents. Researchers have also linked successful aging to mental stimulation. An idle brain will deteriorate just as surely as an unused leg, notes Dr. Gene Cohen, head of the gerontology center at George Washington University. And just as exercise can prevent muscle atrophy, mental challenges seem to preserve both the mind and the immune system. But what most impresses researchers who study the oldest old is their simple drive and resilience. "People who reach 100 are not quitters," says Adler of the National Centenarian Awareness Project. "They share a remarkable ability to renegotiate life at every turn, to accept the inevitable losses and move on." Merle McEathron knows all about accepting losses. She's 102 today, but she was just 7 when she found her mother dead on the floor at her childhood home in Vincennes, Ind., felled by a heart attack. As the oldest girl in the family, Merle had to raise her baby sister and take over cooking and cleaning for her father and two older brothers ("I stood on a box to reach the range," she recalls). She married at 15, but her man left her at 25, so she started a general store and worked there long enough to put both of her sons through college. The boys were grown by the time World War II came along, but she found other ways to stay busy. She worked as a house mother at the Cadet Club, a military social center, where young airmen took her flying in small warplanes after hours. And when the war ended, she got in her Buick and headed for Arizona.

She was 51 years old by the time she hit Phoenix, but the move brought many adventures, including three more husbands. After dumping one (a dance-hall sax player with a roving eye) and outliving the others, she moved herself into the Eastern Star retirement center to avoid getting lonely. A doctor assured her she would never walk again when she broke her leg four years ago, but she got herself a walker, made her way down to the exercise room and worked the injured limb until she could get around on a cane. Then she threw away the cane. She now walks a mile and a quarter each day, and every September she travels to Indiana for a reunion at the Cadet Club. When she gets there, she climbs over the wing of a restored World War II training plane, crawls into the cockpit behind the pilot and rides that baby into the sky.

With Anne Underwood and Mary Hager
Newsweek 6/30/97 Lifestyle/How to Live to 100

* * *

I emphasized the entire last section because I read this article a long time ago, but I still think about that woman regularly. Screw what the doctor tells you! Such quacks.

LSD Discoverer Dies at 102

Albert Hofmann not only invented LSD, but invented and took a daily dose of Hydergine, a dementia preventative that may reduce mitochondrial damage to cells in the brain.

Interestingly enough, I was thinking about Hofmann a few days ago when I was biking through my beautiful neighborhood, taking in the glory of all the floral colors and every shade of green. I laughed to myself that it was like I was celebrating centenarian Hofmann -- who was still living the last I had read -- by reenacting Bicycle Day. I made a mental note to follow up on him later, though I forgot. As it turns out, that happened to be the day he died.

New England Centenarian Study Basic Summary

http://www.sunjournal.com/story/262078-3/LewistonAuburn/Doctors_advice_on_living_to_100/

Doctor's advice on living to 100

- Staff Writer Bonnie Washuk
Tuesday, April 22, 2008

BOSTON - The number of people who live to 100, like Lewiston's Libby Goldman, is low, about 1 out of 8,000, says Dr. Thomas Perls, director of the New England Centenarian Study at Boston University's Medical Center.

Of those who live to be 100, "the larger numbers aren't doing so well," Perls said Monday. Only 20 percent are lucid.

Those in that minority can keep going to 101, 102, 103 and beyond, "as long as their minds are sharp," Perls said.

"Some people say, 'Who would want to live to 100?' I say most of us," if the disabilities associated with old age are compressed to the very end of life, he said.

The vast majority of those who live to 100 have lived independently through their early 90s, Perls said. The world's oldest known person today is Edna Parker of Shelbyville, Ind., who celebrated her 115th birthday April 20. People who live to 110 are "supercentenarians" and are rare, Perls said.

There are three common traits of centenarians, according to research in the New England Centenarian Study:

• Good genes. They have "significant genetic advantages" and lack genes that predispose them to diseases, Perls said. Longevity often runs in families.

• Good health habits. Most don't drink or smoke, and they exercise. They're not overweight.

• They manage stress well. Perls guessed that Libby Goldman was "gregarious and optimistic." People who live to 100 "find humor in their daily lives." They have stress, but "they seem to be able to let go of it easily."

To learn more about the New England Centenarian Study at Boston University's Medical Center, go to: http://www.bumc.bu.edu/Dept/Home.aspx?DepartmentID=361


* * *

Not too helpful, as it's all stuff we knew. I think stress is the biggest problem for most people. The good news is that if you're exercising and eating properly, stress is less likely to be a problem anyway. And what better excuse to block out time for your favorite activities and to hang out with good friends?

