Would you want to know how long you'll live?
The new science of longevity might give us some clues. Or not.
As we muscle our way through the dark days of winter — wasn’t January 77 days long? — I’ve been thinking about longevity.
It seems like every second news story or book right now is about living longer. What to eat. How to exercise. Goals to set. Stress to control. And the new and exciting science behind all that.
I think this goes beyond the regular New Year, New You kind of reporting that always happens in January. We who are over the age of 55 (generations that include both Baby Boomers and Generation X) are the leading crest of a wave of a people who expect to live longer as a birthright. That expectation is making major changes in how we think about our lives — and in the broader culture as a whole.
It’s not just about living longer. We’ll also stay healthier longer, stay married longer and be able to start companies, start new jobs and try out new sports well into our later lives. It’s pretty mind-blowing, actually, to think about adding potentially 20 more productive years to our lives. SO different from the expectations our grandparents and even our parents had.
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One of my new favorite cookbooks is called Blue Zones Kitchen, part of the Blue Zones project led by National Geographic Explorer and Fellow and journalist Dan Buettner. Buettner and his team began traveling the world in the early 2000s looking for communities where people not only lived longer but also lived with great quality of life, sometimes until age 100. They identified five regions — from Ikaria in Greece to Sardinia in Italy to Loma Linda in California — that stood out.
What they found is distilled into a compelling set of principles called the Power9. You’ll be surprised at how appealing some of these ideas are.
Take the 80 percent rule, or the idea that Japanese people on Okinawa call hara hachi bu. Turns out a 2,500-year-old Confucian mantra said before meals reminds them to stop eating when their stomachs are 80 percent full. People in the Blue Zones eat their smallest meal in the late afternoon or early evening, then don’t eat again until the next day.
Each Blue Zone culture has a de-stressing routine woven into their lives. Okinawans take a few moments each day to remember their ancestors, Adventists (in Loma Linda) pray, Ikarians take a nap and Sardinians do happy hour.
See what I mean? We can do this!
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One of my favorite journalists, Allison Aubrey of NPR, has also started the year promising to report a series on the new science of longevity. This week, her story followed her visit to the Human Longevity Lab at the medical school at Northwestern, where doctors looked at her DNA, body composition and dozens of other markers of aging. They have also begun serious research into slowing aging down.
But there’s a question I keep coming back to, even as I make another batch of Ikarian Longevity Stew (yes, it’s really called that, but it tastes wonderful) and try to get up early to go to spin class:
If you could know for sure how long you would live, would you want to know? Really?
I’ve thought a lot about this, because recently several of my closest friends have lost key people in their lives suddenly, shockingly, way too soon.
I spent part of last year reporting a story on the burgeoning medical specialty palliative care, which eases both the medical and social processes during a major medical event. Truthfully, it’s difficult to think about the merits of eating Ikarian Longevity Stew when you’re watching physicians in a trauma intensive care unit.
In that place, and for my grieving friends, luck seems to have as much to do with longevity as eating, exercising and avoiding stress. Even the Blue Zones team admits that cententarians have won the genetic lottery.
I don’t want to give you the wrong impression: I started this newsletter so we could build community around talking frankly about the issues that women over 55 face in their life and work, and I’m doing everything I can to set myself up to be in this conversation for a good long time.
But I am also keenly aware that I might not have that option.
So, what do you say? If a crystal ball could show you how long your life will be, would you look?
Thanks, as ever, for reading.
A lifetime of anxiety disorder has guided me directly to the moment I’m in and not a step further. For me, it’s freeing, joyful and fully present.
Life’s sudden loss and long-known loss (like a cancer diagnosis) have taken me to the exact same place. Live now, love loudly and laugh often. ♥️💙🩷
LK, thanks for this community. It is a breath of joy and belonging.
No. I really would not like that, at all. Incidentally, the grandson of four people born in a blue zone, three of whom lived into their 90s.