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MONDAY, Nov. 19 (HealthDay News) -- A young, trim farmer with four or more children: According to a new study, that's the ideal profile for American men hoping to reach 100 years of age.
The research, based largely on data from World War I draft cards, suggests that keeping off excess weight in youth, farming and fathering a large number of offspring all help men live past a century.
Having Lots of Kids Helps Dads Live to 100 - Yahoo! News (broken link)
Being thin is indisputably important as it seems like that wards off many future health issues.
Being a farmer means to me that he ate lots of fresh food - fresh fruits and vegetables and perhaps fresh meat as well.
Being a farmer also means to me that he did lots of physical labor and likely also got a lot of fresh air.
Having four or more children doesn't really seem all that important in the grand scheme except that once retired, the father probably always had visitors... children and/or grand children, and/or great grand children. Probably even lived as part of a nuclear family with at least one of his children's families. Seriously, I bet that does a lot to keep an old man happy and active and living to old age. I don't think it is a coincidence that when I've seen aged parents put into homes and their children don't visit often, those people have succumbed to disease and death prematurely. The more children you have the less likely that will happen, at least probability-wise.
I've read numerous reports describing how really aged people usually have positive outlooks on things too. Glass half empty folks just don't seem to live as long as their positive counterparts. I bet that is an oft overlooked component to living to an old age.
I guess that could be true "back in the day". But today it seems it could kill a person just trying to afford having to many children!!
My friend's family is pretty amazing. She is one of 12 chlildren, and although her father was a physician, they still didn't have all the luxuries most families provide their middle-class children with today.
They got jobs, worked around the house, and helped out with their siblings. They all have seemed to become very productive and responsible adults today and somehow all received a college education (scholarships, loans, etc).
My friend, btw, has 7 kids and somehow financially "manages". Her older sister has 11 kids (ages 2-20) and The Washington Post did a front-page article on her family last year while they spent Christmas Day w/ them. Remarkable.
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Her parents are only in their 70's.....I guess they have a loooooong life ahead of them.
