Aging, George Burns Style How Do Some People Live Hard And Keep Going?
The comedian George Burns, whose recipe for longevity seemed to be martinis and cigars, died in 1996 at the age of 100. When asked in his late 90s if his doctor knew he still smoked, Burns said, “No … he’s dead.”
An enlarged photograph of Burns happily puffing a cigar brightens the article headlined “How Long Have You Got?” in the Getting Ever Older section of the Scientific American Summer 2000 quarterly, “The Quest to Beat Aging.”
That lead article by Science News writer Kathryn Brown reports that several of the 169 centenarians queried in a recent New England Centenarian Study said they smoked.
Some centenarians exercise and “some brazenly defy the notion of a healthy lifestyle,” Brown writes. “Nevertheless, almost all have lived free of cancer, and nearly a fourth of them have escaped any form of dementia.”
Aging is incredibly variable, Brown continues. The average life span has jumped from about 47 in 1900 to 76 years today, according to the National Institute on Aging. “We’re living longer simply because we escape many of the illnesses and events that plagued our ancestors, from death during childbirth to tuberculosis,” Brown reports, “largely because of better sanitation, cleaner water supplies and basic medical advances such as immunizations.”
And the older you get, the better your odds for getting older. “Demographers have found that death rates climb steadily till about 85 — and then begin to slowly edge back down again,” Brown says.
Variables? “Your neighbor may have run a marathon at 70, while your landlord was busy having heart surgery. Your great-aunt was a chess champion, but your grandfather couldn’t remember his address.”
Brown quotes Dr. Thomas J. Perls, co-author with Margery Silver of “Living to 100: Living to Your Maximum Potential at Any Age” (Basic Books), who says: “Researchers used to believe that the older you get, the sicker you get.
That’s completely wrong.”
An illustration in the new issue of Scientific American shows how the body ages, noting, “Each person’s body ages in unique ways, but a hypothetical average person can expect these changes over time” - changes to the brain, eyes, heart, lungs, pancreas, blood vessels, bones and muscles.
The quarterly’s scientists, researchers and writers say healthy habits can add years. Healthy habits prescribed include proper diet and physical and mental exercise.
Instead of taking an antioxidant pill to fend off cellular damage from free radicals, researchers advocate eating fruits and vegetables that are rich in antioxidants.
Before you swallow any magic pill or some mystic “natural” nosh that promises to deter aging, the quarterly warns you to enter your health food store with extreme caution.
The American propensity for fad diets and miracle health cures brings a new anti-aging diet every decade.
“Only a single dietary regime has ever been conclusively demonstrated to extend the life span of laboratory animals, let alone humans,” the quarterly declares. “It is known in the scientific lingo as `caloric restriction’ and less technically as `eating less than you might normally prefer.”’
The Major Killers section covers “Coping With Alzheimer’s,” “Stopping Cancer Before it Starts” and “Saving Hearts That Grow Old.”
By 2030, one in five Americans will be a senior, the quarterly projects in an article titled, “From Baby Boom to Geezer Glut.”
“What becomes of childhood, youth, middle age and old age, if people routinely live to 150?” the magazine’s editors ask. The possibility of extending the human life span has “provoked blistering polemics among ethicists, clergy and gerontologists.”
Zoologist Steven N. Austad of the University of Idaho predicts, “The first 150-year-old person is probably alive right now.”
Will it be you? Do you want it to be?