‘Super-Agers’: What It Takes to Live Beyond 100
The secret to a long life may be linked to your personality. A study out Wednesday in the journal Aging looks at people who lived 100 years or more.
It found that they all tend to have a positive outlook. The study focused on a group of New Yorkers known as super-agers.
106-year-old Irving Kahn used to pass through Central Park on his way to school. Along the way he would see “things you would never see (today)… cows, sheep on the lawn.”
Researchers discover optimism may lead to longevity
Kahn still goes to work every day, keeping tabs on the financial firm he built with his family. His sister named Happy, lived to be 109. His baby brother Peter is a 105. Tom, Irving’s son, is 69.
“We think it’s normal!” explained Tom Kahn. “All of you journalists and other people are coming and saying this is amazing. We’ve always lived with it so it doesn’t appear to us to be so extraordinary.”
But it is. The Kahns are part of a group of Ashkenazi Jews, those from Eastern Europe, who live unusually long, healthy lives.