This one silent habit is more dangerous than alcohol or smoking, says 102-year-old doctor

No miracle diet or supplement can help you live long if you don't have a
purpose in life
, argues a
centenarian doctor
. American physician
Howard Tucker
, who made it to the Guinness World Records as the oldest living physician in the world, recently shared one of his secrets to a long life. In an interview with
TODAY
magazine, the 102-year-old doctor said, 'Retirement is the enemy of
longevity
.'
According to Tucker, the key to a long, fulfilling life lies not in any pill, but in living with intent. He strongly asserts that the moment people abandon their sense of purpose, particularly after retirement, they begin to deteriorate both mentally and physically. Simply put, a passive life is a fast track to decline.
Rather than stepping away from life's engagements, Tucker advocates for remaining intellectually and emotionally active. Hobbies, voluntary work, or even light responsibilities can offer stimulation to the brain. Continual learning and curiosity, in his view, are essential mental exercises that help preserve cognitive clarity. Each day must offer the mind something new to wrestle with—be it knowledge, creativity, or connection.
No Room for Stagnation
Dr. Tucker practiced medicine until the age of 100, halting only because the hospital he was affiliated with closed down in 2022. If it had remained open, he says he would have continued treating patients without hesitation. This sheer commitment exemplifies his core belief: consistent engagement with meaningful work fuels life itself. For Tucker, waking up each day to contribute to society was more than a duty—it was his lifeblood.
Love, Loyalty, and Lifelong Joys
Beyond professional pursuits, Tucker draws strength from deeply rooted relationships and personal passions. He's been married for over seven decades and is the proud patriarch of a large family that includes four children and ten grandchildren. This strong familial network, paired with his unwavering devotion to his hometown sports teams, gives him constant emotional grounding and joy. Research has repeatedly shown that individuals with rich
emotional connections
and an optimistic perspective on life often enjoy longer and healthier lifespans.
Never Too Late to Learn
Tucker is not just a doctor but also a legal scholar. At the age of 67, he pursued and earned a law degree—proving that age is never a barrier to academic or personal growth. When asked about mortality, he reflects with realism, saying that the inevitability of death only enhances the value of life. For him, acknowledging the end motivates one to embrace the present with vigor.
Movement as Medicine
Another pillar of Tucker's philosophy is
physical activity
. He emphasizes the importance of daily movement, noting that even a modest 15-minute walk can significantly lower the chances of early death. His own routine includes walking three miles a day on his treadmill and snowshoeing in winter, demonstrating that movement should be a lifelong habit, not a fleeting phase.
Mindful Eating, Simple Living
His diet is built on balance and moderation. He begins his mornings with seasonal fruits or cereal paired with low-fat milk and prefers tea over coffee. Lunch is often skipped to maintain mental clarity, and dinners usually consist of fish, a variety of vegetables—especially broccoli—and an occasional serving of meat. His eating habits reflect his broader approach to life: clean, consistent, and conscious.

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For this article, Reuters reporters found children who had taken Wegovy or a similar weight-loss drug to speak with them about their experiences. The reporters spent more than a year closely following four teens and their families to examine in detail the impact of treatment. Here are their stories:GLADSTONE, Missouri - "Why do you want to lose weight?" When Elizabeth Smith asked her son Austin that question, he didn't hesitate. "To be healthier and so people will stop bullying me," he said. Elizabeth wrote his answer on the form she was filling out as they waited in the doctor's office. Austin was near the end of a miserable freshman year. At almost 300 pounds, he struggled each morning to squeeze down the aisle of the school bus. Other students teased him relentlessly. He looked pregnant, they said, and he was gross. At school, the insults continued. 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For Christmas, Elizabeth bought him extra-large pants and shirts to replace his 2XL clothes. "He's like a whole new person," his pediatrician told Elizabeth, echoing many family friends and relatives. Austin's father was cheered by his son's physical and emotional transformation. Jeremy had lost about 30 pounds while taking Ozempic, Novo's medication for type 2 diabetes that has the same active ingredient as Wegovy. At a January 2024 appointment, Lindquist chided Austin when he admitted to skipping meals. "You need to put gas in your tank to make it go," the doctor told him. He referred the teen to a nutritionist. Elizabeth scheduled an appointment, but had to cancel because of a work conflict and hasn't booked a new visit. The following April, Austin was at 200 pounds. He celebrated the end of his sophomore year by taking a trip in June to Belize with other students. He snorkeled and went on eight different zip-lines through the