First posted on Health Populi on 6/8/2012
Jane Sarasohn-Kahn, Host of Health Populi
To get to be 100 years or older requires exercise, social connectedness, and good sleep, according to a majority of centennarians polled in UnitedHealthcare’s 100@100 Survey, 2012 Report of Findings.
The key findings of this fascinating survey are that:
- Centenarians have better eating and sleeping habits than Boomers.
- One-half of centenarians regularly exercise. The most common forms of exercise are walking or hiking, muscle strengthening, gardening, indoor cardio exercise, exercise classes, and yoga/Tai Chi or other mind/body/spirit forms.
- Social networks bolster health, with most old-old people communicating with family or friends nearly every day And, laughter is a vitamin, with most saying they giggle or laugh on a daily basis.
- Food is health, with 80% of over-100s saying they eat balanced meals nearly daily. Prayer and spiritual activity also bolster centenarians’ vitality.
Physical health, over emotional or spiritual health, is the most important thing to maintain, centenarians say…and it’s also the most difficult of the 3 to maintain. The centenarians also read to keep the mind sharp, and one-third do puzzzles like crosswords or word challenges like Sudoku. 27% keep a diary or write letters, fiction or poetry.
One in four centenarians has Internet access, which is double the percent from 2011. Most use the Internet to look at photos and do email. 44% search for information and 32% get news and watch movies online.
The use of social media is limited among centenarians at 1 in 8. 16% research health conditions online.
HC polled 100 centenarians (turning 100 this year or older) and 300 Boomers (50-55) by telephone in April and May 2012
Health Populi’s Hot Points: That virtually all Boomers have Internet access provides a platform for channeling health information and services to them, which UnitedHealthcare and other health plans and providers can leverage to improve medication adherence and health@home. That even 1 in 4 of the oldest Americans have Internet access, with a handful seeking health information online, is also an encouraging finding.
95% of centenarians say they’re retired; their average age at retirement was 68..The most common reason centenarians retired because they thought “it was time.” The most common reason Boomers have retired is due to health problems: 20% of Boomers say they’re retired, and did so at the age of 45.
There is a handful of lessons to learn from these wise centenarians about how to live a long, healthy life: have a resilient social network, whether online or off, of family and friends; eat good and balanced meals; keep an active mind and, most importantly, an active physical body.
We cannot know for sure whether the 20% of Boomers who retired around the age of 45 lived by these lifestyles.
Whatever their answer, we all have choices to make every day on these behaviors
Long may you, and I, live by these precepts.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Jane, I loved reading about these findings. I started doing crossword puzzles about age 9 or 10 and continue doing so today (although now I do them on my iPad–Thank you New York Times.). It seems they may be therapeutic and contribute to a vibrant old old age. I am wondering if Words with Friends will have the same therapeutic value…certainly hope so. Pat
An idea for a followup study would be to see how long people live who retire at age 45 (!!!) or thereabouts, adjusted for health status and other conventional predictors of longevity, vs. people who retire much later. I am quite convinced that working is itself a fountain of youth. Not just the mental acuity required but also the inspiration that comes from knowing you’re relevant to people other than your family and a few friends, and that others are being paid to listen to what you have to say.
I would also like to see life expectancy following retirement correlated to whether one has a retirement game plan and sticks to it.
I have researched longevity for about 37 years. There are many factors that promote longevity including a healthful diet, low body weight for height, regular exercise, not smoking, and good medical care. A factor generally ignored is height. While many epidemiological studies find tall people have lower death rates, my longevity studies show the opposite. I have looked at data on longevity in US, Europe, Africa and Asia.
A recent paper by Salaris et al. found that short Sardinians lived longer than taller ones. Previous studies found that as regions in Sardinia grow shorter, people live longer. Another study in Spain found shorter men live longer based on a 70 year study of 1.3 million men. In the US shorter Asians have lower all-cause mortality than taller Latinos, Native Americans, Blacks and Whites. Latinos and Native Americans are intermediate in height and have lower mortality than Whites and Blacks. Another study found that shorter Native Americans have lower mortality than taller ones. Studies of deceased baseball players, football players, basketball players and high achievers in different professions found that shorter ones live longer. Many more studies show similar findings. See my website.
Height is only about 10% of the longevity picture and whether a short or tall person lives a long time depends on many other factors as mentioned previously.