Free Republic

A woman celebrating her 105th birthday says that celibacy and staying single has been the key to her long life. Clara Meadmore, a retired secretary, who still has her own hair, teeth, and sharp wit, never had time for a family and lived alone until going into care. She said: "I've always had lots of platonic friendships with men but never felt the need to go further than that or marry." "When I was a girl you only had sex with your husband and I never married. I grew up in an era where little girls were to be seen...

ARLINGTON — He opened the jacket of his suit and braced himself."Hit me," he said.What?"Go on, hit me!" he insisted, his voice a mock growl.It’s not every day one is invited — instructed — to slug a man in the stomach on his 94th birthday, but then there is only one Jack LaLanne, the godfather of American fitness.Still remarkably fit, the tireless evangelist for preventive health celebrated his birthday Friday at the Arlington Convention Center, where he spoke at a wellness conference presented by the Parker College of Chiropractic.Practicing what he preaches, LaLanne declined a slice of the cake.His wife,...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - People who want to live a long and healthy life might want to take up running. A study published on Monday shows middle-aged members of a runner's club were half as likely to die over a 20-year period as people who did not run. Running reduced the risk not only of heart disease, but of cancer and neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's, researchers at Stanford University in California found. "At 19 years, 15 percent of runners had died compared with 34 percent of controls," Dr. Eliza Chakravarty and colleagues wrote in the Archives of Internal Medicine. Any...

Plan for long life, without pandemic NANCY STANCILL Should doctors let people older than 85 die in a flu pandemic? A Monday news story saying a U.S. task force recommends denying lifesaving care in a pandemic or other disaster to some folks -- including healthy people above 85 -- was unsettling. They're talking about my mother, soon to be 86. My friend Karen's father, who is 92. Another friend's grandmother, 102. These people live life joyfully, with their minds and hearts intact. My mother relishes foreign travel. Karen's father loves bird watching. The 102-year-old grandmother plays a mean hand of...

Scientists: 115-year-old's brain worked perfectly By ANRICA DEB , Associated Press WriterJune 13, 2008 Hendrikje van Andel-Schipper, who died at age 115 in 2005, is seen in this May 26, 2004 photo at de Westerkim, home for the elderly, in Hoogeveen, Netherlands. Scientists say that Henrikje van Andel-Schipper's mind was probably as good as it seemed: a post-mortem analysis of her brain revealed few signs of Alzheimer's or other diseases commonly associated with a decline in mental ability in old age. "This is the first (extremely old) brain that did not have these problems," Professor Gert Holstege of Groningen University...

Henry Allingham, who was born in London on 6 June 1896, is also the last surviving original member of the Royal Air Force - formed 90 years ago... Now partially deaf and almost blind, Mr Allingham, who was born in Clapham, London, now lives at St Dunstan's home for blind ex-servicemen, in Ovingdean. His life has spanned six monarchs and has taken in 21 prime ministers. Mr Allingham is the last survivor of the Battle of Jutland in 1916, and also fought at the Somme and Ypres where he was bombed and shelled. He joined the Royal Air Force when...

Take a look at this web page. Find out when you should DIE: http://www.abc.net.au/science/planetslayer/greenhouse_calc.htm Propaganda to brain wash Australian children. A questionnaire to calculate your carbon footprint and predict how long you will/should live on the planet.

Edna Parker was alert and eager to party on Friday morning as family, friends, dignitaries and their representatives gathered at Heritage House Convalescent Center to honor Shelbyville's own certified oldest person in the world as she turns 115 years old on Sunday. Shelbyville Mayor Scott Furgeson announced at the party that the city has ordered signs that will promote Shelbyville as the "Home of Edna Parker, the world's oldest person." "It is a great honor to have Edna and her great family in Shelbyville," Furgeson said. Dressed in a new blue and white polka dot dress with a crisp, white...

