Today, some researchers are convinced that the widespread halting of hormone therapy in 2002 was an overreaction.

About five years ago, Sally Shepard, a 52-year-old human resources consultant from Santa Cruz, California, began experiencing hot flashes and especially heavy and irregular periods as part of perimenopause, the few years leading up to menopause. Shepard, who surfs, skis, golfs, and runs 20 miles a week, felt less motivated to stay active. But when Shepard asked about hormone therapy, her doctor discouraged her.

Throughout the ’90s, the pills and patches that delivered a combination of estrogen and progestin (a synthetic form of progesterone) were prescribed freely to menopausal women. By the end of that decade, an astounding 22 percent of women over 40 were being prescribed hormone therapy. It was considered a godsend, not just to ease the discomfort, but to ward off the risk of heart disease and brittle bones associated with menopause, not to mention the gloom and misery that sometimes accompanies “the change.”

But problems with hormone therapy arose in 2002 when a large clinical trial (the Women’s Health Initiative) sponsored by the National Institutes of Health was shut down after it became clear that taking the medication resulted in higher rates of stroke, heart disease, and breast and ovarian cancers. In a hastily assembled press conference in July 2002, the researchers shocked the world by announcing that the risks of taking the popular drugs outweighed the benefits. The news also came as a surprise to doctors, who had expected the trial to show hormone therapy protected women’s hearts. Droves of frightened menopausal women threw out their pills and hormone patches, leaving those with severe symptoms to endure the embarrassing hot flashes and sheet-drenching night sweats that disrupted their sleep and left them weary, dazed, and cranky.

“The pendulum had swung from hormone therapy is good for all women, to hormone therapy is bad for all women,” says Dr. JoAnn Manson, a WHI investigator and chief of preventive medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, an affiliate of Harvard University. But it appears the pendulum is swinging again. Today, more than a decade after the WHI trial, a new consensus is emerging that, at least for younger women with moderate to severe menopausal symptoms, the benefits of short-term hormone therapy may outweigh the risks.

Shepard discovered the shift by doing some exploration of her own: “It didn’t seem those studies that had been so hyped in the news [back in 2002] were relevant to my circumstance.” She went back to her doctor, intent on reopening the discussion. To her surprise, this time her doctor was on board. “I don’t know if she had a change of heart … or if it took me being aggressive about it,” Shepard says. But, since she began hormone therapy, the hot flashes and abnormal bleeding are gone, and she has a lot more energy and what she can only describe as a “happiness factor.”

No one had predicted the outcome of the Women’s Health Initiative hormone studies. When they were first planned in 1992, they were designed as large, scientifically rigorous randomized trials to test whether hormone therapy could protect women from heart disease — something that had already been seen in smaller, less rigorous scientific studies.

So confident were scientists about the benefits of hormone therapy that the drugs were already widely prescribed not just to relieve symptoms of menopause, but to prevent heart disease. “Cardiologists were even starting women on the drugs in their 70s and 80s,” says Dr. Wulf Utian, founder of the North American Menopause Society and author of the 2011 book, Change Your Menopause: Why One Size Does Not Fit All. “There was a lot of wild use of hormones.”

The combination study was huge, involving more than 16,000 women aged 50 to 79, with most study volunteers at least a decade past menopause. (Significantly, the average age of study participants was 63.) The trial started in 1997 and was meant to be completed in 2005, but on May 31, 2002, a safety monitoring board found the number of breast cancers in women taking hormones exceeded a pre-specified limit and halted the study.

How bad was it? An initial analysis published in July 2002 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)found women taking combination hormone therapy had a 41 percent higher risk of strokes, a 29 percent higher risk of heart attacks, and twice as many blood clots as women in the placebo group. (They also had a 37 percent lower risk of colon cancer and a 33 percent lower risk of having a hip fracture, but that information didn’t make the headlines.)

As frightening as these results sound when expressed as percentages, the actual risk to any individual woman was still quite low. In a press release about the results, WHI Acting Director Dr. Jacques Rossouw explained that over the course of a year, only 8 more out of 10,000 postmenopausal women with a uterus who took combination therapy would have an invasive breast cancer; 7 more would have a heart attack; 8 more would have a stroke; and 18 more would have blood clots compared with women not taking hormone therapy.

Still, WHI investigators took an all-or-nothing approach, and for the once hormone-happy medical community, the result was a major about-face. Sales of Prempro, the drug used in the combination estrogen and progestin study, fell nearly 50 percent in the first two years following the study.

