CANADA: More and more Canadians living past 100

By Shannon Proudfoot, Canwest News Service CALGARY, Alberta (Calgary Herald), April 11, 2008: Emilie Lavoie celebrated her 110th birthday on Thursday, marking another year as an extraordinarily long-lived member of one of the fastest-growing sectors of the Canadian population: the century club. "I told her she could be one of the oldest people in Canada and she said, 'That's nothing to be proud of!' " says her granddaughter, Linda Bostick, 60. The Minto, N.B., "supercentenarian" is in good company. The number of people aged 100 and over jumped by more than 50 per cent in 10 years, according to the latest census figures, and women outnumber men by almost five to one in that age bracket. Researchers are still puzzling over whether it's genetics, lifestyle or mindset that keeps this long-lived group going, and how those factors can be harnessed to create a fountain of youth for the rest of us. "I really do have a firm belief that this, to a certain degree, is a solvable puzzle," says Dr. Thomas Perls, director of the New England Centenarian Study at Boston University. There were 4,635 centenarians in Canada in 2006. That's up more than 22 per cent since 2001 and 50 per cent since 1996. Projections suggest this group could triple by 2031 to more than 14,000 people. Similar trends are occurring in other industrialized nations, with Japan leading the way. Some credit is due to public health improvements, experts say. Bostick has a simpler explanation. "I think it's the mints," she says of the white peppermints her grandmother eats by the dozen every day. Lavoie told her birthday party guests she expects to be around for another decade or so. There are three kinds of people who hit the century mark, says Bill Dalziel, chief of the Regional Geriatric Program of Eastern Ontario. - The first are the "genetically well endowed" who come from long-lived families and reach 100 remarkably healthy because they simply don't get diseases such as cancer and heart disease. This group offers living proof that "the older you get, the healthier you've been," says the New England study. - The second group of centenarians eventually develops life-limiting diseases, but their internal clocks delay the onset a decade or two later than most people's, Dalziel says. "These are people who have great biological clocks, and their clock is set for 110 where yours and mine is set for 80." - The third group is mostly women, he says, and they reach 100 in extremely frail condition, but they're just "too stubborn to die." For reasons still unclear, women can live much longer with chronic diseases than men, Perls says. It's a "double-edged sword," he says, because it means more women reach extreme old age, but they're worse off when they do. "For a man to get to these very old ages, he just has to be in spectacular shape for the vast majority of his life, practically until the end," he says. © 2005 - 2008 Canwest Digital Media