In the courtyard of a low-slung convalescent hospital west of USC, Gertrude Baines was inaugurated Sunday into one of the world's most exclusive sororities. She turned 114 years old. There was cake. Singing. Proclamations. Superlatives. Because only two other people in the world are 114. There is no one older. A former college maid with a fondness for hats, bacon and Scripture, Baines is the third-oldest person on Earth, according to the Gerontology Research Group, which validates claims of extreme old age. A year ago she was No. 9. It's not hard to figure out what happened in the interim.

Study of long-lived Ashkenazi Jews may yield longevity genes galore A type of gene mutation long known to extend the lives of worms, flies and mice also turns up in long-lived humans. Researchers found that among Ashkenazi Jews, those who survived past age 95 were much more likely than their peers to possess one of two similar mutations in the gene for insulinlike growth factor 1 receptor (IGF1R). The mutations seem to make cells less responsive than normal to insulinlike growth factor 1 (IGF1), a key growth hormone secreted by the liver. In past studies, IGF1 disruption increased the life...

Shorter Women May Have Very Long Lives: Gene Mutation FoundA gene linked to living a very long life -- to 90 and beyond -- is also associated with short stature in women. Daughters of centenarians were 2.5 cm shorter than female controls. (Credit: iStockphoto/Alexander Raths) ScienceDaily (Mar. 4, 2008) — A gene linked to living a very long life -- to 90 and beyond -- is also associated with short stature in women, according to new research. Mutations in genes governing an important cell-signaling pathway influence human longevity, scientists at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have...

Living to 100 is easier than you might think. Surprising new research suggests that even people who develop heart disease or diabetes late in life have a decent shot at reaching the century mark. "It has been generally assumed that living to 100 years of age was limited to those who had not developed chronic illness," said Dr. William Hall of the University of Rochester. Hall has a theory for how these people could live to that age. In an editorial in Monday's Archives of Internal Medicine, where the study was published, he writes that it might be thanks to...

CHICAGO - Living to 100 is easier than you might think. Surprising new research suggests that even people who develop heart disease or diabetes late in life have a decent shot at reaching the century mark. "It has been generally assumed that living to 100 years of age was limited to those who had not developed chronic illness," said Dr. William Hall of the University of Rochester. Hall has a theory for how these people could live to that age. In an editorial in Monday's Archives of Internal Medicine, where the study was published, he writes that it might be...

During her first 111 years, Catherine Hagel was a doer, a talker and a farm wife who taught her children, by example and expectation, the value of hard work, a positive attitude and an utter trust that God gets everything right. Now she lives in a quiet inner place, responding occasionally with a word or faint smile as a nursing home aide offers a gentle caress or her daughter speaks into her better left ear. Still, Hagel continues to break new ground. Today, at age 113 and 73 days, she enters the record books. Hagel is the longest-lived Minnesotan, according...

The name of Jack Kevorkian, infamous for his role in “assisting” the “suicide” of depressed individuals, is being bandied about in discussions of what the next Democratic administration’s cabinet might look like. Possible positions are said to include Surgeon General, Secretary of Health and Human Services, and Social Security Commissioner. Pointing out that “Kevorkian brings the same kind of rational compassion to ‘end-of-life’ issues that abortion handles at the earliest stages,” Democratic National Committee Chairman, Dr. Howard Dean said it “is only natural that his name would come up in the context of forecasting who might serve in the upcoming...

There's new hope for the five million people in the United States who live with heart failure. Scientists say they have been able to grow a rat heart in a lab. They were also successful at getting it to start beating. About 50,000 people die each year waiting for a heart donor. But that all may change thanks to a rat heart, built by scientists at the University of Minnesota. "Everyone has cells," Dr. Doris Taylor told CBN News. "What's lacking is a way to put that together in a 3-D structure that lets you create an organ," she explained....