Birthday Two-fer

http://www.ohio.com/news/17937024.html?page=1&c=y

Family, friends honoring 2 centenarians

No secrets to aging, but hard work helps

By Jewell Cardwell
Beacon Journal columnist

Published on Saturday, Apr 19, 2008

Their families have spared no expense nor investment of time in planning two supremely important birthday bashes today.

While the honorees' lives probably have never intersected — not formally, anyway — they share a common thread.

Josephine Fuller and Elvina Gulley are not only turning the corner on 100 years of living, but they also are doing so with style, grace and a real enthusiasm for the bridges they've crossed and what still lies ahead.

Mrs. Fuller

Josephine (Kightlinger) Fuller has always marched to the beat of her drum.

It's served her well so far.

As she approaches her 100th birthday, she sees no reason to change the recipe.

I met her this week at Forrest Motors of Ohio Inc. in Barberton, which is owned by her son Forrest C. Fuller. She is one of the partners in the parent company — Al for Limited.

Mrs. Fuller — who still gets around remarkably well — was born April 21, 1908, in Meadville, Pa., on a dairy farm; she was one of nine children.

''It just creeps up on you,'' Mrs. Fuller said about turning 100. ''You just don't think about the time.''

By the way, Mrs. Fuller insists she doesn't have any special formula for aging so well.

''I eat anything I want, although I don't care for milk,'' an animated-and-engaging Mrs. Fuller noted. ''But I do like yogurt.''

Mrs. Fuller, dressed in casual chic clothing like you might see on the golf course, has two children, Forrest of Atwater and Duane of Staten Island, N.Y. A third son, Jack, is deceased.

She also has 10 grandchildren, 22 great-grandchildren and just recently celebrated the birth of her first great-great-grandchild.

One thing is for sure; they've got a treasure chest of stories from the family matriarch, guaranteed to educate and entertain them for many years to come.

''I learned to do everything,'' Mrs. Fuller took great pride in saying.

At an early age, she even found herself charged with driving a milk truck.

She recalled one time while making her rounds, ''the brakes gave out and I was just shaking.''

Somehow she kept her wits about her and she announced, ''I still got the milk to where it was supposed to go and on time.''

Mrs. Fuller met her husband Charles at 17 and was married at 19.

They had been married 72 years when he died in 2000.

He worked a variety of jobs, including farmer, meat cutter and self-taught musician.

She was a seamstress, doing everything by hand.

The couple also worked together for many years caring for people with mental disabilities.

''When she was in the independent-living apartment, she was beating the pants off of everyone in poker. She's unbeatable!'' boasted daughter-in-law A.J. Fuller.

These days, Mrs. Fuller resides in an apartment in Marlboro Township. She shares cooking on the weekends with another friend.

She formerly pursued oil painting and crocheting. ''I've made so many afghans, I've lost track of the number,'' she said.

When she's not out walking or watching television's Wheel of Fortune or Lawrence Welk Show reruns, Mrs. Fuller enjoys the company of Chester, her Bijon Fraise dog.

Except for a daily blood pressure pill, she's in incredibly good health.

Mrs. Fuller will be honored at a birthday bash at the Tangier restaurant in Akron with local musician Larry Altop performing.


Mrs. Gulley


Elvina (Marshall) Gulley isn't nearly as excited about turning 100 as she is about the prospects of having an African-American president.

Her eyes light up and her voice moves into a higher octave as talk turns to Sen. Barack Obama and his amazing journey — Something Mrs. Gulley, who is also African-American, said she never thought she would see in her lifetime.

''He has my vote!'' she wanted me to know.

Mrs. Gulley is conversant on a wide range of subjects, including cooking and canning.

Nattily dressed in a light blue suit, Mrs. Gulley is in remarkably good health given her advanced years.

She was born March 18, 1908, to Simon Marshall and Narcissus Patterson Marshall in Repton, Ala., the fourth of 14 children, with 12 growing to maturity.

She and her husband, Willie E. Gulley, moved to Springfield Township in 1953. They were married for 49 years before his death in 1974.

The Gulleys also had 14 children, with 12 growing to maturity.

Mrs. Gulley's children are Robert of Mobile, Ala.; Judge of Akron; Willie Pearl Davidson of Pensacola, Fla.; Amanda Mims of Akron; Clara Tolbert of Pensacola; Ben and James, both of Akron; Cornelia Isabell and Delores Gulley Drone, both of Akron; and Walter, David, William, John Lee and Eloise, all deceased.

