HOME   HYGIENE LIBRARY CATALOG   CHAPTER 2

   How long do you wish to live? Many a man has answered that his ambition is to be shot at 90 by a jealous husband. That reply may be good for a laugh but perhaps that ambition is not, after all, beyond reason. There are some pretty remarkable cases of longevity on record, some people live to 110 years or more. However, some apparently healthy folk don't make 50.

   Why did my old mate, Algy Virtue, die of a heart attack at 52, but at the age of 117, Leliai Omar Bin Datuk Panglima. of Malaysia could cycle 43 kilometres to marry his 40-year-old lover who is his 18th wife?

   You cannot put it down to luck, there has got to be a reason. Genetics? Long life seems to run in some families, but does short life run in others? Perhaps, but it is hard to accept a variation of 100% or more as attributable to genetic factors.

   When high-quality machines break down, rarely is the breakdown the result of defective design or defective components. A motor car, carefully maintained and driven, will last for hundreds of thousands of miles. Yet many cars break down because of dirty ignition wires or distributor points and suffer early wear because of clogged filters and dirty oil. The car body may even look shiny and new but its vital mechanical components have been ruined by bad driving and poor maintenance.

   Just as a reason can be found to explain the long life of one machine or the short life of another, so must there be reasons, perhaps just as simple, for different human life spans. Many researchers have spent their lives studying the subject.

   Most medical researchers have been investigating the causes of degenerative diseases, the most common reason for people dying young. Others have investigated the factors governing longevity, how to explain the vigor of Leliai Omar Bin Datuk Panglima and others like him. Khfaf Lasuria, 130 years old, a lady from Abkhazia in the U.S.S.R., was still a tea picker at 100 and still smoked a pack of cigarettes a day; Miguel Carpio of Vilcabamba, a farmer, was still active at 123.

   Dr Alexander Leaf of the USA visited these people to find the secret of their longevity. Many of these people in remote areas who claim great age cannot prove it and some of them in Russia are suspected of having assumed their fathers' identities years ago to avoid military service. But in Vilcabamba, proper church records substantiate the ages of people there, and in the two other countries visited by Dr Leaf, Hunza and Russia, he found sufficient evidence to convince him that many claims were substantially correct. His study was described in the National Geographic, January 1973, and later in his book Youth in Old Age.

   Dr Leaf was impressed by the simple diets and vigorous activity of these old people, who were merely following the lifestyle in which they had been reared, and who accepted long life as normal. Like most people, they accepted their lot as it comes, never querying the whys and wherefores of lifespans short or long.

   in California, Mrs Eula Weaver, at 81, although crippled with heart disease and arthritis, would be considered by most people to be doing quite well by American standards. However, fortunately for her, in nearby Santa Barbara a researcher had the whys and wherefores just about figured out, and by following his advice Mrs Weaver rejuvenated. At 85 she could run a mile, and at 90 she was still able to run a mile every day. Her story is told in the next chapter. The story of her benefactor, Nathan Pritikin, is told in Chapter 3.

   The reason, as it turns out, for the tremendous variation in human lifespan is not all that different to the analogy made to motor cars. When correct maintenance is adopted, the deterioration ceases--even better, the machinery of the body is so infinitely wonderful that it cleans and actually repairs itself.

   On lifespans, Dr Hans Selye in his book, The Stress of Life, has this to say: "What makes me so certain that the natural human lifespan is far in excess of the actual one is this. Among all my autopsies (and I have performed over 1000), I have never seen a person who died of old age. In fact, I do not think that anyone has ever died of old age yet.

   "We invariably die because one vital part has worn out too early in proportion to the rest of the body."

   The biblical edict that man's allotted span is "threescore years and ten" is generally accepted as par for the course, and indeed it is. However, as we proceed with our investigation, it will be seen that this allotted span applies only to those who transgress the laws of Nature. Indeed, if you correct your lifestyle, you can abandon the threescore years and ten" concept and leave it to those who cannot escape their mental blocks. The allotted span, if there is one, is more than a century, and you can make it.* We do not degenerate because we grow old, we grow old because we degenerate . . .

*The Bible: Genesis VII, 3. "And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years."