AIT researcher explores what helps people live beyond 100

Once an exclusive club, centenarians are now the fastest growing demographic globally. In Ireland, the centenarian population has risen 20% in four years, and the number is expected to increase 10-fold by 2050.

By the turn of the next century, it is estimated that there will be more than 25 million centenarians living worldwide.

While this remarkable phenomenon can be attributed, in part, to advancements in healthcare, technology, living conditions and improved economies, Alison Fagan, an MSc researcher in the Department of Nursing and Healthcare at Athlone Institute of Technology, believes there’s more to extreme longevity than meets the eye.

“Centenarians have long been regarded as paragons of successful ageing. I wanted to know what they did, beyond the norm, to extend their lifespans,” she said. Under the stewardship of Dr Mary McDonnell Naughton and Lorraine Gaffney, both lecturers in the Faculty of Science and Health, Alison set about finding and interviewing a sampling of Ireland’s centenarians. She soon discovered a range of psycho-social factors that have an incredibly potent impact on the ageing process.

Loneliness: a silent killer

The first commonality to emerge from her research was the importance of social connectedness and having close ties to friends, family and the wider community.

“I’m not talking about how we would rank social connectedness today – I could say I’m extremely socially connected because I have 700 friends on Facebook and 300 people like my Instagram page – but that’s a foreign world to them. They’re talking about real-time connections, face-to-face interactions with the people around them,” Alison said.

Loneliness is a pervasive problem that affects all strata of society. Irish women aged between 65 and 85 are considered particularly at risk of withdrawing into themselves following retirement or the loss of a spouse. At the other end of the scale, 16-24-year-olds are experiencing record levels of depression and anxiety; and more than 10% of them report feeling often or always lonely.

“Loneliness is worse for your health than smoking, it’s a silent killer. We need to listen to the centenarians who are telling us to develop our social relationships and put down the phones and actually talk to one another,” Alison said.

Staying active in retirement and maintaining “hobbies, goals and roles” was also vital to the centenarians’ longevity. Often, they carried hobbies, like dancing, right through from childhood to adulthood.

She recalled her first encounter with one of the oldest participants in the study – a sprightly 106-year-old man with a penchant for gardening: “I pulled up to the house and saw a man flying around his garden on a ride-on mower. I, assuming he was the son, introduced myself and asked to speak to his father. He laughed, hopped off the lawn mower to shake my hand.” Shortly after, Alison discovered that same man still had an active driving licence and drove to Mass every Sunday to meet his friends.

She was also struck by how engaged the centenarians were with what was happening in the world around them.

Every one of them had an opinion on the big stories dominating the news cycle at the time, most notably #MeToo and #Repealthe8th, and was determined to take an active role in the public discourse.

“As a trained nurse working in aged care, I often see patients on the other end of the spectrum – older people who have retreated into themselves because they feel that no one wants to listen to what they have to say, even though they have many years of experience that society could benefit from,” she said.

Resilience and positivity

Many of the study participants also showed a propensity for resilience – a quality that saw them through some extremely challenging times. Some were orphaned, others had experienced difficulties in their married lives and were left rearing children by themselves, while others had never married at all. For Alison, the commonality was not in the event but in how they dealt with it: “They took setbacks in their stride, stepped up when needed and didn’t complain about it.” She gave several anecdotal examples, one of which detailed how, when one of the women’s husbands got sick, she took on the role of a full-time carer so that she could nurse him back to health.

“What’s even more incredible is that he is two years older than her and she was 96 at the time,” she explained. “That kind of resilience and positive outlook on life is inspiring, it’s something we should all take on board.”

Looking to the future

Irish centenarians are beginning to affect society on a grand level, and through research like Alison’s, policy makers will have the tools to plan for the future to meet increased demand on housing, service, medical care and considerations to pension and working age. “These are the conversations that we need to be having now,” she said.

Believing prevention to be better than a cure, Alison maintains that more money needs to be allocated to health promotion and educating people on how to make better choices and stay healthy – something that is atypical across the developed world.

Other things that can be done to promote successful ageing include encouraging people to stay in their homes longer – and she recommends that neighbours check on people most at risk of isolation.

“What I’m hoping to stress is that we, as a society and as individuals, can learn from the centenarian population and implement changes right now that will affect our journey to old age and improve our longevity and quality of life. We just need to listen to our older people and afford them the value and respect they deserve,” Alison said.