Living To A Ripe Old Age Often Defies Scientific Explanation

At age 100, Audrey Stubbart might be considered an authority on living a long life. She never smoked, drank nor told a lie, the Independence, Mo., resident told the Associated Press. She has no doctor and doesn’t take medications.

What keeps her going is work. “It makes me feel like I’m contributing,” said the former teacher and mother of five who is a full-time newspaper copy editor. “I want to be among people who have something to think about, something to do.”

What’s the secret to a long life?

While medical researchers seek clues in laboratories and studies, answers crop up regularly from the fascinating few who have lived an extraordinarily long time.

In newspaper accounts of centenarians, invariably the question is asked. The answers are usually succinct and often fly in the face of science. Occasionally, they contain insight.

In February, newspapers internationally reported about Jeanne Calment, who celebrated her 120th birthday in Arles, France. A wisp of a woman who once knew Vincent Van Gogh, she is reported to be the oldest human to be authenticated by the Guinness Book of World Records.

Asked her secret for a long life, Calment replied: “To take care of yourself and stay healthy.” Unlike Stubbart, Calment never held a job, spent her days doing whatever pleased her, lived a calm life. As doctors might say, she lived stressfree and in control.

Other old-timers have credited more curious antidotes to dying. But can a shot of whiskey or a chaw of tobacco a day keep the grim reaper away? Not likely, according to William Jarvis, a professor of health promotion and education at Loma Linda (Calif.) University, who believes the retrospective of those who have lived a long life has more to say about what people want to believe than about longevity.

Jarvis, president of the nonprofit National Council Against Health Fraud, has collected news reports for 20 years about people who achieve grand old age. One of his favorite reports, because it defies all odds, was 104-year-old Eubie Blake who told the TV program “60 Minutes” he had been smoking since he was 10 years old, and had worked up to four packs a day. A 103-year-old California woman, who had beaten cancer four times, credited eating “plenty of meats, vegetables, fruits and vitamins.” One man attributed his years to aligning his bed with the magnetic poles of Earth.

“There is nothing really significant that emerges,” said Jarvis of the anecdotal reports.

However, Jarvis said, one rich source of lessons culled from such folksy perceptions is the 1982 book “Living to Be 100” that analyzed interviews conducted by the Social Security Administration from 1922 to 1952 of 1,200 Americans on their 100th birthdays.

The most commonly attributed factor by those interviewed (15 percent) was “hard work.” Not drinking and not smoking was second (14.5 percent). Eating habits were mentioned third most often (12.5 percent), though they weren’t necessarily healthful habits: Told as a little girl that if she ate fat pork every day, she would live to be 100, one woman did.

“You don’t find very many smokers,” said Jarvis. “You don’t find many health nuts. They are neither slackers nor zealots. The whole theme of moderation does come through in this.”

Other than doing one’s best to live a healthful life, there are no fool-proof predictors, Jarvis said. “It appears that longevity is mostly genetic and that genes follow pretty much a law of probability, something like coin tossing in statistics. So longevity in the family would be one thing to be happy about.”

Genetically, Wendell Palmer may have reason for optimism. Two years ago, when his 98-year-old mother, Margaret White, was figuring life was about over, the 63-year-old Texan taught her a pastime he learned as a high school field-and-track star. It rejuvenated her.

But White, 100, who never drank or smoked, believes “hard work” is the secret to a long life. As for shot-putting and breaking the world’s indoor and outdoor record for the 100-104 age group, she told the Dallas Morning News recently: “I’m just doing it to keep myself limbered up.”