A LANDMARK IRISH study has explored the lives of Irish centenarians in the first empirical research in the Republic on those who live to the great age of 100.
Strong family and social connections, a sense of purpose and innate resilience were some of the common threads linking the centenarians interviewed for the paper, which has just been published in the Journal of Aging Studies.
Seventeen men and women aged between 100 and 105 as of 2018 were interviewed face-to-face before the Covid-19 pandemic about their lives. All were fully cognitively healthy and able to consent to participating.
Dr Alison Fagan, a lecturer in nursing at the Technological University of the Shannon, who led the research, believes the centenarians have much to teach our ageing society about the importance of social connection and of fostering a positive and accepting outlook on life as more of us live longer.
“We are seeing more and more centenarians each year,” Fagan said. “We’re all living longer. The only difference now is that we’re living more years in ill health. So how can we position ourselves to live well as centenarians?”
One of the questions Fagan asked participants was whether there was a secret to living well and ageing well.
The answers, she said, reflected the “get up and go” many of the centenarians shared – that one should go out of life having done what you needed to do.
“None of them said ‘eat your five a day’,” Fagan joked.
Rather, what came through in the study was the importance of “living in the moment, being well [socially] connected, not being afraid to take chances, being resilient”, Fagan said.
“I know it’s something we can’t teach, but it [resilience] is so important: having a positive attitude even in the face of adversity.”
This resilience and positive attitude of the centenarians came through in the centenarians’ account of their childhoods.
They were born at a turbulent time in Ireland, with their early years corresponding with the War of Independence and Civil War, with World War II – which brought rationing and a surge in emigration – arriving in their early adulthood.
Most grew up in poverty, left school and worked from a young age (all but three were from farming backgrounds). One man told Fagan of how his parents had died when he was a child and he and his siblings were split up. Nevertheless, he had gone on to “build a wonderful life for himself and his own family”, Fagan said.
The centenarians spoke positively of their childhoods, despite these hardships, in particular, a “a sense of togetherness and belonging”, Fagan said.
They talked about their strong relationships, in particular with their siblings, although many were separated from their brothers and sisters by emigration, and had to keep in contact with them by letter. Over half the centenarians had themselves emigrated for a period of time.
“They kept coming back to formative relationships they had,” Fagan said, adding that friends and neighbours were also important .
“It was funny because a lot of them came from a rural background – Ireland was very rural. Your nearest neighbour could be a couple of miles down the road. Now, we couldn’t be nearer to neighbours but we don’t know them,” she said.
She added that the centenarians shared an attitude of acceptance towards difficulties they had faced, including poverty or having their education cut short.
“A few talked about how they wished they had done other things, but they were still quite matter of fact about ‘but sure look, I didn’t’,” Fagan said.
“There was a lot of acceptance that ‘this is the hand I was dealt, and I have to play it’.”
The research also identified another common outlook among the centenarians, namely a strong sense of purpose in life. For many, this started in their formative years with their work on the family farm. Many continued with work or other activities in later adulthood, by developing new skills, childminding, or volunteering.
One man, Tom (100), told the study that after he retired from farming he “started making walking sticks and shepherds crooks”, while Roger (105) explained how he took up fishing on retirement and continued “up until my 103rd birthday”. At 105 he was still playing bridge.
All of the centenarians were religious or spiritual. They spoke of their faith giving them a moral framework, and providing solace in difficult times, particularly when dealing with grief.
Fagan said the way the centenarians were able to deal with loss was one of the most powerful examples of their resilience.
“You can’t get to 100 without losing people. They lost spouses, children, grandchildren, siblings – most had lost all their siblings and were the last of their era,” she said.
They acknowledged this grief and loss as part of living.
This strong social connectedness the centenarians talked about in their childhoods seems to have continued throughout their lives: they told the study of their ability to form and maintain relationships with others throughout their lifetimes.
One 105-year-old woman, Peggy, told the study: “I have never felt lonely. I have always been surrounded by people that I care about, both friends and family.”
Last year, the World Health Organization formed a new health commission chaired by the US Surgeon General to address loneliness, which it described as a “pressing health threat”. The WHO’s director general noted that people without enough strong connections are at higher risk of stroke, anxiety, dementia and depression.
Fagan hopes the research can raise awareness that good health is not only physical but also psychological and social.
“Absolutely we need to mind our physical health – but we also need to mind our social health,” she said.
“One of the biggest takewaways was social connectedness: connection to your family and your wider community. Now we are seeing huge rates of loneliness in younger people, as well as older people.
“Many of these centenarians were in long-term residential care or if they were at home they were supported by family or private [care] providers, but what they all had in common was social connectendess with peers, with family. They always had people, they never felt lonely. That’s something we really need to home in on.”
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