Besse Cooper, the world’s oldest living person who turned age 116 on Sunday, shared some secrets to her longevity: "I mind my own business, and I don't eat junk food.”
Her son Sidney observed, "The older she has gotten the more wittier she has gotten."
Her son Sidney observed, "The older she has gotten the more wittier she has gotten."
Sensible advice like Michael Pollan's commandment in Food Rules:
“Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food."
http://news.yahoo.com/woman-116-listed-worlds-oldest-dies-ga-002936971.html
ReplyDeletehttp://newsfeed.time.com/2013/05/23/happy-114th-birthday-to-jeralean-talley-the-oldest-living-american/
ReplyDeleteWorld’s oldest person celebrates her 116th birthday: “Eat and sleep and you will live a long time”
ReplyDeleteMisao Okawa, a Japanese woman born in 1898, has told The Telegraph her recipe for longevity: eating lots of sushi and sleeping eight hours a night
By Julian Ryall, Tokyo
7:00AM GMT 02 Mar 2014
Already recognised as the oldest person in the world, Mrs Okawa will on March 5 reach the remarkable milestone of 116 - and attributes her longevity to eating well and sleeping at least eight hours every night, with the occasional nap thrown in for good measure.
“Eat and sleep and you will live a long time,” she said in a message to The Telegraph. “You have to learn to relax.”
The daughter of a kimono-maker from Japan’s second city, Mrs Okawa assumed the title of the oldest person in the world after the death of 116-year-old Jireomon Kimura in June 2013.
Experts say it is no coincidence that both record-holders are from Japan, which was home to 54,397 centenarians on the last Respect for the Aged national holiday in September - including 282 super-centenarians, who have achieved the ripe old age of 110. . . .
The average lifespan for a Japanese woman is now 85.9 years, with women also accounting for 87 percent of the nation’s centenarians. A Japanese man can expect to reach 79.6 years old.
Experts put Japanese longevity down to the nation’s comprehensive healthcare system, the support of the community, encouragement to remain physically active until they are quite elderly, a sense of being part of a family and a healthy diet that has traditionally been heavy in fish, rice, vegetables and fruit.
Additional research has suggested that people who were in middle-age during the years of food shortages during the Second World War have subsequently enjoyed better long-term health than people who never had to go without.
But Yasuyuki Gondo, an associate professor at Osaka University who specialises in geriatric psychology, says there is much more to longevity than merely a good diet and advanced medical care.
“When we surveyed centenarians, we found that the majority have enjoyed good mental health throughout their lives and have developed psychological adaptations to their situations as they have got older,” he told The Telegraph.
Professor Gondo is one of a number of scholars who have studied Mrs Okawa and other centenarians as they try to pin down more traits that identify those of us who will live the longest.
Those studies suggest that people with a strong will, are outgoing and a sense of curiosity live longer than average.
Mrs Okawa underlined the determined side of her character after suffering a fall at the age of 102 in which she broke her leg. After she returned to the nursing home from a stay in hospital, the staff found her doing leg squats as she held on to a hand rail in the hall.
When asked what she was doing, Mrs Okawa replied that she was making sure her body did not get out of shape.
On her birthday, TV crews and national media have been invited to the nursing home to record the birthday festivities.
“We will be having a cake, of course,” said Mr Okada. “But we will only be having three candles, one for each figure of her 116 years, because that many candles could be dangerous.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/10670467/Worlds-oldest-person-celebrates-her-116th-birthday-Eat-and-sleep-and-you-will-live-a-long-time.html
An Ever-Curious Spirit, Unbeaten After 111 Years
ReplyDeleteBy RALPH BLUMENTHAL
MAY 4, 2014
So what is it like to be pronounced the oldest man on earth?
Alexander Imich, 111 ¼ years old, sat in a chair in his Upper West Side apartment overlooking the Hudson and made a face. Stick-thin with vein-roped hands, bristly whiskers and an enviable shock of hair, he formed a gaunt smile, eyes dancing.
“Not like it’s the Nobel Prize,” he wheezed, pausing for a startled moment when his hearing aid popped out.
