Learning from the top 5th percentile
Grandma Kay & the New England Centenarian Study
👋 Hello, I’m Kevin Ferguson and welcome to 🍷 Rain on the Monte Bello Ridge,🍷 a memoir about health, aging and winemaking. (Book summary in 50 words)
Below is a middle chapter. Hope you enjoy it!
Grandma Kay & the Centenarian Study
The Bay Bridge Series is a nail-biter. The San Francisco Giants won the previous day’s game against the Oakland A’s 6-5, when LaMonte Wade Jr. smashed a two-run walk-off homer in the ninth inning. I’m watching the Sunday finale of the three-game series with Grandma Kay in her family room. It’s mid August, two months after her 100th birthday.
She can’t stop talking about yesterday’s fireworks.
“I got up to go to the bathroom in the ninth inning, and missed everything,” she said. “I couldn’t believe it!”
It’s been a busy day for her. She did her morning exercises, ten minutes pedaling her Stamina InStride Cycle, a compact stationary contraption she keeps lodged under her favorite chair. Ate two bowls of her Puffins cereal. Made her bed. Napped. By the time I arrived in the early afternoon, she was eager to head to the park and do her half-mile loop with her walker.
It’s three o’clock. This is supposed to be down time, but she’s amped up. She wants the Giants to win the Bay Bridge trophy, which has only been celebrated in the San Francisco Bay Area for the past four years. It goes to the team that wins this series.
Grandma Kay - 2/25/2021 The play-by-play announcer and color commentator keep talking about it, more than usual, because recently it’s been renamed the Bridge Tom Pellack Memorial Trophy, after the longtime employee of the station airing the game. He died in 2020.
The Giants are batting and down 1-0 in the eighth, as Grandma Kay figures there’s no better time to get up and go to the bathroom. Moments later, pinch hitter Donovan Solano drives a fastball over the fence in left field, catapulting the Giants ahead 2-1.
Hearing the roar of the crowd on TV, Grandma Kay comes barreling into the room, as fast as her walker would allow.
“What’s happening! What’s happening?” she asked.
“We just took the lead, Grams!”
“Oh my God! Just like yesterday. Right when I leave the room!”
And that’s when it hit me. What keeps her going at one hundred: her superstitions.
Researchers at the University of Boston are just as curious about her longevity. One of their staffers stumbled upon a newspaper article published in February about Grandma Kay’s plans to throw out the first pitch at the Giants game on her 100th birthday, and reached out asking her to join the New England Centenarian Study.
Grandma Kay’s longevity theory: “I don’t smoke, don’t drink, and I exercise.”
That’s partly true. I reminded her, “You do drink a little - on occasion. After all, you were married to a winemaker.”
“Yeah, a little,” she’d say, then retell a story from her greatest hits, about how she and grandpa would go out to dinner with their friends, Kay and Ed Donahoo. One glass of champagne and the women would giggle nonstop.
On the contrary, drinking in moderation, the centenarian study suggests, isn’t a strike against your longevity. Those who also don’t smoke, exercise and eat a healthy diet with a reduction of red meat increase their odds of living into the mid to late 80s. But for the rare individuals who make it into their 90s and beyond, researchers say, it requires a certain genetic makeup to prevent being struck by Alzheimer’s, heart disease, cancer or diabetes.1
For example, one centenarian study suggests women who give birth later in life - at least once after the age of 33 - tend to live three times longer than those who stop having children at 29. This is partly driven by a delay in menopause.2 How much of that factor plays into it is unclear, but the fact that 85% of centenarians are women, may tell us something.
I shared that insight with Grandma Kay, highlighting that she was just under the cut off. She had her last child, my Uncle Mark, a little over three months past her 32nd birthday.
“We’ll round up to 33 in your case, Grams,” I said. “Not that I have the authority, but you’ve made it to 100, so it’s probably ok to do so.”
“I knew I had Markie for a good reason!” she said.
That “good reason” has been a running joke in the family for years, since Grandma Kay’s first two children came early in her marriage. Kay gave birth to my mother, Pat, at age 22, and Uncle John at 25. Then seven years later, came Mark.
Another fascinating item in these longevity studies is that researchers claim children of people who make it into their late 90s and beyond, tend to have purpose in life3 that keeps them going to old age, as well.
My Great Grandfather, John Gemello, died a month short of his 99th birthday in the early 1980s, back when centenarians were even more rare. So his son, Grandpa Mario Gemello, often seemed driven to reach that age. Unfortunately, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer in his mid 70s. It went into remission for a decade, but the cancer returned in his mid 80s. He often acted like he felt cheated about this to his dying days. He died just past his 89th birthday.
“Grandpa was so healthy,” Grandma said. “On the rare occasions that he even got the sniffles, he’d make a hot toddy before going to sleep. The next morning, he’d come whistling down the stairs.”
Another study suggested that older adults who read a lot or play mind-stimulating games build up cognitive reserves, slowing the aging process.
Grandma’s face lit up, when she heard that.
“Get the Chinese Checkers out. Let’s play!” she said.
****
New England Centenarian Study newsletter - April 2013, Vol. 10.1
Purpose In Life: In these studies, PIL is determined based on a survey that rates participants answers from 1-6. Some questions are positively phrased such as “I enjoy making plans for the future and working to make them a reality” which are coded from one to six. Negatively worded questions such as “My daily activities often seem trivial and unimportant to me” are reverse coded. Source: Purpose In Life Among Centenarian Offspring