Manson credits the WHI study with stopping the gross overuse of hormone therapy, especially in high-risk women long past menopause. But Utian argues that many younger women, who may have benefited from hormone treatments for menopausal symptoms, suffered. “What happened unfortunately is we went from gross overuse to gross under use,” he says. He believes the net effect of the WHI study may have been to harm more women than it helped. “Even now, it’s very difficult to get an internist to prescribe hormones.”

Hormone Therapy Is Back The Saturday Evening Post

Research now suggests that starting hormone therapy well after menopause has more side effects than starting just at the time of menopause.

The North American Menopause Society’s (menopause.org) 2012 Position Statement on Hormone Therapy (HT) provides the following guidelines:

• HT remains the most effective treatment available for menopausal symptoms, including hot flashes and night sweats that can interrupt sleep and impair quality of life. Many women can take it safely.

• If you have had blood clots, heart disease, stroke, or breast cancer, it may not be in your best interest to take HT. Be sure to discuss your health conditions with your healthcare provider.

• How long you should take HT depends on whether you take estrogen alone or a combination of estrogen and progesterone. For combination therapy, the time is limited by the increased risk of breast cancer that is seen with more than three to five years of use. For estrogen alone, no sign of an increased risk of breast cancer was seen during an average of seven years of treatment, a finding that allows more choice in how long you choose to use estrogen therapy.

• Most healthy women below age 60 will have no increase in the risk of heart disease with HT. The risks of stroke and blood clots in the lungs are increased but, in these younger age groups, the risks are less than 1 in every 1,000 women per year taking HT.

• Estrogen therapy delivered through the skin (by patch, cream, gel, or spray) and low dose oral estrogen may have lower risks of blood clots and stroke than standard doses of oral estrogen, but all the evidence is not yet available.

Hormone Safety and You The Saturday Evening Post

Experts agree that a daily 1,500 mg dose of glucosamine sulfate is generally safe and well tolerated—the main exception being for pregnant and nursing mothers. Some studies show benefits in reducing joint pain and improving function, while others have failed to show any value. Stick with national brands when selecting a product, and make sure you’re buying glucosamine sulfate, rather than glucosamine hydrochloride. (The latter formula needs more clinical testing.)

As always, ask your doctor or pharmacist about potential interactions with prescription medicines before starting any new supplement.

Glucosamine Guide The Saturday Evening Post

Studies show that starving oneself causes changes in the brain that can lead to the inability to see oneself objectively. It’s “distorted body image,” according to Cleveland Clinic eating disorders specialist Ellen Rome, M.D., M.P.H.

Women suffering from anorexia, for example, tend to draw their silhouettes or estimate their hip width disproportionately larger than they actually are. This is not a coy way of denying their condition; when confronted with the truth, they will firmly deny their true size. Altered perceptions of body image are predictable and painful—but they are often reversible, says Rome.

For help, turn first to a medical doctor who is well-versed in eating disorders. Contact the National Eating Disorders Association (nationaleatingdisorders.org, 800-931-2237) for local specialists.

Distorted Body Image: Objects in Mirror May Appear Larger Than Actual Size The Saturday Evening Post

We are vastly, ridiculously, hopelessly, humblingly outnumbered: For every one human cell, there are an estimated 10 single-cell microbes in us or on us, at least 100 trillion in all, nestled in our guts and in our urogenital tracts, lying on our skin and happily ensconced in our mouths and noses—entire civilizations of fungi and protozoa and (mostly) bacteria that eat and breathe, evolve and reproduce and die.

Before you reach in horror for the hand sanitizer or industrial-strength mouthwash, you might want to keep something in mind. A profusion of research in just the past five years is showing that our microbial hitchhikers, collectively called the “human microbiota” and so small they account for only 1 or 2 percent of our weight, play a key role in maintaining our health. And we disrupt them at our peril. “It’s not possible to understand human health and disease without exploring the massive community of microorganisms we carry around with us,” says Professor George Weinstock of Washington University in St. Louis. Knowing which microbes live in healthy people “allows us to better investigate what goes awry in diseases that are thought to have a microbial link, like Crohn’s and obesity.”

The microbes in our body—especially some of the 10,000 or so species of bacteria in and on us—have indeed been implicated in disorders as diverse as obesity and Crohn’s, and also in asthma, heart disease, sinusitis, and possibly even mood disorders. They influence how big our appetite is and, possibly, even what foods we crave. They synthesize vitamins and affect how quickly we metabolize drugs such as acetaminophen (Tylenol), they protect against esophageal reflux and they churn out many of the same neurochemicals as our own brains. Given this job description, it’s hardly surprising that when perturbed, scientists are discovering, the microbiota can tip us into poor health or outright illness.