Yes, Mr. Imich, a scholar of the occult who was born in Poland on Feb. 4, 1903, is the world’s oldest validated male supercentenarian (those over 110), according to the Gerontology Research Group of Torrance, Calif.
He attained the distinction when the previous record-holder, Arturo Licata of Italy, died on April 24 at 111 years and 357 days. (Sixty-six women officially outdate him; the eldest, Misao Okawa of Japan, is 116, the Gerontology group reports.)
“I didn’t have time yet to think about it,” Mr. Imich said in a halting interview last week as friends came by with a chocolate cake for a belated birthday celebration, delayed by a hospitalization for a fall at home on the very day he turned 111. “I never thought I’d be that old.” . . .
So what are his secrets of longevity?
He and his wife never had children. That might have helped, he guessed. (His closest relative is an 84-year-old nephew.)
Did his many hardships prolong his life? “It’s hard to say.” He credited “good genes” and athletics. “I was a gymnast,” he said. “Good runner, a good springer. Good javelin, and I was a good swimmer.”
He used to smoke but gave it up long ago.
Alcohol? Never, he said.
He always ate sparingly, inspired by Eastern mystics who disdain food. “There are some people in India who do not eat,” he said admiringly. Now, his home-care aides said, he fancies matzo balls, gefilte fish, chicken noodle soup, Ritz crackers, scrambled eggs, chocolate and ice cream. At the words “ice cream,” Mr. Imich perked up. “Jah!” he interjected.
The couple who came to visit, Michael Mannion and Trish Corbett, founders of the Mindshift Institute, dedicated to spreading new scientific knowledge of the nature of the universe, met Mr. Imich in the 1990s at the IM School of Healing Arts on 26th Street in Manhattan, where, though he was already in his 90s, he prepaid for three years.
They lay his survival to his ever-curious mind. Mr. Mannion said Mr. Imich wondered recently, “How long can this go on?” But he was cheerful, noting, “The compensation for dying is that I will learn all the things I was not able to learn here on Earth.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/05/nyregion/111-year-journey-of-the-worlds-oldest-man.html
World’s Oldest Man, Though Only Briefly, Dies at 111 in New York
ReplyDeleteBy RALPH BLUMENTHAL
JUNE 9, 2014
Alexander Imich, a Polish-born psychic researcher who was certified the oldest man on earth, died Sunday morning at a senior residence in Manhattan. He had turned 111 on Feb. 4.
His death was reported by a grandniece, Karen Bogen, in Rhode Island, and a longtime friend in New York, Michael Mannion, who had visited him Saturday night at the Esplanade, the senior home at West End Avenue and 74th Street where Mr. Imich had been living since 1986.
Mr. Imich became the world’s oldest validated male supercentenarian (those over 110), according to the Gerontology Research Group of Torrance, Calif., when the previous record-holder, Arturo Licata of Italy, died on April 24 at 111 years and 357 days. At the time, 66 women were officially older than Mr. Imich, with the oldest being 116.
Mr. Imich had willed his body to Mount Sinai Medical Center for study, Mr. Mannion said. . .
He attributed his long life to the fact that he and his wife, Wela, a painter and therapist who died in 1986, never had children. (In addition to Ms. Bogen, he is survived by an 84-year-old nephew, Jan Imich, in London.) He also exercised, ate sparingly and never drank alcohol.
He said “the aeroplane” was the greatest invention he witnessed in his lifetime; he was born 10 months before the flight of the Wright Brothers.
Mr. Imich was born into a well-to-do secular Jewish family on Feb. 4, 1903, in Czestochowa in southern Poland, . . ..
Mr. Mannion said that Mr. Imich was highly agitated four days before his death, speaking Polish and Russian to spirits he felt were around him. He was treated with medication before his death.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/09/nyregion/worlds-oldest-man-though-only-briefly-dies-at-111-in-new-york.html
The World's Oldest Man Alexander Imich Dies at 111
By Samantha Payne | IB Times – 14 hours ago
Craig Glenday, editor-in-chief of the Guinness World Records, said: "What an incredible life Dr Imich led -- fighting the Bolsheviks as a teenager, earning a PhD in the 1920s, surviving a Soviet labour camp, losing much of his family to the Nazis and pursuing a successful career as a chemist and parapsychologist.
