Dr. Thomas Perls, founder of the New England Centenarian Study at Boston University, spoke at 7 p.m. last night in Emerson Suites.

Perls is an expert in aging studies and published a book on the topic, “Living to 100.” In his presentation, titled “The How and Why of Living to 100,” he addressed the patterns he observed among centenarians — people who live past 100 years — and emphasized how environmental factors, physical factors, and personal habits play a role in how people age.

The audience was put through a quick “test” to help gauge roughly how old they might live to be. They filled out index cards with information on much they exercise, whether they smoke, and family history. Participants calculated their expected life span based on how they ranked themselves in these categories.

Senior Elissa Goldman, president of the Nutrition Club at the college, said Perls’ presentation answered some of her questions about how diet affects age. Perls said that low-carb, low-fat diets can increase life expectancy.

"I’m very interested in seeing how nutrition can help you live longer,” Goldman said.

Perls also stressed the fraudulence in the anti-aging industry. Hormone treatments advocated by the industry, he said, speed up aging as opposed to slowing down the process.

Maureen Curtis, a Newfield, N.Y., resident, said she attended the presentation to see what Perls’ ideas were and to hear what advice he had about maintaining healthy lifestyles.

"You do wonder about your longevity,” Curtis said. “People wonder how long they will live.”

Perls also explained why he founded the New England Centenarian Study and his interest in centenarians. While he was a fellow at Harvard University, training in geriatrics and contemplating a research project to take on, he was assigned 40 patients, two of whom were 100 years old.

"I had preconceived notions about what a 100-year-old would be like,” he said. “My thought was that there were a number of diseases that became much more prevalent with age,” he said.

At the time, Perls thought the centenarians would be his frailest and most challenging patients to take care of. Eventually, Perls discovered that one of his centenarian patients could play difficult piano pieces by Chopin and Mozart. The other spent time in the occupational therapy area of the facility working as a tailor, mending clothes and showing younger people how to tailor clothes.

"When he wasn’t doing that, he was robbing the cradle dating his 85-year-old girlfriend,” Perls said.

Perls said his initial interaction with centenarians helped mold him into the expert he is today. He now works to defeat the stigma of old age.

"It struck me that these guys had some kind of resistance to age-related diseases,” he said. “At that point, I then set out to find as many centenarians as I could.”