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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Boston Herald Review by Michael Lasalandra, April 8, 1999
By A Customer
Perls imparts wisdom for living to a ripe old age Want to know how to live to a ripe old age? Dr. Thomas Perls' new book, ``Living to 100'' is about as good a guide as you are likely to find. Perls, a geriatrician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, has been studying centenarians for years. This book, written with Margery Hutter Silver and John F. Lauerman, summarizes Perls' work and offers tips on how anyone can increase his or her odds on making it to a very old age. It turns out living to the century mark isn't as rare as one might think. There are currently more than 50,000 centenarians in the United States, three times the number 20 years ago. You will meet a number of them in this remarkable book. Perhaps the most surprising thing about Perls' centenarians is their astoundingly good health. Perls says he suspected these survivors would be a hardy bunch. But that turned out to be an understatement. Take Tom Spear, who is profiled in the book, for example. He is still playing 18 holes of golf three times a week at the age of 102 and shooting 15 strokes under his age. He hits his 3-wood up to 180 yards! And he's not all that unusual among his centenarian peers. Perls' work with the New England Centenarian Study found that growing old doesn't necessarily mean growing sicker. ``Our eyes told us that the oldest old were sometimes among our healthiest patients,'' he writes. ``Perhaps rather than having survived disease, centenarians were more likely to have avoided the chronic and acute diseases associated with aging in order to live to 100.'' Good genes help, of course. Yes, most of his centenarians were born with genes that helped them reach the century mark. These genes may help them avoid the chronic diseases associated with aging. But does this mean that until gene therapy is perfected it is useless to adopt healthy lifestyles that may help us live longer and healthier lives? No, Perls concludes. Rather, he urges people to look into their family histories, determine whether their ancestors lived beyond average life expectancy, find the causes of death and disability and make intelligent choices about how they can delay or even prevent the diseases that killed or disabled their predecessors. ``People with an optimal combination of genes that affect aging can probably afford to relax and indulge themselves a bit,'' Perls writes. `But those who have family histories of cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's, diabetes and other afflictions should begin doing what they can now to compress inevitable illness into a small percentage of what could possibly be a long life.'' How? By taking vitamins, minerals and antioxidants; performing mental exercises to keep the brain sharp; getting regular exercise; reducing stress; eating a healthy diet; not smoking; keeping your blood pressure and cholesterol under control; taking an aspirin a day; and, for women, considering estrogen replacement therapy. The book gives specific recommendations for all of these items and more. It also includes a test you can take to determine just how long you are likely to live. Perls, however, derides those who claim to practice ``anti-aging''medicine. Those who boast unproven hormonal supplements and other expensive treatments to supposedly delay the aging process are nothing but hucksters, he says. ``All these quick fixes . . . are sold on the premise that they provide the benefits of a healthy lifestyle with none of the work,'' he writes. ``In fact, compressing morbidity may require some of us to make drastic changes in the way we live. Living to be a centenarian takes 100 years of effort.''
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