Meanwhile he has an older sister who, while bedridden, is very much alive at 100.
I suppose the necessary medical breakthroughs happened in the second half of the 20th century, as no one, including the people in question, anticipated they would live this long. Grandma even stated in her will that my second oldest cousin would inherit the apartment - supposedly to have "a better start in life when she grows up". That was 30 years ago and my cousin's oldest child should be in high school now right now.
That, but also various factors during one's life - most importantly, ample and healthy food (especially during fetal growth, childhood and youth), a lack of exposure to known damaging factors for physical and mental health (smog, noise, tobacco, alcohol and other drugs), and a lack of wars and other forms of violence.
The top killers in the Western world are cardiovascular diseases (strongly linked to food) and cancers (strongly linked, again, to food but also to drugs). A safe working culture (both in business and in private) is also a good thing to have - the typical lackluster attitude towards workplace safety is a top cause of workplace accidents both fatal and non-fatal but serious.
Ancel Keys and his work on diet and longevity is pertinent to this article. He discovered that the people that lived the longest had a low saturated fat plant-based diet. This was to be found in the 'blue zones' around the world. This does not mean exclusively vegan, but getting that way.
Keys had to make some recommendations to the U.S. government and he went for the Mediterranean Diet rather than what they were eating in Okinawa. This was because the Second World War was fresh in people's memories at the time and telling Americans to eat like Japanese people was not going to be well-received advice at the time.
The Japanese diet has changed since the post-war years with the processed foods, animal products and saturated fats rather than what you might call a peasant diet. It is also the same with the Mediterranean Diet, which is not 'pizza, pasta, red wine and meat from imprisoned animals'.
Also important is that most Japanese live in walkable neighbourhoods. Japan is a cycling nation so cycling happens too, not this lycra + polystyrene hat cycling from the parking lot and back to the parking lot that passes for cycling in the West, but everyday cycling on bicycles that are designed for comfort and getting about in regular clothes.
We all like our fat, sugar, salt and motor cars, however, those that were deprived from these joys due to war do well in the longevity stakes.
I can tell you very easily why Japanese live longer than Americans, since I have spent abundant time in Japan.
It is unreal how much a good diet and walking everyday will change your entire life.
This is apparently weird even to Chinese people; an image of ramen with rice and roast dumplings on sides amounts to a ragebait to them(as well as to experts in cardiovascular systems), while it's nothing more than a common lunch menu to students and young workers in Japan.
But I digress - my point is, the real traditional Japanese meal is more like half a football worth of rice with vegetable flavored salt, quite unlike idealized modern interpretations thereof.
It is true that rice was always the prestige food consumed by the upper classes, and the peasantry ate rice too, but it was only one of the five staples (gokoku) and was often extended with other grains (mugigohan etc).
In contrast, people in East Asia started cultivating rice 9,000 years ago, and modern Japanese are probably mostly descended from these early rice farmers (who started out in China, then spread to Korea and then Japan) with a substantial contribution from another population called Jomon, which were already in Japan when the heavily-rice-dependent people started to arrive in Japan about 2,300 years ago and who lived mostly by hunting and gathering.
This is relevant because some people here are advocating for everyone to adopt a Japanese-like diet, which might not turn out so well for you unless most your ancestors have 8,000 or 9,000 years of experience getting most of their calories from grains.
This parallels China, where the warm, wet south is rice country but the colder, drier north grows other grains. The five grains (gokoku) idea is itself originally Chinese:
Car culture makes Americans fat and lazy. 40% of US adults are obese. 80% are overweight.
Walking and good food, yeah, that helps. But trains introduce short sprints into everyday life. It starts with "He's too late, he's never gonna catch it... well I'll be damned, he did it." and pretty soon, you're saying "We can catch it, just run!" Everyone on the train has a shopping bag, because trains don't have huge trunks like a car. You want groceries? Carry it. Good exercise. Trains also remove the road rage from your life, the daily stress of defensive driving in a fast moving freeway full of other angry drivers. Trains eliminate the premature death caused by road accidents which not only lower life expectancy directly, but indirectly as bread winners are taken from families. The car exhaust is gone too. Trains reshape how towns are built, with higher density and less parking. More walking! Everything mushrooms out from the decision to travel with trains. It's little wonder why Japan has the lowest obesity rate in the world.
The Japanese retirement attitude is "I've worked my ass off all my life. Contributing to the society all my life. Finally I have some time to spend on my hobbies! I should be active!" and they pick up quite active hobbies: if you go hiking mountains you'll see many old retired people with serious gears. Also still trains.
Contrast it to ime, western retirement which is more "finally I can relax" and people become sedentary. Hanging around in parks, cafe, or focus more on socializing and diet. And starts to rely more on cars and other senior services.
My father spends all day watching football or horses and has visibly started going senile.
If you'd like a more direct comparison to Japan, try Hong Kong, another place where I have spent a fair amount of time riding the trains. They also have world leading life expectancy.
In Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal he mentions that research shows that long life is not particularly heritable.
While longer lives may not be directly inheritable, shorter lives absolutely can be, good genetics does play a role to living long .
Seems like something similar could still be a problem here, although it seems less likely since the number here is significantly less than article I've linked.
Obligatory mention of how genetics and early nurture and environment cannot be separated in research: https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/looking-in-the-cultu...
Were you there when they were born, so that you can verify their true age?
On my mother's side, I was a little boy when I met my great-great grandmother who was already 90, and witnessed her living to, guess what, nearing that other age mentioned. And, again, there are records and photos going way back to when she was born.
At an old people's home nearby I got to know a gentleman for some years, he died this year at 99. Again there are records in numerous places documenting his age and where and when he was born (and he grew up nearby my grandfather's place). And at that same old people's home there's a vital lady who's 105, and, again, unless you believe all public documents and church records are fake, she's as real as it gets. She has a daughter who visits, she's in her seventies. That daughter has children of her own, and her children also have children.
It's when you get to all the 115-120 year olds in remote regions you start to see the fakes. And it's not difficult to spot when you look, the statistics are all skewed - unlike in places like most of Japan, just to get back to the original story.
My grandmother never knew her birthday, or her birth year. We just estimated, even though she was very much real.
Is this some kind of new math? 100 and 110 are within 10% of each other, which seems very much in the same ballpark to me.
Ie if you live to 100, you do not have 10% chance of living to 110.
Eg this study says:
"Three percent of females and 1% of males in the 2019 birth cohort, given age-specific mortality rates in that year, are projected to survive to 100 years old. Only 0.4% of females and 0.09% of males will survive to 105 years which is 10 times rarer than survival to 100. Survival to 110 years is 150 times rarer for females and 333 times rarer for males (0.02% for females, 0.003% for males) than living to 100. "
2^10 = three orders of magnitude difference in survival