Old and Healthy? Thank Your Genes

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At 98, Harold Laufman plays the violin, prepares dinner for relatives and throws a joint birthday party with his 31-year-old neighbor. He is writing a book about life after 95 and calls his girlfriend “feisty.” The retired surgeon says, “I wake up every morning with an agenda for the day.”

According to research published August 3 in the online edition of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, Laufman probably owes his longevity to the genes he inherited. Dr. Nir Barzilai, Chair of Aging Research and Director of the Institute for Aging Research at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University, was lead researcher in a study that looked at over 500 Ashkenazi Jews. All were between ages 95 and 117 and were living independently. Three quarters were women. They were enrolled in the Longevity Genes Project.

The advantage of focusing on the Ashkenazi Jews was their genetic homogeneity. A trained interviewer asked questions about their lifestyles at age 70—drinking and smoking, diet and exercise. The results were compared with responses from 3,164 people surveyed for the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, conducted between 1971 and 1975.

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Read more: aging, healthy policy, longevity, old age, public health

Photo from Urbankudos via Flickr Creative Commons

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Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of
Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

Joe R.

3:04PM PDT on Mar 27, 2012

I can't afford to live that long.

send a green star

colleen p.

6:09PM PST on Dec 22, 2011

lies. everyone knows it is 100% a vegan diet. thats what "they" told me.

SUDHIR S.

6:10AM PST on Nov 27, 2011

Thanks a lot its quite inspiring I feel I may also go on the path lead by them,I hv compleated my53 years and I feel myself as young as 25.I wish all msy live long and healthy.

Ellie D.

4:30PM PST on Nov 10, 2011

thanks

Glen P.

2:43PM PDT on Oct 6, 2011

I would LOVE to live to 100 or even much longer, but only if in good health.

But even if in perfect healthy I wouldn't want to live for 5,000 Million Billion Trillion Quadrillion years to the googolplex power (which doesn't even begin scratch the surface of eternity), like religious people apparently are imagining when they pine about everlasting life.

Betsy M.

9:04AM PDT on Aug 13, 2011

No. Not genetics. Cohesive, positive culture.

Loo S.

4:15AM PDT on Aug 13, 2011

thanks for sharing.

Andrew C.

4:29AM PDT on Aug 12, 2011

Synthetic organs if properly designed can not only be mass produced cheaply (no waiting list), but if manufactured correctly can be installed easily (low cost surgeries). Another benefit is that unlike biological transplants that run the risk of infecting you with whatever the donor had (disease or bad DNA) synthetic organs can be controlled for quality.

Synthetic organs would VASTLY reduce the cost of health care for everyone. I look forward to a future where I can pick up a new heart, AND get it installed at Wal-Mart. Maybe it will have a built in MP3 player. =3

4:28AM PDT on Aug 12, 2011

I will say this though, if immortality is to be had it have to be had more via technology than biology.

Biological parts have DNA which carries a lot of garbage along with the necessary blueprint of making a human be a human. Genetic flaws turn up in a wide variety of ways from the manageable (near sightedness) to the potentially lethal (high blood pressure).

I am sure we can screen problematic genetic code out, and eventually get to a point that we are working from a “pure base DNA code.” Even with pure DNA we would still be working with the limitations of biological material, and have to deal with gene mutating breakdowns that lead to cancer and organ failure.

With synthetic organs we remove the flawed DNA, and replace it with something that is incapable of mutation. It will still break down over time, but part failure will be contained to the part alone instead of spreading throughout the body and damaging other parts like we have with biological organs.

Synthetic organs if properly designed can not only be mass produced cheaply (no waiting list), but if manufactured correctly can be installed easily (low cost surgeries). Another benefit is that unlike biological transplants that run the risk of infecting you with whatever the donor had (disease or bad DNA) synthetic organs can be controlled for quality.

Synthetic organs would VASTLY reduce the cost of health care for everyone. I look forward to a future where I can pick up a new heart, AND get it

4:26AM PDT on Aug 12, 2011

I inherited nothing but garbage DNA from my parents. So other than being highly intelligent, it's a wonder I'm not dead yet, and I'm only 34.

So...100?...not too sure about that.