Genetic Code of World's Oldest Person May Reveal Recipe for Long Life

I love herring. I love the study of genetic science.  I am trying to figure out how I can enrich my life and stay along for a long time in order to bug my children and as many grandchildren as they will give to our family.

As many of my friends know, I try to stay on top of the latest news concerning life enhancement, be it via diet, medicine, genetics, or spiritual dedication.

I know I'm not alone in my desire to live a long life.

In fact Hendrikje van Andel-Schipper wants to live a long life too!

The 115-year-old Hendrikje van Andel-Schipper, who held the title of world's oldest human before she died in 2004, attributed her longevity to eating herring every day. But doctors had a hunch it was a little more than that. After all, everyone and their uncle eats herring in van Andel-Schipper's native country of the Netherlands.

Turns out their hunch was right. It was the herring and a group of coveted genes known to help prevent circulatory disease and Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. The genes likely led to van Andel-Schipper's remarkable mental clarity at such an advanced age as well as her ability to lick breast cancer . . . at age 100.

Dutch researcher Henne Holstege of the VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam presented the initial findings from an analysis of van Andel-Schipper’s genes on Oct. 14 at the annual meeting of the International Congress of Human Genetics in Montreal.

Herring + good genes - herring = long life

Holstege said she hopes van Andel-Schipper's unique genetic blueprint, called a genome, can serve as a reference for future studies of longevity genes. She compared van Andel-Schipper's genome to a checklist of all that's needed to combat the ravages of aging. No other centenarian has been studied as thoroughly.

Van Andel-Schipper was robust and didn't enter a nursing home until age 105. Researchers grew intrigued by her mental acuity during her later years. Her performance in mental tests at age 113 was above average for a healthy adult between the ages of 60 and 75. Ultimately van Andel-Schipper died of stomach cancer, which is ironic because this type of cancer is rare today but was common in 1890, the year she was born.

Fortunately, van Andel-Schipper decided to donate her body to medical science when she was just a sweet, young thing at age 82, allowing researchers to look more deeply for the underlying causes of her remarkable longevity.

Upon van Andel-Schipper's death, an autopsy of her brain showed no signs of even minor dementia, previously thought to be inevitable for the elderly. Doctors also found no sign of plaque in her arteries. While it is true that van Andel-Schipper's favorite fish, herring, contains heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids, doctors had never seen such a pristine vascular system in the elderly.

Key to living past 100

Holstege and her Dutch and American colleagues are only in the initial stages of van Andel-Schipper's genome analysis, and no results have been published. Doctors hope that a better understanding of longevity genes can lead to medicines that can suppress the genes that cause disease and activate the genes that promote long life.

The late van Andel-Schipper is unique in that she was among the fewer than 30 people in modern times known to live longer than 115 years; and she is also one of only a few hundred people (so far) to have their complete genome analyzed.

Maybe being the world's oldest person isn't the best goal in life. The title usually is short-lived, with some sinister senior in a rocking chair out to take your title away. But at least you know to get there you don't have to eat herring every day. All you need is that magic combination of genes, distributed to roughly 1 in a billion people.

In case you're wondering what I'm going to eat for lunch, you got that right: herring!

Learning from Steve Jobs: How to lead with purpose

Leadership is a choice. Pure and simple.

When you assume a position of authority, either formally as a manager or informally as a team leader, you make the choice to lead. Management is the discipline of getting things done right. Leadership is the art of doing what is right for good of the organization. In other words, management is execution; leadership is inspiration.

Inspiration emerges from purpose, knowing what you do and why you do it. Organizational purpose emerges from the vision, mission and values of an organization.

Apple is fine example of a purposeful organization. Its leadership under Steve Jobs at the helm was focused on producing well-designed products, easy to use as tools of productivity or means of entertainment. Everyone in Apple has been focused on this mission. You could say much the same about the Ritz-Carlton hotel chain. Everyone from top to bottom, and that includes maids and wait staff, knows how to deliver a superior guest experience.

Among the ways leaders instill purpose in an organization, according to research conducted my book, Lead With Purpose, Giving Your Organization a Reason to Believe in Itself, is through communicating the vision, tying customer benefits to employee contributions, and linking work to results.

Creating a purposeful organization is not easy. It takes the commitment of senior leaders who hold themselves accountable for delivering on the corporate mission. A fine example of this is Vineet Nayar, CEO of HCL Technologies, a global IT services company headquartered in Delhi.

As Nayar wrote in his book, Employees First, Customers Second, "The role of the CEO is to enable people to excel, help them discover their own wisdom, engage themselves entirely in their work, and accept responsibility for making change." Toward that end, Nayar regards himself as a servant of his organization one who holds himself accountable for putting individuals and teams into positions where they can excel.

Purpose is especially necessary in tough times. As Roger Webb, President of the University of Central Oklahoma, told me an in an interview: "If people don't feel the purpose, and don't feel the goal and [know] that they are accomplishing things and moving forward, then depressing news can really bring people down."

While purpose is the spark that sets up the vision -- where an organization is headed -- and defines its mission, it becomes inert if not practiced. So a leader must "connect the dots" between what an employee does and why it matters to the organization.

A key example of this is Ford Motor Company. Under the leadership of CEO Alan Mulally the organization has transformed itself from a struggling company to one that has become the most admired automaker. Key to this has been the One Ford plan, which is the relentless focus on creating cars and trucks that complement the Ford brand globally. The beauty of this imperative is not the words; it's the action steps.

Employees throughout Ford understand the responsibility they have to deliver on One Ford. If you work in manufacturing you understand that decisions and actions you make complement Ford's ability to build world-class products. Or if you work in marketing, you know how your marketing plan for the Focus complement the strategic imperative. Put in other way, purpose becomes personal.

Specificity is critical to purpose. I have developed two questions that managers can ask themselves to ensure that they are using purpose as a lever to effect positive results. The first, is asking oneself if you are teaching your staff about a purpose. Secondly, ask if you are ensuring your staff follow through on the shared purpose.

Answers to these questions will enable the leader to provide his team with a goals. Ways to deliver on this will include briefings from senior management but it will more importantly involve having conversations about what the team is doing and why it matters. Stories about what is working or what is not can greatly contribute to a greater understanding of purpose.

Leadership is a choice for individuals to make, but the leader must provide his or her team with clear direction founded on purpose and understanding.

Oh October!

"In the garden, Autumn is, indeed the crowning glory of the year, bringing us the fruition of months of thought and care and toil.  And at no season, safe perhaps in Daffodil time, do we get such superb colour effects as
from August to November."

-   Rose G. Kingsley, The Autumn Garden

Happy October!!!