Drugs much more powerful than the resveratrol found in red wine will be tested to treat diabetes. A novel group of drugs that target a gene linked to longevity could provide a way to turn back the clock on the diseases of aging. The compounds are 1,000 times more potent than resveratrol, the molecule thought to underlie the health benefits of red wine, and have shown promise in treating rodent models of obesity and diabetes. Human clinical trials to test the compounds in diabetes are slated to begin early next year, according to Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, based in Cambridge, MA, which...

Ming the clam is 'oldest animal' Shakespeare was writing plays when the clam was a juvenile A clam dredged up off the coast of Iceland is thought to have been the longest-lived creature discovered. Scientists said the mollusc, an ocean quahog clam, was aged between 405 and 410 years and could offer insights into the secrets of longevity. Researchers from Bangor University in Wales said they calculated the clam's age by counting rings on its shell. According to the Guinness Book of Records, the longest-lived animal was an Arctica clam found in 1982 aged 220. They are like tiny tape-recorders......

ABOUT a week ago, I was swimming in my pool when I had serious difficulty breathing. “Uh-oh,” I said to myself, “now I am about to die.” My wife was upstairs reading, way out of earshot and, anyway, if I were about to have a lethal heart attack, I wouldn’t be able to scream. It turned out to be a nasty but short-lived bronchitis, and as I was lying in bed recovering, I thought, “I will die someday, and before I do, I would like to share with you the best possible thoughts I can, in gratitude for the many...

Baroness Greenfield, the well known neuroscientist and director of the Royal Institution, has joined the likes of Nicole Kidman and Chris Tarrant by putting her name to a computer game designed to train the brain. ** Train your brain: Take the MindFit test At the House of Lords she helped to launch a new fitness routine to play on the insecurities of the masses - the brain workout - and described the results of a trial that suggests that it could help arrest the ageing of the body's most complex organ. "You are your brain and it is vital your...

An iron-lunged pensioner has celebrated her 100th birthday by lighting up her 170,000th cigerette from a candle on her birthday cake. Winnie Langley started smoking only days after the First World War broke out in June 1914 when she was just seven-years-old - and has got through five a day ever since. She has no intention of quitting, even after the nationwide ban forced tobacco-lovers outside.

SHELBYVILLE, Ind. — A 114-year-old Indiana woman who became the world's oldest person this week celebrated the distinction Thursday with a slice of her favorite cake. Edna Parker, who has outlived her husband, children and siblings, was confirmed as the world's oldest known person when Yone Mnagawa, a Japanese woman four months her senior, died on Monday. Dressed in a pink polka-dot dress and costume pearl jewelry, Parker was wheeled before television cameras and reporters Thursday in a dining room at the central Indiana nursing home where she lives. Clutching two old photographs — including one from the early 1900s...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Americans are living longer than ever, but not as long as people in 41 other countries. For decades, the United States has been slipping in international rankings of life expectancy, as other countries improve health care, nutrition and lifestyles. Countries that surpass the U.S. include Japan and most of Europe, as well as Jordan, Guam and the Cayman Islands. "Something's wrong here when one of the richest countries in the world, the one that spends the most on health care, is not able to keep up with other countries," said Dr. Christopher Murray, head of the Institute...

"Americans are living longer than ever, but not as long as people in 41 other countries." "Countries that surpass the U.S. include Japan and most of Europe, as well as Jordan, Guam and the Cayman Islands. "Something's wrong here when one of the richest countries in the world, the one that spends the most on health care, is not able to keep up with other countries," said Dr. Christopher Murray, head of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington." "Forty countries, including Cuba, Taiwan and most of Europe had lower infant mortality rates than the...

William Stein, associate professor of biological sciences at Binghamton University... and his colleagues offer new insights into the world's oldest trees found in an area cited as home to the Earth's oldest forest. Located near the Gilboa Dam in Schoharie County, NY, the region has yielded tremendous tree trunks from the Devonian era, meaning they're roughly 380 million years old. These trunks have been studied by paleobotanists for about a century, but scientists could only guess what the tops of the trees looked like... The fossil, more than 12 feet long, offered the first evidence of how big and complex...

