In 1521, Ponce de Leon arrived in Florida in search of the mythical fountain of youth; those who drank from it or bathed in it were said to be returned to their youth. Some 500 years later, the New York Times ran a lengthy article on a longevity guru whose disciples wear T-shirts emblazoned “Don’t Die” and who buy supposedly rejuvenating vitamins and supplements from him by the bushel.

            What is real in our search for longevity? I assume that most of you, like me, are interested in healthy longevity – I would rather be well and active into my 90s than live into my 100s in a frail dependent state.

            The maximum lifespan of any species, including our own, seems to be fixed. The longest documented human lifespan was 122 years, and the next oldest were 119. About 120 would seem to be as much as we can hope for.

            In the famous Blue Zones, five scattered sites in Italy, Japan, Greece, Costa Rica and California, many people live healthy and active well into their 90s, and much of what we know about healthy longevity came first from studying these populations, backed up by many other studies.

            While heredity clearly plays a role – the best single predictor of a long life is having long-lived parents – only some 30% of your chance for a long healthy life comes from choosing the right parents. Much is under our control.

            Diet is a critical factor. If longevity is very important to you, prepare to be hungry. There is incontrovertible evidence in mice and considerable data in humans that calorie restriction lengthens lifespan.

            What you eat is important. Contributing to a long and healthy life is eating a plant-based diet, heavy in fruits and vegetables with little or no red meat. Get your protein from fish and nuts, and use olive oil in place of butter. This type of diet leads to less heart disease and less cancer.

            Move. Regular exercise both leads to less premature death and better quality of life. While any amount of exercise is much better than none, more is better. Even walking 30 minutes a day will pay dividends, but exercising more and longer is even better. Do not forget strength. Aerobic exercise will do the most to extend life, but strength training prevents falls and injuries and strengthens the bones.

            Don’t smoke. If you do, quitting now will do more to improve your health than anything else you can do.

            Minimize your alcohol intake. There is soft evidence that moderate drinking may reduce heart disease, but it increases a variety of other disorders. One drink a day is probably a wash, but more is clearly bad.

            Get enough sleep. Sleep is when we rejuvenate, and try for at least eight hours a night.

            Socialize. Spending time with friends and family and participating in group activities is very common in the Blue Zones and has been shown to be associated with less depression and better physical health.

            See your doctor once in a while. Many chronic diseases that shorten life, including hypertension, high cholesterol and diabetes, have simple treatments that prevent premature death and worse diseases. A few preventive measures such as colonoscopy and immunizations have good data supporting their use.

            Pills? Not many. As I wrote a while back, there is now data supporting the use of a daily multivitamin to stave off dementia. Softer evidence favors the amino acid taurine and the diabetes pill metformin; both are in early stages of testing and I do not take either. Most other supplements enrich their sellers but do not help you.

            There are no quick fixes to let you live longer and better, but there are many things you can do.

            Dr. Ed Hoffer is the chairman of the Marion Board of Health, a graduate of MIT and Harvard Medical School. He is Associate Professor of Medicine, part-time, at Harvard and a Senior Scientist at the Massachusetts General Hospital.

What Does The Doctor Say?

By Dr. Ed Hoffer

            All my rowdy friends gathered at the Mattapoisett Museum recently on a cold rainy Thursday morning to share tall tales and real ones, too, about growing up in the 1950s and ’60s. Truth be told, all the stories were real remembrances of our youth in and around Mattapoisett. The group consisted of eight septuagenarians and one octogenarian (barely) who gather weekly for coffee.

            For some time, I have been on a quest to convince the museum to do an oral history of our town during those decades, which I believe have been forgotten. The new curator, Connor Gaudet, agreed to let our group reminisce and record us doing so, without knowing what to expect.

            No need to worry, it wasn’t long before we were transported back to primary school, junior high and high school; our long memories and gifts for gab had one story after another pouring out. No need for Mr. Gaudet’s long list of prompts, which he had available for lulls in the conversation. There were none.

            By asking each of us to introduce ourselves, he established for the record that most were legitimate “townies” with ancestry going back well over a hundred years plus. One member, Mike Hickey, noted that he almost felt out of place since he didn’t arrive until high school … some 60 years ago! Having been a firefighter in town for many years, his telling of the infamous My Place fire cemented his membership in this “brotherhood.”

            The story goes that Police Officer Gilly Alves radioed that My Place, a local nightclub, was ablaze. The dispatcher promptly passed the word that there was a fire at Officer Alves’s house on Park Street where our diligent firefighters descended upon in short order. Mrs. Alves, awakened at the commotion and standing at the front door in her nightgown, announced that “there is no fire here.” By the time the engine company arrived at the actual fire, the building was well charred.

            Talk of fire brought up stories of the famous Harbor Beach Club restaurant, which burned down under suspicious circumstances. John DeMello recalled a time when he was parking cars there that a bride lost her new husband during the wedding reception. It was snowing and it seems that the groom went outside (presumably for a smoke or he had second thoughts and was escaping) and fell into a snow-covered septic tank! He was finally discovered and rescued (from the tank, not the marriage), but one can assume the honeymoon was postponed for a time.

            Speaking of unpleasant smells, while talking about the Holy Ghost grounds, its many clambakes and Portuguese feasts, none could forget the infamous outhouses. Enough said about that.

            On a less odorous subject, Peter Foster recalled his parents offering him the option of going to summer camp or getting a small skiff with an Evinrude motor attached. He chose the boat. “Who needed camp when we had Mattapoisett?” he said. So true.

            Richard DeMello noted that there was so much to do in town it was hard to choose.

            In winter we skated on the cranberry bogs, built soapbox racers in our dads’ garages in anticipation of the annual derby on Ship Street and ate linguica pizzas at The Nest restaurant after every school event.

            In the summer, there was basketball on the Center School courts, pick-up baseball games and Little League on the many diamonds. There were fireworks at the town beach on the Fourth of July, swimming meets and the Lions Club carnivals where I learned never to ride a Ferris wheel after seeing how they were assembled in less than two hours. And, of course, band concerts and square dances.

            Tales we told of the two old swimming holes. The story goes that one fellow whose name has been lost to history was in such a hurry to take the first dip of the summer in the one on the Mattapoisett River behind the Tinkhamtown Chapel that he tore off his clothes, hurriedly grabbed the rope hanging from the giant oak tree and swung out over the water, let go with a loud yell and … splat! … his behind firmly planted in mud. The spring thaw had deposited mud from upstream into the pond, leaving only 6 inches of water.

            The stories continued. The New York Yacht Club’s annual arrival was a highpoint because kids with boats could make a few bucks transporting liquor from Romeo’s package store out to the yachts. Bruce Rocha told of the time the Shining Tides installed a large swimming pool, the first one in town (my how things have changed), and a hurricane promptly and completely covered it with sand.

            Al Apperson remembered attending dances at the Congregational Church Hall. He recalled the boys would stand on one side and the girls on the other, waiting eagerly for the music to begin to race across the floor to ask their secret crush to dance before someone else did. And of course, we talked about the famous Center School firing range and the early days of Old Rochester High.

            Our allotted time went by in a flash just like the decades have. Somehow no youthful indiscretions were revealed, though the statute of limitations had long since expired.

            Editor’s note: Mattapoisett resident Dick Morgado is an artist and retired newspaper columnist whose musings are, after some years, back in The Wanderer under the subtitle “Thoughts on ….” Morgado’s opinions have also appeared for many years in daily newspapers around Boston.

Thoughts on…

By Dick Morgado