How can some centenarians lead unhealthy lives?

You'd think that centenarians -- people age 100 and older -- would owe their longevity to healthy habits, but that's not always the case. Tune in to this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com to learn more about genes, longevity and unhealthy habits.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know?
From House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Chuck Bryant. It's freezing
in here. It's not that cold you need to put
on a sweater or something. Well, uh, I didn't expect
it to be chilly. It is a little chilly. Our

(00:21):
producer Jerry's wearing a hooded twitter and the vest. That's
kind of a giveaway. Chuck, Well, she stylished the way
she is she is. So everybody, Um, if you haven't
figured out by now, this is stuff you should know. Um.
And uh, Chuck and I are going to talk about death.
It's part of our death suite kind of yeah, yeah,
realized Everest Bizarre and then this one. Right, And if

(00:43):
you don't know what we're talking about, it means that
they've been published out of order. So just look forward
to a lot of death from S Y s K. Right. Yes, Okay,
So Chuck, I'm pretty sure you're fully aware that I
don't leave a very healthy life. I yes, I know
that have certain vices that are disgusting and um, suicidal. Right,

(01:06):
that's one of many. Basically I shouldn't be walking around
right now. Um, and I've come to um kind of
take hope in. Uh. Someone who's become one of my
personal heroes a woman named Madame Jeanne Clement. And Madame
Clement was a frenchwoman, as her name would indicate, and

(01:27):
she in she died happy and healthy, um and a
hundred and twenty two years old. Amazing. And the greatest
part about Madame Clement is that she smoked until she
was a hundred. So I've got what sixty eight more
years before i have to quit, if you know, I

(01:48):
want to possibly live to a hundred and twenty two,
to live another twenty two years, right, and there there
are caveats to that, right, Um, you know, I plan
on raging against the dying of the light unless you know,
I get like a terminal cancer diagnosis or there's something
that that I'm not going to be able to get
out of and it equals like horrible death and then yeah, yeah,

(02:10):
I'm yeah, I'm not going to go go easy. No,
actually no, the opposite. I'm gonna go very easy, but
it will be by my own hand. Yeah, so that's
my plan. But I'd rather lived a hundred twenty two
and just you know, have the a FP take photos
of me and post them on Getty images that kind
of thing. You just want to be a hundred with
a smoke in your hand, Yeah, totally, and be like,

(02:32):
don't smoke, kids, it's really bad for you. My grandmother
lived to be a hundred, did Yeah you know what, right?
Uh yeah, a hundred years old? Yes, there's another word
for that. Is it a centurion? That's very close? Did
she combat people and and or anything? No, centenarian centenary.

(02:53):
Anybody who lives to age one hundred or older is
automatically a centenarian, right. She passed away between one hundred
and one one. Good for her. She made it to
this centenarian status. So, um, what was she a healthy person?
Did she lead a healthy life? Yeah? I mean she
was from the South and uh so she ingested a
lot of grease and fried foods over her life. But

(03:16):
she didn't drink and she didn't smoke. She you know,
grew on vegetable stuff like that. Now, that's that's generally
the rule of thumb. If you're going to lead a
very long life, especially a healthy long life. They're certainly like,
you can't drink, you can't smoke, you have to foreswear
a lot of stuff. Um, So basically you can lead
a long, healthy, boring life, right. Um. But there's people

(03:38):
like Madame Clement who kind of fly in the face
of this notion, like you're you're she she should have
been dead many many years before she did die from
lung cancer, lung cancer, heart disease, any any number of things, um,
and she wasn't. So that kind of leads us to
this question of how can people like her? And she's

(03:59):
not the only one. She's definitely a rarity, but she's
not the only person who who's lived that that led
us slightly unhealthy life but lived a very long, healthy one.
So how is this possible? Right? And this is there's
actually a field of research, aging research, dedicated to longevity,
so it's not dumb luck. But they're trying to figure
out there's got to be something to this. Yeah, And

(04:20):
the weird thing is is I have a pretty high
chance of actually making it a lot longer than I should,
although I should probably insert here as you know, the
death clock gives me till but a gypsy once. I'm sorry,
a Roma once read my palm and told me I
had till eighty seven. So I'm not sure which one's right.