No stranger to hard work, Mrs. Gulley farmed in her native Alabama.

She also was a bit of an entrepreneur, ''growing vegetables and selling them to 'mobile' grocers or rolling stores, as they were called, in exchange for the items she needed to take care of her children and her household,'' said daughter Delores Gulley Drone.

''The lights rarely went out in our house at night, as she created and made clothing for the boys and girls in her family.''

Mrs. Gulley also was a prolific quilter. ''I used to make mattresses for the beds, too,'' she said of the leftover cotton she used to pick.

''She taught her children well with the meager academics she possessed,'' Gulley Drone said. ''She would help them with their homework and emphasized education and school attendance.

''She also taught them all — boys and girls — how to be good cooks and housekeepers. . . . She never failed to remember that her children needed to honor God in all their efforts. So, she made sure they attended Sunday school and church regularly.''

Mrs. Gulley also has 56 grandchildren, 89 great-grandchildren, 72 great-greatgranchildren and 73 nieces and nephews.

Asked for her recipe for a long and happy life, she had a simple answer. ''Hard work. I don't think it hurt me a bit,'' she said.

Genes may have been a factor, too, as she had a sister who lived to be 105 and an aunt lived to be 107.

The best thing anyone ever said about her? ''That they never known no one who worked as hard as me and that I'm a good person,'' she was happy to reply.

Mrs. Gulley will be feted today with a party at the Cathedral Buffet in Cuyahoga Falls.

Jewell Cardwell can be reached at 330-996-3567 or jcardwell@thebeaconjournal.com.

Supercentenarian Man Celebrates

http://www.greatfallstribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080423/NEWS01/804230301


Originally published April 23, 2008

111-year-old Breuning world's 28th oldest person, group says

By ERIC NEWHOUSE
Tribune Projects Editor

At age 111, Great Falls' Walter Breuning is officially a supercentenarian and ranked the 28th oldest person in the world, according to the Gerontology Research Group.

He's also the second oldest living American male, following George Francis of California, who is 107 days older. Both were born in 1896, Francis on June 6 and Breuning on Sept. 21.


"If you keep your mind busy and if you keep your body busy, I guess you're just going to keep going," Breuning said philosophically as he waited for lunch Tuesday in the Rainbow Retirement Community.
According to the Inglewood, Calif.-based Gerontology Research Group, which verifies reports of extreme ages, only 75 living people — 64 women and 11 men — qualify as supercentenarians, or people living to be 110 or more.

"Look around this place," said Breuning, gesturing around the restaurant. "It's mostly women. All the men are gone."

The world's oldest person is American Edna Parker of Indiana, who was born on April 20, 1893, and turned 115 on Sunday with a birthday celebration at which 115 helium-filled balloons were released into the sky.

Dressed in a blue and white polka dot dress with a pearl necklace, she clutched a red rose during the ceremony.

"We don't know why she's lived so long," said her 59-year-old grandson Don Parker. "But she's never been a worrier and she's always been a thin person, so maybe that has something to do with it."

Her two sisters also lived to advanced ages: Georgia died at 99, while Opal lived to 88.

"Longevity is the family history," said Dr. Nir Barzilai, director of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine's Institute for Aging Research in New York, noting that good genes and a healthy lifestyle are keys to longevity.

That doesn't seem true of Breuning, whose mother died at age 46 and whose father died at 50. "My mom had an operation that didn't work out, and my dad basically drank himself to death. My brothers and sisters — two brothers and two sisters — all passed away at about 75," he said.

Another positive characteristic might be a strong work ethic. "I had to leave school and go to work when I was 14," Breuning said. "I was making $2.50 a week scraping out trays in a bakery back about 1910."

Dr. Tom Perls, an aging specialist from the New England Centenarian Study at Boston University, said people who don't worry appear to live longer than others. His studies on about 1,500 centenarians show "they tend to manage their stress better than the rest of us," Perls said.

And that's a characteristic of Breuning, who was dressed Tuesday in his trademark pinstriped blue suit and neatly knotted tie. "My goodness," he beamed. "I couldn't feel any better!"

The Associated Press contributed to this story.


