Nola Ochs, Poised to Become World's Oldest College Graduate at 95, Is Living Testimony to Importance of Healthy Lifestyle

Nola Ochs, a senior at Kansas' Fort Hays State College, is poised to make history later this year when she finishes her bachelor's degree. Ochs, who turned 95 in November, will become the oldest person to graduate from college.

Having witnessed the 1918 flu pandemic, both world wars, the Dust Bowl, the Depression, the rise and fall of communism in Eastern Europe, and the advent of the air and electronics ages, Ochs has been a first-hand source of information about nearly a century of scientific, political, economic and social changes for her classmates.

She's also living testimony to the contribution a healthy lifestyle can make to longevity and vitality.

"I don't come from a particularly long lived family," says Ochs, whose youthful voice belies her age. Her father died of heart disease at 62; her mother, at 72, of pneumonia. Her brother lived to 74, her sister, to 67; both died of cancer. Except for a bout with breast cancer, which was successfully treated in 1983, and mild hypertension that's responded well to treatment, Ochs has had no health problems to speak of. Her hypertension medication is the only one she takes. She sees a family practitioner but her check-ups tend to be brief. "Because there's not a problem, we don't have a lot to talk about," she says.

A full-time student at Fort Hays, Ochs lives in an apartment on campus and enjoys walking for exercise. During school breaks and on occasional weekends, she drives 100 miles to her farm. Her husband died in 1972 and three of her sons, who own farms nearby, take care of her place while she's away. "I thought I'd go home more often but I'm too busy with course work," says Ochs. On Sundays, she attends church and catches up with her friends who aren't students.

Thanks to medical and public health advances such as clean water supplies and immunization programs, more Americans are living longer than ever. Centenarians, in fact, now make up the fastest growing segment of the US population, followed by those 85 and older. Many of the nation's older citizens face important challenges, including multiple chronic and debilitating health problems -- challenges exacerbated by the growing shortage of geriatrics healthcare professionals. Yet some, like Ochs, reach very old age in surprisingly good shape.

"Almost 90% of centenarians have a history of independently functioning at the average age of 92 years," says AGS member Thomas Perls MD, MPH, the founder and director of the Boston University Medical Center's New England Centenarian Study, the largest study of centenarians in the world. "The fact that they compress their disability towards the end of their very long lives, points to an optimistic picture of aging. Rather than it being a case of "the older you get, the sicker you get," it appears to us that for many people, particularly those with healthy habits, it is much more the case of "the older you get, the healthier you've been."

Researchers with the Centenarian Study have found evidence that exceptional longevity runs strongly in families. In fact, in conjunction with the National Institute on Aging and two other study sites in the United States, they are conducting the Life Long Family Study and are searching for families in which exceptional longevity is prevalent (families in which, for instance, two living siblings are 90 or older). The hope is that the study will find factors these families have in common that help explain their predisposition to healthy very old age. Genes aren't the only factor, however. Additional research suggests that a lifestyle also plays an important role in determining both longevity and vitality later in life. Ochs considers her longevity and vitality blessings, but allows that her healthy, lifelong habits may also figure into the equation. She's always eaten a healthy diet, maintained a healthy weight, exercised regularly, and stayed socially and intellectually engaged.

Born in 1911 in rural Illinois in a home with neither running water nor electricity, Ochs was the first of three children. Her parents were farmers. When she was 2-months-old, the family moved to northwestern Nebraska, where her younger sister and brother were born. "Because my brother was younger than I by several years, I helped my father on the farm early on, while my sister helped my mother around the house," she recalls. Shortly after Ochs turned 16, her family moved again, to Hodgeman County, Kansas, where she finished high school and began teaching after passing a certification exam. She enjoyed teaching - "When you teach, you learn a lot," she says -- but had to stop four years later, when she married Vernon Ochs, a local wheat farmer. "That was a condition of getting the job - you had to stop when you got married because they didn't want the teacher to be pregnant in the school," she explains.

So Ochs went back to farming, working alongside her husband and, later, their four sons. "Farm work is hard work but I enjoyed it; even now I like to do yard work," she adds.

In addition to physical work, she's always enjoyed intellectual challenges, and started taking classes at a nearby community college after the boys were on their own. One of her first courses was an agribusiness marketing class. She applied much of what she learned to the management of the family farm.

One course led to another and one day a professor on campus told her that she needed only to take an algebra class to finish her Associate's degree. She did - and immediately enrolled at a local four-year-college to work on her Bachelor's. The school closed that same year, but Ochs, undeterred, transferred to Fort Hays. "I enjoy being on campus and I've always enjoyed learning situations," she says.

"By actively challenging her brain, Mrs. Ochs might actually be adding healthy years to her life since partaking in both novel and complex cognitive activities have been shown to markedly slow or delay memory impairment and possibly neuropathologies such as Alzheimer's disease," notes Dr. Perls. "Her socially active life probably also provides a benefit and, as a living historian, she is also a great resource to the younger students around her."

Once she earns her Bachelor's will she apply to grad school?

No, says Ochs, who also loves to travel. "I'm going to seek employment on a cruise ship as a story teller," she says, laughing. "You know, there are so many opportunities today that we can do most anything that appeals to us. This is a great time to be 95; I'm really enjoying it."

For more information about the New England Centenarian and Long Life Family Studies visit their Web sites at www.bumc.bu.edu/centenarian and www.LLFS.org. The centenarian study can also be reached toll free at 888-333-6327.