For more than a decade, author Dan Buettner has been working to identify hot spots of longevity around the world. With the help of the National Geographic Society, Buettner set out to locate places that not only had high concentrations of individuals over 100 years old, but also clusters of people who had grown old without health problems like heart disease, obesity, cancer, or diabetes.
His findings—along with easy steps you can take to live more like these cultures—can be found in his book, The Blue Zones Solution.
This island eight miles off the coast of Turkey in the Aegean Sea has some of the world’s lowest rates of middle-age mortality and dementia. Research links their increased longevity with their traditional Mediterranean diet, which is heavy in vegetables and healthy fats and contains smaller amounts of dairy and meat products.
2. Okinawa, Japan
The largest island in a subtropical archipelago controlled by Japan, Okinawa is home to the world’s longest-lived women. Food staples like Okinawan sweet potatoes, soybeans, mugwort, turmeric, and goya (bitter melon) keep Okinawans living long and healthy lives.
The mountainous highlands of this Italian island boast the world’s highest concentration of centenarian men. Its population consumes a low-protein diet associated with lower rates of diabetes, cancer, and death for people under age 65. In this magnificent Mediterranean island people are living longer than anywhere else. Also the number of residents over 100 years old is unusually high. For the last 10 years researchers have tried to find the secrets of their outstanding physical and mental health. https://www.youtube.com/watch?
This community has the highest concentration of Seventh-day Adventists in the United States, and some residents live 10 more healthy years than the average American by following a biblical diet of grains, fruits, nuts, and vegetables.
In this region of Central America, residents have the world’s lowest rate of middle-age mortality and the second highest concentration of male centenarians. Their longevity secret lies partly in their strong faith communities, deep social networks, and habits of regular, low-intensity physical activity.
“I may give out, but I never give up”
Preview 109-Year-Old Veteran and His Secrets to Life
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When you take care of your effort and intention, with a little bit of luck, outcome will follow. ~Amit Sood, Professor of Medicine at Mayo ClinicALSO in a poll in 2010 found that just 16% of Czechs say they do believe in a God, which is the lowest rate among all European Union countries.
The current population of Czech Republic is 10,623,193 as of Thursday, March 15, 2018, based on the latest United Nations estimates. The Czech Republic population is equivalent to 0.14% of the total world population. However, 673 centenarians in the small country where 64% of Czech Republic’s population is Czech, followed by Moravians (5%), Slovaks (1.4%), Poles (0.4%) and Germans (0.2%). https://www.tasteofprague.com/pragueblog/traditional-czech-food-in-prague-what-to-have-and-where-to-have-it http://czechrepublic.wikispaces.com/Czech+eating+habits
People who reach the age of 100 years or more, are currently the fastest growing part of the population. You have learned a little about where they live, how they live, and have taken away maybe one or two of their secrets.
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So you may now be wondering just how many centenarians are there currently living on this planet we call home? Current estimates put the figure of total centenarians worldwide at about 450,000. Exact numbers may be difficult to determine, since many centenarians live in developing or outlying areas, where census data is not often available. However the numbers of centenarians in industrialized nations are still rather impressive.
The West
In total numbers the United States has the most centenarians with currant estimates as high as 72,000. If the population of centenarians continues to increase at its current rate of expansion there could be close to 1 million people of 100 years of age or more by 2050 residing in the US. In the UK while the overall numbers of centenarians are much smaller the trend is the same. The Office of National Statistics reports around 9000 centenarians today in The UK and Wales, a 90-fold increase since 1911, a 7% plus increase since 2005. At the current rate of expansion, UK’s centenarian population could reach over 40,000 by 2031. As in other parts of the industrialized world people over 90 are the fastest growing segment of the population in the UK.
The East
In total numbers of centenarians Japan is second to the US, with a current population of about 30,000. However that number has almost quadrupled in the last 10 years, making the centenarians population in Japan rising more dramatically then anywhere else. At its current rate of expansion Japan’s population of centenarians may rival that of the United States in sheer numbers in the years ahead. Certainly by 2050 Japan proportionally will have the most centenarians in the world.
In direct proportion to its large population China does not have a high percentage of centenarians, about 7000 officially in the least census. However with the rate of expansion of the population in general in China, and also number of centenarians increasing proportionally, it is estimated that in total numbers China will actually lead the world population of centenarians by 2050, with over 450,000. Since the death of Dominica’s “Ma Pampo”, the “official” world’s oldest person currently resides in Japan, Yone Minigawa at 114.
