#9: BELIEF IN GOD OR SPIRITUALITY
I assumed that a good many of our SuperAgers would mention God or spirituality as a reason for healthy longevity, because when we ask them how they feel, they often say something like, “I’m feeling good, thank God.” But only 6 percent included spirituality among their reasons for longevity. That said, though, a significant number of our SuperAgers still keep the faith. Fanny is among those who regularly attend synagogue and remain active in their spiritual practice. She says that when her husband of sixty-three years was alive, the synagogue kept them so busy at their separate duties and activities that they rarely saw each other except nights and weekends.
#8: LUCK
We weren’t surprised that luck made a showing on the list, but we were surprised that it placed so highly. Even at age ninety-seven, chemist Morton Rosoff—a scientist—largely credits luck for his longevity. And that’s coming from a SuperAger who’s been defying the odds from the start. Six weeks after Morton was born, he came down with pneumonia and doctors didn’t expect him to survive, but he recovered, and in the nine-plus decades since, he’s also recovered from heart bypass surgery and a pulmonary embolism that involved such a large blood clot that, again, doctors considered him a lost cause. Though he acknowledges that it’s “not very Einsteinian,” he seems to speak for many of our SuperAgers when he says he thinks life span is largely a matter of chance. But Morton also happens to have an older sister, one-hundred-year-old Dorothy, so he may have more than luck on his side.
#7: KEEPING BUSY AND ACTIVE
Forty-seven percent of men and 43 percent of women said staying busy was a reason for their longevity. And for some, working was part of the equation; 20 percent of the men and 8 percent of the women said they thought it played a role. The life of Harold Laufman may be the strongest argument for the “staying busy” hypothesis. Harold, who died at age ninety-eight, was a modern-day Renaissance man who packed his “extra years” with doing. When I asked him to list his interests for me, the list he came up with was a very short one: “Everything.” Besides his career as a surgeon, he was an accomplished illustrator and painter, and in his eighth decade of life, he began a career in bioengineering. For the next twenty years, he approached life the same way he had for much of his first seventy—by balancing career with all his other passions and doing his best to explore “everything.”
The subject of engagement with life was a favorite topic of discussion whenever I saw Harold: Was his level of engagement the reason for his longevity, or did “good genes” simply make it possible for Harold to thrive for all those years? Whatever the answer, Harold and many other SuperAgers make a convincing case for the benefits of making the absolute most of every day.
#6: NOT SMOKING AND MODERATE DRINKING
Only about 40 percent of the men and 60 percent of the women said they avoided smoking and believed that this contributed to their longevity. Like his older sister Helen, Irving was a longtime smoker, not kicking the habit until he was about fifty, when he quit to set an example for his children. And many of the SuperAgers who did not smoke had spouses who did, but the secondhand smoke did not appear to have negative consequences for them. Morton’s wife, Anne, for example, was a smoker throughout their fifty-four-year marriage, adding to the considerable odds against his exceptional longevity. But those decades of being exposed to secondhand smoke have not taken a detectable toll on Morton.
As for alcohol consumption, we don’t know how much protection the SuperAgers have against its effects, because only 24 percent of the men and 12 percent of the women reported drinking alcohol daily.
#5: SOCIAL OR FAMILY SUPPORT
The fact that SuperAgers’ fifth most common reason for exceptional longevity was social or family support didn’t surprise us, because all the people in our study reported having layers of supportive family members in addition to outside help from social service agencies and in-home aides. Evelyn Edelstein, for example, says she’s blessed with three attentive sons, five grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren, and at age ninety-nine, she had the opportunity to see her granddaughter graduate from Yale. She also has friends who range in age from the seventies to early nineties, and she sees all of them often. Meanwhile, in addition to her synagogue family, Fanny sees her sons and their families regularly, and judging by the lift in her voice, FaceTiming with her grandchildren and seven-year-old great-grandson—“a lovely little guy” named Lev—is her greatest joy. “Oh my God, that’s the best—I love FaceTime—because he’s so cute.”
As important as family and friends are to our SuperAgers, it’s possible that it wasn’t ranked higher because most of the people in our study have lost the most influential partner of their life and their best friends.
#4: POSITIVE ATTITUDE
After enduring significant hardships early in life, my wife’s grandmother Frieda emerged from it all with an unshakable optimism, and that kind of positive outlook is a hallmark of many of our SuperAgers. After her family moved to the Bronx from Poland when she was sixteen, she spent the next forty years living close to the poverty line like many immigrants, but she ultimately prevailed, living to age 102 and finding joy all along the way. “No matter the difficulty that one encountered, she always gave you the belief that it’ll get better soon,” her son (and my father-in-law) Jerry Rubenstein says.
Irma Daniel, who also moved to America from Europe with her family, demonstrated the same kind of emotional resilience. Having fled Germany in response to the attacks on Jews initiated by Adolf Hitler, her family greeted the challenge of starting their lives over with gratitude and optimism. “This was, for us, a fantastic beginning,” she told me with the smile that never seemed to leave her face. Even in her eleventh decade of life—she died at 106—she was grateful for the quality of life she enjoyed. “I think it’s wonderful to get that old and have all your faculties,” she said. In our study, 19 percent of the SuperAgers said they think this positive way of seeing the world and their lives is a reason for their longevity.
#3: PHYSICAL ACTIVITY
Considering that four-star nutrition isn’t common among our SuperAger study participants (see #2), I thought that maybe they were exercising enough to make up the difference, but only 20 percent of them (more men than women) believed that physical activity played a role in their life span. And even though physical activity was the third most common answer they gave to explain their extended life spans, their histories showed that not many of them were especially active. Frieda was a perfect case in point. “She didn’t believe in exercise,” Jerry says, but she lived to age 102 anyway, the same age at which her father died.
There are exceptions, of course—like Jerry, who’s part of our study because he is the offspring of a centenarian. At age eighty-nine, he still plays two sets of singles tennis a day and appears to be in great health. And Lilly, who makes it a practice to walk up and down the stairs of her home sixty-five times a day. Speaking of steps, she also climbed the three-thousand-plus steps at Machu Picchu during a recent visit. And she’s a regular at her gym, where she is often found walking a treadmill, riding a stationary bike, working with weights, or taking a tai chi class. “You have to be active—exercise and walking, lots of walking,” she says when asked for some tips for living a long, healthy life. “And skiing and bicycle riding and…” And the list goes on.