(04:41):
I think I'm gonna go with the Roma. Well, what
would the other one put you at? Um, sixty five?
I think, well, between six and eighty seven, that's pretty good. Well,
the thing is is if I if I make it
to sixty five, I'm that's not very long. Yeah, eighty
seven is definitely long, but I think if you look
at it in perspective, by the time i'm eighty seven,

(05:03):
eight seven will probably be like sixty five is now.
Either way I'm going down, I can tell, but you'll
look like you're exactly So. Um, how did we get
on this one? You need you to leave me back there, buddy,
Well we need to go back. It's Jeans, Josh oh No. First, first, yes,
they're pretty sure that it is Jenes. Surely there's a

(05:24):
genetic cause. And the whole reason why there's pretty much
evidentiary proof that that genes do play role is that
this whole families of centenarians and if if genetics didn't
play a major role in longevity, uh, then the the
probability of a family having like three or four UM

(05:46):
centenarians is like astronomically unlikely, right, So, yes, genes play
a role, but there's another mechanism that the kind of
a physiological mechanism, the starvation. Yeah, yeah, restricted caloric intake.
And it's gonna say, right it is, well just you know,
just through observation um and in studies in like worms

(06:08):
and uh, I think yeast, yeast, yeast ratch, which is
a fun guy, not a plant, by the way, we've
learned many times over. Yeah, but the rats in particular
are the ones who are really kind of giving up
the secrets of what genes might lie behind us. But
you want to talk about a clerk restricted diet first,
and what happens with that, Well, yeah, they found out
they did some like you were talking about tests on rats,

(06:30):
and they found that the rats fewer calories than their
beefy counterparts, uh called caloric restriction. Uh. They live longer,
so and healthier. Evidently longer and healthier. Part of it
is a leanness leads to um longevity and health. Generally,

(06:51):
fat is although our body has a mechanism for storing
it in. Uh. In the lean times, if you'll forgive me, Um,
it's actually not very good for us. We we make
much better use of carbohydrates and proteins UM and other nutrients. Um.
That's kind of like that. The it's it's the bottom
of the barrel nutrient right right. I know when I

(07:12):
was doing my survival work in the how long can
you live without food and water? That kind of thing
that when you start to starve, your fats are the
first thing to go than carbohydrates and the proteins, which
means that's your body itself. Right. So um, So we
know that a caloric restricted diet is a good thing,
but we just what what longevity researchers are trying to

(07:33):
figure out it is exactly how this keeps us um
healthy and the mechanism behind it. Right. So, one one
of the genes that's been studied is the s I
R T one gene. That's one, and it's my favorite
the longevity genes. Yes, well mind the other one. We'll
get to this, okay. Well, which, by the way, I've
dubbed the ponta da leon gene like that. Did you

(07:56):
notice that in the article that was all Josh I believe, Okay? So, Um,
the s I R T one gene actually curiously was
studied by two independent studies, one at Harvard and one
at m I T. And they both published their findings
in June two four, within like sixteen days of one another. Yeah,
it kind of makes me wonder if they were, you know,

(08:17):
looking on each other's test paper. Can't you see like
some eggheads like huddled over like the study um so uh.
What one of them found was that the s i
r T one gene inhibits the expression of this protein
called backs. Right, no matter whether your cells are doing
well or damaged, they have a specific life time right

(08:43):
right there, They have a lifespan and they could be
healthy as an ox. But once they reached this the
end of this lifespan, um, this protein backs comes in
and actually creates a poptosis, and a poptosis is um
program cellular death. Like it's an execute. Wow. Now, what
s i r T one does is it prevents the
expression of of backs, right, and so therefore it grant

(09:08):
sells a stay of execution so they can keep working longer.
And it's ultimately cellular death that that leads to death
from old age, non disease, non environmental factors, but just
your cell stop dividing and reproducing and stop function about it. Right,
So the s I r T one gene has been
shown to produce that, right, But it also um it

(09:30):
also creates a process where fat is shed more quickly,
so you become leaner basically with a reduced calorie diet,
your body inner survival mode and s I r T
one really comes into play. But as you said, you
have another favorite gene, which indicates that there's that's not
the only gene involved in this. No, and and I'll

(09:52):
likelihood there's probably more than one gene involved at a
time as well. Yeah, there's there's a guy who's conducting
his study of massage you sits on longevity, and he
he says probably about eight thousand genes are responsible for it.
Is that Dawkins. No, that's Pearls I believe is his name.
We'll get the Dawkins too, right, Yeah, oh yeah, I
promise me. I promised, uh, my favorite gene, Josh. And