Everywhere Else
The are many other places in the world that sport high populations of centenarians, many of them claiming to have the “Most Centenarians” (based on their population) in the world. The most recent such claim goes to the Czech Republic where a just completed census says that it has 673 centenarians in the small country. Other countries with large centenarian populations include:
- Spain – 10,000
- France – Over 3000
- Canada – Roughly 5000
- Italy – 4500 – 5000
https://www.aplaceformom.com/blog/2013-9-6-places-america-people-live-longest/
In the United States a growing number of Americans are living to age 100. Nationwide, the centenarian population has grown 65.8 percent over the past three decades, from 32,194 people who were age 100 or older in 1980 to 53,364 centenarians in 2010, according to new Census Bureau data. In 2014, there were 72,197 Americans aged 100 or older, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That number is up 44 percent from 2000, when there were only 50,281 centenarians.
One-quarter of what you eat keeps you alive.
The other three-quarters keeps your doctor alive.
(Hieroglyph found in an ancient Egyptian tomb.)
So how do you know if living right pays off?
It is widely accepted that regular exercise, keeping your weight right and avoiding tobacco all reduce health risks across the board. Vegetarian meals and vitamin supplements also carry clear benefits. But what do you say to the almost inevitable comment that so-and-so did everything wrong and still lived to the age of 96?
Having heard this one before, I offer this response. Outside of positive mental attitude, fortunate heredity and the grace of God, for every one who broke the laws of nature and lived, I can show you hundreds more buried in neat rows. An elderly, healthy priest was asked if you could still get into heaven if you ate junk food. “Yes,” he said, “And a lot more quickly, too.”
It is likely that you personally know precious few old persons who are in good health after a lifetime of bad habits. A relative of mine broke all the rules of nutrition and logic by smoking, drinking, being overweight, and eating lard spread on bread. Yes, he lived into his mid-nineties. But no, he was hardly the picture of health, and had been completely dependent on others and in continual discomfort for many years. Length of life is not quality of life.
It is just amazing how tough the human body can be, sometimes. Beggars in India were found to have fewer, yes fewer, dental cavities than well-fed persons in most wealthy Western countries. In one study of 160 beggars, carious teeth were noted in only two.
The overall health of the beggars was remarkably similar to that of a comparison group of 80 medical students. “Clinically, the physical status of the two groups did not vary much… 94 percent of the beggars were free from symptoms and signs of avitaminosis or hypovitaminosis (vitamin deficiency disease)”. (Pathak, C. L. “Nutritional Adaptation to Low Dietary Intakes of Calories, Proteins, Vitamins and Minerals in the Tropics,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol. 6, No. 2, March-April, 1958, pp 151-158.)
Please do not hurry to catch the next boat to Calcutta just to try to stop Mother Theresa’s workers from helping the destitute. The truly poor and the sick need all the help they can get. Still, there is a puzzle here. Is it what the beggars ate, or what they didn’t eat, that enabled them to survive in impossible nutrition conditions?
Pathak’s above study indicated that beggars ate less and “were always underfed.”
There: the overweight connection. The medical students were perhaps overfed, however, undernourished, eating more sugar and processed foods. The study also proposed that the beggars had better intestinal flora, or friendly digestive tract bacteria, to synthesize more of certain B-vitamins for them. That would figure, for beggars would receive far fewer courses of antibiotics than “properly” cared for students. At the very least, I think we are left with the suggestion that we should eat less in general, eat less sugar in particular, and eat some more yogurt.
We’ve tried a few impromptu nutritional experiments in our house. My son had a gerbil that ate fresh seeds, grains, nuts and garden vegetables. We also fed the gerbil fresh, raw bean sprouts. There definitely were times when my son forgot to feed the animal at all. The gerbil’s name was Mister Chubb, and don’t ask why from a boy who invented a dish called dogstocket. In round numbers, Mr. Chubb lived six and one half years. That is very, very old for an animal whose heart rate is hundreds of beats per minute. Oh, I do wish I’d contacted the Guiness Book of World Records on this one, but who would have thought to have certified the birthdate of a rodent?
We’ve also had some rather long-lived cats, and even a catfish that is surely eligible for a pension. The cats get raw egg yolk and what the catfish eats is indescribable. Our dog gets carrot pulp left over from the juicer mixed into her dog food, and has never needed to go to the vet except to be spayed. My wife raised an amazingly ancient parakeet. It would eat sprouts, too. (Hey, everybody in this family eats sprouts!)
