Living to 100 More Than a Lotto Number?

Letter to Ephesians: Want to live to be a centenarian? Stay fit, pray no diseases plague you, and otherwise aggressively address serious health issues before they fester. So suggests new scientific studies on “What people who live to 100 years old have in common.”

Jesus already told us that our time on earth is a mystery that only the Father knows when & how it will end. Yet, we’re now also told “research shows centenarians have lower disease rates throughout their lives.” According to the Fox News coverage, “people who are in their 100s have [been] found [to have suffered] fewer diseases overall, develop them more slowly and are less likely to experience fatal conditions compared to people who live shorter lives.” One 2024 study from Sweden published in the journal GeroScience was cited for its review of historical data from folks over 60 and followed them from 1972 to 2022; the focus was on their age at time of death as well as past medical complications like stroke, heart related ailments, various cancers ... and hip fractures.

The bottom line: “Centenarians were found to have a lower age-specific lifetime risk for all conditions except hip fractures, which suggests 100-year-olds are able to delay & avoid many major age-related diseases rather than surviving them. There are other similar studies, of course, but perhaps the other common take away may be that the human body can only take so much pain & attacks from disease before its potential life span is compromised?

Davd Soul