(10:16):
this category is I don't know how you would say it,
f O x O three so three A I like
fox O three A. Yeah, that's what we'll call it.
And that when they tested on worms and it had
a definite effect on the lifespan of a worm. Uh.
They were able to turn this gene on and off
by adding compounds that basically target and shut down these

(10:38):
specific genes. Yeah, they're called the gene silencing compounds. They've
used them to create tearless onions. Oh really, Yeah, how
I need to get some of those stuff kills me.
I prepared to pay seventeen bucks an onion. Nough pal really. Oh,
genetic research didn't come cheap. Yeah, I guess I'll just
fry as they cook. Uh. So um. Yeah, they found
out when they had the gene turned on, the worms

(11:00):
lived a lot longer. So uh. They also found that
the same gene was in a lot of elderly Japanese people,
and Okinawa has the largest concentration per capita of centenarians
anywhere else in the world. And centurions, yeah, they're still
running around. Uh. And they also found it in elderly Germans.

(11:21):
So that kind of proved that it's not you know,
drawn along continental or racial bounds. Right. And there's there's
there's another Um, there's another gene. It's the insulin growth
factor one gene one, yeah, good one. And they found
that in a in a population of Ashkenazi Jews. You

(11:43):
know what those are? Look that up. I I know,
apparently they're Jewish people that from medieval Jewish people in
Western Germany, so direct descendants of that line. I got you,
all right, Yeah, I knew that they were a very
specific um group. But they found in women in this
group that the i g F one gene had a mutation,

(12:04):
and i g F one is partly responsible for creating
growth hormone. And these women are generally small in stature
as well. Um, and one of the researchers who connected
the study on them, I just found this kind of
flawed logic. I mean, it makes sense, but sometimes biologists,
geneticists and you know, evolutionists make certain leaps. They go

(12:28):
from A to C without hitting B as we like
to say, which I've done before. And yeah, I was
not mad at you, by the way. Um. So this
one researcher positive that, you know, because they're smaller, they're
living longer, and a pony lives longer than a horse.
And I was, I don't know, for some reason that
just I was like, back that up, dude, you know, um,

(12:50):
But I think the more likely explanation is that cancer
has been shown to be fueled by growth hormones. So
if you're producing last, that would lead you to believe
that you're you have less of a likelihood of dying
of candida. That's an adcy I can get behind right now.
The the problem is is this shouldn't just express itself
in women, this mutation or should it. Let's talk about

(13:14):
Richard Dawkins zoologists. Yes, yes, he has a theory that
um or perhaps a hypothesis, as we've been corrected, not
the same thing. That everything that can reproduce basically is
only a vessel for its genes, for carrying out you know,
and putting your genes and your son or daughter, and
then that goes on and their son or daughter, and

(13:36):
it's a vessel essentially. Right, We're basically like a yeah,
we're a vessel for a genetic line. Almost it's so
disturbing to look at it like this, but almost like
a parasite, you know what I'm saying. Like everything we're doing,
every flaw we have, every every good thing that's going
on with us is genetic, right, and then we die,

(13:57):
but our genetic klein gets passed on. It's surely so
if you look at it like that, then the genes
would only be concerned with getting us to reproduction age,
and they wouldn't care whether or not. Right that, they
wouldn't concern itself with the Evolutionarily speaking, it's pretty interesting.
But the thing is is, um, there is a case
you could make for women having longevity genes but not men. Well,

(14:20):
so they could reproduce longer. Yeah, they would have a
healthier lifespan and thus their reproductive age would be greater,
so they could produce more offspring and the genetic line
would would have even more of a chance of survival. Yeah,
but women only produced reproduced for what like half their
life roughly, I don't I don't think even that. Let's
say like fifteen to fifty. Yeah, I was just thinking

(14:42):
about the end date. Actually that's probably about half a lifetime. Sure, Yeah,
depending on who you are. Although fifty I don't even
know if you could do that. That's probably kind of
a freak occurrence if you're fifty and have a kid. Yeah,
I think anything over forty is isn't always guaranteed yeh.
And medically speaking, even a thirty five is considered how
risk pregnancy today inya, so that's Dawkins position, and um

