“What is your secret?”

Everyone wants to know how anyone reached 100 years of age. Do you know how you did it?

The answers are puzzling, occasionally comical and often don’t seem to be practices that assure long life.

In an interview I read years ago, a 100-year-old man who was asked his secret, answered, “Bourbon every day.” Church ladies may talk about their hour of daily prayer. There are some scatterings of life-long vegetarians or exercisers but many say they honestly have no idea why they are here 100 years after they were born.

This is research from Boston’s New England Centenarian Study, the largest study of its kind.

This research is the first to define which genes determine who is likely to live longest.

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CNN

“If celebrating triple-digit birthdays sounds appealing, scientists may be able to determine if you’re likely to live that long.

“Researchers from the Boston University Schools of Public Health and Medicine and the Boston Medical Center have identified genes associated with living longer. They also predicted using genetics alone many of those among study participants would be a centenarian. Their results will be published in the journal Science.”

…”People who live to 100 are a model of healthy aging, the study said. Previous research shows that about 90 percent of centenarians are disability-free until around age 93, said Perls, founder and director of the New England Centenarian Study, the largest study of centenarians in the world, based in Boston, Massachusetts.”

Source: CNN, July 1, 2010

Citation: Science, July 1, 2010