Life-Span Extension

There are lots of people who manage to live a long time. The century mark has proven itself to be a useful measure of establishing a truly long life. The number of centenarians is growing rapidly, but the longest lived, so far, is Madam Jeanne Louise Calment, who had a validated life span longer than any one else in recorded history, living 122 years, 165 days. Calment was born in Arles, France on February 21, 1875 and died August 4, 1997. She once met Vincent Van Gogh in her father's shop. Calment rode a bicycle to the age of one hundred, but by the time of her death, she was blind, almost deaf, and confined to a wheelchair. Her genes may have contributed to her longevity, as her father lived to the age of ninety-four and her mother to the age of eighty-six.

Even thought Calment holds the record, there are an extraordinary number of centenarians alive in the world today. There are 50,000 in the United States alone, and worldwide there are expected to be millions of centenarians alive by the year 2020. The Living to 100 Web site (www.livingto100.com) includes a method to calculate one's chances of reaching the century mark.