(15:07):
the O B g y n Ruth Fettes was the
one who posited that um hypothesis of that explanation of
why women would have a long devity gene and not men. Clearly,
though we don't really have an idea yet, or else
we we, this podcast would have been much shorter. We
would have said, it's the FOXO three a gene. You know,

(15:29):
it could be, it could have a part, It could be,
but I think more likely it's it's a bunch of
jeens working together. Yeah, and once we figure it out,
we're gonna figure out how to harness it. We're all
gonna be walking around at twenty five getting in boxing
matches with kangaroos. Still, Uh, We're you gonna mention the
Hayflick limit because I thought that was kind of cool.
You kind of talked about it earlier, but that I

(15:50):
didn't know this until i'd read the article. You were
talking about cells having a shelf life basically until they
can die out or as many times as they can
can split, and the Hayflick limit. Um. Dr Hayflick Leonard
Hayflick noticed that fifty times is the number that a
cell can can split and then it stops. Right. But

(16:10):
he also figured out that if you take an old
cell and put a young nucleus in it, it'll keep
going just also very coolm right. And then as it
as it reaches closer and closer to that fifty fifty
division limit, it starts to slow down more and more,
and then it finally gets the fifty and stops. But yeah,
you can, um, you can replace the nucleus and it

(16:32):
will jam on it interesting, much like a old man
goes after a younger woman. Let's go out on a
morality tail, Chuck. I think that's a good idea. Yeah,
you want to talk about old Tom Parr. Old Tom Parr.
Is that actually how he's known? Actually they knew him
as old par but yeah Tom Parr. Yeah, but old
Tom Parr. Yeah, I could. I could hardly believe this,

(16:54):
but since you came up with it, I will believe it.
Um par was a hundred I'm sorry. He was born
in fourteen eighty three, so we need to point out
that at the time, in fourteen eighty three year lifespan
was what two something like that, That's what I read. Um.
He lived as a single man until he was eighty,
so he more than doubled his lifespan already, which is amazing.

(17:17):
And then he got married and started having kids at
eighty and at a hundred. Uh he apparently fathered an
illegitimate child with another woman. Yeah, he was publicly chastised. Uh.
He was three times the age at this point almost
and he had an llegitimate Yeah. Yeah, he was killing

(17:37):
it basically. Um. Everybody else is just dying around him
and he's fathering illegitimate children at age one hundred, right, Um,
and he actually uh, he became fairly well known in
England as you can imagine. Um, his birthdate is tentative,
but they're pretty sure based on the age that he
supposedly entered the service, um that he was born around.

(17:59):
So yeah, and they know exactly when he died. So
even if it was off, it could have been off
by not too terribly much. Huh. Um. So so this guy,
he was asked many times like what his secret was.
And he was like a real salt of the earth
farmer who liked to you know, father illegitimate children. Um.
But he ate like a very steady diet. Um. He

(18:21):
drank um, not meat, I guess he drank ale fairly regularly,
but he I vibed in cider only on special occasions,
So I guess cider was a lot stronger back hard stuff. Yeah. Um,
And he just kind of lived as much of a
healthy life as people lived in the fifteen, sixteenth, and
seventeen centuries. The guy made it to see three centuries right,

(18:41):
unbelievable what God him was at the age of a
hundred and fifty two? Um, this this uh courtier who
had fallen out of grace with King Charles um decided
he was going to get back in the King's good
graces by bringing old Tom Parr to court and basically
parading him around. Like check, this whole guy always a
hunt two. So old Tom Parr this is first taste

(19:05):
of like court life and basically he parties like a
rock star for two weeks dead. And I mean, you
think a hundred and fifty two now is just unthinkable.
And this is when the average life fan is thirty
two years, so I can't even imagine he must have been.
That was a terrible idea, it was, And you have
to imagine, like did King Charles in this disgraced courtier.

