The secret of the healthy agers

Is there a secret to living to a hundred—and beyond—and still be vibrant and healthy?

Researchers who have been looking at centenarians think there must be something special about them—but not knowing what it is, they say that healthy agers must have a ‘super power’.

A research team from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden tracked more than 170,000 people who were born between 1912 and 1922 and checked their health status from the time they were 60 until their death, or until they reached 100.

The researchers compared each person’s risk of stroke, heart attack, hip fracture and various cancers, and compared those who survived to the age of 100 with their shorter-lived counterparts.

The centenarians not only had lower rates of disease in late midlife, but they continued to have lower rates of disease throughout their life overall.  At the age of 85, only 4 percent of those who lived to be centenarians had experienced a stroke, while 10 percent of those who died between the ages of 90 and 99 had suffered a stroke by the time they had reached the age of 85.

By the time they reached 100, just 12 percent of the heathy agers had suffered a heart attack—just half that of those who died earlier.  “This suggests that centenarians delay, and in many cases even avoid, major age-related diseases, rather than simply surviving them more effectively,” said lead researcher Karin Modig.

Healthy centenarians also avoid other diseases, too, the researchers discovered when they explored the wellbeing of 274,000 Swedes and tracked the numbers who suffered from any of 40 diseases, including high blood pressure, diabetes and heart failure from the time they were 70 until they died, or had reached 100.

Of these, just 4,300 of the group reached their century—and, again, they suffered from fewer health issues.

But what’s their secret?  It could be diet, environmental factors, good genes—the researchers say they don’t know, and so they put it down to them having super powers.

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