"To live such an extraordinarily long and rich life is a testament to good genes, a healthy lifestyle and a positive mental attitude. Dr Imich is an inspiration to anyone wishing to make the most out of their limited time on Earth."
His motto was one should "always pursue what one loves and is passionate about".
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/worlds-oldest-man-alexander-imich-dies-111-144659600.html#vddmKLQ
World's Oldest Woman Revealed Her Secret to Long Life
ReplyDeleteby Tanya Lewis, Staff Writer | April 01, 2015 04:48pm ET
The world's oldest person, a 117-year-old woman in Japan named Misao Okawa, died today. Okawa was born on March 5, 1898, and died of heart failure just a few weeks after celebrating her birthday.
Okawa was named the world's oldest person in 2013, when she was 114, according to Guinness World Records. Now, the world's oldest living person is Gertrude Weaver, a 116-year-old woman in Arkansas, according to the Gerontology Research Group, which keeps track of supercentenarians, or people older than 110.
Sakari Momoi of Japan became the world's oldest living man at 111, according to the Geronotology Research Group, since the death of Dr. Alexander Imich of New York City in June 2014. The oldest person ever known was Jeanne Louise Calment of France, who lived to be 122 years and 164 days old, and died in 1997, according to Guinness World Records.
http://www.livescience.com/50340-worlds-oldest-woman-died.html
The world's oldest person dies at 117
Jessica Durando, USA TODAY Network 8:08 p.m. EDT April 1, 2015
With the death on Wednesday of 117-year-old Japanese woman Misao Okawa, an American, Gertrude Weaver, is now the world's oldest person.
In fact, the three oldest people in the world, as documented by the Guinness Book of Records, are Americans. Joining Weaver, who lives in Arkansas, are Michigan's Jeralean Talley and New York City's Susannah Mushatt Jones. The three are among only four people still living who were born in the 1800s. The other is Italy's Emma Morano.
Weaver, like Okawa, was born in 1898, and is due to turn 117 on July 4. The other three were born in 1899.
Here are mini-biographies of Weaver, Talley, Mushatt Jones and Murano:
Name: GERTRUDE WEAVER
Country of residence: United States
Birthday: July 4, 1898
The oldest person in the world also is America's oldest person.
The daughter of sharecroppers who witnessed the Civil War, Gertrude Weaver was born in southwest Arkansas near the border with Texas and was married in 1915,according to the Associated Press. She and her husband had four children, all of whom have died except for a son, now in his 90s.
Weaver lives at Silver Oaks Health and Rehabilitation, a nursing home in Camden, Ark., about two hours southwest of the state's capital city, Little Rock.
According to an article in Time magazine, some of the highlights of Weaver's week are manicures, Bible study and "wheelchair dancing," which she does three times a week. "We chair dance because we can't get up anymore," Weaver told Time. She is also visited regularly by friends and her granddaughter Gradie Welch, who is nearly 80. "She is a loving and compassionate grandmother," Welch told the magazine.
So how has she lived so long? "Kindness," she told Time. "Treat people right and be nice to other people the way you want them to be nice to you."
Also, she says, it helps to have strong religious beliefs. "You have to follow God. Don't follow anyone else," she told the local Camden News. "Be obedient and follow the laws and don't worry about anything. I've followed Him for many, many years and I ain't tired."
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/04/01/arkansas-woman-is-now-the-oldest-in-the-world/70765530/
Gertrude Weaver dies just five days after becoming the world’s oldest person
ReplyDeleteBy Elahe Izadi
April 6, 2015
Gertrude Weaver, who became the world’s oldest person last week, died Monday morning in Arkansas after suffering complications from pneumonia.
The 116-year-old became next in line to officially earn the title of oldest person when 117-year-old Misao Okawa of Japan died Wednesday. Weaver was fully aware of her unique place in the world and “knew everything,” Kathy Langley, administrator at the Silver Oaks Health and Rehabilitation Center, where Weaver lived, told The Post by phone.
“She was alert and oriented,” Langley said. “She knew that she was the oldest person in the world, and she enjoyed that distinction greatly. She enjoyed every phone call, every letter, every comment — everything was read to her.”