(19:27):
I mean, like It's almost like um ending up with
some sort of thrill kill Colt and then you know,
dying because you weren't. You're totally out of like your
your league, you know, kind of thing like did they
feel bad that they killed old m bar getting him
wasted and feeding him pig and duck and stuff he
had never written before? So yeah, I bet they did. Yeah,
I can't tell. I'm curious. I wonder if the history

(19:48):
books write about stuff like that. Well, let's find out.
Chucking will check out, give an update, and we will
follow up. Yeah, well, there's plenty more to read. All
you have to do is type in uh, some of
the world's oldest people or old then unhealthy in the
handy search bar at how stuff works dot com. So, Chuck,
let's did you know I have a question for you?
Did you know that if you my friend went onto

(20:11):
iTunes right now and typed in super stuffed to words
into their search bar, our spoken word album would come up.
Spoken word album. We have a spoken word album, Chuck.
I know that you were kind of zonked for a
while while we were doing this. We had to prop
him up like a dope monkey. Um, but he did
a great job. Regardless. I can only imagine if we

(20:32):
get to do another one, which is largely contingent on
how many we sell this one. Um that if you're
not doped up, we will be able to really excel
at it. Yeah, so, um, you want to talk about
it for a second. Sure, it's it's called the Stuff
You Should Know, super Stuffed Guide to the Economy, and
Josh and I talk about economics on a broad level

(20:54):
and on a small level, granular level, and uh we
kind of break it down for the for the everyday
Joe that doesn't really understand what's going on in the
world of economics, which makes sense because we're every day
Joe's got it or layman. I think, as we've put
it before, right are Yeah, So it's up for what
it's an hour long, it's got all sorts of bells

(21:14):
and whistles, interviews. Yeah, there's professional or expert interviews. So yeah,
it's it's not just like our regular podcast times four,
it's it's exponentially better. Right. We get out of the studio,
which is nice for us. Yeah. I think we cut
out a lot of buzz, which is vastly different from
our regular pod, much more professional. Uh So, Yeah, there's

(21:35):
our there's our plug for our audiobook The Stuff You
Should Know, super Stuff Guide to the Economy three on
iTunes right now. If you want to buy it, we
won't be mad at you. We'd love you. And uh,
I'm thinking you want to talk about the blog. Sure, Josh,
let's talk about the blog. Okay, it's been up for
a few weeks now, maybe a month, and we're starting

(21:55):
to get some good interaction from the fan. That's nice. Disnice.
I do a little blog podcast recap on Fridays, and
so if you hear something on Tuesday or Thursday that
strikes your fancy, just log onto the blog and leave
a comment Josh, and I'll chat it up with you.
And uh, yeah, it's been cool. Yeah, that is cool.
And you can find it through the homepage at how
stuffworks dot com over on the right side there. Yeah,

(22:18):
it has our mugs alternately alternate mugs. Yeah. So yeah,
check it out right, Okay, so chuck us about the blogs?
Is it time for listener mailed Josh? This one um
comes to us from a post postal service worker named
Scott and he's from Pismo Beach, California. And remember we

(22:42):
did our thing on junk mail. Yes, and how awful
and evil it is. Turns out junk mail is actually
keeping the Postal Service in business really a large degree. Yeah,
and this is something we never consider, and that's why
we wanted to read this, because sometimes there's another side
of the coin that that we don't really realize, and
this is definitely the case. Um, Josh and Chuck, you

(23:02):
guys feel like a couple of old poker buddies to me.
Very nice way to keep going there. Scott Um writing
in response to junk mail. I'm a letter carrier for
the US Postal Service, and I can assure you that
on a superficial level, I hate junk mail even more
than you. I sometimes loathe having to mess with all
that seemingly used to scarbage on a daily basis. However,
it is a huge source of revenue for the Postal

(23:23):
Service and surprisingly it does provide a substantial return for advertisers.
And these increasingly difficult, difficult economic times, we post employees
are becoming concerned about the future of our jobs. Mail
volumes dropped rapidly in the so called junk mails, providing
us with much need of business if it were to
disappear so would all of our jobs. So before you

(23:43):
can call an all out assault on this admittedly minor annoyance,
please take a moment to reconsider. I'm willing to put
up a little mailbox clutter to keep alive one of
our nation's oldest and most important professions. From Scott and m.
Giddy up Scott and I believe Eve. Just last week
the Postal Service announced a lot of layoffs and this

(24:04):
was just a few days ago, So it kind of
think we're responsible for it, think so, I hope not?
So what we'll tell people then? Junk mail apparently is
keeping the postal service open, so do your best to
recycle it and uh and deal with things that way.
If you want to be taken off a list, you
can be taken off a list, But we can't completely
stop jumpmail, or else there would be no more Pony Express.

(24:25):
It also makes for really good artwork too. Yeah. Well,
if you want to give us another perspective, I'm reality.
You can dose this by sending an email to stuff
podcast at how stuff works dot com wow for more
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(24:47):
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