111-year-old Alexander Imich shares tips on longevity
Alexander Imich, who turned 111
on Feb. 4 and is the world?s oldest validated male supercentenarian,
belatedly celebrates his birthday with a chocolate cake, in his Upper
West Side apartment in New York, April 30, 2014. Imich, born in Poland
in 1903, was a toddler when the Wright brothers invented manned flight.
(Damon Winter/The New York Times via Redux)
“Not like it’s the Nobel Prize," Imich told the New York Times after being pronounced oldest man on earth by the Gerontology Research Group. “I never thought I’d be that old.”
According to the Gerontology group, there are 66 living women older than Imich, including a Japanese woman, Misao Okawa, who is 116.
Imich was born on Feb. 4, 1903, in
Poland, and grew up in Czestochowa in southern Poland. He and his
second wife, Wela, a painter and psychotherapist, immigrated to
Waterbury, Conn., in 1951. Imich moved to New York in 1986 after Wela's
death.
In his late 20s, the Times
reports, he "grew fascinated with a Polish medium who was known as
Matylda S., a doctor’s widow gaining renown for séances that reportedly
called up the dead." He became a scholar of the occult, eventually
editing an anthology — “Incredible Tales of the Paranormal: Documented Accounts of Poltergeist, Levitations, Phantoms, and Other Phenomena" — that was published in 1995, when Imich was 92.
So what's the supercentenarian's secret? Here's what he told the Times:• Not having children.
• Not drinking alcohol.
• Quitting smoking.
• Playing multiple sports. “I was a gymnast,” he said. “Good runner, a good springer. Good javelin, and I was a good swimmer.”
• A diet "inspired by Eastern
mystics who disdain food," the Times said. (According to Imich's
caregivers, he eats matzo balls, gefilte fish, chicken noodle soup, Ritz
crackers, scrambled eggs, chocolate and ice cream.)
• "Good genes," Imich said.
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