Weaver became sick on Saturday and died at 10:12 a.m. Monday, Langley said. She’s survived by her son, Joe Weaver, who turns 94 on Tuesday, Langley said.
“She was an amazing woman who we deeply loved, and we’re incredibly saddened by her loss,” Langley said.
Born in 1898 as the youngest of six children in southwest Arkansas, Weaver was the daughter of sharecroppers. She once told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that her longevity was due to “treating everybody good” and eating her own cooking.
She told the Associated Press last year that she lived a long life thanks to “trusting in the Lord, hard work and loving everybody.”
“You have to follow God. Don’t follow anyone else,” she said. “Be obedient and follow the laws and don’t worry about anything. I’ve followed him for many, many years and I ain’t tired.”
Weaver married Gennie Weaver in 1915, and their marriage certificate was used by researchers in July to help verify her age.
She had four children, and her husband painted houses while she worked as a housekeeper. At age 104, she briefly entered a nursing home to recover from a broken hip, but she soon left the home and continued living with her granddaughter until the age of 109.
Figuring out the world’s oldest person is not an easy task, and the title goes to an individual whose age can be verified by some sort of documentation who typically applies for the recognition.
Weaver very likely was going to receive the title, Robert Young, director of the supercentenarians program at the Gerontology Research Group, told The Post last week. But a process had to first take place for the official Guinness title to be given, said Young, who serves as a consultant to Guinness.
Young said the Gerontology Research Group will recognize Weaver posthumously.
The world’s oldest person, according to the Gerontology Research Group’s tracking, is now likely 115-year-old Jeralean Talley of Inkster, Mich. “Technically speaking, we have the information we need. We know Ms. Talley is alive, we know Ms. Talley was born in 1899 — the 1900 Census said she was born in May,” Young said. “She basically is next in line.”
Talley previously held the title of “Oldest Living American,” but it was retracted in 2014 when the Gerontology Research Group confirmed Weaver’s birth date.
Talley also has remained active in her later years; she bowled until she turned 104 and went fishing at the age of 113.
“It’s all in the good Lord’s hands,” Talley told the Detroit Free Press ahead of her 115th birthday last May. “There’s nothing I can do about it.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/04/06/gertrude-weaver-dies-just-five-days-after-becoming-the-worlds-oldest-person/
Surprising Health Habits Of Jeralean Talley, The World’s New Oldest Living Personseconds
ReplyDeleteKorin Miller
April 7, 2015
While most of us strive to eat more leafy greens and cut back on junk food, the world’s oldest living person is eating chicken nuggets and potato salad (and plenty of fruit, of course).
At age 115, Michigan’s Jeralean Talley is thought to be the new world’s oldest living person after the death this week of116-year-old Gertrude Weaver, who held the World’s Oldest Person title for 5 days after the death of 117-year-old Misao Okawa of Japan, who passed away on Wednesday, April 1.
Talley, who is from the Detroit area, hasn’t been sitting back in her advanced age: She bowled until she turned 104 and mowed her own lawn until a few years ago. She also lived alone until she was 108, when her daughter Thelma Holloway moved into her home.
“Given her age, I’d consider her to be very active and very mobile,” family friend Michael Kinloch tells Yahoo Health of Talley. According to Kinloch, Talley uses a walker in public but walks around or leans on furniture when she navigates her own house.
“She’ll say, ‘Hey, I’ve got it!’ She’s very aware of the fact that she needs to move around, otherwise she’ll lose that mobility,” Kinloch says.
Kinloch just recently went on a walk with Talley, who had this to say about her health: “I don’t feel bad. I don’t feel sick. I feel as good as you do, and I look as good as you do. I just can’t get around as well as you do.”
“Her mental state is very sharp,” family friend Michael Kinloch told the Detroit Free Press of Talley. “She’s feeling no pain. She just can’t get around like she used to.”
Talley herself says that she’s in good health: “I feel good. I don’t feel sick. I’m still trying to do the right thing is all.”
According to U.S. Census Bureau data, a growing number of Americans are living to age 100, and nearly 83 percent of them are women. The next oldest living person in the world, Susannah Mushatt-Jones, is also an American women, according to the Gerontology Research Group.
