Wish I had clipped it, but I was doing "Obit searching" on old newspaper microfilm at the library last week (I'm a volunteer for my area at a genealogy website).

The news item (from 1913) was about a lady---Mrs. somebody or other---who had just died in Los Angeles at 105. Likely her death made the local news back then not only because of her very advanced age, but also because she was the widow of the first non-hispanic Mayor of Los Angeles.

What was particularly interesting is that the lady had had ten brothers & sisters, ALL who had lived past age 90!

I recall several years ago reading an interview with a researcher at a longevity study program (I think at UCLA), who said that when they do a profile on someone who lives beyond 100, they almost invaribly find that their siblings (barring accidental/war deaths, etc.) are also extremely long-lived. Certainly was in that lady's case.

sooo...longevity gene?

Could be.

Many years ago, one of my co-workers mentioned that her paternal grandmother had died at age 109 several years earlier in a St. Louis, Mo. nursing home. She'd only been there for about six months. Previously,she'd been able to care for herself in the family home.

She had her first son in Italy at age 14, and her other five sons after coming to the U.S.

At the time of our conversation, my co-worker had an uncle that was 103, three other uncles ranging in age from 95 to 100, and her own father, the "baby" of the family. who was 89 (& who had spent the previous two weeks re=roofing his house). According to her, all were in very good health.

One of the sons was dead. He was the "black sheep" of the family. Had been a "street person" for years, disappearing for long periods where no one knew where he was. Even with all this, the guy lived to age 92.

Sooo-maybe a longevity gene.

I am going to postulate a theory..

Which, is that people that live to advanced ages in spite of smoking, eating cooked foods, not exercising, etc. simply have immune systems that are able to function at peak efficiency regardless of lifestyle habits..

All of the diseases, bacteria, viruses, etc. simply cannot establish a toehold within their bodies because their white blood cells attack & vanquish anything & everything that enters..

In addition, the waste products of these successful repulsions have little, or no, lasting effects..

Thus, their immune systems are never seriously compromised, which allows all of their other organs to function at peak efficiency for virtually their entire lives..

They age better because their organs are constantly healthy..

The rest of humanity suffers to one degree or another because our immune systems are compromised, & are not able to fend off the things that constantly attack us..

What we see & accept as "normal" aging is merely the result of immune systems that function at a lower & lower efficiency rate as we grow chronologically older..

Who knows how old humans are capable of living to if they ate nothing but a diet of raw fruits & vegetables from birth, exercised vigorously throughout life, & were taught how to (and were successful at) managing stress from a very early age..

Luck in avoiding serious injuries would also play a part in living to an advanced age, I'm sure..

Bruce

Instead of a genetic cause, what about prenatal nutrition and childhood nutrition? Those would also probably be similar for siblings.

I Googled longevity prenatal nutrition, and found there's recent research on it, so it's not far-out nutritional speculation, but conventional science now. Most of the research uses mice fed mice chow as a model, though. Here are a couple of news stories about that:

Poor prenatal nutrition permanently damages function of insulin-producing cells in the pancreas

Mother's prenatal and lactational diet may protect daughters from breast cancer

(Warning: Besides being about abusing mice, the latter article ends with the researcher recommending fish oil supplements for humans, after recommending walnuts. The root cause of high omega-6 to omega-3 ratios is the high ratio in grains/seeds/nuts/legumes, and fish is not a safe solution because consuming excess EPA and DHA above what the body produces from ALA causes blood thinning and increased risk of hemorrhage. Fruits and vegetables have enough ALA omega-3, if a person eats 10 to 20 times the weight of them as the recommended 3-ounce servings of nuts or fish.)

From a skeptical conventional scientific point of view, these reports of family longevity are anecdotal and might just be chance coincidences. There's the possibility of overall genetic predisposition to longevity, which would make sense because humans vary in years to maturity partly because of genetic variation, and lifespan is theoretically some multiple of years to maturity. However, there's hardly a possibility of a longevity gene, because it would have to influence all aging processes and risks of diseases.

A longevity gene wouldn't necessarily be inherited by everyone in a family. For example, if one parent is heterozygous for it and it's a dominant gene, then the children each have a 50% chance of having it and its effect. That is not what anecdotes like these suggest is happening. So the hypothesis that it has to do with nutrition is more likely on the face of it.

So overall it surprised me that commenters here would appear to lean toward the genetic explanation fashionably given for stories like these, practically giving up on the theme of the forum, support for a natural raw vegan diet, when it's very pertinent. That's why I felt I had to start commenting here and now, to try to defend the spirit of this forum, although I've just been lurking for a few months since I haven't improved my diet much yet.

Well, changing your diet doesn't secure you a longer life for sure. I mean, let's not forgot the human brain plays a huge role in how we live.

It's so interesting to hear about this story. I love how different every person can be --which is why i'm drawn closer and closer to learning about anthropology everyday. This stuff is such an interest to me. To see so many different cultures and how that certain human being(s) have/has adapted or used the land is so cool. Both current and present living, that is.

Having a good immune system doesn't make you superman though. I mean surely there must be something so much more then just supposedly "dealing" with cooked food and smoking and drinking -- all these things assumed which are bad for the human body, ofcourse. Hey, they haven't even got it proved smoking causes lung cancer yet. Not to say it's not a huge risk factor..haha -- to living a long life.

For example - it's been shown in study that alzheimer's (sp?) disease is linked to a lack of stimulation to the brain.

"over doing" health could be just as bad for you; like making an obsession out of it; or maybe assuming something is healthy when really it's causing an underlying problem; over exercising - causing stress. Stress, a big one.

maybe if you just do what makes you happy you'll live as long as you feel like living haha. i mean most of the very old (yeah we're talin 90s) people you see seem to have some sort of happiness. maybe it's the cure to everything haha..rainbows and happiness oh yeah


but any more articles on longevity would be really intriguing, definitely

I think if all humans were evaluated for the strength of their immune systems from a gene perspective they would fall somewhere on a sliding scale ranging from excellent to poor with the biggest grouping being in the average range in a statistical bell curve.

In addition to or subtraction from a persons standing on the immune bell curve lifestyle choices would factor in.
If a person started high on the gene bell curve but had bad health habits they could possibly outlive someone who starts life low on the immune system gene bell curve but lives a healthy lifestyle. A person born with good immune system genes and making healthy lifestyle choices as well would have the best chance of living a long and healthy life.

So I think at this time there isn't much a person can do about their genes but a person can make good lifestyle choices that will effect their immune system and thus their potential longevity.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/11/2008 02:30AM by EZ rider.

Lucky lady, she spent more than half her life in a world without pesticides. Poor baby boomers, so few of them were breast fed.

BTW, to add to names:

Jack LaLanne's older brother (and as far as I know, only sibling), Norman LaLanne, died a few years ago in California, a few months short of 98. Jack just turned 94.

And Jeanne Calment, the French lady who died at 122, had an older sibling, a brother named Francoise, who died at 97. Don't know if she had other siblings though. Her parents were also very long lived.

And the beat goes on.....