Exactly how our bacterial companions affect our health is the subject of ongoing research in labs around the world, but one thing is clear: Our decades-long war on germs is looking seriously wrongheaded. In an effort to obliterate disease-causing microbes through antibiotics and anti-microbials—from the pills we down for a cold (against which antibiotics are useless) to the meat we eat to the hand-sanitizer-dispensers everywhere you look—we are carpet-bombing our microbiota. And that war on germs takes a huge toll on beneficial bugs, too.

One example: The bacterium Helicobacter pylori causes ulcers and has been linked to stomach cancers. Although it was once in almost everyone’s gut, it is now found in just 6 percent of U.S. children, Science magazine reported in 2011, probably due to the widespread use of antibiotics and anti-microbials. That should mean fewer ulcers, but there’s a dark lining to that silver cloud: H. pylori may ward off asthma. Scientists led by Dr. Martin Blaser of New York University Langone Medical Center found that those without H. pylori are more likely to have had childhood asthma than those with it. Coincidence? In 2011 scientists in Switzerland infected half of a colony of mice with the bacteria and left the other half germ-free. They showered all the mice with dust mites and other allergens. Mice with H. pylori were fine; those without suffered airway inflammation, the hallmark of asthma.

Exactly how H. pylori might ward off asthma is still a mystery, but researchers have made progress understanding the link between our microbiota and other diseases.

The field of microbiota and health took off in 2006, when scientists led by Jeffrey Gordon of Washington University in St. Louis noticed something: Fat mice and svelte mice have very different gut microbes. Could different microbes actually cause obesity? To find out, Gordon transferred gut bacteria called Firmicutes from obese mice into thin ones. The thin mice ate no more than they used to, but they quickly started packing on the pounds (okay, ounces). Firmicutes, it turns out, are really good at liberating calories from food, much better than the common gut bugs called Bacteroidetes. That finding offers a hint of why your friend can scarf down calories and remain slim while you have merely to walk past a bakery window to gain weight. “Some microbes change how efficiently we metabolize food,” says biologist Rob Knight of the University of Colorado, who studies the genetics of the microbiota, called the microbiome.

It seems Firmicutes are quite adept at digesting fats and carbs, allowing you to absorb many more of, say, the 1,200 calories in half of a Domino’s bacon-cheeseburger pizza than if you have fewer Firmicutes and more Bacteroidetes. “Obesity depends not just on calories ingested but also on the microbiome,” says Dr. Yang-Xin Fu of the University of Chicago Medicine. And, yes, like mice, obese people tend to have more Firmicutes and fewer Bacteroidetes than slim people.

At this point everyone asks, how can I get my slim friend’s menagerie of gut microbes? Short answer: Scientists don’t know yet. But they have some clues. For instance, Bacteroidetes—the microbes linked to slimness—proliferate in the presence of fructans, a form of fructose found in asparagus, artichokes, garlic, and onions, among other foods, notes microbiologist Andrew Gewirtz of Georgia State University. A diet high in fructans might support a good crop of slimming Bacteroidetes. On the other hand, he notes, stress decreases the abundance of Bacteroidetes, suggesting one more way stress causes obesity.

“Lots of people are exploring the possibility of using antibiotics or prebiotics or probiotics to treat obesity,” says Colorado’s Knight. Prebiotics are foods that promote the growth of some bacteria at the expense of others. Probiotics are live microorganisms such as the Lactobacillus in yogurt; the idea is to ingest beneficial ones. The strategy with antibiotics would be similar: Zap the obesity-promoting ones. These ideas are in their very earliest stages, so don’t go looking on your drugstore shelves for such products just yet.

Much clearer is the strong evidence that modern medicine’s penchant for antibiotics has a downside beyond the well-known problem of breeding antibiotic-resistant bugs. A study of 11,532 children found that, on average, those exposed to antibiotics for the usual childhood ills, such as ear infections, from birth to 5 months of age weighed more for their height than other kids. By 38 months, they had a 22 percent greater likelihood of being overweight, scientists reported last August. “The rise of obesity around the world is coincident with widespread antibiotic use,” says Blaser. “It is possible that early exposure to antibiotics primes children for obesity later in life.” That’s one reason farmers add antibiotics to animal feed: The drugs alter the gut bacteria in cattle, pigs, and others, substituting bacteria that are better at extracting maximum calories from feed and thereby making the animals pack on the pounds.

