Bad news, all you joggers, dieters and fitness freaks:
People who live to 95 or older are no more virtuous than the rest of us in terms of their diet, exercise routine or smoking and drinking habits, according to researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University.
Their findings, published August 3 in the online edition of Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, suggests that "nature" (in the form of protective longevity genes) may be more important than "nurture" (lifestyle behaviors) when it comes to living an exceptionally long life. Nir Barzilai, M.D., the Ingeborg and Ira Leon Rennert Chair of Aging Research and director of the Institute for Aging Research at Einstein, was the senior author of the study.
The proable truth is (before all you smokers, drinkers and couch potatoes start doing high fives) that our genes program us in general for relatively short or long lives, but the lifestyle choices we make tweak the program upward or downward a few years. That mixture is probably truer in a lot of areas than a lot of people might like. There is a genetic component to everything we do, including our worst behaviors, but that's only a potentiality that doesn't excuse making rational judgments based on careful
