Good news – – I’m going to live to 95.8 years of age! At least that’s what the Life Expectancy Calculator tells me. Following the suggestion of Harvard researchers, Thomas Perls, M.D. and Margery Silver, Ed.D., I took the test devised by them and can now plan ahead with confidence.
It would be easy to make fun of people who presume to tell you how long you’re going to live. But the instrument used, a questionnaire focused largely on life style, has a scientific basis and prompts serious questions about personal values. If you have access to an on-line computer, I recommend that you take the test yourself. You will find it at http://www.livingto100.com
Better yet, you can read their recently published book – – Living to 100: Lessons in Living to your Maximum Potential at Any Age. In it researchers Perls and Silver, along with writer John Lauerman, share the results of their studies of some 130 women and men centenarians. In its pages the reader meets altogether remarkable people who have defied the averages and have lived beyond their hundredth birthday.
Much about the research must be judged innovative, meaningful, and provocative. Among the general conclusions, several stand out. The researchers say, for example, that what’s important is not how to stay young but rather how to age well. This insight they call the “guiding light” of the study.
For them the key to reaching old age is not so much surviving disease, as avoiding it altogether. By and large, centenarians do not suffer long gradual declines in health but rather tend to die from short sicknesses. Much better than other people, they know how to escape stress.
The researchers also believe that “the vast majority of people have genes that allow them to live to at least 85 years old.” What makes for extra longevity is lifestyle – – exercise, diet, social networks, and a positive approach to living.
Among other interesting findings, the Harvard scientists claim that normal brain aging should be synonymous with disease-free aging. By comparing tests of people’s brain functioning while alive with the condition of their brains after death, the researchers show that some men and women can continue sharp into very old age. Drastic mental decline does not have to happen.
They also report other characteristics shared by people who live past 100. Most say that religion exerts a strong influence on their lives. A sense of humor marks their personalities. They are almost never lonely. Many play the piano or another musical instrument. The serious disease diabetes is practically unknown among them.
Of their subjects, I talked with one several times. Anna Morgan, who lived to be 101, was just as remarkable as the authors claim. She retained her uncommon vitality till close to the end of her life, along with zeal for the common good. I remember her testifying at the state house in Boston at age 100.
But for every one Anna Morgan among the centenarians studied, there were three others who had brain impairment. And that fact, to my mind, makes the overall optimism and roseate approach of Perls and Silver to their subject often ring hollow. Even in their own sample, most men and women who reach 100 do not enjoy much quality of life.
Asked by Christopher Lydon, in a recent radio interview, if the centenarians were happy, Dr. Perls answered “Of course, they’re happy.” But, if so many were brain damaged, then how does one know? A more credible answer, I would suggest, would be that, like their juniors, some of these centenarians were happy, while some were not. Otherwise, do we not make of them something inhuman?
The possibility of finding in extreme old age the same kind of grief that many of us en-counter in so many of our oldest friends and colleagues may lie behind my friend Pat Pattullo’s response. “I do not accept the premise that it’s a good thing to go on as long as you possibly can,” he says.
All things considered, I do not judge it desirable to live to one hundred. In the conditions of current American society, such longevity seems likely to expose the aged to much more grief than satisfaction. One-half of the people studied lived in nursing homes, many of them, as noted, afflicted with brain disorders. Who wants to look forward to such conditions of life?
Many other very old people in this country, especially women, live in poverty. Is that a fate one should embrace with enthusiasm?
The tone of the research reports here is almost relentlessly upbeat. Though I generally feel quite bullish about growing old myself, I try never to forget that, for not a few people, this experience proves bitter. The authors of this research seem to leave out of consideration the tragic elements in human life. That omission makes for an imbalance which I find troubling.
Richard Griffin