More (of the same) secrets to long life

An article from The Week by Eric Barker titled "How to live a long life, according to science" opens with the question: "So is it possible to live forever?"

The answer is NO.

However it is possible to live a long and fulfilling life. More specifically, one can take steps to minimize the risk that your life will be cut short by a medical issue.

In a previous post, I mentioned the Three Secrets to Long Life: 1) Eat well and exercise, 2) Focus on your health, and 3) Be social.

The above article by Barker has 5 recommendations, but two caught my attention because they relate to the Three Secrets: 1) Relationships and 2) Conscientiousness.

The importance of relationships underlie the commandment to Be social:

"What else can you do to extend your life while improving the quality? 1) Relationships are the most important thing.  There is a single question that best predicts whether you'll be alive at age 80: "Is there someone in your life whom you would feel comfortable phoning at four in the morning to tell your troubles to?"

Building (and sustaining) long-lasting and close relationships is very hard. Yet from an overall health perspective, it is worth the effort.

If there is one word that summarizes my other 2 longevity keys (eat well and exercise, and focus on your health), it is the word conscientiousness. From the Barker piece:

"Get your act together.  Was there a personality trait that was tied to a long, healthy life? Yes. Conscientiousness. Conscientiousness, which was the best predictor of longevity when measured in childhood, also turned out to be the best personality predictor of long life when measured in adulthood…By the end of the 20th century, 70 percent of the Terman men and 51 percent of the Terman women had died. It was the unconscientious among them who had been dying in especially large numbers. [...]

Truly fascinating: after a heart attack, conscientious people were not only more likely to recover because they were better about taking their meds but conscientiousness was a better predictor of improvement than the medication itself."

Taking your medicine on schedule in the proper amounts, getting the appropriate disease screening done on time, and watching your weight are all manifestations of conscientiousness.

If you possess good relationships and are conscientious, with a little luck (i.e. no bad luck), there is no reason why you cannot live to 80, 90 or even 100. Beyond 100, then genes matter, and you can't change your genes.

In a previous post I mentioned the fact that siblings of centenarians (people who live to 100) are more likely to live beyond 80 than the average person by a factor of 3 or 4 (that increases with age) strongly suggesting that genetics are important to live to 100 and beyond.

The Barker article offers more support for the importance of genes for very long-lived individuals: "The person with the longest confirmed lifespan is Jeanne Clement. She lived to be 122 and died in 1997." Clement did not focus on her health, "in fact, Clement smoked until she was 117."

Indeed the evidence for "longevity genes" goes beyond this one anecdote:

"People who live to 95 or older are no more virtuous than the rest of us in terms of their diet, exercise routine or smoking and drinking habits, according to researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University…"This study suggests that centenarians may possess additional longevity genes that help to buffer them against the harmful effects of an unhealthy lifestyle."

100 years is a long time, and you can get there even if you do not possess special longevity genes. Relationships and being conscientiousness about your health matter. You want to take good care of yourself.

Figure 1. Dorian Gray could not ultimately trick the aging process.