Why We Need Germs The Saturday Evening Post

Sorry about the bad pun, but we’re talking about, um, fecal transplants. Recently published research in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that for a certain intransigient intestinal ailment, transplanting beneficial microorganisms from a healthy intestinal tract into an ailing one can work miracles.

In the study, fecal transplants quickly cured 15 of 16 people of a debilitating illness caused by a very nasty and stubborn bacteria called Clostridium difficile that antibiotics couldn’t cure. The results drive home the importance of maintaining a balanced and diverse microbiota.

For the transplant, donor feces were blended into a potion that was ported into the patient’s intestine via a tube down the throat. Some patients felt better within a day, and enrollment was halted early because the transplant group fared so much better than a control group.

“The study helps to scientifically prove the high success rates of fecal transplants that we see in our patients: This therapy works,” says Dr. Colleen R. Kelly, a gastroenterologist with the Women’s Medicine Collaborative in Providence, Rhode Island, who was not part of the original trial. As for the unpleasant-sounding methodology, pinpointing the curative strains may someday lead to therapeutic pills or products containing them.

Read more about good bacteria in “Why We Need Germs,” March/April 2013.

Poo Fighters The Saturday Evening Post

Your cholesterol is creeping up and it’s just a matter of time before the doc prescribes statin therapy. Can foods fortified with plant sterols help?

The short answer is yes. Plant sterols—which are found naturally in vegetables, fruits, and seeds, and which are being added to a growing number of foods—lower cholesterol by keeping it in the digestive tract and out of the bloodstream.

“Research is pretty clear: Adding two grams of plant sterols to your daily diet can reduce LDL cholesterol by 8 to 15 percent. Importantly, you get quick results (within two weeks) and without compromising the taste or texture of your favorite foods,” says holistic pharmacist and author Sherry Torkos, who practices in the Buffalo area of New York.

Happily, it’s easy to find sterol-fortified foods in regular grocery stores. Look for Cargill’s CoroWise logo on labels of pasta, margarine, orange juice, granola bars, chips, and oatmeal squares. One serving of these foods typically provides 0.5 grams of plant sterols, or ¼ the FDA-recommended amount for cholesterol lowering.

“To get your 2 grams of sterols, take your pick of Minute Maid HeartWise orange juice or Smart Balance milk. Then have a serving of Corazonas torilla chips or my mother’s favorite: oatmeal squares topped with dark chocolate,” suggests Torkos.

Future research will focus on the role of sterols in preventing heart attacks and strokes. “Long-term data aren’t yet available to confirm these foods promote heart health. Nevertheless, I encourage my patients to consume them as part of a healthy diet,” says leading cardiologist and Post contributor Douglas Zipes.

Photo credit Cargill.

Eat for Health The Saturday Evening Post

In this video, microbiologist Jonathan Eisen, professor at the University of California Davis Genome Center, explains how these good microbes may actually be our first line of defense against infection, disease, and lasting medical conditions—and how antibiotics may be doing more harm than good.

In Defense of Microbiomes The Saturday Evening Post

As scientists find more medical conditions that respond to placebos just as well as to drugs and even surgery, they are gaining a healthy respect for the mind’s amazing ability to heal. Illustration by Shout.

Maybe you have comforted a crying child by kissing her scraped knee to “make it all better”—and seen her tears turn to a smile and the pain recede. Perhaps you’ve stumbled to the medicine cabinet, half-asleep at 2 a.m., taken an acetaminophen for the headache that woke you, felt better—and discovered in the morning that you had actually taken a calcium pill.

Or maybe you took your arthritic knee to a hospital where you were prepped for arthroscopic surgery, wheeled into the operating room, and had a completely fake procedure in which the surgeon made a few incisions but did not remove the cartilage whose deterioration causes osteoarthritis—after which you had less pain and were walking better than you had in years.

Okay, you have probably never experienced the last one. But scores of patients with osteoarthritis of the knee did. They volunteered for one of the more astounding medical studies in recent years, in which researchers performed true arthroscopic surgery on some volunteers, flushing out the joint and removing cartilage, and sham surgery on others. The sham surgery is a form of placebo, an intervention that has no physical effect (inert sugar pills are the best-known placebos). In the groundbreaking study, when patients with osteoarthritis of the knee merely thought they had received arthroscopic surgery the intensity, frequency, and duration of their knee pain diminished as much as in patients who actually received the highly touted $5,000 procedure.

It is tempting to say that “mere thought” or “mere belief” caused these patients to feel and function better, just as the child’s trust in her mother made her knee feel better and our belief that little white pills will relieve a headache made the calcium tablet do so, even though it contained not a speck of headache-fighting medication. But if doctors and scientists have learned one thing about the placebo response or placebo effect, it is this: There is nothing “mere” about how thoughts, beliefs, and the power of the mind affect the body.