America's oldest residents

According to the Gerontology Research Group, which verifies reports of extreme ages, about half of the world's 30 oldest people live in the United States. Here's a list of the oldest Americans, their rankings in the world, and their birth dates. For more information, check out the group's Web site of supercentenarians at www.grg.org/Adams/E.HTM

1. Edna Parker, Indiana April 20, 1893 (115)

3. Gertrude Baines, California April 6, 1894 (114)

5. Catherine Hagel, Minnesota Nov. 28, 1894 (113)

6. Beatrice Farve, Georgia, April 30, 1895 (112)

8. Mary J. Ray, New Hampshire May 17, 1895 (112)

10. Olivia P. Thomas, New York June 29, 1895 (112)

11. Neva Morris, Iowa Aug. 3, 1895 (112)

14. Maggie Renfro, Louisiana Nov. 14, 1895 (112)

19. Daisey Baily, Michigan March 30, 1896 (112)

21. C. Letitia Lawson, Iowa April 10, 1896 (112)

23. George Francis, California June 6, 1896 (111)

24. Eunice Sanborn, Texas July 20, 1896 (111)

25. Florence Busch, Wisconsin Aug. 13, 1896 (111)

26. Besse Cooper, Georgia Aug. 26, 1896 (111)

27. Berta Rosenberg, New York Sept. 5, 1896 (111)

28. Walter Breuning, Montana Sept. 21, 1896 (111)


* * *


Here is some inspiration that proves genetics aren't everything. Keep busy with work, with physical activity, with mentally engaging activities (socializing counts), and you'll hardly have time to stress when life puts up a fight.

Anecdotally, the best thing I have done to manage stress is get more B-vitamins in my diet through supplements and properly prepared corn, which must be soaked in lime hydrate to make the vitamins bioavailable (and perhaps reduce the harmful lectin content present in most grains).

NY Times Piece on Blue Zones

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/24/fashion/24CYBER.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

How to Live Longer Without Really Trying

By MICHELLE SLATALLA
Published: April 24, 2008

MY neighbor Bruce has the healthiest lifestyle on the block. He eats small portions and skips dessert. He walks to work. His hobbies — coaching Little League, riding his bike and taking his dog on hikes — all involve getting wholesome, fresh air.

This behavior drives my husband, who has the least healthy lifestyle on the block, crazy. “You’re going to be so lonely living forever,” he yells at Bruce from our balcony, where we drink beer. “All the interesting people will be dead.”

“Yeah, good luck with that,” I chime in to show support for my husband (and Anchor Steam).

But secretly I’m on Bruce’s side. I wouldn’t mind living forever. Or at least long enough to blow out the candles on my 100th birthday cake.

Maybe I can. According to a new book that looks at the daily routines of clusters of centenarians who live in four geographically remote or culturally isolated “blue zones” of longevity — from Okinawa to a community of Seventh Day Adventists in Southern California — all I need to do to extend my life is follow a few of their simple secrets.

Eat less. Make family a priority. Banish stress. I figured it should be no problem to follow most of the common-sense tips that Dan Buettner outlines in “The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who’ve Lived the Longest” (National Geographic, 2008).

Of course, I was not going to be able to work a nightly glass of mugwort sake into my diet as easily as an Okinawan. Or spend the whole day hiking uphill like a Sardinian shepherd.

But maybe I could take advantage of the culturally isolated and geographically remote environment in which I live — my basement, in front of a computer — to create my own blue zone. I hoped, in fact, to find a way to obey the Power 9 — what Mr. Buettner nicknamed the rules of longevity — without ever getting up from my desk.

The first step was a cinch. Mr. Buettner recommends getting started by visiting www.bluezones.com to take a test called the Vitality Compass. Answer 35 questions, and voilà, it calculates your life expectancy.

I felt healthier already. Two minutes later, I received (sort of) good news.

“You are in the Blue Zone!” the Web site told me, adding that my biological age is 40, which is better than both my real age (46) and my Wii Fit age (49), but not nearly as young as the age I would like to look (23).

But then the results took a dark turn.

My life expectancy: 95.2.

My healthy life expectancy: 83.9.

While 12 years of decline was bad news for me, it would be even more of a blow to my children, who already have been warned that they won’t inherit my jewelry if they put me in a nursing home.

The only way to react to such dark news was to scoff at it, and dismiss the quiz as a publicity stunt to sell books.

Sadly, however, it turned out that the quiz results were based on a complex, 106-page algorithm developed by Dr. Robert Kane, a physician and a professor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health.

“What the results tell you are a confirmation and a consolidation of what’s been known, for the most part,” for decades, Dr. Kane said in an interview. “The challenge now is to try to get people to use it to change behavior. Most of us know what we ought to do, but have a hard time doing it.”