rainforest. The weight limit for riding the zip-lines was 280 pounds. Back home, Elizabeth wept when she watched the video Austin shared of him gliding through the trees. "He couldn't have done this before," she said. Soon after his return, he was hit hard by the death of his elderly friend. His psychiatrist prescribed a more powerful antidepressant. Austin then panicked when, after Lindquist stretched out Austin's dosages, he started eating more and putting on pounds. That stopped when he went back to regular weekly injections. The family got another shock in January, when Elizabeth's insurance through University Health quit covering Wegovy and other so-called GLP-1 drugs for weight loss. Wegovy had been free, after insurance and Novo-provided coupons. Now, the health system would be providing Wegovy at $250 for a three-month supply through its own pharmacy. Insurance coverage for Wegovy has steadily expanded since the drug's 2021 launch, and Novo has offered ways to bring down out-of-pocket costs. But employers and government agencies often impose restrictions to hold down costs associated with the drug's high price and the large number of patients eligible to take it. Last year, 64% of U.S. employers with 20,000 or more workers covered GLP-1 drugs for obesity, up from 56% in 2023, according to Mercer, a benefits consulting firm. Medicare and most state Medicaid programs don't cover the drugs solely for weight loss. Elizabeth has been able to scrape together enough to cover the cost. She also had to find Austin another doctor at University Health after Lindquist left to set up his own practice and the hospital stopped covering Wegovy for doctors outside of its network. Austin is just relieved that his parents can afford to keep his prescription going. His weight has leveled off at about 200 pounds - a 30% loss in two years. He doesn't want to contemplate life without Wegovy. "I feel I would be bigger," he said. "I don't want to go back."WILMINGTON, Delaware - At 15, Katie Duncan, 6-foot-1 and 270 pounds, was growing increasingly anxious and depressed about her weight. Some of her clothes no longer fit, she was easily winded while walking, and her back ached. Classmates occasionally lobbed mean comments about her size. Blood tests showed she had high triglyceride levels, which can increase the risk of stroke and heart disease. But Katie's hunger never let up. She often ate four or five meals a day. She would devour an entire pizza and hide snacks in her bedroom to satisfy cravings. She had tried an older weight-loss drug that did nothing. "We need to change something," she told her father, Randy, in the summer of 2023. "What I'm doing isn't working." Randy scheduled an appointment at the Healthy Weight and Wellness Clinic at the nearby Nemours Children's Hospital. The Duncans knew the hospital well: Katie had been treated there after she was diagnosed at age 7 with a brain tumor. Doctors had given her a 20% chance of surviving the cancer. Katie took an experimental drug and underwent months of chemotherapy and radiation. She was tiny at the time, only 42 pounds. The cancer went into remission within a year. However, the tumor had damaged her hypothalamus, the portion of the brain that controls hunger, and the nearby pituitary gland, which releases hormones that regulate growth and metabolism, among other key functions. Her doctors put her on a lifelong regimen of synthetic hormones and a low-dose steroid to replace what she lost. The brush with death forged a fierce bond between father, divorced since Katie was 3, and daughter, the youngest of five siblings and the only one still living at home. Randy, a paramedic and volunteer firefighter, took off from work to go to every doctor's appointment and physical therapy session with her. Katie treasured a locket with her father's photo inside and refused to go to school without it. He accompanied her on every school field trip. Katie tried a sleepaway camp hosted by the hospital and called her dad to pick her up after the first night. "I don't like being away from my family," she said. But by the time Katie was 9, Randy, now remarried, noticed something was wrong. Katie was constantly hungry, and the two clashed repeatedly over it. During a trip to SeaWorld in Florida, they shouted at each other when Katie complained that she was starving, even after a big breakfast at their hotel. Katie steadily put on weight during her middle-school years. She avoided running and other sports due to painful neuropathy in her feet, likely caused by her cancer and chemotherapy. She couldn't keep pace with classmates in physical education. At her appointment in 2023, Katie saw Dr. Thao-Ly Phan, medical director of the Nemours weight clinic. After examining Katie and reviewing her medical history, Phan determined that Katie probably has "hypothalamic obesity" from her brain injury, for which the replacement hormones don't fully compensate. "Her body isn't helping her out," Phan said. While brain cancer isn't common, Phan said, teens can have other, more common underlying conditions or treatments that lead to obesity and complicate their care. For example, polycystic ovary syndrome can cause hormonal imbalances and weight gain, especially around the belly, in young women. Antidepressants, mood stabilizers and other psychiatric medications can lead to weight gain, too. After prescribing Wegovy, Phan had Katie see the