But what really astounded him was the proportion of healthy centenarians. In the United States or Europe, you can expect only about 15 percent of centenarians to be independent in their activities of daily living. Although later cohorts of centenarians tend be less functional than earlier cohorts, amazingly, of the 32 centenarians Dr. Suzuki was able to track down for the second part of his survey, all but 4 were functionally independent.