So, what’s Talley’s secret? TV and eating … pretty much everything. Holloway says that her mother likes to listen to baseball on the radio and watch The Ellen DeGeneres Showand Wheel of Fortune. She also loves potato salad, honey buns, McDonald’s chicken nuggets, and Wendy’s chili, and often stays up until midnight.
But Talley doesn’t just eat fast food: Kinloch says she eats plenty of fish (especially catfish), rice, vegetables, and fruits like blueberries, cantaloupe, strawberries, and watermelon. She also began avoiding butter 10 years ago for dietary reasons.
According to Holloway, her mother has stayed active by sewing dresses and quilts, and playing slot machines at casinos. She now sits most of the time, but works out by waving her arms in the air and kicking her feet. And twice a year she goes fishing for catfish and trout with Kinloch.
Talley also cooks on occasion. Every Christmas she bakes head cheese—pigs’ ears and feet in a jelly stock—for Kinloch (although she’s not a big pork eater herself), and makes walnut pie with nuts from the tree in her backyard for friends.
But Talley says that the secret to living a long life isn’t what you eat—it’s what you do: “Treat the other fellow like you want to be treated. You don’t tell a lie on me so I won’t tell a lie on you.”
https://www.yahoo.com/health/surprising-health-habits-of-jeralean-talley-the-115775115702.html
The second-oldest person in the world told us her secrets to a long life
ReplyDeleteMELIA ROBINSON, HUNTER WALKER AND SAM REGA
MAY 20, 2015, 4:31 PM
,,,Supercentenarians occur at a rate of about one in 7 million people. In the US, roughly a dozen of every 4,500 centenarians, or people who reach the age of 100, will live past their 110th birthday.
A surprising majority, like Jones, are in great shape. According to the Boston School of Medicine-New England Centenarian Study, a leading center for longevity research, 69% of supercentenarians show no signs of age-related diseases, such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, dementia, and stroke, at age 100 or later. Another study found 41% of supercentenarians require minimal or no assistance in activities of daily life, such as feeding, bathing, and getting in and out of bed.
Jones' daily regimen is simple. Every morning with a glass of water and cranberry juice, she takes a multivitamin and a blood-pressure medication. She sees the doctor just four times a year for "maintenance," Judge said. Along with chewing gum and her breakfasts, Judge said Jones' diet largely consists of fruits. She never complains of pain. To the bewilderment of her physicians and family members, Jones even appears to be "reverse aging." Over the last four years, her hair changed from gray to brown and softened. When she was 96, she grew a tooth — not a wisdom tooth, not an impacted tooth, but a new tooth — in her lower jaw. She's a medical marvel.
For decades, researchers have engaged in a modern-day space race to identify the common thread among supercentenarians that allows them to live so healthily, so long. Jones checks off a few boxes.
Jones is a woman, and that counts for something. About 90% of supercentenarians are female. The New England Centenarian Study suggests that women may biologically fare better than men when age-related diseases manifest, meaning they hold on longer despite illness.
In her heyday, she never abused alcohol or drugs. Even coffee was too strong for her tastes.
Most important, Jones has good genes. Her niece Judge told us that, according to the US Census, Jones' grandmother lived to be 117.
The research is inconclusive, but it suggests that supercentenarians have ingrained protective mechanisms — basically a complicated web of genes — that help them avoid age-related diseases and delay cognitive and functional decline.
George Church of Harvard Medical School explained it best in an interview with io9's George Dvorsky:
"To appreciate why it's so extremely rare to live to 107 and beyond you need to think about it this way. It may take several genes to help protect a person from various forms of cancer. You can have all of those genes, but still die early of cardiovascular disease. If you have genes that protect you from the many forms of CVD, you may nevertheless still die early from cancer, neurodegenerative diseases, diabetes, and so on. So a person likely needs numerous protective genes in every major category of disease risk, in order to sidestep these typical longevity landmines."
As researchers scramble to pinpoint the winning DNA combination, Jones sticks with her routine.
According to Judge, Jones partially attributed her longevity to family. She never had children or a husband of her own, but she still had a large family around her to provide comfort, contact, and a support system.