clinic's psychologist and nutritionist, a routine step the doctor requires of her patients. "We don't want kids to lose so much weight that they develop eating disorders," she said. "We want to make sure that they're still getting the nutrition they need to grow and to thrive." Katie got her first dose of Wegovy in November 2023. She lost about 20 pounds in the first couple months, with only mild side effects. At times, Katie had no interest in eating and skipped meals, despite Phan's warnings not to. Poor nutrition and eating habits during adolescence can have long-term consequences, from impairing cognitive development to increasing the risk of osteoporosis and bone fractures, research shows. About six months after Katie started treatment, the family's insurer cut off coverage of her Wegovy. Randy's appeal of that decision failed, and he switched Katie's prescription to her secondary insurance with the state Medicaid program, which had been in place since her cancer treatment. Delaware is one of 14 states with Medicaid coverage for the newer GLP-1 weight-loss drugs. Katie missed only one weekly dose. At an appointment with Phan in March, Katie weighed 209 pounds, down 60, or 22% of her body weight, in about 18 months. Her triglycerides were no longer elevated. The weight loss has brought welcome changes. Katie said she used to lack motivation to do much at all and would lounge for hours in bed. "I used to always feel yucky before," she said. "The weight loss has actually helped a lot with my energy." The 17-year-old now enjoys regular visits to the Planet Fitness gym with her father and stepmother, Denise, and spends more time on her painting and crafts. She has more stamina to cook two hours straight in her high-school culinary class. She also doesn't get winded chasing after her 2-year-old niece at family gatherings. While she used to hide herself in baggy clothes, she now feels comfortable wearing sundresses. Randy is pleased with Katie's progress. He worries that Delaware may stop covering GLP-1 weight-loss drugs through Medicaid due to budget shortfalls or proposed cuts in federal funding. California and North Carolina are seeking to rescind Medicaid coverage of the drugs to save millions of dollars. "I hope to God they keep Wegovy around for kids," Randy said. Katie wants to stay on the drug and trusts that her dad and her doctor wouldn't let her take anything harmful. "Wegovy doesn't scare me," she said. "I've had so many needles in my life."DODGE COUNTY, Wisconsin - Early last year, after eight months on Wegovy, Leo had a choice to make. He could stop taking the drug, end the side effects that were wreaking havoc on his life and risk regaining some of the more than 25 pounds he had lost. Or he could stay on it, keep losing weight and hope the severe stomach aches, nausea and diarrhea would abate. For this article, Leo and his mother, Jamie, asked Reuters to withhold details such as their precise location and Leo's surname, and Leo declined to be photographed. They said they feared the exposure would lead to more teasing from Leo's peers about his appearance and his decision to take a weight-loss drug. Leo had been a strong candidate for Wegovy when he first saw an obesity specialist, Dr. Leslie Golden, in mid-2023. He was a compulsive eater from an early age, due in part to his attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, for which he takes medication. He was diagnosed with obesity at 11 years old. Three years later, he was carrying 181 pounds on his 5-foot-4 frame. Jamie tried to stock the kitchen with healthier foods. But Leo's older sister and two older stepbrothers wanted ultra-processed snacks and sugary drinks around. Leo would gulp down five cans of Coke in a day. He sneaked snacks and sodas into his bedroom at night, leaving empty wrappers and cans for his mother to find strewn about the next morning. One of his stepbrothers was severely underweight, complicating Jamie's food choices for the family. The teasing and bullying started in middle school. When he walked the halls between classes, other students hurled jeers and jokes at him. "It was always directed at my weight," he said. "The comments just got to me." Leo knew he had a problem but felt powerless to do anything about it. "I was eating way too much," he said. "I was worried I was going to get way too overweight." Jamie, a pharmacist, thought Wegovy might help. Frustrated with her own efforts to lose weight, she had started taking the drug in January 2022. She, like Leo after her, suffered severe gastrointestinal side effects, but they faded, and after a year, she had lost 50 pounds. Leo, having learned what Wegovy did for his mother, was open to trying it. In June 2023, Leo had his first appointment with Golden, at her obesity clinic in a town near where he and his family live about an hour outside Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He already bore troubling signs of the effects of his obesity. His blood pressure was high. His elevated blood sugar level put him at increased risk for type 2 diabetes. The doctor worried that Leo could develop liver and heart disease if he didn't lose weight. She prescribed Wegovy. Golden doesn't require families to undergo counseling on lifestyle changes as a prerequisite for prescribing the drug for children. She said most families have already tried other ways to lose weight before they reach her office, and