PITTSBURGH - Anger is good for you, as long as you keep it below a boil, according to new psychology research based on face reading. People who respond to stressful situations with short-term anger or indignation have a sense of control and optimism that lacks in those who respond with fear. "These are the most exciting data I've ever collected," Carnegie Mellon psychologist Jennifer Lerner told a gathering of science writers here last month.

Share this with All your Friends... And SHOW this to your children and grandchildren !!!! THE YEAR 1907 This will boggle your mind, I know it did mine! The year is 1907. One hundred years ago. What a difference a century makes! Here are some of the U.S. Statistics for the Year 1907: ************************************ The average life expectancy in the U.S. Was 47 years old. Only 14 percent of the homes in the U.S. Had a bathtub . Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone. A three-minute call from Denver to New York City Cost eleven dollars. There...

Vitamin supplements taken by millions of people every day for their health could be increasing their risk of death a new Danish-led study suggests. The study is published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The international research team reviewed the published evidence on beta carotene, vitamin A, vitamin E, Vitamin C and selenium. The team was led by Dr Goran Bjelakovic, from Copenhagen University Hospital, Denmark. These dietary supplements are marketed as antioxidants and people take them in the hope they will improve health and guard against diseases like cancer and heart disease by eliminating the free radicals...

Man aged 107 forsakes sex for longevity: paper Sun Feb 25, 9:24 AM ET HONG KONG (Reuters) - A 107-year-old Hong Kong villager, who still enjoys an occasional smoke, has attributed his longevity in part to decades of sexual abstinence, a newspaper said on Sunday. "I don't know why I have lived this long," Chan Chi -- one of Hong Kong's oldest people -- was quoted as saying in the South China Morning Post during an annual feast for the city's elders. "Maybe it has to do with the fact that I have lived a sex-less life for many years...

HONG KONG (Reuters) - A 107-year-old Hong Kong villager, who still enjoys an occasional smoke, has attributed his longevity in part to decades of sexual abstinence, a newspaper said on Sunday. "I don't know why I have lived this long," Chan Chi -- one of Hong Kong's oldest people -- was quoted as saying in the South China Morning Post during an annual feast for the city's elders. "Maybe it has to do with the fact that I have lived a sex-less life for many years -- since I was 30," said Chan, a widower whose youthful bride perished during...

The refrigerator is used to lengthen the life of your food, and a new study suggests a similar principle could prolong your life, too. Researchers have found that lowering the body temperature of mice by just 0.5?C extends their lifespan by around 15%. In the future, people might be able to take a drug to achieve a similar effect on body temperature and enjoy a longer life, they say. ... Bruno Conti at Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, US, and colleagues designed genetically engineered mice with a specific brain-cell defect in a region called the lateral hypothalamus. The...

WASHINGTON - Where you live, combined with race and income, plays a huge role in the nation's health disparities, differences so stark that a report issued Monday contends it's as if there are eight separate Americas instead of one. Asian-American women living in Bergen County, N.J., lead the nation in longevity, typically reaching their 91st birthdays. Worst off are American Indian men in swaths of South Dakota, who die around age 58 — three decades sooner. Millions of the worst-off Americans have life expectancies typical of developing countries, concluded Dr. Christopher Murray of the Harvard School of Public Health. Asian-American...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - George Johnson, considered California's oldest living person at 112 and the state's last surviving World War I veteran, had experts shaking their heads over his junk food diet. "He had terrible bad habits. He had a diet largely of sausages and waffles," Dr. L. Stephen Coles, founder

LOS ANGELES (AP) - George Johnson, considered California's oldest living person at 112 and the state's last surviving First World War veteran, had experts shaking their heads over his junk food diet. "He had terrible, bad habits. He had a diet largely of sausages and waffles," Dr. Stephen Coles, founder of the Gerontology Research Group at the University of California, Los Angeles, said Friday. The 5-foot-7, 140-pound Johnson died of pneumonia Wednesday at his Richmond home in Northern California. "A lot of people think or imagine that your good habits and bad habits contribute to your longevity," Coles said. "But...

