Do we really all want to live to 100?

DR MICHAEL MOSLEY is determined to live to 100 years old (Mail) and assumes all his readers wish to do the same. He suggests various ways they can achieve this, even if they lack the ‘anti-ageing gene’ — mainly by following his intermittent fasting diet (there’s a surprise), regular exercise and stress reduction.

I am 84 years old and have no wish to go sailing on towards a century. Why would anyone want that slow descent into senility and decrepitude?

The anti-ageing gene won’t prevent your body gradually ‘wearing out’, with all the accompanying shrinkage of bone and muscle, slowing of various bodily and mental functions, and impatient glares from other shoppers as you fumble for your credit card. No thanks.

It’s a shame there isn’t a peaceful and legal way in which elderly people could simply pop off when they decide ‘it’s time to leave the party, thank you all, I’ve had a lovely time but I want to go now’. I guess it’s not going to happen, though, so we’ll all have to plod on and stay as healthy as we can for as long as we can. But not to 100. Oh God, no.

LEE JANOGLY, London NW11.

TO THOSE who aspire to live beyond 90, perhaps to 100, I say: be careful what you wish for. Unless cures are found for arthritis, dementia and other conditions, old age for most people will continue to be painful and frustrating. My mother lived to 99, my father was 84, my great-aunt 94 and my grandmother 96. They had all led active lives, did not smoke and ate home-cooked food. But had they known what their final decade would be like, I think each would have said ‘no, thanks’.

The idea that by eating this and doing that one can prolong healthy life into one’s 90s is just a dream.

CHRISTINE HOLLAND, Heswall, Wirral.