The death of the world’s oldest person, Maria Branyas Morera, at the age of 117 may have many people wondering about the secrets to an incredibly long life, but scientists say it would be best to avoid taking advice on life expectancy by the centenarians themselves.
According to the Guinness World Records website, Branyas believed her longevity stemmed from “order, calmness, good connection with family and friends, contact with nature, emotional stability, no worries, no regrets, lots of positivity and staying away from toxic people “.
However, Richard Faragher, a professor of biogerontology at the University of Brighton, said that in reality scientists were still trying to understand why some people lived past the age of 100.
Faragher said there were two main theories and they were not mutually exclusive.
The first, he said, was that some individuals were basically just lucky. In other words, just because centenarians had certain habits, that doesn’t mean those habits are boosting their longevity—a fallacy in logic known as the “survivor bias.”
“Just because you’ve survived smoking 60 cigarettes a day doesn’t mean smoking 60 cigarettes a day is good for you,” Faragher said.
The second theory, he said, was that centenarians had specific genetic traits that equipped them to live longer lives—in other words, they became stronger as a result of their genetics.
Faragher said both theories, however, resulted in the same warning: “Never, ever take health and lifestyle advice from a centenarian.”
He added: “What you see with most centenarians most of the time – and these are generalizations – is that they don’t require a lot of exercise. Very often, their diets are quite unhealthy,” noting that some centenarians were also smokers.
“This is consistent with a lot of the epidemiological evidence we have about how to extend your healthy lifespan,” he said, adding that a large study found that not smoking, exercising, drinking moderately and eating five servings of fruit and of vegetables a day can increase life expectancy by up to 14 years.
“The fact that [centenarians] do a lot of these unhealthy things and still just coast [life] says they are either lucky or usually very well endowed [genetically]”, he said.
Branyas admitted that luck had played a role in her long life, while her daughter Rosa Moret once attributed it to genetics. “She has never been to the hospital, she has never broken any bones, she is fine, there is no pain,” Moret told regional Catalan television in 2023.
Faragher added that many of the possibilities discussed for why centenarians live longer may actually be examples of reverse causation. For example, the idea that having a positive mental outlook can help you live a very long time may be rooted, at least in part, in the fact that people are more sanguine because they have better health.
“When was the last time you had a really positive mental attitude and a toothache?” he said.
Faragher added that one problem was that when considering centenarians, there was a tendency to focus on things that might have aided their survival. “But we don’t consider the naysayers,” he said.
Prof David Gems, a geneticist at University College London, said that while sex was an important factor in longevity – with women aging more slowly than men – he accepted that luck was important, noting that one example was natural variability on the aging scale.
“I work with nematode worms that only live a few weeks,” he said. The worms are genetically identical to each other and are kept in the same conditions, but the first worms die of old age in about 10 days and the last in about 30 days.
But while at the individual level, a dose of luck may help explain why some people live past 100, experts say there are known factors that can help improve life expectancy at the population level, including improvements in health care and hygiene.
“Since about 100 years ago, what we started to see was huge advances in life expectancy driven by improvements in reducing the likelihood that children will die,” said David Sinclair, chief executive of the International Longevity Centre, noting that this it was mostly up to the entrance. of vaccines and clean water.
“What we’ve had over the last 20 years and will see over the next 20 years is a similar focus on aging,” Sinclair said, adding that includes improvements in flu and herpes vaccines. statins and other medications that would help increase longevity in the elderly.
But he said governments should also take action to help individuals make healthier choices – choices that would ultimately help them live longer – adding that many people lived in environments where it was difficult to exercise. , eat well or avoid pollution.
However, even if a person lives in triple figures, it is not necessarily the case that life will be filled with balloons and glowing birthday cakes.
As Sinclair said, while the news about centenarians tended to be optimistic, it often turned out that such individuals faced challenges, such as living alone for many years.
“The reality is not always as positive as it seems,” he said.