Are you curious about the longest-living persons aside from Bible records? Well according to research carried out by world data, the average life expectancy for a male is 69.8 years, while the average life expectancy for a female is 74.9 years old. In some regions of the world, people live far above the average age, while people live far below in other places. For example, the life expectancy in Europe is far above that of those in Africa.
This shows the huge difference in life expectancy between the two regions of the world. The life expectancy of people is affected by factors like gender, economy, standard of living, etc. These factors in the long run determine how long or short a human can live. However, some people have lived longer than stipulated. According to the Guinness Book of Records, Jeanne Clement is the longest-living person. Asides from the French citizen, a hand full of people have lived longer on earth.
Life expectancy is the average age a person is expected to live in relativity to factors surrounding him. As the world develops, the life expectancy of man increases. This is because as time goes on, technology advances the health and medications of man. Today, scientists are studying ways to prolong the life of a man.
The life-prolonging technique being actively studied is the blood transfusion technique. Scientists have successfully prolonged the life of monkeys, and before long man would be the recipient of such technology. However as earlier mentioned, certain factors contribute to the life expectancy of man. Studies have suggested that two major factors contribute to how long a man lives. They include genetics and lifestyle choice.
- GENETICS – How long a person lives is sometimes dependent on their genes. A person can inherit a genetic variation that makes them susceptible to certain diseases that can increase their life expectancy. In the same way, a person can inherit a genetic variation that predisposes them to certain diseases that can increase their life expectancy. Some diseases that can be inherited include cancer, dementia, arthritis, etc.
- LIFESTYLE CHOICES – The way you choose to live affects your life expectancy. Good diets, regular exercises, good sleeping habits, etc. are all choices we make while living our life. These choices directly affect our health. The healthier we are, the longer we get to live. Other choices that could affect life expectancy include; Excess smoking, excess alcohol consumption, stress and anxiety, and excess intake of carbon dioxide, amongst others.
According to the Guinness book of records, the world’s longest-living person is Maria Branyas Morera. Born on March 4, 1907, Maria is the longest-living person aged 115 years, 319 days (about 10 and a half months) as of January 17, 2023. She took over the record from her sister Andre who lived for 118 years, 340 days (about 11 months). Maria was born in San Francisco, California one year after her parents emigrated to the United States.
In 1915, the young family decided to move back to Spain, and they settled in Catalonia. She has been a resident ever since. Unfortunately, her father did not make it back to the Spanish soil after falling ill on the voyage. Maria also faced a bit of misfortune as she injured herself and lost one of her hearings while playing with her brothers. The young family landed in 1915, during the First World war, and had to start life all over without a father. In 1931, she got married to Spanish doctor Joan Moret and is blessed with 3 children, 11 grandchildren, and 13 great-grandchildren.
Maria has lived a very eventful life. Voyaging during the First World war was not all the adventure she had. She has also survived the Second World war, the Spanish civil war in 1936, the Spanish flu pandemic, and COVID-19. In 2019, she tested positive to the covid, making her the oldest survivor of the virus. Luckily for her, she recovered a few days later. Maria has been a resident of the Residencia Santa Maria del Tura retirement home for 22 years.
When asked about the secret to her longevity, she attributes it to “Order, tranquility, good connection with family and friends, contact with nature, emotional stability, no worries, no regrets, lots of positivity, and staying away from toxic people.” Living for a very long time, Maria has experienced technological evolution and increase, notable to her is communication.
She has made the most of communication through her Twitter account where she drops quotes fueled by her experience and longevity, and the voice-to-text technology. However, she believes that the early 20th century was “more joyful and more peaceful”, and that people now place so much value on money. Regardless of this, she stays positive at her age and loves life. She believes there is still a lot to learn from life no matter her age.
Being 115 years seems like a very old age, given that it is far above the average life expectancy, but Jeanne Calment lived 7 years older than Maria’s current age. According to the Guinness book of records, the world’s oldest living person documented and with verification is Jeanne Clament who lived for 122 years and 164 days.
Jeanne Calment is a French woman who lived from 21st February 1875 – 4th August 1997. Jeanne Calment came from a Bourgeois family and never had to work all her life. Her life was centered on Swimming, tennis, bicycling, roller skating, piano, and opera. Calment had the gene of longevity from her maternal side but left no heir with the gene.
Her husband died from eating spoilt preserved cherries in 1942 at age 46. Her daughter died from pneumonia in 1934 at age 36, and she was left to take care of her grandson, a medical doctor who died in a car accident in 1963. She took fencing lessons at 85, rode a bicycle till 100, stopped smoking at 119, and released her two CDs titled ‘Maitresse du Temps’ at 121.
In her later years, Calment lived mostly off income from her apartment which she sold when she was 90. According to French researcher, Jean-Marie Robine, she never did anything special to stay in good health. This makes her longevity fascinating. She was known for her good sense of humor, and she recommended laughter as the secret to living long. In an actual sense, her longevity can be accredited to her immunity to stress.
She once said, “If you cannot do anything about it, do not worry about it”, a quote that she lived with to the end. Clament showed no sign of Senile Dementia in her old age and played a yearly host in her nursing home in Arles, France. Her story of longevity is still very fascinating, considering that she lived her life nonchalantly, and at least five books about her have been released
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