Like me. If I followed all the personalized advice in the quiz’s final report, I could get as much as an extra 2.3 years — if I didn’t get struck by lightning or some unforeseen fatal disease. But even knowing that incentive, I suffered an immediate setback. Two suggestions — get more rigorous exercise and eat less — made me hungry.

A few Mint Milano cookies later, I returned to my desk determined to improve. I e-mailed my tennis doubles partner, Stacey (who is also studying to become a certified personal trainer), to volunteer to let her train me twice during the next week.

She wrote back, with suggested training sessions and gossip about the latest team scandals, which sidetracked me until my fingers had gotten such a rigorous typing “workout” that I was ready to move on to the next suggestion: avoid salt.

To accomplish this, I sat at my desk awhile, eating nothing, until I figured enough time had passed to allow me to check off the no-salt suggestion.

Next: eat more fruit.

A Google search for salty fruit yielded 456,000 results. I settled quickly on something delicious called Sweet-n-Salty Fruit-n-Nut Honey Lace Brittle. Was that so hard?

After printing out the recipe, I moved on to the next suggestion: drink red wine.

Here — while people who know me might find this hard to believe — I hit a roadblock. While it’s possible, sometimes even essential, to drink wine in front of my computer, I couldn’t imagine myself drinking red.

Seeking clarification, I phoned Mr. Buettner. “Do you really think some book is going to get me to give up white wine?” I asked.

“No, no, you don’t have to,” he said in a reassuring tone meant to lower my stress level (another suggestion from my final report). “When it comes to drinking any spirits, a woman should have a drink a day and maybe two, unless pregnant.”

“Any spirits?” I pressed.

“You get this extra little antioxidant bump” from the polyphenols in red wine, he explained. “But white wine is fine too. I know drinking alcohol helps because I looked at epidemiology studies of huge populations and saw that those who drink a little outlive those who don’t.”

No doubt because nothing reduces stress like a full glass of chardonnay. And I needed relaxation more than ever because Mr. Buettner had become part of the problem. “I’m feeling considerable stress,” I told him, “because, according to your quiz, I am not going to live to be 100.”

“You have to have won the genetic lottery to live that long,” he said. “Like, did your grandparents and all their siblings live to be 100?”

I considered. Perhaps all four grandparents combined reached that age. My only option was to tackle another of the Power 9.

“I am thinking of trying to be more likable, as page 259 of your book suggests,” I said. “But how does that help?”

“If you’re likable, you’re likely to have a better social network, and even get better health care at the doctor’s office because the people who take your blood pressure will do a better job,” he said.

Pray tell, how to become more likable? “Be interested, not just interesting,” he said. “Likable people tend to ask you a question about yourself instead of just talking about themselves.”

Taking his advice, I changed my Facebook status to say, “Michelle is wondering what YOU are thinking.”

This prompted a Facebook friend to write a post: “Funny you should ask. ...”

Encouraged by how youthful my newfound amiability made me feel, I sent a text message to my Twitter entourage that said, “I meant to mention earlier, you look really good today.”

No response. So I texted, “Did you change your hair or what?”

This backfired. One of my Twitter-hating teenagers texted, “Do you realize that everyone can see what you’re typing?”

In desperation, I was ready to take the final bit of Mr. Buettner’s advice (“Maybe you should minimize time spent on the Internet as a way to reduce stress”) and spend some quality offline time “surrounded by those who share your blue-zone values.”

So I made a pan of calorie-laden chicken tetrazzini and went across the street to Bruce’s house with it. There my husband and I found him poring over the score sheet from a Little League game (his team won 20-5, which had to have diminished his stress).

“That looks good,” Bruce said, pointing to the casserole.

“Try some,” I said.

He had seconds. I didn’t.


E-mail: slatalla@nytimes.com


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Not terribly chock full of any new info on the Blue Zone book, but I included it because her writing is entertaining. I've seen conflicting reports about alcohol--some say it improves average lifespan, but then I've seen reports that most centenarians tend not to be drinkers. This researcher seems to be giving it the go-ahead. I presume the epidemiological evidence he mentioned was more than just average lifespan, and analyzed centenarian patterns separately as well.

Oh, did I not tell you last time that Blue Zones has a website? Yah, because it does.

I've been there; there's a lot of bunk, because they hired a bunch of bloggers to post new material constantly based on their personal opinions and not Buettner's research. Whatever you gotta do to market your book, I guess.