TIME Secrets of Living Longer by The Editors of TIME

Author:The Editors of TIME
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: JNF003000;JNF003150;JNF003090
Publisher: Liberty Street
Published: 2016-04-01T20:30:00+00:00

WHY DO PRESIDENTS LIVE SO LONG?

BY NANCY GIBBS AND MICHAEL DUFFY

Some of the longest-lived presidents.

Adams

Ford

Carter

Reagan

HERE IS A CLASSIC CONUNDRUM of cause and effect: the men who survive the crushing pace (not to mention lethal diet) of multiple U.S. presidential campaigns and go on to hold one of the most stressful jobs in the world also have a habit of outliving the rest of us.

In the fall of 2012, Jimmy Carter, now 90, took his place in history as the president who had lived the longest after leaving the White House—31 years and 231 days out of office, breaking the record of Herbert Hoover, who died in 1964. Carter left the White House in January 1981, went back to Georgia and proceeded to teach, improve his Spanish, paint, write poetry, win the Nobel Peace Prize and write 21 books about, among other things, how to find a second career. He is rather typical. Ronald Reagan lived until 93. So did Gerald Ford. George Bush the elder, like Carter, is 90. Granted, the presidential demographic typically enjoys access to better nutrition, health care and living conditions. Yet these men also knew pressure that few of us can imagine, and stress is a proven toxin.

So does the presidency endow people with some special life force, or do they share some quality that helps get them to the White House in the first place? Is there something about holding the office that forces men—and presumably one day women—to live a healthy lifestyle rather than just aspire to it?

For starters, there is constant vigilance. Ignoring troubling symptoms is not an option for someone who has a doctor following him virtually everywhere he goes; medical teams are steps away at all times. Even when presidents return to private life, they are shadowed by Secret Service details, albeit smaller ones. Among those agents, an EMT is always on duty. Think of it as a retirement benefit.

At least since the mid-1970s, nearly every president has been devoted to some kind of regular exercise. If some of that recreation was done for public-relations purposes, most presidents have come to rely on it for private sustenance. The elder Bush, who as president was known to try three or four different sports in a single day, still takes exercise to extremes and jumped out of airplanes with Army skydivers at ages 80, 85 and 90. “I want people at my age to know they don’t have to slow down,” he once told us.

There’s body, and then there’s mind. We all may know we need to manage our stress, but for a sitting president this is imperative, a consistent part of the advice they give one another. Be sure to rest. Take your vacations. Use Camp David. After the hard-fought 1960 election, Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy met in Key Biscayne, Fla., where Nixon made an unsolicited promise. I may criticize your policies, he told Kennedy, but “of one thing I can assure you: I shall never join in any criticism of you, expressed or implied, for taking time off for relaxation.

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