There is, presumably, a point to all of this show-and-tell, and here it is: the common thread connecting all these species of pets is that we have systematically underfed them.
I do not mean that they have been starved, but they are seldom allowed to eat their fill.
All our pets are a little hungry. In nature, this seems to be the rule by necessity. With pets, and their keepers, it is a healthy rule by design: planned undereating promotes longevity. The best exercise is still to push yourself away from the table. Or the dog dish.
UCLA Medical School professor Roy L. Walford has written a book detailing how he has “added 40 percent to the normal life span of mice and … kept fish alive 300 percent longer than normal” (Zucker, M. Of mice and men: eating less and living longer. Let’s Live, May, 1983, p 44). The book is called Maximum Life Span (W. W. Norton), and is all about “undernutrition without malnutrition.”
The beggars in Pathak’s study provide some confirmation for this idea. Now: would they have been healthier with a better balanced diet and vitamin supplements? Sure. I think we all would be. But with many vitamins, the B-complex in particular, vitamin need parallels food intake. If you avoid unnecessary calories, your vitamin need can actually decline.
This also means that if you over eat, your vitamin need is going to be higher. Unfortunately, just eating more of the Standard American Diet (our SAD, really SAD diet) full of empty calories from foodless foods does not provide healthy quantities of vitamins. Eating more of the wrong thing is no solution.
We all know that eating right is important. Eating less may accomplish more. As expressed in the vedic literature of ancient India:
“Hunger is not the cause of death, for death comes to the man who has eaten.”
“Eat less? Eat right? Why bother, when you are just going to be run over by a bus someday anyway?” Aside from the fact that statistics show that few people are done in so spectacularly, while well over half of us do indeed die from diet-related disease, this is really a question of self-image. If I don’t care, then I don’t have to act. If students declare to anyone who will listen that they “didn’t study, and didn’t even read the chapter,” then they have prefabricated an excuse for the bad test grade that they are about to create. If “everything causes cancer, so don’t tell me what to eat” is part of your personal code, then why bother? Avoid the rush: buy a box now, and climb in.
An ounce of prevention is still worth a pound of cure, and at today’s prices, probably tons of it.
Now for “The Best Health and Longevity Bargains Ever.” May I have the envelope, please. The best health bargains ever are:
- The don’t-stuff-yourself Vegetarian Diet, or as close as you can manage it
- The High-Potency, Natural Multivitamin-Multimineral Supplement
- The use of Extra Vitamin C and Extra Vitamin E Each Day
- Eating lots of Raw Foods (like salads and sprouts) and Fresh Raw Vegetable Juices
How do you prove that this will work? Medical and nutritional research proves it over and over again. So do the many millions of Americans who take vitamin supplements each day. Here are seven secrets they cite for living a long and happy life.
- A Positive Attitude Trudi Fletcher of Tubac, Ariz., a lifelong artist, remains an innovative painter at 100 and recently had a gallery exhibition showing off her new style. She credits her creative longevity to “attitude, attitude, attitude.” Almost all of the centenarians we spoke to \believe a positive yet realistic attitude is critical throughout one’s life and described themselves as optimistic people.
- Diet Here’s diet advice you may not have heard before: Eat like it’s 1960. Our centenarians were critical of today’ssupersized portions; the majority advised just eating nutritious food in moderation. Only 20 percent said they had ever been on a specialized diet plan, although some had become vegetarians. Lillian Cox, 107, of Tallahassee, Fla., confided that in her 50s she became “quite heavy” but resolved to lose the weight, did so and kept it off by just eating less. The stylish former dress shop owner says, “I was a good advertisement for the merchandise I selected on my frequent buying trips to New York.”
(MORE: Do You Have What It Takes to Age in Good Health?)
- Exercise “Move it or lose it,” says Louise Caulder, 101. “I don’t leave my bedroom before doing 30 minutes of stretches. Later, I walk a mile. Three times a week I play bridge. You’ve got to exercise your mind as well as your body — everyone knows that, but I wonder how many are actually doing it.” A few centenarians who successfully maintained their athleticism or gained new skills in later years have competed in the Senior Games. “I always thought of myself as an ordinary guy, but once I was in my 90s, I looked around and realized I was the oldest one at the lanes and I could still keep up my score,” says bowler George Blevins, 100. “So I entered the Senior Games and have enjoyed winning several medals, even at 100.”
Joe Meyser, 102, took up golf at 70, got pretty good and began competing in the Senior Games himself. “I drove to wherever they were holding them that year in my camper,” he says. “It was fun. I gave up the camper when I was 97, but won a gold medal at 100.”
