Wellness: Celebrating Longevity and My Mother’s 90th Birthday

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Perhaps it’s only a sign that I’m getting older, but I’ve been thinking more and more about longevity. It’s not so much that I fear death (although who of us can say we don’t fear it at all?), as it is that I’d kind of like to know how the remaining years of my life will unfold. I accept that few of us can know the future, but wouldn’t it be good to have a positive vision for the final decades of our lives?

So often, old age is seen only as a time of decline, depression and loneliness. Call me a pollyanna if you like, but that’s not how I plan to spend my final years. Yesterday, I read a story about the death of Dr. Leila Denmark at age 114, a remarkable life span. But what really caught my attention was this detail in her obituary: she was a pediatrician who kept office hours five days a week into her 103rd year. And recently I’ve been dipping into John Robbins’ study of some of the world’s healthiest and longest-lived peoples, Healthy At 100. It’s an important book wherein Robbins brings together scientific studies of communities where people live much longer and healthier than most of us, and I’ll have more to say about it in a later post.

Today however, I want to salute longevity much closer to home: that of my own mother. I’ve just returned from a quick trip too Minnesota where my family celebrated my mother’s 90th birthday. It was a great occasion, not only because of my mother’s age, but because she continues to be so alive. Although my mother’s health isn’t perfect,

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Photos: Top– my mother at home last fall. Above–celebrating her 90th with eight great grandchildren.

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Want to Live Happily to 100 years or More?

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DIET AND LIFE-STYLE CHOICES MAKE A HUGE DIFFERENCE

Perhaps it is just a sign that I’m getting older, but recently longevity interests me more and more! In this TED talk, National Geographic writer and author of the book “Blue Zones,” Dan Buettner talks about three communities where people live much longer than the average in the U.S. The first is in the highlands of the Italian island of Sardinia where the elderly are held in high regard.  The second is in the northern part of the main island of Okinawa, Japan where people have one-sixth the rate of cardio-vascular disease that we do. The third is actually in the U.S., the Loma Linda community of Seventh Day Adventists in Southern California where men live on average 11 years longer then other American men.  These communities have much in common, a largely plant-based diet for one thing. Exercise, particularly walking, tends to be built into their lives. Family and especially, friendship come first.  One circle of five women friends in Okinawa have known each other for 97 years, and their average age is 102. They stay active, retirement is mostly unknown.  One 97-year old man in the Loma Linda community still performs 20 open-heart surgeries a month. Also important is knowing why you are alive: having a reason to get up in the morning.  It’s an inspiring talk which covers some of the same territory as John Robbins does in, “Healthy at 100,” a book I’ll discuss in a later post.