As researchers find more and more conditions that respond to placebos, they are gaining new respect for the power of mind. They are also learning how a belief or expectation can travel from the brain to arthritic knees, asthmatic airways, hypertensive blood vessels, and sites of pain. Understanding these mechanisms holds out the promise of tapping the placebo response more systematically, so more illnesses can be treated not with pills and operations (which almost always come with side effects or other risks) but with the power of the mind. “What we believe and expect can significantly influence the outcome of a disease, how much pain we feel, even whether Parkinson’s symptoms diminish,” says neuroscientist Mario Beauregard of the University of Montreal, who examines the brain basis for the placebo response in his 2012 book, Brain Wars.

To investigate placebos, scientists typically take patients with the same condition and give half of them a real treatment and the other half a placebo. Crucially, all the patients believe they are receiving the real treatment. Studies like these have shown that placebos can successfully treat pain and other problems, including angina, asthma, irritable bowel syndrome, hypertension, gastric reflux, psoriasis, anxiety, and depression.

But while anecdotes are not science, it is stories of the placebo response that drive home its awesome power—much more so than reports in dry research papers. Placebos burst into the medical literature in 1955, with an article by Harvard Medical School anesthesiologist Henry Beecher, who had served as a medic in World War II. One day, when his field hospital was running out of morphine, a desperate Beecher had injected some of the suffering soldiers with a saline solution, assuring them that it would vanquish their pain. Miraculously, it did. With that, placebos had entered the medical mainstream as worthy of study and, increasingly, clinical use.

Placebo Power The Saturday Evening Post

Gear up your smartphone with free apps to crush those annoying goals that show up on our top-10 lists every year:

Lose Weight: Two proven weight-loss strategies—calorie counting and peer support—team up in FitNow’s app (loseit.com). Set a daily calorie budget, track activities, and connect with friends for extra motivation.

Get Organized: Build collections of photos, recipes, and decorating ideas at pinterest.com. Think of it as a personal digital scrapbook that you just happen to share with the entire world.

Manage Money: Track and categorize spending at mint.com. Enter account information, then sit back and watch. As the year unfolds, you’ll begin to notice where to cut back and save.

Learn Something New: Bring global photo journalism into your tablet with this app from Reuters (widerimage.reuters.com). Timely, insightful, sometimes disturbing, always fascinating. (Sorry, it’s iPad only.)

Get a New Job: Access postings from job boards and company websites at indeed.com. Bonus: Personalize and send your search to your smart device.

Quit Smoking: OK, these apps aren’t free—but they’re lots cheaper than smoking. QuitNow! ($2.99, Google Play) and Livestrong MyQuit Coach ($3.99, iTunes) motivate soon-to-be-reformed-smokers with progress trackers, chats, and achievable goals.

Help Others: Find a great place to volunteer at volunteermatch.org.  Make a difference and connect with others in your community with this iPhone app.

Meet New People: Join the largest location-based social network at badoo.com. Meet new friends, chat, and share interests.

Send Cards: Find the perfect card for whenever and whomever at justwink.com. Get reminders and send personalized digital greetings via text, email, or Facebook.

Save the Planet: Go green with the One Small Act app from greenisuniversal.com. Choose from 400+ simple, eco-friendly actions; track progress; and share achievements.

Top 10 Apps for Self-Improvement The Saturday Evening Post

Warm weather comes and goes—but the risk of skin cancer is always in season, says three-time Olympic medalist Julia Mancuso. Photo courtesy American Academy of Dermatology.

Slathering on sunscreen to sidestep skin cancer is often associated with being outdoors in the hot, summer sun. But don’t drop sun-smart habits to prevent and detect skin cancer just because the air temperatures fall. People remain at risk during cold weather months, especially if they are around snow (which reflects damaging UV rays) or at are at higher altitudes (where rays are more powerful).

Top alpine skier Julia Mancuso is passionate about raising awareness of skin cancer. And it’s a family affair: Her grandfather and aunt are dermatologists.

“Ever since I was a little girl, my mom instilled in me the importance of protecting my skin from the sun. I follow that advice to this day—on the mountain or off,” says America’s most decorated Olympic female alpine skier. Join in the fight against skin cancer with Julia’s tips and video for protecting your skin while on the slopes: 

More than 3.5 million cases of skin cancer are diagnosed annually. Here's what you need to know about the disease. Infographic by Four Points Dermatology.

Click image to enlarge.

