The secret to living to 100
Le secret des centenaires...
Quel point commun partagent donc les centenaires ? D’après un ouvrage publié récemment en Angleterre, le secret de la longévité ne serait ni un régime méditerranéen, ni des habitudes sportives, mais plutôt un optimisme à toute épreuve et de longues et belles amitiés...
By the time Jeanne Calment died, in a nursing home in Arles, on 4 August 1997, aged 122 years and 164 days, she had become a poster girl for longevity (although quite how long she lived has been disputed by some). She claimed to have known Van Gogh and regaled journalists with tales of her smoking and drinking. “But these were lies,” writes Marta Zaraska, author of the book Growing Young: How Friendship, Optimism, and Kindness Can Help You Live to 100. Calment only picked up smoking for two years, well after her 110th birthday.
2. Although public records show that Calment came from a line of long-lived people, Zaraska says that “how long we live is only 20% to – 25% heritable”. A gerontologist who knew Calment and researched her case argued that her love of interviews, and even her fibs might have been key. “She was strong, rebellious, curious about the world and fiercely independent.” Crucially, she was an optimist.
3. It is hardly news that unhappy people generally don’t live as long as happy ones. Zaraska contends, though, that one of the most damaging forms of unhappiness is loneliness. The feeling of loneliness signalled the sort of isolation that put early humans in danger of animal attack. It generates a constant, low-burning stress. This could lead to chronic inflammation, which is associated with everything from cancer and rheumatoid arthritis to diabetes and Alzheimer’s.
WHEN LONELINESS IS LETHAL...
4. Calment may have been an outlier, but Zaraska believes that France has a message to share. “The average French person lives over four years longer than the average American – but don’t assume it’s all to do with the Mediterranean diet,” she writes. “The French do obsess about their eating – just about every different aspect of it.” More than two-thirds of French people in their 30s and 40s eat dinner with their family, compared with 24% of Americans. “Maybe,” she says, “the life-prolonging aspect of the Mediterranean diet is not the amount of vegetables and olive oil it contains, but the way these foods are eaten: together with others.”
5. The statistics Zaraska has unearthed to support her thesis are startling. Sticking to the Mediterranean diet – rich in fruit and vegetables; olive oil in place of butter – may reduce your chance of premature death by 21%. Having a large network of friends, though, will cut it by 45%. Having a happy marriage will pretty much halve it.
6. Put them all together, she says, and you may even arrive at “the Roseto effect”. In the early 60s, the inhabitants of Roseto, Pennsylvania, were found to have very low rates of heart disease, for all that they smoked, drank and loved sausages cooked in lard. The phenomenon was ascribed to the extreme sociability of a community of Italian immigrants who had forgotten all about the Mediterranean diet, but not about the lifestyle that went with it. Were they to abandon their neighbourly habits, a local doctor warned, their health would deteriorate.
ORGANISE YOUR SOCK DRAWER!
7. It is on the subject of personality that her book is most surprising. Extroverts tend to outlive introverts, says Zaraska. One Dutch study claimed that each extra person in a network of regular interactions lowered the risk of dying within five years by 2%. “[But] Don’t worry about your lack of a wide friendship group. Take good care of the few close friends you do have.” 8. “If you were to pick one personality trait to work on in order to increase your chances, go for conscientiousness,” she says. As traits go, it is relatively easy to change. “Keep your office neat, organise your sock drawer, set your clothes out the night before.” Conscientious people are more likely to do things that are good for them.
9. “But maybe we should just do things that are already known to work, such as volunteering, making friends and learning optimism. If we invest more in being kind, mindful and conscientious, we are more likely to improve the conditions in which we all live.” O