Live to be 100
An old joke asks: “Who the heck wants to live to be 100?” Answer: “A 99-year-old.” I recently attended a funeral for a woman who died at age 101 years. She lived in the mountains and was active till the end, even skiing regularly until she was 95. The attendance at her burial was impressive, although all of her peers had long said goodbye to the world. She had clearly done something right in her life, and I wanted to know how to follow in her footsteps. So I did some digging. Our lifespan is believed to be determined 10% by our genetics and the remaining 90% by environmental factors. If that is true, then there is a lot that we can be doing to extend not only our number of years, but the quality of life in those years. Studies have been conducted in the world’s Blue Zones, namely, regions in the world where people not only live the longest, but are also the healthiest. The top five include: Loma Linda, California; Okinawa, Japan; Sardinia, Italy; Nicoya, Costa Ri...