Living to 100

My father turns 91 later this month, which is really getting up there. And despite a couple of strokes in 2005 and 2006 and a handful of other asymptomatic chronic conditions, he is, to all appearances, doing pretty well. The only thing that gives him any real trouble is a bad knee that he has to favor. So I was wondering the other day just how far Pops might make it past 91. (After all, he still has an older brother, Bill , who’s 94 or so.) The question led me to a recent HealthTalk Live program on living long. The program consisted of an interview with Dr. Thomas T. Perls, a geriatrician who is director of Boston University’s New England Centenarian Study, which for the past dozen years or so has been studying people who top 100 years of age. The interview taught me some interesting facts about reaching extreme old age – and touched on some stuff pretty close to home for my father! One of the things that surprised me was that you don’t have to be one of those “never-sick-a-day-in-my-life” supermen to live to be very old. Dr. Perls said that many of the centenarians they have studied had faced serious disease, including cancer and heart attack. Also, many (40 percent) had chronic diseases, like high blood pressure or diabetes. The factor that’s important, he said, is the resilience of these people – their ability to come back from an illness. This idea of resilience immediately made me think of my father who was so knocked back by that last stroke in 2006 he ...
Source: Caregiver Notes - Category: Caregivers Authors: Tags: Caregiver lifestyle Caregiving support Geriatric Senior Health 100 Alzheimer's disease blog blogger caregiver blog centenarians founder effect jeff muise longevity parents Source Type: blogs