For the past 30 years, Jones has lived in her apartment in the Vandalia Houses. Her nieces and nephews visit every Sunday, and she will call out any one of them who misses a week. Though she can't see them, she recognizes their voices and the ways they interact with her; one likes to tap her on the head, for instance…
http://www.businessinsider.com/we-just-had-breakfast-with-supercentenarian-susannah-mushatt-jones-2015-5
World's oldest person Susannah Mushatt Jones turns 116
ReplyDeleteMichael Balsamo, (Morris County, N.J.) Daily Record
12:47 p.m. EDT July 6, 2015
Happy birthday to Susannah Mushatt Jones, who turned 116 Monday. Jones is now the world's oldest person, according to a statement from Guinness World Records.
Jones credits her longevity to "lots of sleep," Guinness said. But her family members say she has lived a long life due to her love of family and generosity to others.
Jones was born in a small farm town near Montgomery, Ala., on July 6, 1899. She was one of 11 siblings and attended a special school for young black girls. When she graduated from high school in 1922, Jones worked full time helping family members pick crops. She left after a year to begin working as a nanny, heading north to New Jersey and eventually making her way to New York.
"She adored kids," Jones' niece, Lois Judge, told the Daily Record of her aunt, though Jones never had children of her own and was married for only a few years.
After she moved to New York, Jones worked with a group of her fellow high school graduates to start a scholarship fund for young African-American women to go to college. She was active in her public housing building's tenant patrol until she was 106.
Jones is blind because of glaucoma and also hard of hearing. However, she visits a doctor only once every four months and takes medication for high blood pressure and a multivitamin every day. Aside from that, she has had a clean bill of health for years, Judge said.
Jones, who wears a yellow turban on her head and a nightgown most days, spends her time in a public housing facility for seniors in Brooklyn, N.Y., where she has lived for more than three decades.
Jones keeps a steady diet of bacon, eggs and grits for breakfast. A sign in her kitchen reads: "Bacon makes everything better."
She plans to celebrate the milestone with two parties — one with family on July 6 and another with her housing community and friends on July 7, according to Guinness.
The oldest person to have ever lived was also a woman, according to Guinness. Jeanne Calment from France lived to 122 years and 164 days. She died in 1997.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/07/06/susannah-mushatt-jones-birthday-116-worlds-oldest-person-guinness-world-records/29758893/
This doctor lived to 105. He believed the key to longevity is not retiring.
ReplyDeleteRose Leadem
Published 12:00 pm, Thursday, July 27, 2017
To live a long life, work forever. At least, that’s what one of Japan’s leading doctors believed -- and he was his own proof.
Before his death on July 18, 105-year-old Dr. Shigeaki Hinohara was a practicing physician, a chairman of St. Luke’s International University and the honorary president of St. Luke’s International Hospital. Up until a few months before his death, Hinohara was active in the medical community -- treating patients, taking new appointments and working up to 18 hours a day.
Often credited as a major contributor to the foundations of Japanese medicine and in positioning Japan as a world leader in life expectancy, Hinohara held a number of beliefs for healthy living and longevity. And one of his main ones was: “Don’t retire. And if you must, retire much later than age 65,” he told theJapan Times.
Maybe we should listen to the wise words of Hinohara, who believed that because the average life expectancy of Japanese people reached 84 years as of 2015, then the retirement age should be pushed back too, because work is what helps keep people going. At least that was the case for Hinohara, whose career, in a way, kept him living.
Janit Kawaguchi, a Japan Times journalist who considered Hinohara a mentor, said, "He believed that life is all about contribution, so he had this incredible drive to help people, to wake up early in the morning and do something wonderful for other people. This is what was driving him and what kept him living."
On top of working for as long as possible, Hinohara also preached other guidelines for a long life, including having fun, always taking the stairs, asking your doctor questions and unsurprisingly, not being overweight.
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/This-Doctor-Who-Lived-to-105-Believed-That-for-a-11498781.php
History’s oldest woman a fraud? Russian researchers claim 122-year-old Jeanne Calment was actually a 99-year-old imposter
ReplyDeleteDid the real Jeanne Calment die in 1934 at the age of 59?
