Must be something in the water. A few of the Earth’s creatures actually never age. They are primitive species, such as lobsters, alligators and many but not all fish. The key is that they are constantly if only minimally growing throughout life–lucky lobsters that avoid the dinner table can live more than 100 years.
But while the flounder is basically ageless and the Carolina box tortoise routinely lives to 129, we landlubbers must face the facts. Potential human life span is currently fixed by biologists at 120 years–a figure first noted in Genesis 3 of the Bible–which doesn’t sound so bad to the 15,490 Americans who turned 50 in the last two days.
These are the first official Baby Boomers to hit the half-century mark, which is more a media event than an instant world-changer. Yet by the year 2005, Boomers will be in the majority among people between 50 and 74, and by 2030 about 20 percent of the population will be 65 or older. This is bound to significantly change our culture–and a few definitions.
“As a society we will be redefining the meaning of `old,’ ” said Dan Georgakas, author of the revised and updated “The Methuselah Factors: Learning From the World’s Longest Living People” (Academy Chicago Publishers). “I’m not sure we have totally embraced the concept just yet. Too many people still think 70 is old. The Baby Boomers will change that perspective.”
In his book, Georgakas refers to people in their 70s as “being in late maturity.” He reserves “old” for the 80- to 89-year group, while anyone between 90 and 109 is “longevous.”
Other researchers say 70-year-olds are “young old.” Perhaps more important, companies have loosened or even lifted the mandatory retirement age of 65, which was a reasonable standard when first established in 1870 by German industrialists during a time when 49 was the average life expectancy. These days, 75 is the life expectancy in Germany and most other developed countries, including the United States.
“Our goals are still too low,” said Georgakas. “We should be expecting to live into our 80s and 90s–and with full independence. Our health between 60 and 80 should be little different than our health between 40 to 60.
“The human body is programmed to live until 110, 120. We shouldn’t be marveling at birthday announcements on television that someone has turned 100.”
Georgakas speaks with the tenacious passion of a popular-culture historian who has written books about topics ranging from racism in Detroit to filmmaking to the Greek-American experience. He pored through countless birth documents as he traveled the world to chronicle the tales of long-living people for the first edition of his “Methuselah Factors” book in 1980, including a visit to the Caucasus Mountains along the borders of the former Soviet Union, Iran and Turkey. The area is considered the longevity capital of the world. It covers what was then the Georgia region of the former Soviet Union, where the local population has lived so long and heartily that one historian chose their name to represent all white people of European descent.
“Several mountain ranges produce long-living people–Caucasus, the Andes, the Himalayas,” said Georgakas. “There was theory that altitude slows down aging, but it breaks down under analysis.”
So, OK already, what’s the secret?
“The one common denominator I found was not eating that much food,” he said. “It appears you can eat and drink almost anything within limits.
“In every country I visited there was a pattern: People who were lighter tended to live longer.”
We are how much we eat
All of which leads Georgakas to believe Americans feast too liberally on more than cheeseburgers and junk food.
“In some ways, we are bombarded with too much information about nutrition,” he said. “One report says we should eat margarine, the next says butter is better because you want to avoid transfatty acids. The answer seems to be to eat everything in moderation.”
One other note: Many of the centenarians he interviewed in the former Soviet Union said a lifelong staple in their diet was horta, which happens to be both the Georgian and Greek word for green, leafy vegetables.
“But that isn’t sexy advice. America is land of the quickest of quick fixes, though our ways are spreading rapidly to other countries.”
The trend frustrates Georgakas, who happens to be a 57-year-old weighing 170 pounds and holding steady for decades after hitting a big-fat 190 in his 20s. He would like to work off a couple of pounds each year to reach 158–the ideal weight of his youth–by the time he reaches 70.
“When someone in her 50s is complimented, the comment is usually something like `you’re so young-looking,’ ” explained Georgakas. “We want to live longer as young people rather than accept life can have its different stages and possibilities. That’s a mistake.”
Market researchers expect Baby Boomers to blaze new trails as they gray. It’s anticipated they will represent the youngest-thinking 50-year-olds ever to sign up for mountain climbing expeditions, change career paths or lift weights at the gym.
Last month’s issue of American Demographics magazine said Boomers will create a “mid-youth” market that will push aside the traditional “mature market.” It projected great financial gains for the travel and entertainment industries, as Boomers look for ways to live differently from their save-everything-for-retirement parents.
It also clearly indicated the American penchant for the quick fix when feeling, uh, less than youthful: Women aged 45 to 54 spend more than any other age group on clothes, which market researcher Cheryl Russell, author of the article, writes eventually will force fashion designers to quit snubbing their best customers.
Russell predicted a similar change in auto purchases. Boomers she called “Fun Seekers” will be “abandoning their stolid mini-vans and looking for something with style and energy.”
Another sexual revolution?
What’s more, things might get spicier than R-rated movies (which of course are going to be filled with popular Boomer actors who are pushing 50). The 1994 General Social Survey conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago shows the proportion of Americans who agree extramarital sex is always wrong falls below 70 percent among people in their 40s–lower than in all other age groups. Another stat from the survey: The highest proportion of Americans who admit to having had an extramarital affair (22 percent) are in the 45- to 49-year-old segment.
Hollywood is a willing participant in America’s middle-age makeover. Celebrity exercise videos are the cornerstone of a market made possible by former actress and modern-day trophy wife Jane Fonda. Fitness-gadget infomercials with the likes of Morgan Fairchild and Suzanne Somers are a mainstay of late-night cable TV. And you don’t make the A-list without a personal trainer who travels with you.
