Larryh86GT
Member
Oh yeah - and a beer:
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/43992058/ns/health-aging/
Clean living key to long life? Don't believe it
Centenarians may have a great deal of wisdom to share, but this apparently does not include advice on how to live to age 100.
Researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have found that many very old people — age 95 and older — could be poster children for bad health behaviorwith their smoking, drinking, poor diet, obesity and lack of exercise.
The very old are, in fact, no more virtuous than the general population when it comes to shunning bad health habits, leaving researchers to conclude that their genes are mostly responsible for their remarkable longevity.
But before you fall off the wagon and start tossing down doughnuts for breakfast just because your Aunt Edna just turned 102, remember that genetics is a game of chance. What didn't kill Aunt Edna still could kill you prematurely, the researchers cautioned.
The study, appearing Aug. 3 in the online edition of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, followed the lives of 477 Ashkenazi Jews between the ages of 95 and 112. They were enrolled in Einstein College's Longevity Genes Project, an ongoing study that seeks to understand why centenarians live as long as they do. About 1 in 4,400 Americans lives to age 100, according to 2010 census data.
A research team led by Nir Barzilai compared these old folks with a group of people representing the general public, captured in a snapshot of health habits collected in the 1970s. The people in this control group were born around the same time as the 95-and-above study group, but they have since died.
The living, old people in the study were remarkably ordinary in their lifestyles, Barzilai said. By and large, they weren't vegetarians, vitamin-pill-poppers or health freaks. Their profiles nearly matched that of the control group in terms of the percentage who were overweight, exercised (or didn't exercise), or smoked. One woman, at age 107, smoked for over 90 years.
Whatever killed the control group — cardiovascular disease, cancer and other diseases clearly associated with lifestyle choices — somehow didn't kill them. "Their genes protected them," Barzilai said.
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/43992058/ns/health-aging/
Clean living key to long life? Don't believe it
Centenarians may have a great deal of wisdom to share, but this apparently does not include advice on how to live to age 100.
Researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have found that many very old people — age 95 and older — could be poster children for bad health behaviorwith their smoking, drinking, poor diet, obesity and lack of exercise.
The very old are, in fact, no more virtuous than the general population when it comes to shunning bad health habits, leaving researchers to conclude that their genes are mostly responsible for their remarkable longevity.
But before you fall off the wagon and start tossing down doughnuts for breakfast just because your Aunt Edna just turned 102, remember that genetics is a game of chance. What didn't kill Aunt Edna still could kill you prematurely, the researchers cautioned.
The study, appearing Aug. 3 in the online edition of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, followed the lives of 477 Ashkenazi Jews between the ages of 95 and 112. They were enrolled in Einstein College's Longevity Genes Project, an ongoing study that seeks to understand why centenarians live as long as they do. About 1 in 4,400 Americans lives to age 100, according to 2010 census data.
A research team led by Nir Barzilai compared these old folks with a group of people representing the general public, captured in a snapshot of health habits collected in the 1970s. The people in this control group were born around the same time as the 95-and-above study group, but they have since died.
The living, old people in the study were remarkably ordinary in their lifestyles, Barzilai said. By and large, they weren't vegetarians, vitamin-pill-poppers or health freaks. Their profiles nearly matched that of the control group in terms of the percentage who were overweight, exercised (or didn't exercise), or smoked. One woman, at age 107, smoked for over 90 years.
Whatever killed the control group — cardiovascular disease, cancer and other diseases clearly associated with lifestyle choices — somehow didn't kill them. "Their genes protected them," Barzilai said.
