What is the secret to living until 110 years old? Researchers say record-keeping is inadequate

According to one researcher, most of what we know about humans living to very old ages is based on erroneous information, including the science behind the “blue zones” famous for their high proportion of people over 100. It’s based on data.

The desire to live as long as possible has led to a booming lifestyle industry that sells supplements, books, techniques, and tips to those who want to know the secrets of the world’s oldest people.

But Saul Justin Newman, a researcher at University College London’s Center for Longitudinal Research, told AFP that most of the data on the extreme elderly is “junk to a truly shocking degree”.

Newman’s study, which is currently under peer review, looked at data on centenarians and supercentenarians, people who live to be 100 or 110 years old, in the United States, Italy, the United Kingdom, France, and Japan.

Contrary to expectations, he found that supercentenarians tend to be in poor health, have high poverty levels, and come from areas with poor record-keeping.

The real secret to super long life seems to be to “move to a place where birth certificates are rare, teach your kids about pension fraud, and start lying,” says the Ig Nobel Prize, a humorous version of the Nobel Prize, in September. said Newman, who received the award.

Just one example is Munemoto Kato, who was thought to be Japan’s oldest living person until his mummified body was discovered in 2010.

It turned out that he had passed away in 1978. His family was arrested for collecting 30 years’ worth of pension money.

The government then launched an investigation and found that 82% of Japan’s centenarians, or 230,000 people, were either missing or dead.

“Their paperwork is in place. They’re just dead,” Newman said.

This points to the problem that Newman is trying to solve: that to confirm age in this field, you have to triple-check very old documents that may have been wrong all along.

The industries that have sprung up around blue zones are one of the “symptoms” of the problem, he said.

“I only live for my pension day.”

Blue zones are areas around the world where people are said to live disproportionately longer and healthier.

The term was first used in 2004 by researchers referring to the Italian island of Sardinia.

The following year, National Geographic reporter Dan Buettner wrote an article that included Japan’s Okinawa Islands and the California city of Loma Linda.

Buettner admitted to the New York Times in October that he only featured Loma Linda because his editor told him, “We need to find America’s blue zones.”

The reporter collaborated with some demographers to launch a lifestyle brand, Blue Zones, and added Costa Rica’s Nicoya Peninsula and Greece’s Ikaria to its list.

However, as seen in Japan, subsequent government records cast doubt on the data for older adults in these regions.

In Costa Rica, Newman said, a 2008 study found that 42% of people over 100 years old had “lied about their age” on previous censuses.

For Greece, they found 2012 data suggesting that 72 percent of the country’s centenarians are either dead or fictitious.

“The only time they live is pension day,” Newman said.

Several prominent Blue Zones researchers wrote a rebuttal earlier this year, calling Newman’s work “ethically and academically irresponsible.”

They accused Newman of referring to larger areas of Japan and Sardinia, when the Blue Zones were smaller areas.

Demographers also stressed that they had “meticulously verified” the ages of supercentenarians in the Blue Zones by reviewing historical records and registers dating back to the 1800s.

Newman said this argument illustrates his point.

“If you start with the wrong birth certificate, it gets copied to everything and you end up with a completely inconsistent, completely wrong record,” he said.

clock to measure age

The only “way out of this quagmire” is to physically measure people’s ages, Newman said.

Steve Horvath, an aging researcher at the University of California, told AFP that he developed a new technology called the methylation clock “for the express purpose of testing claims of extraordinary longevity.”

The watch can “reliably detect instances of serious misconduct” such as a child misrepresenting the identity of a parent, but it still cannot tell the difference between a 115-year-old and a 120-year-old, he said.

Professor Horvath offered to test DNA samples from France’s Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997 at the age of 122 and holds the record for being the oldest known person to date.

Newman’s analysis “seems to be rigorous and convincing,” Horvath said, adding that some blue zones are monitored by rigorous scientists.

“I think there’s some truth to both opinions,” he said.

So what can people at home gain from this discussion?

“If you want to live longer, the first step is to not buy anything,” Newman said.

“Just listen to your doctor, exercise, don’t drink or smoke, that’s all.”

© 2024 AFP