Fact Checking 100-Year-Old’s Health Advice

Every day there are more and more people living past a hundred and frequently we see YouTube videos like this or news articles like that And I want to be able to fact-check this centenarian advice. Let's get started This is Mike Fremont He's a hundred and one has multiple world records running marathons does daily pull-ups and he's diamond two in League of Legends What my guy is low. I'm joking. I mean, he's uh, are they cool? What do you think his diet is paleo vegan pescetarian animal based is it music what is the diet His vegan diet is the number one key to his health for good reason He was diagnosed with cancer at 69 was given only three months left to live and stumbled upon the cancer prevention diet by Mishio Kushi, which talks about a macrobiotic diet based on Zen Buddhism Which means no animal products with lots of anecdotal evidence a lot of cancer survivors who swear by it And he himself was cancer-free a few months later I would be really careful with these types of anecdotal stories because a when someone says you have three months to live We don't know who made that prognosis I've seen patients tell me stats about their health Then when I go to investigate those stats, they turn out to be untrue. It doesn't mean the patient's lying It's just there's a lot of a game of telephone that happens in the hospital system Doctor says one thing radiologist says another nurse says another the internet says another the patient combines all that and then creates their story Another thing that happens eating a diet. That's very healthy Especially one that's rich in fruits vegetables is going to be the healthiest way for most people to live to say that this is the only Way is a type of inflexible thinking that's ultimately going to lead you to an unhealthy relationship with food Therefore an unhealthy relationship with your weight and all these things really live in a really healthy ecosystem Our healthy weight a healthy relationship with food our mental health our physical well-being all those things need to be in harmony and Different things are going to work differently for different people. It's just that You keep going. Wow. It's only a number 101. There's only a number a spot of whiskey occasionally helps Although it's not on the national health Yeah, that's not something we ultimately recommend alcohol has had such a tumultuous history within the healthcare community We go from one decade saying that it's prolonging life the next decade that it's harming life The reality is it's technically a poison, right? but it also helps with our minds because if we're being honest sometimes our minds can be poisoned and if you Put your attention towards the minor poison that alcohol is and it takes away the attention from sometimes how bad Poisonous our minds are could be a good trade-off But the important part is always staying in control and not overusing it not becoming overly reliant on it elizabeth sullivan has lived in the same fort worth texas house since 1942 and she has just celebrated her 104th birthday 104th birthday. Wow. Wow. What's it like to see a century go by and then still live some extra years? She credits at least some of her longevity to a lone star state favorite. No You're drinking Dr. Pepper right now. That's gotta be the producers doing this There is no way this old lady goes around telling people this this stuff is good It's got sugar in it and three two doctors have told me that if I drink it, I will die, but they died first The mentality is amazing. Okay, so this is the perfect time to introduce survivorship bias Okay, so that's proof that it's good for you. Yeah, that's actually not proof just because something has worked It doesn't mean that it is proof. That's why we do research including many people randomizing people Does it mean it's going to prevent you guaranteed from living a long life? No, nothing can really guarantee that everybody tells me it has too much sugar in it but since i've been drinking three a day for 50 or 60 years Uh, evidently my body needs sugar. I don't take any medication They can't still find anything wrong with me. That's amazing that she's so healthy. That makes me really happy now Look, I don't like villainizing food. That's why when a doctor gundry tells me that dr Mike, don't you know fructose is terrible for you? I say pause fructose on its own is not terrible for you Everything needs to be considered in its dose So if you have sugar from fruits, it's not the same as getting sugar from a soda It also depends how much total sugar are you ingesting? How many calories are you consuming totally? What other conditions do you have all those things matter? My job is to counsel on risks and if the risks are increased i'm going to tell you and it's in your choice To make that decision or not born in harlem in 1912 and always proud of her italian heritage Louise moved to the bronx as a young girl happily calling the borough home ever since Her golden years. She's danced almost daily and can play bocce with the best of them She still lives alone and reveals that's been a key to less stress. I think the secret of 107. I never got married I think that's a secret see that was good because had she have gotten married into an unhappy marriage She would have had a more difficult life and like the bocce stuff all that like it's a joke But it's not because what does bocce do brings people together? You have social entertainment you have connections with others when you have social support you handle mental health issues better If you have a medical emergency, you're more likely to have someone check on you These are the things that lead people to live longer and healthier lives. I'm 107 I just take the high blood pressure pill. That's all aging with grace hasn't been without challenges She's legally blind recently overcame pneumonia and at 103 survived an assault and robbery in her apartment building. Wow Who is doing that you have to be? Such a bad person good food. No soda. No cake All right, so she knows how to control eating the healthier foods good balance good advice. My name is richard. I've been old I am 109 years old Still walk I still talk and he still got swag and I still drive I wouldn't want to be behind him in traffic is what i'm saying But like props I just sit and smoke sometimes 12 cigars a day. Oh, no sometime more than that Don't do it to me. Anybody say what you smoking for? I guess I guess it makes you Feel better. I'm gonna say something that I bet you're not gonna expect me to say If this person was my patient, I wouldn't put pressure on them to stop smoking If this person has lived this long and is happy with their choice and is not interested in making a change Why would I encourage a swap? Why would we fight over