- Faith It came as no surprise to us that almost all centenarians we spoke to said that their faith has sustained them. Most believe they will be here as long as God has a purpose for them. “Perhaps we are here to be an example to others in hard times,” says Roberta McRaney, 101, whose original home was struck by lightning and burned to the ground, as did her rebuilt house.
- Clean Living Harry Adler, 101, says it’s this simple: “Just stay out of trouble.” Everyone’s interpretation of that advice may vary, but many centenarians told us it means doing what you know is right and following your conscience. Also, almost 75 percent of the centenarians we surveyed never smoked; most of the others stopped between the ages of 40 and 70. And while some never drank, most said they enjoyed only an occasional cocktail or a glass of wine; some still do.
- A Loving Family Family was universally important to centenarians. They enjoy their roles as matriarchs or patriarchs and many spoke of the pleasure of watching younger generations grow and flourish. One respondent credited her longevity to “a wonderful and loving family, the good Lord and a rum and Coke every afternoon.”
- Genetics All of the secrets mentioned so far reflect lifestyle choices that can influence longevity to varying degrees, but our genetic makeupmakes a difference as well. “I picked the right parents and genes!” says Andy Weinandy, 100. Until medical science devises new ways to help us work with the genes we’ve been dealt, the secret is that some of us will be more prone to longevity than others. But there’s no reason to be discouraged: A large percentage of centenarians we surveyed said their parents and grandparents were not especially long-lived.
Despite the inevitable ups and downs, the biggest secret these centenarians shared is that living to 100 is worth the effort. Like climbing a mountain, we should aspire to reach that height, not just because it is there, but because the view from the top is unsurpassed.
Lynn Peters Adler, J.D., is the co-author, with Steve Franklin, Ph.D., of the new book, Celebrate 100: Centenarian Secrets to Success in Business and Life. She is founder and director of the National Centenarian Awareness Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to celebrating centenarians and combating ageism.
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Life Expectancy Calculator
The Living to 100 Life Expectancy Calculator uses the most current and carefully researched medical and scientific data in order to estimate how old you will live to be. Most people score in their late eighties… how about you?
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Tis video asked three centenarians what their most valuable life lessons were, and also their regrets. The conversations that followed were remarkable. They talked about the importance of family, people, relationships and love. Their view on life, as an elderly citizen with a lot of experience is truly an inspiration and motivation. Enjoy the video!
Preview Life Lessons From 100-Year-Olds
Delphine Gibson (née Tucker; born 17 August 1903) is also a validated American supercentenarian who is the oldest living American resident. She has been the oldest living person in the United States since the death of 114-year old Adele Dunlap on 5 February 2017 and the oldest living American citizen since the death of American emigrant Marie-Josephine Gaudette, who lived in Rome, Italy, on 13 July 2017. She is also the last known surviving person in the USA born in 1903.
On 1 September 1980, Taylor passed away at the age of 88 and Delphine became widowed. A few years after his death, she became blind. In 1998, it was reported that she was granted a handicapped parking space for her and her caretaker due to her blindness. In 2004, she moved to the Huntingdon Nursing and Rehabilitation Center.
At the time of her 110th birthday, it was reported that Gibson used a wheelchair but was in good spirits. For instance, she was hymning ”Oh How I Love Jesus” as well as joking about receiving presents for her special milestone.
To honour Gibson’s 112th birthday, the mayor of Huntingdon declared the week of her birthday as ”Delphine Gibson
List of oldest people by U.S. state of birth
| United States’ Oldest Living Person Titleholders (V • E) |
| Clarida Roy • Mary Bittlebrun • Sophia DeMuth • Fannie Thomas • Nellie Spencer • Emma Wilson • Mathew Beard • Augusta Holtz • Mary McKinney • Florence Knapp • Lucy Hannah • Margaret Skeete • Wilhelmina Kott • Sarah Knauss • Myrtle Dorsey • Maud Farris-Luse • Grace Clawson • Adelina Domingues • Mae Harrington • Mary Christian • Elena Slough • Charlotte Benkner • Emma Verona Johnston • Elizabeth Bolden • Emma Tillman • Corinne Dixon Taylor • Edna Parker • Gertrude Baines • Mary Josephine Ray • Neva Morris • Eunice Sanborn • Besse Cooper • Dina Manfredini • Gertrude Weaver • Jeralean Talley • Susannah Mushatt Jones • Goldie Michelson • Adele Dunlap • Delphine Gibson |
