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Level 1-2 Lesson 5 Reading Text

Tortoises are known for their long lifespans of up to 200 years, which makes the author question whether they would want to live to 100 years old. Scientists are studying genes linked to longevity and identifying communities where healthy long lives are common, such as areas of Italy and Japan where many elderly residents eat diets high in fruits and vegetables. Research is exploring both lifestyle and genetic factors that may protect against aging and diseases like cancer, with some groups found to share genes associated with long lifespans. While genes, environment, and diet all likely contribute to longevity, an element of luck is also involved in living a long and healthy life.

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155 views1 page

Level 1-2 Lesson 5 Reading Text

Tortoises are known for their long lifespans of up to 200 years, which makes the author question whether they would want to live to 100 years old. Scientists are studying genes linked to longevity and identifying communities where healthy long lives are common, such as areas of Italy and Japan where many elderly residents eat diets high in fruits and vegetables. Research is exploring both lifestyle and genetic factors that may protect against aging and diseases like cancer, with some groups found to share genes associated with long lifespans. While genes, environment, and diet all likely contribute to longevity, an element of luck is also involved in living a long and healthy life.

Uploaded by

Johan Zamora
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Life Level 1-2 Reading Text

A long and healthy life?


A long and healthy life?

Tortoises are famous for living for a long time. They can often live for two hundred years. I
don’t think I want to live that long, but, these days, we are all living longer. This article
about long life made me think a lot. Do I want to live to be 100? Do you?

How long will a baby born today live? One hundred years? One hundred and twenty years?

Scientists are studying genes that could mean long life for us all. There are already many,
many people who live to more than 100. In fact, there are now so many healthy elderly
people that there's a name for them: the wellderly. These are people over the age of 80
who have no major illnesses, such as high blood pressure, heart disease, or diabetes.

There are many scientific studies of communities where a healthy old age is typical. These
include places like Calabria in southern Italy, and the island of Okinawa in Japan. In Calabria,
the small village of Molochio has a population of about 2,000. And of these 2,000 people,
there are at least eight people over 100 years old. Researchers ask people like this the
secret of their long life. The answer is almost always about food and is almost always the
same: “I eat a lot of fruit and vegetables,” “I eat a little bit of everything,” “I never smoke, I
don't drink.”

So, in the past, scientists looked at things such as diet and lifestyle for an explanation of long
life. But these days they are also looking at genetic factors. Researcher Eric Topol says that
there are probably genes that protect people from the effects of the aging process. The new
research into long life investigates groups of people who have a genetic connection. One
interesting group lives in Ecuador. In one area of the country there are a number of people
with the same genetic condition. It's called Laron syndrome. These people don't grow very
tall—just over one meter. But Laron syndrome also gives them protection against cancer
and diabetes. As a result, they live longer than other people in their families. On the other
side of the world, on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, there's another group of long-lived men.
They are Japanese-Americans, but they have a similar gene to the Laron syndrome group.

In Calabria, researchers constructed the family trees of the 100-year-old people. They
looked at family information from the 19th century to today. They think that there are
genetic factors that give health benefits to the men. This is interesting because generally, in
Europe, women live longer than men.

So what really makes people live longer? Probably, it's a combination of genes, the
environment and one more thing—luck.

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