X-Message-Number: 11373
From: Daniel Ust <>
Subject: Centenarians research
Date: Fri, 5 Mar 1999 12:36:01 -0500

In Message #11363 Thomas Nord <> wrote:
>Instead of reading all those healthpapers about veggies and pills I
>turned the issue upside down. Asked myself how the old ones did
>it, wrote to some, then found a lot of research on "Centenarians".
>Am I the only one in here who have looked on the facts of
>centenarians? Those who became more then 100 years old, ie
>Jeanne Calment who become 122 with no doubt (and died on
>my birthday), when the theoretical age was said to be max 120!

122 versus 120 would not seem significant in my book.  It's less
than a 2% difference.  To use an analogy, if a car is supposed
to go 50 miles on a gallon of gas and it actually goes 51 miles on
a gallon, would you suddenly believe the mpg rating was totally
fallacious?  (This is perhaps not the best analogy as we have 
accurate ways of measuring mpg that we do not yet have for life
spans in humans - to my knowledge!)  Not to discourage
questioning current estimates of maximum Human life span, I'd
be more skeptical if Calment had lives to 150.

But are the current estimates even claimed to be that accurate?  
I've not seen anyone claim that exactly 120 years, no more, no
less, is the maximum for humans.

>I havent found any vegetarian or CR people among those yet. Try
>to find one if you are in those groups. Even if its a part genetics, we
>can help the whole matter up a lot.

I've read articles on centenarians and do not totally disregard this.
While on the diet side, most of them do not appear to - and this is
all anecdotal, from interviews and news blurbs - stray too far from
normal diets for their times.  This might be healthy because they are
getting a balanced meal.  But also, many of them did not indulge in
alcohol or be have been obese.  Another factor seemed to be the
fact that many of them seem to have lots of social contact.  They do
not appear to spend lots of time reading CryoNet digests!:-)
 
However, I see some problems with this.  There is a sampling
error possible here.  People who live long now might be doing so
simply because of factors outside their control.  It could be genetics
or some other lucky combination of factors.  Happily, the number
of people reaching 100 years age is growing.  Even so, I don't
feel like waiting around for the results.:-)

Cheers!

Daniel Ust

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