Maria Esther de Capovilla, the world's oldest person, died in her native Ecuador yesterday. She was 116 years old. By all accounts, she had a good life and was in such good shape at the time of her unexpected death that her family was actively planning on celebrating her 117th birthday. The news of de Capovilla's death wouldn't typically have me waxing philosophic about the possibility of my living to such a ripe old age. But in combination with two other recent news articles, it did. The first story I came across was an Associated Press report revealing that the...

The secret to longevity genes may lie in their potent power to fight off cancer. Over the years, biologists have discovered a handful of genes in roundworms, mice and flies that bestow a dramatic increase in lifespan on the organism that carries it – sometimes up to twice their normal life expectancy. These genes are involved in diverse biochemical pathways including those for growth hormones, insulin, food intake and caloric restriction. But it is thought that they are all have a role in how the body responds to stress. Julie Pinkston at the University of California in San Francisco, US,...

PARIS: People who never marry run a far greater risk of premature death compared with peers who tie the knot or get divorced, according to a study published on Wednesday in a specialist journal. University of California at Los Angeles experts looked at national census and death certification data involving almost 67,000 adult Americans between 1989 and 1997. In 1989, nearly one in two of this cross section of the adult population were married, and almost one in 10 were widowed. One in eight were divorced and three percent were separated. Of the remainder, five percent were cohabiting and around...

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - An 88-year-old Indian farmer, who has never heard of Viagra, became the father of a baby boy and has sex daily and wants more kids, The Times of India reported Tuesday. "I don't want to live to 100 but, as long as I live, I should be able to enjoy sex," Virmaram Jat, who lives in a village in the Barmer district in the western desert sate of Rajasthan, was quoted in the newspaper as saying. The prosperous farmer, with a flowing white beard and a weather-beaten face, says he takes long walks every day and...

Actuaries admit that they cannot tell how long we will live By Christine Seib --------------------------------------------- ACTUARIES, the highly trained professionals who calculate pensions liabilities, yesterday broke with tradition and admitted that it was too difficult to estimate how long human beings might live. For more than 80 years the Continuous Mortality Investigation (CMI) has supplied mortality tables that showed how lifespans were lengthening and how they might continue to improve. Yesterday, the CMI acknowledged after the release of its latest set of tables that there was so much room for error it was no longer sensible to offer a single...

Elderly people who bustle around the house, spend much time on their feet, climb stairs, and hold down jobs might be buying themselves precious years of life. In a new study, researchers used a precise measure of calorie burning to assess activity. A total of 302 people, ages 70 to 82, completed questionnaires regarding their daily activities. All the volunteers got around without help, and none lived in an assisted-care facility or had been diagnosed with a life-threatening illness. This is a subscribers only page, so I expect it should be excerpted, so I did ...

How to live to 100... and enjoy it 03 June 2006 NewScientist.com news service Live long and prosper Perhaps you think you stand no chance of clocking up a century. You know that longevity depends in large part on having the right genes, and one glance at the family tree may reveal that yours just won't pass muster. If so, think on this: centenarians are the fastest-growing demographic group across much of the developed world. Assuming there hasn't been a miraculous Methuselah mutation in the human genome in the past hundred-odd years, we can draw only one conclusion: the way...

Immortality is within our grasp . . . In Fantastic Voyage, high-tech visionary Ray Kurzweil teams up with life-extension expert Terry Grossman, M.D., to consider the awesome benefits to human health and longevity promised by the leading edge of medical science--and what you can do today to take full advantage of these startling advances. Citing extensive research findings that sound as radical as the most speculative science fiction, Kurzweil and Grossman offer a program designed to slow aging and disease processes to such a degree that you should be in good health and good spirits when the more extreme...

