POLL : Do you want to live to a hundred?
As reported in the Lancet over half of babies born this century will live to over 100 years. Available data suggests that most of them will be functional, but with many minor diseases between 60 to 85 years. After 85, functional problems, such as difficulty in walking and stair climbing, are predicted to increase. In addition major disabilities will also become much more common. About half of persons as they reach 100 will have major problems limiting their ability to function without help. Women are likely to have more disabilities than men. These changes in aging will also require persons to work to a much older age - perhaps even to 80!This will most probably be part time work; 20 to 30 hours a week. Many of my patients in their nineties loose their zest for life - they no longer can relate to all the changes around them.
I met Dr Christensen, the author of the Lancet paper, last year in Iceland. when he was asked how to tell how long a person would live, he said just have a stranger look at them. If they look older than their stated age, they are in trouble; younger and they will do much better than expected. He had done a study on Danes showing that how you look tells how old you really are!
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Dammert Professor of Gerontology and
Director, Division of Geriatric Medicine
Director, Gateway Geriatric Education Center
Department of Internal Medicine
Saint Louis University School of Medicine
and Director, GRECC,
St. Louis Veterans Affairs Medical Center 
Living to be 100 might be okay if I have all my mental functions and no arthritis. As it stands now, I dread reaching 60.
It’s a real dilemma: Only live as long as I’m having fun, then miss a lot by dying early — or worse, the day before they discover a cure for my ailment;
or
live as long as I can, and I see the real course of human events, but I’m uncomfortable and sucking my meals through a straw and listening to LPNs speak to me in baby talk.
I think I’ll just let nature do it’s work, because I’m not going to kill myself regardless of what I want to happen.
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only if it’s a guarantee that means I live long enough to see Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck die-preferably in one another’s arms.
I don’t mind being a dinosaur and absolutely not getting it why people I have never heard of are famous. I am waiting for Mick Jagger on the cover of Modern Maturity. As long as the Stones are touring, I’m not old. As long as there is an undiminished supply of 12 year old boys I don’t have to deal with technology either. iPOD ergo sum.
If I can maintain 6/6 ADL, 8/8 IADL, and I still can drive, I don’t mind to live to 100. Otherwise there is no incentive to live, especially if I am suffering from someting.
Interesting that according to the (very small) poll, 59% of us would not want to live to 100. I wonder why euthanasia isn’t legal yet?