There’s even a mind-body-spirit connection. For example, Ali MacGraw has a best-selling yoga video and David Carradine is experiencing new success as a martial arts master.
“It all has such a promising side,” said Georgakas. “A lot of great art was created by people in their 60s and older (see accompanying story). Wisdom is part of their work.
“As many Boomers grow older, they will be less concerned about income or career status and more focused on the essence of their lives. They will do things they have put off. It can be an exciting and introspective time for people.”
Not that some of the aging population won’t continue to look for a little outside help. Even Fonda, considered one of America’s most attractive 50-something women, admitted to undergoing cosmetic surgery on her face and breasts.
It was an ironic twist for Georgakas. The first edition of his book was released in 1981 by Simon & Schuster a few months before the same publisher introduced the first “Jane Fonda Workout” book–with material about “going for the burn,” which Fonda later rescinded. Despite a favorable review in The New York Times, the publicity budget for “Methuselah Factors” was soon funneled into the Fonda book because of its tremendous public interest. Georgakas has wanted to reissue a paperback version of the book, and Academy Chicago Publishers were willing participants provided the author submit a completely updated manuscript.
“The biggest difference in the research between 15 years of editions is that scientists have found it is never too late to reap benefits from proper diet and exercise,” said Georgakas. “Whatever time you start will have a payoff.”
Examples: Exercise scientist William Evans, in studies at both Tufts and Penn State universities, has found people who begin even a light regimen of weight training can improve mobility and range of motion in their 70s, 80s and 90s. Smokers who quit can almost return to normal life expectancy within their relevant age group within three to four years.
Even so, no civilization is without its own version of the fountain of youth. Japan, Iran and Germany have all passed down mythology of blessed islands. India has its notion of a magic tree of life, while the ancient Greeks actually identified three youth-granting places.
America seems to be more faithful to its technology. You can expect to hear plenty about melatonin, DHEA and other hormones that possibly, just maybe, can stave off aging if you simply take them in pill form before breakfast.
Secret to longevity is . . .
Georgakas is here to tell you not to count on it. The 90- and 100-year-olds in his book–including some who still invite him to their birthday parties–have lived a long life the old-fashioned way. They avoided disease by maintaining moderate diets, staying physically active and breathing fresh air. It was not always by choice: Some of his subjects were child slaves who carried water up and down long flights of stairs each day; others considered themselves lazy but spent decades as lumberjacks.
“Call it the law of Unintended Consequences,” he said. “I went looking for longevity but what I found was lack of disease. There was no heart disease, no osteoporosis, no cancer.”
“One major problem is people fail to distinguish between aging and disease,” said Leonard Hayflick, a leading gerontologist at the University of California at San Francisco who has researched aging long enough–since 1960–to once be considered on the lunatic fringe by more conservative scientific colleagues. “Many diseases can be reversed, and the medical community is getting better at it each year. But aging cannot be reversed.”
Fine, fine, but can’t we keep it to a slow crawl? What about the adage `You’re only as old as you feel”?
“It’s not a bad statement,” said Hayflick, author of “How and Why We Age” (Ballatine Books), a solid account of the subject that sold about 14,000 copies in hardback compared with an estimated 200,000 copies for the much-hyped, more provocatively titled “The Melatonin Miracle: Nature’s Age-Reversing, Disease-Fighting, Sex-Enhancing Hormone” (Simon & Schuster). “The rate of aging varies from individual to individual.
“We are mistakenly guided by skin and hair color when there are millions of changes going on at the cellular and molecular level to determine your age and `functional life expectation.’ The goal is to live longer and still perform all of your normal daily activities, like eating and taking public transportation. You don’t want to spend your later years flat on your back.”
CREATIVITY KNOWS NO RETIREMENT AGE
One breakthrough in aging research is the finding that senility is not always an eventual result of old age. As if to prove the scientific point, in his book “The Methuselah Factors” historian Dan Georgakas offers up many famous examples of people whose abilities were far from feeble in later years:
Literature: Cervantes completed “Don Quixote” at age 69; Goethe finished “Faust” at 83; Sophocles was in his late 80s when he finished the final plays in his “Oedipus” cycle.
Art: Claude Monet didn’t even start his famed water lily series until his 70s; Anna Mary Moses found her arthritic fingers would no longer allow her to embroider in her 70s, so she started painting and staked a reputation as Grandma Moses until she died at 101; Pablo Picasso created an erotic series of works well into his 80s; Michelangelo was even more prolific, designing and painting until his death at 89.
Music: Verdi composed “Otello” at 73, “Falstaff” at 80 and “Quatro Pezzi Sacri” (Four Sacred Pieces) at 85; Wagner finished “Parsifal” at 69. Pianist Artur Rubinstein and cellist Pablo Casals both performed in their 90s.
Politics: Since 1940, every developed nation has had at least one chief executive older than 70. Mother Jones, who lived to be 100, stayed socially active throughout her 90s and wrote an autobiography at 95; philosopher Bertrand Russell founded a highly visible anti-war group in 1960 at age 88.
Law: Eighty-five percent of U.S. Supreme Court service has been logged by men over 65. Oliver Wendell Holmes was a justice until 91, but his professional longevity still falls way short of time served by Missouri state Supreme Court judge Albert Alexander, who rendered case decisions until almost his 106th birthday.