• Always pack sunscreen in your ski gear bag.
• Cover your nose: I use zinc oxide to prevent sunburn. 
• Apply sunscreen every couple of hours because it wears off. I reapply every time I go into the lodge.
• Start your day with a daily moisturizer that contains sunscreen.
• Wear goggles or sunglasses with UVA/UVB protection for your eyes.
• Pull on a mask or wrap a bandana over your face to filter out the sun—and help prevent a wicked goggle line!  
• Grab a hat. When I’m not wearing my helmet on the slopes, I love trucker hats to help protect my face from the sun.

Currently, skin cancer strikes one in four Americans and early detection is key to successful treatment. Now, a new video “Skin Self-Exam: How to Do” from the American Academy of Dermatology shows how to inspect your skin and what to look for.

“Check your skin regularly and see a board-certified dermatologist if you spot anything suspicious. Examining your skin only takes a few minutes, but it could save your life,” said Thomas E. Rohrer, MD, FAAD, a board-certified dermatologist in private practice in Chestnut Hill, Mass. To track suspicious spots, use the American Academy of Dermatology’s Body Mole Map.

Skin-Saving Tips from Alpine Superstar Julia Mancuso The Saturday Evening Post

A man asks his doctor how to live to be 100.
The doctor asked the man, “Do you smoke or drink?”
“No,” he replied. “Never.”
“Do you gamble, drive fast cars, or fool around with women?” inquired the doctor.
“No, I’ve never done any of those things either.”
“Well, then,” said the doctor, “why do you want to live to be 100?”

It was a question that might have occurred to pollster George Gallup as he concluded his 1959 study “The Secrets of a Long Life,” for The Saturday Evening Post. (Read the full story here.) For the report, the Gallup Organization had spent months interviewing 402 Americans from across the country who had all lived 95 years or longer.

When all the data was collected, Gallup drew two surprising conclusions.

"I'm not a salad eater or a fruit eater, and if it were true that an apple a day keeps the doctor away, I'd be dead long ago; I don't eat an apple a year," 96-year-old Dr. John Edward Rhetts of Salem, Indiana, told the Post. The cane, he said, was to make him look distinguished.

First, if you wanted to live to a very ripe old age, it didn’t matter what you ate or drank or how much you exercised.

Second, you’ll live a lot longer if your life is dull.

Nothing helped the human body reach a ripe old age better than an unexciting life of regular habits, little  variation, and low stress. The interview subjects weren’t motivated by driving ambitions. They hadn’t even tried to achieve a long life. (Only 9 percent of the group had ever expected to reach their 90s.) “For many,” Gallup wrote, “their only outstanding accomplishment is that they have lived longer than most other humans. … Living to be old is probably the most exciting thing that ever happened to these people.”

They were admirable people, Gallup argued: honest, hardworking, law-abiding citizens and parents. But these elderly men and women had shaped their lives for contentment, not achievement. They were not risk-takers. When the great tide of migration swept westward, they remained where they had been born—usually in a small town.

In their lifetimes, stress wasn’t the buzz word it is today. They might have talked instead of discomfort, worry, nerves—whatever the word used, these subjects had figured out how to avoid it.

“If this still sounds dull,” Gallup concluded, “the chances are that you’ll never make 90.”

Gallup had commenced his research by asking subjects if they could attribute their long lives to any one factor. Fully one-third of the subjects said, “I don’t know.”

Others offered these explanation:

• God’s will (22 percent)

• Adaptability and a good sense of humor (17 percent)

• Hard work (16 percent)

• Good genes—parents or siblings who lived into their 90s (11 percent)

• Keeping regular habits (9 percent)

It shouldn’t surprise you to learn that most of the interview subjects lived lives of moderation—they didn’t eat or drink to excess, and they didn’t smoke. But a significant minority broke these rules.

In 1959, William Perry, 106, of San Francisco had ham and eggs, beans, fried fish, and coffee for breakfast.

Take the issue of drinking, for example. Over half of the people interviewed had never touched liquor in their lives, which might seem like an argument for abstinence. And yet, there was 115-year-old Uncle Charley Washington who, throughout his life, had drank “as much whiskey as he (could) afford.” Also, there was the testimony of 101-year-old Mrs. Marie Renier. For 80 years, she had drunk a quart of whiskey, and in many decades, as much as a gallon of beer a day.

As for food, there’s no consistent answer, either. Some ate lean, others ate richly. Meals tended to be heavy on the starch and protein. If a vegetable made it to their table, it was usually overcooked. Half of them had eaten fried food regularly all their lives.