If you can walk a quarter-mile, odds are you have at least six years of life left in you, scientists announced today. And the faster you can do it, the longer you might live. While walking is no guarantee of health or longevity, a new study found that the ability of elderly people to do the quarter-mile was an "important determinant" in whether they'd be alive six years later and how much illness and disability they would endure. "The ability to complete this walk was a powerful predictor of health outcomes," said study leader Anne Newman of the University of...

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---Despite research efforts to find modern factors that would explain the different life expectancies of men and women, the gap is actually ancient and universal, according to University of Michigan researchers. "Women live longer in almost every country, and the sex difference in lifespan has been recognized since at least the mid-18th century," said Daniel J. Kruger, a research scientist in the U-M School of Public Health and the Institute for Social Research. "It isn't a recent trend; it originates from our deep evolutionary history." This skewed mortality isn't even unique to our species; the men come up...

A number of studies have shown that restricting calories increases the lifespan of animals, but the biological basis for this has remained elusive. A new report hints that growth hormone, as well as insulin, are key factors in the life-extending effects of calorie restriction. "The implication ... for pharmaceutical development would be that the signaling pathways of growth hormone and insulin may be logical targets for development of anti-aging medicine," Dr. Andrezej Bartke from Southern Illinois University in Springfield told Reuters Health. "Although it would be irresponsible to recommend that healthy people start using anti-diabetic drugs," said Bartke, "it is...

ATLANTA -- In what appears to be an amazing success for American medicine, preliminary government figures released Wednesday showed that the annual number of deaths in the U.S. dropped by nearly 50,000 in 2004 -- the biggest decline in nearly 70 years. The 2 percent decrease, reported by the National Center for Health Statistics, came as a shock to many, because the U.S. is aging, growing in population and getting fatter. In fact, some experts said they suspect the numbers may not hold up when a final report is released later this year. Nevertheless, center officials said the statistics, based...

Americans' longevity hits new highCDC: Life expectancy rose to 77.9 years in 2004, deaths dropped By Kristen Gerencher, MarketWatch Last Update: 11:43 AM ET Apr 21, 2006 SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Shore up those retirement-account contributions. Americans are living longer than ever before, according to preliminary data the government released this week. The total number of deaths declined by almost 50,000, or 2.4%, from 2003 to 2004, the largest one-year drop in several decades, according to a preliminary report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics. The last time the number of deaths fell...

The Stanford University Symbolic Systems Program and the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence announced today the Singularity Summit at Stanford, a one-day event free to the public, to be held Saturday, May 13, 2006 at Stanford Memorial Auditorium, Stanford, California. The event will bring together leading futurists and others to examine the implications of the "Singularity" -- a hypothesized creation of superintelligence as technology accelerates over the coming decades -- to address the profound implications of this radical and controversial scenario. "The Singularity will be a future period during which the pace of technological change will be so rapid, its...

Anyone for tennis, at the age of 150? Ronald Bailey Scientific progress promises us far longer, happier lives. Yet the 'bioconservatives' want to stop it BY THE END of this century, the typical European may attend a family reunion in which five generations are playing together. Great-great-great grandma, at 150 years old, will be as vital, with muscle tone as firm and supple, skin as elastic and glowing, as her 30-year-old great-great-granddaughter with whom she’s playing tennis. After the game, while enjoying a plate of vegetables filled with not only a solid day’s worth of nutrients but medicines she needs...

Churchgoers Live Longer By Robert Roy Britt LiveScience Managing Editor posted: 03 April 2006 11:29 am ET There are many things you can do to increase your life expectancy: exercise, eat well, take your medication and ... go to church. A new study finds people who attend religious services weekly live longer. Specifically, the research looked at how many years are added to life expectancy based on: Regular physical exercise: 3.0-to-5.1 years Proven therapeutic regimens: 2.1-to-3.7 years Regular religious attendance: 1.8-to-3.1 years The role of religion The study, which is actually a review of existing research from the three categories,...