Dear Friends:
As an expatriate living in Spain for a few months each year, I come
across our own special blog. This evening's email provided me with the
following article from Anna Nicholas.
-bhuban
Is routine the key to old age?
By annanicholas
The oldest man in Majorca, Antoni Mut Pol, has just died at the age of
106 and it was only a short time ago that the oldest living resident of
Soller, my mountain town, died at 104 years-old. It makes you wonder
whether there’s something magical in the air here.
Was Antoni Mut Pol's longevity the result of a brisk daily routine?
In my salad days as a Guinness Book of Records adjudicator, I met many
elderly contenders for entry to the book and was forever trying to find
a common thread to their longevity. When I met John Evans, a retired
coal miner from Wales, and at the time the oldest man in Britain, he
told me that he had always kept a regular pattern to his eating and
sleeping habits and stimulated his brain every day. So too did
Charlotte Hughes, who at the same age, was the oldest woman to fly on
Concorde.
Gerty Land, a retired school teacher, who passed her first driving test
at 90, told me that keeping the mind active with crosswords and
reading, and doing regular gentle exercise had kept her in good working
order. One of my favourite oldies was Arthur Cook Merrick who at 93
rode his motorcycle every day and gave me an exhilarating spin on it
when we met at his home in Exeter. Arthur was another believer in
regular exercise and having a simple but effective daily routine part
of which was keeping up with current affairs. The French 113 year-old,
Jeanne Calment, an avid reader, rode a bicycle until she was 100 and
regularly smoked and drank her favourite tipple.
As far as Antoni Mut Pol was concerned, wine and a hearty meal followed
by good coffee kept his spirits up, and he was proud to have worked for
90 years for a shoe factory which later diversified into construction.
Joan Riudavets-Moll from Minorca was the oldest person to have lived in
the Baleares, and was also a shoemaker by trade who lived to 114 and
died in 2004. He too was a creature of habit and cycled until 110.
Although never properly authenticated, Shigechiyo Izumi from Japan,
purportedly 120 years and 237 days old when he died, drank barley wine
daily and took up smoking when he was 70. When Norris McWhirter, the
founder of the Guinness Book of Records, met him, he was amazed at his
sprightly demeanour and knowledge of world events.
So to reach a grand old age it seems that all we have to do is follow a
simple daily routine, indulge in regular exercise and keep the brain
ticking. Fairly obvious stuff when you think about it.
Of course, the American humorist, Josh Billings would probably have
cautioned about celebrating old age. As he once wryly commented: “I’ve
never known a man to live to age 100 and be known for anything else.”
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