You don’t get to be over a century old without learning some choice secrets of the universe along the way. Jeanne Louise Calment, who lived to be 122 years old, credited her age to a life lived without worries. She also smoked 2 cigarettes a day and ate nearly 16 bars of chocolate every week. Queen Elizabeth, at 91, eats healthy and spends adequate amount of time outdoors, but also indulges in 4 cocktails every day.
Is the universe telling us something? Have we been worrying needlessly about our chocolate to kale ratio? Dr Nir Barzilai, director of the Institute for Aging Research, begs to differ.
“Genetic factors are more dominating (than lifestyle factors) at exceptional older ages,” he says, “‘In our (study of) centenarians, almost 50 per cent were obese or overweight, smokers, and not exercising even moderately. That is why we study them — because their interaction with environment is not exemplary and still they make it.” So while the thought of consuming booze and chocolate like there’s no tomorrow for a long life might be appealing, your family health history can put a dampener on those plans.
Since there’s been no progress in the discovery of the Fountain of Youth, we decided to examine the advice of these supercentenarians to see what might actually work. Should you subscribe to a diet of ‘anything and everything you want’ and abstain from men (the secret to 117 year old Emma Morano’s long life)? Let’s separate the myths from the facts.
How to live to be a 100, according to 11 centenarians
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