Chapter 5

The Top Secrets from Our Centenarians

SECRET 1: ATTITUDE

SECRET 2: HEALTHY EATING

SECRET 3: FAITH

SECRET 4: EXERCISE AND ACTIVITY

SECRET 5: CLEAN LIVING

SECRET 6: FAMILY

SECRET 7: GENETICS

ADVICE TO CENTENARIAN WANNABES

WHY 100?

In 1513 Ponce de Leon began searching for the legendary Fountain of Youth, and ever since then people have been intrigued—in many cases obsessed—with discovering the mystical “secret formula,” “magical pill,” or “eternal elixir” for extending life into a perpetual panoply of blissful youthful existence. Whenever we mention our research and interest in centenarians to anyone anywhere, the immediate first question that everyone wishfully asks is: “What’s the secret?” We always smile and calmly suggest, “Read our book.”

As you have read through the pages of Celebrate 100 to this point, we hope you have gleaned that there is—in our opinion, at least—no single secret to making it 100-plus years. As we extensively articulated in Chapter 2, many factors contribute to the centenarian “formula,” and hundreds of millions of dollars have been and continue to be invested into serious scientific and medical research in an effort to determine the key marker(s), factor(s), secret(s)—whatever you wish to label them—that will enable people to extend life to 100 and even well beyond that initial notable benchmark of aging. The majority of centenarian research we have observed throughout the scientific, medical, and general media has focused on the roles of diet, ...

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