Overall, there was enough contradiction among the subjects’ answers, aside from the uniform dullness, to rule out any other “secrets” for extending lifespan.

Even adopting a healthy pattern of living—regular hours, healthy diet, regular exercise, etc.—was no guarantee. As Gallup noted, “the only apparent value of their testimony is to give some sort of comfort to those of us who do not conform to the pattern and who covet long life.”

In other words, no matter what rules you lived by, you still had a chance at long life. And if you had followed all the generally accepted rules for good health, you still had no guarantees you’d make it to 100.

Americans today have a one-in-6,000 chance of living 100 years, which is probably why there are more centenarians living in America than any other country. We of the modern age still believe we can improve our odds with a better diet and more exercise. But if the real secret is living a life that is horribly, painfully dull, would any of us truly want to live to 100?

The average lifespan was 70 years
when the Gallup articles were published in 1959
and 78.5 in 2012.

Do You Really Want To Live To 100? The Saturday Evening Post

Inattention Symptoms
• You fail to pay close attention to details or make careless mistakes.
• You often have trouble remaining focused during lectures, conversations, or while reading.
• When spoken to directly, your mind seems elsewhere even in the absence of any apparent distraction.
• You often do not follow through on instructions and fail to finish work or chores.
• You often have difficulty organizing tasks and activities, so you fail to meet deadlines.
• You often avoid, dislike, or are reluctant to undertake tasks that require sustained mental effort, such as preparing reports or completing forms.
• You often lose things you need for tasks, such as books, wallet, paperwork, or cell phone.
• You are often easily distracted by extraneous stimuli.
• You are often forgetful in daily activities such as running errands, returning calls, paying bills, and keeping appointments.

Hyperactivity-Impulsivity Symptoms
• You often fidget with or tap your hands or feet, or squirm while seated.
• You often get up when remaining seated is expected, such as at work.
• You often run around where it is inappropriate.
• You are often unable to quietly engage in leisure activities, such as reading or gardening.
• You are often unable or uncomfortable sitting still for an extended time, as in restaurants or meetings.
• You often talk excessively.
• You often blurt out an answer before a question has been completed, finish other people’s sentences, or cannot wait your turn in conversation.
• You often have trouble waiting your turn, such as in line at a bank or store.
• You often interrupt others by butting into conversations or activities.

Symptoms of ADHD The Saturday Evening Post

Buddies for life: President and CEO of Miami Lighthouse, Virginia Jacko, with her guide dog Tracker. Photo by Scherley Busch.

Virginia Jacko was going blind. She knew it, but not everyone else did. Since the mid-1990s, her vision had been steadily deteriorating. Though capable of seeing people and objects in front of her, she might not recognize a person standing at her side. Finally, in 1998, then in her 50s, Virginia was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, an irreversible disease affecting about 1 in 4,000 people in the United States. The disease attacks the cells controlling night vision and peripheral vision first. But in advanced cases, such as Virginia’s, it robs central vision, eventually leading to blindness.

So it was with trepidation that Virginia arrived at the office of the incoming president of Purdue University for an initial meeting with her new boss. She wanted to assure the president that she could still fulfill her responsibilities as the financial advisor to the president and provost.

For years now, she’d found ways to adapt her personal and professional life to an increasingly narrow visual world. She scouted out meeting sites ahead of time. She’d stopped driving, relying on taxicabs if she needed to get somewhere quickly. She prepared for meetings at night, her face close to the monitor so she could read words on the screen and memorize data on Excel spreadsheets. “I never got depressed or felt sorry for myself,” says Virginia. “Negative energy is just a waste of time.”

But that fateful morning in late 2000, as she reached the office of the president’s assistant, her heart sunk. The president had ordered new furniture that completely changed the layout of the room. Virginia realized she would not be able to navigate the space without help. So, thinking fast, she pretended to be running late for the meeting and waited for the president to step away from his office. When he did, she slipped in, guided by the assistant, and sat down on the couch. When he returned, she merely had to stand up to greet him.

The plan was a success, but the experience was a loud wake-up call that Virginia couldn’t ignore. She needed to learn to live as a blind person if she was going to succeed in a sighted person’s world. Her vision was getting to be too much of a problem to conceal. After the meeting, she called her husband Bob, a professor of civil engineering at the same university. She told him she needed to take a three-month medical leave. She would study at a vision rehabilitation facility.

