Want to make it to 100 years old?

If you want to live to a ripe old age of beyond 100, then take up farming, have lots of children and stay trim but not thin.
That is the advice for men who want to live long lives, from the husband and wife team of Leonid Gavrilov and Natalia Gavrilova at the Centre on Aging, University of Chicago, who are about to present the results of a survey of centenarians they conducted to pinpoint how people can live a long and healthy life.

They found that living beyond 100, which was only managed by around two or three in every 1000 born in America at that time, was linked with the following factors:

A trim figure, most of all. In fact, those who were obese at the age of 30 were almost three times less likely to become centenarians.

"It is very good to be a farmer," said Dr Gavrilov. "This result is consistent with our previous findings suggesting that children raised on farms (boys in particular) had higher chances to become centenarians.

Having more than four children at the age of 30 significantly increased the chances of exceptional longevity, trebling the chance over average of reaching the age of 100.
Perhaps they help people live long because children "care for you when you are old," he said.