Tristin Hopper
Jan. 2, 2019
France’s Jeanne Calment, widely recognized as history’s oldest woman upon her death at age 122, may have actually been a 99-year-old imposter, according to an explosive new theory being pushed by Russian researchers.
According to a paper written by mathematician Nikolay Zak and supported by gerontologist Valery Novoselov, the real Jeanne Calment died in 1934 at the age of 59. The woman who achieved fame as history’s oldest person was actually her daughter Yvonne, who assumed her dead mother’s identity in order to dodge steep French inheritance taxes.
…The paper is not peer reviewed and relies exclusively on circumstantial evidence.
…Calment seemed to bear a closer resemblance to Yvonne than purported photos of herself as a young woman.
…Calment’s interviews with age verificators were replete with tiny inconsistencies, such as confusing her husband and father or saying that she was accompanied to school by a family maid who would actually have been 10 years her junior.
…Calment had most of her personal papers destroyed rather than turning them over to the local Arles archive.
The imposter theory has been dismissed out of hand by Jean-Marie Robine, the French gerontologist who helped validate Calment’s extreme age in the 1990s…
Robine said that he and a colleague made sure to ask Calment questions that only she would know the answer to, such as the name of her mathematics teacher. “Her daughter couldn’t have known that,” he said.
Nicolas Brouard, a research director at France’s national institute for demographic studies,…said the question could only truly be resolved via an exhumation of Jeanne and Yvonne Calment.
…To date, only one public claim of Calment as an imposter appears to predate the Zak paper. An obscure 2007 French book, Insurance and Its Secrets, claimed that an insurer became aware of Calment’s identity theft but “the authorities did not make it public because the ‘elder of the French’ became a legend.”
The ruse would also have required the intentional falsification of Yvonne’s death certificate. However, skeptics have made much of the fact that Yvonne’s death was not confirmed by a doctor or coroner; the certificate mentions only Marie Nicolle, a woman “sans profession.”
…Calment was rarely if ever seen during the 1930s and spent much of her time outside the city. “World War II brought chaos with it, and after the war, it all settled as if Madame Calment was always Madame Jeanne Calment,” he writes.
In a recent interview, Novoselov also pointed to a few peculiar aspects of Calment’s life that would have been consistent with a woman adopting her mother’s identity. Yvonne’s husband Joseph never got remarried after her 1934 death, and in fact lived for years with Jeanne, the woman who was reportedly his mother-in-law.
…Calment not only holds the record for longest-living human, but has eclipsed all competitors. She remains not only history’s only 122-year-old, but also its only 121-year-old and 120-year-old. The next longest-living person, American Sarah Knauss, died at age 119, more than three years before Calment’s final record of 122 years, 164 days.
https://nationalpost.com/news/world/historys-oldest-woman-a-fraud-theory-says-122-year-old-jeanne-calment-was-actually-a-99-year-old-imposter
Henry Tseng, who exercised every day at age 111, dies
ReplyDeleteBy LAURA J. NELSON
MAR 24, 2019 | 7:20 PM
Every day at 3 p.m., Henry Tseng arrived at a gym on the Westside for his daily workout — not an unusual sight in Los Angeles, except Tseng was 111.
Tseng’s passion for physical fitness made him something of a local celebrity at the Collins & Katz Family YMCA in Sawtelle, where he had been a member for more than 40 years.
In his 80s, Tseng was doing yoga headstands. He showed up for a 6:30 a.m. dance aerobics class well into his 90s. And in his 12th decade, he still lifted himself out of his wheelchair and onto a recumbent exercise bike for a half-hour ride every afternoon.
“The older you are, the more you need exercise,” Tseng told The Times last year. He didn’t feel old, he said, and did not count his years.
Tseng exercised until the day before he died on Feb. 27 at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. He was 111 and 231 days, his family said. At the time of his death, he was believed to be the oldest man in the United States.
He ate in moderation, took a multivitamin, and stayed away from alcohol, cigarettes and drugs. But the true secret to longevity, Tseng said, was to exercise regularly, smile every day, and choose not to worry.
“I have lots of small troubles like everybody, but I just say, ‘Forget about it,’” Tseng said last year. “Nothing is impossible.”
