Longevity: How Long Will We Live

 

This post is based on a book by Rowan Hooper titled Superhuman: Life at the Extremes of our Capacity. The longest lived person on record is Jeannae Calment who died in 1917 at the age of 122. It is recorded that she did smoke, but only one or two cigarettes per day. Her diet was rich in olive oil and chocolates (1 kilo per week).

Blue Zones is the name for areas were centenarians tend to cluster. The people on Okinawa’s western edge are the longest lived people in the world. Not surprisingly these people have been well studied for clues to their remarkable lifespan. Their diet is high in tofu, fresh vegetables, and fresh fish. Their social structure is tight-knit and supportive. Their lifestyle includes activities such a bashofu (a traditional form of fabric weaving) plus the habit of hara hachi, which is a Confucian practice of eating only until you are 80% full.

There are other blue zones such as Sardinia, in the Italian Mediterranean, and the Nicola peninsula of Costa Rica, and the Greek island of Ikaria.

There is one Blue Zone in the United States the city of Loma Linda, in California. HM’s sister-in law lives there. Men in Loma Linda have a life expectancy of 88, and women a year more. The town has been extensively settled by members of the Seventh Day Adventist Church. Seventh Dayers don’t drink or smoke (smoking is banned in the town) and most are vegetarians. According to the scientist at the New England Centenarian Study, this is the baseline lifespan for the rest of us if only we ate well and took better care of ourselves.

Mental resilience is another important factor. According to the biographer of Jeannae Calment, she was biologically immune to stress. She had a saying, “If you can’t do anything about it, don’t worry about it.” She also ascribed her longevity to her calm approach to stress.

There is a common Japanese expression, sho ga nai, which means “nothing can be done about it.” A variant, shikata ga nai, is similar meaning “it cannot be helped.”

If you’re counting on your genes carrying you well into old age, stop counting. Genetics do play a factor, but not as large as many think. Moreover, specific genes have been identified that contribute to aging, but each of these genes has a small effect, and there needs to be a large group to achieve a noticeable effect. The have also identified a disease-associated gene, but there have been long living individuals who managed to outlive this gene.

The reader can draw their own conclusions from this post. HM would suggest living as healthy a life style as one can tolerate. Maintain healthy social interactions. Shun stress and foster resilience. Meditation should be extremely useful in shunning stress and fostering resilience. There is a very large number of posts on meditation. Just enter “relaxation response” in the search block at healthymemory.wordpress.com. Follow this with entering “meditation” in the search block.

Tags: Blue Zones, Jennae Calment, Loma Linda, Rowan Hooper, Seventh Day Adventists, Superhuman