Successful aging is also a psychological feat. Loneliness, for example, can speed your demise no matter how conscientiously you

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问题    Successful aging is also a psychological feat. Loneliness, for example, can speed your demise no matter how conscientiously you care for your body. "We go through life surrounded by protective convoys of others," says Robert Kahn, a University of Michigan psychologist who has studied the health effects of companionship "People who manage to maintain a network of social support do best." One study of elderly heart-attack patients found that those with two or more close associates enjoyed twice the one-year survival rate of those who were completely alone.
   Companionship aside, healthy oldsters seem to share a knack for managing stress, a poison that contributes measurably to heart disease, cancer and accidents. Researchers have also linked successful aging to mental stimulation. An idle brain will deteriorate just as surely as an unused leg, notes Dr. Gene Cohen, head of the gerontology center at George Washington University. And just as exercise can prevent muscle atrophy, mental challenges seem to preserve both the mind and the immune system. But what most impresses researchers who study the oldest old is their simple drive and resilience. "People who reach 100 are not quitters," says Adler of the National Centenarian Awareness Project. "They share a remarkable ability to renegotiate life at every turn, to accept the inevitable losses and move on."
   Merle McEathron knows all about accepting losses. She’s 102 today, but she was just 7 when she found her mother dead on the floor at her childhood home in Vincennes, Indiana, felled by a heart attack. As the oldest girl in the family, Merle had to raise her baby sister and take over cooking and cleaning for her father and two older brothers. She married at 15, but her man left her at 25, so she started a general store and worked there long enough to put both her sons through college. The boys were grown by the time World War Ⅱ came along, but she found other ways to stay busy. She worked as a housemother at the Cadet Club, a military social center, Where young airmen took her flying in small warplanes after hours. And when the war ended, she got in her Buick and headed for Arizona.
   She was 51 years old by the time she hit Phoenix, but the move brought many adventures, including three more husbands. After dumping one and outliving the others, she moved herself into the Eastern Star retirement center to avoid getting lonely. A doctor assured her she would never walk again when she broke her leg four years ago, but she now walks a mite and a quarter each day, and every September she travels to Indian for a reunion at the Cadet Club. When she gets there, she climbs over the wing of a restored World War Ⅱ training plane, crawls into the cockpit behind the pilot and rides that baby into the sky.
The author uses the example of Merle McEathron to______.

选项 A、indicate that a healthy oldster is good at combating stress
B、support the view that the old should stay busy
C、prove that a doctor’s diagnosis may be wrong
D、show that one can keep healthy by constantly moving.

答案A

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