Scientists trying to figure out why just 1 person in 10,000 lives to be 100 have found an important clue in the blood.

Centenarians, a new study shows, tend to have larger than average cholesterol-carrying molecules.

"Large particle size seems to give people an extra 20 years of life, with very little disability to go along with it," said Dr. Nir Barzilai, who directed the study at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx.
The gene may be one reason why some centenarians in Dr. Barzilai's study have lived to 100, even though they were overweight or ate badly.

"I hate to say it," he said. "but I think it's true. If you have this gene, you can smoke and you can be fat and you can not exercise. This sounds to me terrible."

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So there you have it. Only people who make an effort to hit age 100 (nonsmoking, vegetable-eating, exercise masochists) should live that long. If this guy isn't a poster boy for, "A Puritan is someone who is deathly afraid that someone, somewhere, is having fun," I don't know who is.

It is mainly these "fitness fanatics" who die in their late 50s and early 60s, or die a lingering death in their early 70s because of all the physical and emotional stress they put on themselves in trying to defeat the Reaper. I think this phenomena should be compared to the "excesive hygene" disorder that the Mars founder had, causing him to bath some 200 odd times every day.

It's a reincarnation of the old hair-shirt-to-get-to-heaven phenomenon, fritz. The belief lives on that one must suffer pain and deprivation of the pleasures of the flesh to be "saved."

I'm sure you've noted the many similarities between the current anti-smokers and religious zealots. This is just one more.

I know what you are talking about. This is what we call "works based salvation" as opposed to the "sovereign grace" position. ie God choosing His disciples "after the council of His own will".