Healthy lifestyle, attitude help resilient seniors stay on track

Orville Rogers can make it twice around Coppell High School's track in a little over four minutes. That's a respectable time for many of the teens who attend the Dallas school. For Rogers' peer group, it's remarkable.

Rogers, 91, ran at Coppell last summer in the Texas Masters Championships outdoor track meet. The nonagenarian holds the world indoor record in his age group (90 to 94) for the mile (9:56.58) and the 800 meters (4:19.97).

"It is quite satisfying to be a world champion. No one comes close in my age group," the Dallas-area native says. He's quick to add that it could be because there aren't many runners in his age range.

Rogers began competing in 2007 and keeps in shape by eating healthy foods, running 10 to 14 miles a week and weightlifting.

Rogers is a certain type of senior who intrigues aging experts: a person who has not only lived a long time but has done so with vivacity. Unlike many seniors in nursing homes, he is instead padding around a track on any given day and is active in his church, and he is a great-grandfather who joins his extended family for annual cruises.

Attitude counts

Numerous studies aim to decipher how much genetics play a role in resilient aging as well as what life habits seem to enhance mental and physical well-being deep into the golden years. Scientists are finding that a rich and active social life combined with exercise are key factors. And though genetics appears to influence longevity, a person's attitude about aging may be a driving force for whether he spends the later years of life in a nursing home or polar-bear-watching off a ship's deck in the Arctic, as Rogers did two years ago on a vacation.

"The way you view the aging process, positively or negatively, is going to affect your quality of aging," says Luigi Ferrucci, director of the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging at the National Institute on Aging. The 51-year study has tracked thousands through their young- and middle-adult years into old age. Ferrucci says preliminary data on a paper to be published next year suggest that 40- and 50-year-olds who have negative views of aging tend to age worse than those who maintain a positive view.

"Those who fight aging age better than those who passively accept the decline that comes with it," he says.

Dick "D.C." Clement, 72, of Vienna, Va., says he has never let age stand in the way of his dreams or just plain having fun. At age 60, Clement ran his first marathon.