this habit and then ruin a proper health care relationship? I have patients That they love having a drink of scotch at night, and I know it's not great for them But I know it's what brings them joy if I take it away Even by saying this is a prescription to stop doing that because it's not good for you It's gonna take away the fun and the quality out of their life especially when it's a limited life like we know Once you start getting into these late stages of your years the length of extension we can do is minimal But the quality improvement that's where we come in as physicians You can't inhale just to go ahead and just scold a cat let her go and forget about it That's a little ridiculous. We know what secondhand smoke is right these days So like even if you're inhaling the cigar the smoke is still around you you're inhaling it So you may not be inhaling all of it But you're still inhaling it and look survivorship bias is interesting because it can lead us down a path of thinking that something is really Healthy or unhealthy just because a single individual has survived thus far It doesn't mean that we're actually getting good advice from that person. It's got no taste to it. Just makes you cold I'm going to healthy way. There is no healthy way to smoke a cigar I'm just going to go and put that on the record some birthday wishes for an east valley man today He is 110 years old. Wow. Susan casper reports. The guy is sharing his secret to longevity Oh, I can't wait to hear the secret people ask me uh What do you do to stay so young I say well You've heard the uh old saying I know you have You are what you eat. So i'm a blueberry Five foods garlic honey Cinnamon chocolate and olive oil. I'm with all those foods You've heard me talk about honey on the channel cinnamon is amazing olive oil. You've heard it during my interview with dr Danielle bilardo and dr Gundry dark chocolate is great polyphenols in there garlic rock star fernando picked up from his father a doctor who lived to be 98 And he told me not to eat Ordinary red meat. He said the lamb is okay Red meat stay away from the hot dogs and the french fries and all those things. There's nothing Intrinsically terrible about these processed foods the issue that comes in with processed foods is that they're so palatable. They're so tasty They're so chemically engineered that you could just keep eating them and you're never satiated and yet They're not filled with dense nutrition good quality nutrition minerals vitamins where it's actually you're eating and at least getting something out of you Kind of just consuming empty calories fernando keeps his brain sharp by being a voracious reader That's good crossword puzzles and playing checkers all very healthy habits father set them up for success Not only with the habits but with the genetics as well That's something we don't talk about often a lot of these survivors Here that are living into their hundreds likely had relatives that live into their hundreds But the one thing that's interesting about your genetics is you can't change it, but you can't change your diet You can't change your physical activity. You can change your mental health. So be happy with what you can control and then live Comfortably uncomfortable with all the other things that are outside of your control in anna's 112 years She was rarely sick. Yeah, but look at her her scrabble games weak men cow Sane, those are like at max 10 10 point words. I would crush her in scrap. I'm just kidding. What's her secret? Eat bread What anna really means is that she attributes her long life in part to good genes clean living and staying active What did she say clean bread? There's not a speck of dust in her house Well, that's a great way to keep active and run into the state of flow, which is good for our mental state But baking bread, I mean, okay How in the world did she isolate that one single thing and give it all the credit for the success that she's had? if you do What do you see there is to be done You get all the exercise you can have I don't want to be one of those people But she said there's not a speck of dust and I was looking at her stove. It looked a little dirty I'm, just saying i'm just pointing it out If you're going to use clean in scrabble as a word and then say there's no specks of dust and I see dust I'm going to question your health advice. Do you take vitamins? Yes a lot of A lot of them do you need them different question? Did it make a difference? It was my favorite but No People who took vitamin e didn't live any longer than people who didn't take vitamin e. Yeah, we know this about all vitamins They also looked at vitamin a c and calcium. The short answer is none of them made a difference None of them made a difference. Wow. Thank you 60 minutes for providing some accuracy. What about alcohol? Oh Alcohol made a difference. It's shortened to life Initially, we had the french paradox where people in the regions that drink alcohol lived longer and were like, oh my god Maybe it's because of the alcohol Maybe it's because of the cheese But the reality is the more alcohol you consume the more negative effects you have of it If I have a patient that doesn't drink alcohol I would never recommend that they drink alcohol in order to get some sort of health benefit But if they drink and they drink in a very small amount of moderation That might be okay as to not increase their risk sufficiently moderate alcohol was associated with living longer than individuals Who did not consume alcohol? No, come on. Well, this has been disproven. There's got to be an old interview a moderate Alcohol you live longer. No, this has been disproven up to two drinks a day Led to a 10 to 15 reduced risk of death compared to non-drinkers No Because once we controlled for certain factors like people who drank socially were generally healthier people because they were out and about drinking Versus people who were hospitalized had illness were not drinking once you controlled for all those things You actually saw that that wasn't the case. This brings me into a really good bias publication bias or positive result bias where a lot of the research that's published and especially the research that gets Highlighted in a lot of these news stories is research that's positive that has created some sort of finding a breakthrough if you will But we don't hear about is all of the studies that find negative results that show things don't work And those studies are equally as important if not more important We're only hearing about why this specific hundred year old lived for so long But all the other hundred year olds that took vitamins that we've never heard from we don't know what they did Which meat temperature is optimal click here to find out and as always stay happy and healthy