Tseng was born in Yokohama, Japan, and worked in imports and exports in Shanghai and Hong Kong for decades. He and his wife, Annie, who lived to be 100, settled in Los Angeles in 1975 when their daughter enrolled in college in Southern California.
He was also a fixture at Holmby Park in Westwood, where he would spend an hour or two with his caretakers after he finished his workout. Occasionally, tour bus guides would spot Tseng and yell to their riders: “Look, there’s the guy who’s 111!”
When a longtime friend at the YMCA stopped exercising because he was ashamed of symptoms brought on by Parkinson’s disease, Tseng vowed to find a way to help him stay active.
The friends convened a panel, including a UCLA neurologist and a rehabilitation therapist, and devised a fitness program for people with Parkinson’s, Tseng said in a 2004 interview in The Rotarian magazine. The classes and support groups are still offered at the Westwood YMCA.
“Do everything you can, and never refuse,” Tseng said last year. “Anybody asks you to do something, try hard to do it.”
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-henry-tseng-obit-20190324-story.html
What’s the Secret to Reaching 111? ‘Avoid Dying,’ but ‘Porridge Is Helpful’
ReplyDeleteBy Palko Karasz
March 30, 2019
LONDON — When Alfred Smith and Bob Weighton were born, Edward VII was king of Britain. They have lived through two world wars, more than 20 prime ministers and the entire rule of Britain’s longest-reigning monarch. They also saw Britain join the predecessor of the European Union — a bloc it was supposed to leave on Friday, the day both men turned 111.
As it became clear that the withdrawal known as Brexit wouldn’t happen on his birthday after all, Mr. Weighton, who lives in southern England, echoed a growing frustration with the current political deadlock, calling it “a total mess.”
“My own feeling is that if there were defects — and there were quite obviously defects — we can negotiate on the inside rather than walking off the field with the cricket ball and saying ‘I’m not playing,’” Mr. Weighton told the BBC.
But the most common question he has been asked does not concern politics. He said most people wanted to know the secret to his longevity — something to which he could not respond.
“I have no answer, except to avoid dying,” he said.
The oldest person on record living in Britain is a woman: Grace Jones turned 112 in September. But men are increasingly living past the age of 90, and more than 14,000 centenarians were living in Britain in 2017, the most recent year such statistics are available, according to the Office for National Statistics.
Government population estimates see the number of centenarians passing 65,000 by 2031.
Most British citizens receive a personal greeting from Queen Elizabeth II on their 100th and 105th birthdays, and one for each year past the age of 110. Mr. Weighton told the BBC that he would ask the monarch to stop sending him cards in order to save public funds.
Mr. Weighton and Mr. Smith, who lives in Scotland, were both born on March 29, 1908. In recent years, their photographs have appeared in the news side by side, sitting in armchairs 500 miles apart. Though they have never met in person, the two men have exchanged birthday cards.
“I feel he’s a twin brother, although technically he’s not,” Mr. Smith said of Mr. Weighton in an interview last year with the Scottish network STV.
Both men have led an adventurous life spanning continents and different jobs. In the 1930s, Mr. Weighton taught at a missionary school in Taiwan, and moved to the United States by way of Canada.
He and his wife, Agnes, were in the United States during the attack on Pearl Harbor that drew the country into World War II. He has a son who married a Swede and a daughter who married a German.
“I flatly refuse to regard my grandchildren as foreigners,” he told The Guardian last year. “I’m an internationalist, but I’ve not lost my pride in being a Yorkshireman or British.”
Mr. Smith immigrated to Canada in 1927 and worked on a farm there. But he returned to Scotland after five years to drive trucks for his brother. He was a farmer until his retirement at the age of 70.
“I like to think I’ve lived a decent life,” he told The Scotsman newspaper this past week. “I do ask myself — why me? Why have I lived so long when others haven’t?” he asked. His wife died more than 15 years ago at 97, and one of his sons died in 2016.
As to longevity, Mr. Smith had no definitive answer, either.
“Porridge is helpful,” he said, “and having a job you enjoy.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/30/world/europe/uk-britain-oldest-man.html