What it really takes to live a long, healthy life
My great-grandmother, Muriel Litzman, turned 101 in February. She’ll happily beat you at word games, canasta, and Rummikub. She’ll even FaceTime you and comment on your Facebook posts.
When Muriel’s roommate at a rehabilitation facility learned her age, she seemed surprised. “She’s more lively than I am,” says 81-year-old Michelle.
Whenever I ask my great-grandmother what her secret is, Muriel simply shrugs. “No idea,” she says.
She rarely exercised, has never been a big eater, and enjoys a glass of wine or beer during happy hour most evenings. Until her fall this past summer, she lived independently in a senior living community and needed only limited nursing assistance.
I wondered, as a nurse practitioner and health journalist: What does it actually take not just to reach 100, but to thrive at that age? What roles do genetics, lifestyle, resilience, relationships, and luck play in exceptional longevity?
While many factors influence how we age, science increasingly suggests that longevity is about more than simply extending lifespan. It’s also about healthspan — the years lived without major chronic disease and with a good quality of life.
Kumar B. Rajan, PhD, director of the Rush Institute for Healthy Aging, studies how individual and community-level factors influence cognition, life expectancy, quality of life, and functional independence. His research suggests that social connections, lifestyle behaviors, community environments, and the burden of chronic disease all play a role in how people age.
“Delaying or avoiding chronic disease allows years to be good ones where the goal isn’t just a longer life, but a longer healthy one,” Rajan says.
But living into your 90s or beyond isn’t always about lifestyle and avoiding illness. Some research suggests that exceptionally long-lived individuals carry protective genetic variants associated with healthy aging and preserved cognition, while having fewer genetic factors linked to disease.
Muriel has had a heart attack, takes several medications each day, and broke both femurs after two falls in her 90s.
Yet, she continues putting one foot in front of the other.
Rajan says many centenarians appear to handle adversity differently. Whether they’re navigating chronic conditions or other challenges, they often show resilience.
I’ve witnessed that resilience firsthand. Although Muriel initially felt discouraged after arriving at the rehabilitation center, she became determined to regain her strength. She attended physical therapy most days.
“I have to get out of here,” she would say.
This raises another question: Do we want to live to 100 and beyond? Muriel still considers the best years of her life to be the nearly 65 years she spent happily married to her husband. She also never expected to live this long, and her bank account reflects that. She even declined speech therapy at the rehabilitation center because she thought it would be an additional expense.
I asked Muriel once more about the secret to a long and meaningful life. Her answer this time? “Don’t fall.”
Her advice reflects what researchers are increasingly learning about longevity: The goal may not simply be adding more years to life, but living well during those years — whatever that looks like for each of us. In this issue’s cover section, we explore what healthspan might entail and the latest in longevity science.
Originally published in the Fall 2026/Winter 2027 print issue.
Brittany Edelmann is a registered nurse and a graduate health, environment and science journalism student at Northwestern University.