imposing a months-long delay before drug therapy "is really just another form of bias and stigma." She does ask for monthly visits so she can monitor a child's progress. Her patients pick three goals for the coming month - for nutrition, movement and behavior. For Leo, at one point, that meant eating more carrots and cauliflower, playing basketball in the driveway and downing fewer sugary drinks. Soon, Leo was eating a lot less, though what he ate didn't change so much. At restaurants, he could stomach only three bites of the double cheeseburgers he usually ordered. He was happy with the weight he was losing. The bullying was easing up, and some classmates even complimented him on looking thinner. He grew comfortable raising his hand in class. "It feels pretty good to get myself out there," he said. But as his doses steadily increased - the standard of care for GLP-1 medicines is to up the dose every four weeks - the side effects started taking a toll. He took medicines to quell the nausea and diarrhea. He dropped off anti-diarrhea pills with the school nurse. Some days, his stomach upset was so bad that Jamie had to pick him up at lunchtime. Leo was experiencing by far the most common side effects of Wegovy. In the largest clinical trial of the medicine on teens, 62% of patients experienced nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. Most reported mild to moderate side effects that lasted two to three days. Since their launch, Wegovy and other GLP-1 drugs have also been associated with much rarer incidents of gastric paralysis, pancreatitis, depression and blindness. As his absences piled up, Leo's grades suffered, and he grew moodier. At a parent-teacher conference in October 2023, teachers told Jamie that Leo had become more withdrawn in class. At a checkup with his regular pediatrician later that month, his answers on a questionnaire indicated depression. The doctor prescribed an antidepressant. That didn't lessen the side effects, though, and Leo's school absences persisted. In February 2024, the high school notified his mother that he had missed 10 days, the maximum allowed for the year. Soon after that is when Golden presented Leo with the choice about continuing with Wegovy. Jamie favored sticking with the drug. The doctor wanted the choice to be Leo's. "Jamie is a very involved parent who wants to protect and do what's best for him," Golden later told Reuters. "I had to really zone in on Leo: Do you want to keep taking this?" Despite the physical pain and discomfort, the problems at school, the depression, Leo was adamant. "I'll do whatever it takes," Leo told Golden. "No matter how sick I get, I don't want to stop." Several weeks later, the side effects began to ease. By last summer, Leo had dropped under 150 pounds. His waist had shrunk by five inches. Based on his body mass index, he no longer had obesity. "I am happy that I don't get called names anymore," Leo said. Then last autumn, he started to put on weight. Golden had reminded Leo that some additional weight was expected as he grew three inches taller over the span of a year, eventually reaching 5 foot 7. But Leo's mother found food wrappers and soda cans in his bedroom. In November, Leo wept when he stepped on the scale at home and saw that he had gained 14 pounds, up to 164. "I'm getting fat again," he told his mother. At an appointment with Golden the following month, the doctor put Leo on the highest weekly dose of Wegovy to help counter his cravings. That worked, without the side effects he had experienced earlier. At a checkup in April, Leo weighed 154 pounds, down nearly 30 pounds in the past two years. Leo took a cooking class during his sophomore year and hopes to attend culinary school one day. He also took a part-time job stocking shelves at the local hardware store. Leo's pediatrician was pleased with his improved self-esteem and energy level. She asked Jamie: "What is the end game? When is Dr. Golden going to stop it?" That's an open question. Golden has repeatedly advised Leo that he will probably have to take Wegovy for the rest of his life to maintain a healthy weight. Leo and his mother are OK with that. "There is no end game," Jamie told the Maryland - Stephanie Serrano didn't want to take a weight-loss drug. She didn't think it would work, and even if it did, she didn't like injections, especially if she had to get them for the rest of her life. But Stephanie was desperate. At 320 pounds, she had already been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and liver disease. She was tired of being the biggest kid in class and had become a virtual shut-in after years of failed dieting. "Every doctor that I had ever seen would just tell me to eat healthier, like it was that simple," Stephanie said. In 2022, her family doctor referred the then-16-year-old to the obesity clinic at Children's National Hospital in Washington, D.C. There, initial tests revealed that she had polycystic ovary syndrome, a common cause of weight gain in young women. "That diagnosis changed everything," she said. "I wasn't lazy or not trying hard enough. My body was actually working against me." In October that year, Stephanie's doctor at Children's National, Susma Vaidya, prescribed Ozempic, Novo's drug for type 2 diabetes with the same active ingredient as Wegovy, which hadn't yet been approved for teens. Ozempic has been widely used off-label for weight loss, both