Hard Work and Kids May Lengthen Life
Male centenarians are found to have several common characteristics

(HealthDay News) -- Want to live to 100? Have lots of kids and a physically demanding job, and you might just make it.

Researchers have found that, at least for men, staying slim while young, working as a farmer and having more than three children helped them live to 100.

"We were surprised that having more than three children is beneficial to longevity -- based on previous studies by other authors, and common sense, quite the opposite could be expected," Leonid Gavrilov, from the University of Chicago 's Center on Aging, told HealthDay . He co-authored a study presented at the annual meeting of the Gerontological Society of America.

"This may be due to the support by the children when the person becomes older," hypothesized Gavrilov, who conducted the study with his wife, Natalia, also from the Center on Aging. Another theory, he said, is that having a lot of children "could be an indicator of good general health and attractiveness on the marriage market, leading to earlier marriage and, hence, to more kids by age 30."

For the study, the husband and wife team reviewed information from World War I draft cards, which detailed a number of physical and social attributes. From those cards, the researchers found 171 men who were born in 1887 and lived to be at least 100 and who had completed the physical and social information on the cards. The researchers then randomly selected a group of men also born in 1887 who didn't make it to 100.

The researchers found that the odds of living to 100 increased if a man had fathered three children by the age of 30. In fact, those odds nearly tripled for men who had fathered four children by 30.

Being a farmer more than doubled the odds that a man would live to see 100 years, according to the study.

"The most popular hypothesis [for this finding] is that people in the past had poor sanitation in towns and, hence, a high infection load early in life," Gavrilov said. Because farms tend to be isolated, he said, farmers might have been less likely to contract certain illnesses.

Weight also affected longevity, but only being overweight seemed to affect a man's chances of reaching the century mark. Men with slender or medium builds had double the odds of living to 100.

A longevity researcher, Arnold Mitnitski, told HealthDay that the study was "very well-done, very clean." Mitnitski is an associate professor of medicine, mathematics and statistics at Dalhousie University in Halifax , Canada .

Gavrilov said the study's findings probably don't apply to women. Further study needs to be done to see which factors might increase female longevity, he said.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, common factors that can increase longevity include regular physical activity, good nutrition and no tobacco use.

On the Web

For tips on living a long life, visit AARP.

SOURCES: HealthDay News ; Leonid Gavrilov, Ph.D., Center on Aging, University of Chicago; Arnold Mitnitski, Ph.D., associate professor, Departments of Medicine, Mathematics and Statistics, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada; Nov. 19, 2007, presentation, Gerontological Society of America annual meeting, San Francisco; U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (www.cdc.gov)
Author: Serena Gordon
Publication Date: Nov. 30, 2008
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