One of her three children, Julie, urged her to check out the Miami Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired. Virginia and Bob owned a condominium in Miami, so she would have a place to stay. Once there, Virginia immersed herself in the world of the blind, honing skills she once took for granted, such as baking oatmeal cookies and sewing buttons on clothes. She soaked up everything she could learn about computer programs for the blind, including programs that convert text to speech. After the three-month program, Virginia felt a renewed sense of confidence. “I learned that a blind person can do anything a sighted person does. They just have to learn to do things differently,” she says.

At the end of her medical leave, Virginia was at a crossroads. She could return to her job at Purdue and continue to advise the president and provost on financial affairs. Or she could continue her efforts to regain her mobility by enrolling in a one-month, 24/7 intensive training program with a guide dog. She chose the latter.

By then, not only was Virginia completely blind but for the first time in her life, she was stepping into the future without a clear career path. Yet she was at peace with her decision. “I had changed. Walking out the doors of Miami Lighthouse as a graduate of the program, I realized that my passion was helping the blind,” she says.

Virginia’s husband Bob spent three months with her in Miami while she completed the program but, as a tenured professor, he had to return to Purdue for the new school year. Virginia would stay in Miami with her new guide dog Tracker, immersing herself in work at the Miami Lighthouse. She began as a volunteer, but such was her financial experience—and drive—that she soon became treasurer and a member of the board.

Not everything went smoothly for Virginia as she adapted to her new life. Once, while out on a stroll along a coastal walkway, Tracker stepped aside to avoid colliding with a woman pushing a stroller. The sudden move knocked Virginia off the breaker wall and she plummeted into the sea. Virginia calmly treaded water until someone lowered a ladder, allowing her to climb back up to solid ground.
Another time, she attempted to sit down for lunch at a restaurant in a major department store, only to be told she couldn’t bring Tracker into the restaurant. Not one to be easily thwarted, she stood her ground and seated herself with her guide dog at a table. That day, she called the company’s headquarters and advised that the incident would result in a public relations fiasco unless changes were made. In no time, the chain changed its policy, and it now provides Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliance training for all employees.

In early 2005, the president and CEO of Miami Lighthouse left unexpectedly for personal reasons. The chairman asked Virginia to serve as president and CEO on an interim basis until a permanent replacement could be found. Following a nationwide search, the board selected Virginia, making her the first blind president and CEO in Miami Lighthouse’s 81-year history.

Virginia wasted no time in growing the organization by offering innovative programming as she deepened relationships within the philanthropic community. “When I took over in 2005, we had one grant and today we have more than 30 active grant awards,” she says.

Thanks to her outreach efforts, revenue has nearly tripled, allowing the organization to vastly increase the scope of its services. Today, Miami Lighthouse teaches rehabilitation skills to people of all ages—from blind babies to seniors with low vision—allowing them greater mobility and self-reliance. Miami Lighthouse has become a center of excellence in vision rehabilitation because of its innovative programs, such as sound engineering and mobile eye care for low-income schoolchildren. All told, under Virginia’s leadership, the organization has increased the number of people it serves fourteen-fold to about 10,000 annually.

All of this on a budget that Virginia watches like a hawk. For five consecutive years, Miami Lighthouse has received the highest rating from Charity Navigator, America’s largest independent charity evaluator of financial health and accountability.

Virginia’s disability has never slowed her down. “Virginia is such a determined person. Having a deep faith; supportive family; and positive, can-do attitude are at the core of her success,” says Doug Eadie, co-author of Virginia’s autobiography, The Blind Visionary.

“I am so blessed,” Virginia says today. Her blindness, she feels, was a gift that allowed her to find a new mission and purpose in life. “We transform people’s lives at Miami Lighthouse every day. I lost my vision, and I found my passion.”

Out of the Dark The Saturday Evening Post

People think of arthritis as a problem for older folks—and it surely is. But about 300,000 children in the U.S. have painful, swollen, and stiff joints caused by juvenile arthritis (JA). Fortunately, up to half of kids under age 6 bounce back from milder forms of the disease with customized drug therapy to reduce swelling and relieve pain. “Having juvenile arthritis in fewer than five joints is a good indicator that youngsters will outgrow the disease,” explains Michael Blakley, M.D., who specializes in rheumatology at Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis.

Having more than five inflamed joints, or a history of the skin disease psoriasis (also an autoimmune disease in which the immune system mistakenly attacks normal cells), predicts more lasting problems. Even then, steroids and new immune-suppressing medicines called biologics can stop inflammation and help protect kids with JA from bone, muscle, and eye complications that were once commonplace, Dr. Blakley says.

JA affects mobility and energy levels and includes any form of arthritis or an arthritis-related condition that is detected in children or teens under age 18. To learn more about JA, browse arthritis.org.

Juvenile Arthritis The Saturday Evening Post