prior to Wegovy's launch and after due to shortages and spotty insurance coverage of the latter. By the time she saw Vaidya, Stephanie had her heart set on weight-loss surgery, swayed by TikTok videos of young adults showing their dramatic before-and-after transformations. "Seeing how much they changed, it's incredible," she said. "So that's kind of what I wanted for my life. I wanted a permanent change." Vaidya, medical director of the obesity clinic at Children's National, persuaded Stephanie to accept a compromise: Stephanie would give Ozempic a try while undergoing a six-month evaluation, including sessions with a dietician and a psychologist, to determine whether she was a good candidate for surgery, based on factors like adequate family support and eating regular, well-balanced meals. Stephanie started taking the lowest recommended dose of Ozempic. The side effects were mild, though she occasionally experienced nausea and stomach pain after a big meal. She lost nine pounds in the first month. After four months, in February 2023, she was surprised - and pleased - that she had lost about 30 pounds. "I had never seen the number on the scale go down," she said. At that point, Vaidya told Stephanie she could continue taking the drug, or she could undergo surgery. Stephanie's father, Jose, who was taking Ozempic for his type 2 diabetes, preferred that she stick with the drug. He worried about her risk of complications from a major operation. Stephanie held firm. Despite her weight loss on Ozempic, she felt that surgery was the only way to end the isolation she had endured for years. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Stephanie had retreated from school and friends. In 2021, during her sophomore year, her high school gave students the option to return or continue with online classes. She never went back to the classroom. Through the lens of social media, she watched classmates gloat about their beauty "glow ups" and post photos of themselves with new makeup routines and outfits. Stephanie quit the school's Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps, a leadership program sponsored by the U.S. military, to avoid being around other people. "I hid myself for those years," she said. "I no longer wanted to be a prisoner." In April 2023, Stephanie, at about 285 pounds, had gastric-sleeve surgery, which involved removing a large portion of her stomach to reduce food intake. She came through the surgery and recovery without complications. Today, the 19-year-old college freshman is down to about 175 pounds. She eats small meals and exercises regularly. Her diabetes is in remission, and her liver function is normal. She takes a full load of classes at a nearby community college and plans to transfer to a four-year university soon. She aspires to be a sports psychologist. As Stephanie lost weight, she became more outgoing at school and in church and found she could make friends. She opened up to the possibility of a relationship and flirted with a young man at church. That didn't go anywhere, but she had surprised herself with her willingness to even try. "Having a crush on anyone seemed so silly before. I could never imagine someone loving me," she said. "I was always ashamed of myself." Amid all this progress, another problem emerged: Stephanie was consumed with fear of gaining the weight back. She started skipping meals and guzzling energy drinks. After eating a small meal, she would run a mile to burn off the calories. Her legs and back began to ache, and she sometimes lost her balance - signs of possible muscle loss. Vaidya told her, "This is your body asking for protein." Vaidya diagnosed Stephanie with an eating disorder in April 2024 and referred her to a hospital psychologist. Vaidya also prescribed bupropion, an antidepressant sometimes used to manage binge eating. The possibility that weight-loss drugs may put teens at risk of disordered eating is why some doctors urge rigorous screening of patients and continuous monitoring during treatment. Research on any association between weight-loss drugs or bariatric surgery and eating disorders is limited. Some small studies found that the use of GLP-1 drugs may decrease binge eating episodes among those who already had the disorder. But the studies only tracked patients for three to six months, leaving longer-term effects unknown. Stephanie's psychologist urged her to stop counting calories and poring over the nutrition labels on packaged foods. She's making progress, but it's a "constant battle," she said. Stephanie still gives in sometimes to count calories, and when she exceeds her target, "I completely shut down." At home, Stephanie does much of the cooking for her parents and older sister, Lily. She rarely eats what she cooks. At a recent dinner, her family enjoyed the carne asada, beans and pico de gallo she had prepared while she picked at a small bowl of rice and a homemade tortilla. She didn't finish either. Later, Stephanie, her mother, Vanessa Serrano, and Lily visited a local mall - a place she used to avoid because it was hard to find clothes her size there. At the American Eagle store, she tried on a pair of black jeans. She emerged hesitantly from the dressing room to have a look in a mirror. After Lily told her she looked incredible and snapped photos, Stephanie checked herself out from several angles. She bought the jeans and wore them to church the next day.