World’s oldest person, Maria Branyas Morera, dies aged 117 | Hacker News Reader

World’s oldest person, Maria Branyas Morera, dies aged 117

theguardian.com

At the bottom of the page, in related stories, there's a Hampshire man who seemed to age extraordinarily between 31 March 2020 (officially recognised as world's oldest man) and 28 May (died). (And not in a particularly weak/sick sort of way, just looks about thirty years older, if the same man at all.)

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I think Ms Morera's the long-liver I've previously read suggesting something amusing like 'plenty of olive oil and a glass of red wine every evening' as key to it, but searching for that now all I can find is the present holder of 'world's oldest man', Mr Tinniswood, suggesting 'fish & chips on a Friday & regular walks'. (https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/oldest-man-long-lif...)

>a glass of red wine every evening'

They often have stories like this. Glass of wine. Shot of whiskey. Cigars etc.

Sometimes i wonder if it is hormesis. Other times I think it's probably just genes and luck and that alcohol/cigar etc had very little influence.

Hormesis is a pretty interesting thing (thanks, as TIL). Just a thought, the tiny amount of ethanol in fermented dairy products like cultured buttermilk, yogurt, and kefir, could maybe play a tiny factor in some of its health benefits? The logic here is that for a micronutrient such as Vitamin A that all it takes is 1/1000th of a gram on a daily basis for health benefits (the same goes for many other vitamins' RDA for humans).

As an aside, there is an interesting part of the ethanol section in the Wikipedia entry [0] on hormesis:

> In 2012, researchers at UCLA found that tiny amounts (1 mM, or 0.005%) of ethanol doubled the lifespan of Caenorhabditis elegans, a roundworm frequently used in biological studies, that were starved of other nutrients. Higher doses of 0.4% provided no longevity benefit.[22] However, worms exposed to 0.005% did not develop normally (their development was arrested). The authors argue that the worms were using ethanol as an alternative energy source in the absence of other nutrition, or had initiated a stress response. They did not test the effect of ethanol on worms fed a normal diet.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormesis

The world's oldest person is dead, long live the world's oldest person!

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_king_is_dead,_long_live_th...!

It's so cool that she's lucid. You can find out so much about how the world has changed from someone like that.

I know a 102 year old who wrote her autobiography a couple years ago and it is so fascinating. One thing that stood out to my wife and I (I was reading it aloud to her and the children) is how trusting they were of the government and official news sources. For example during World War II most war news came through newsreels on the big screen. Imagine trusting Hollywood to provide accurate news stories today. Nobody would trust them. Overall, it was just a higher trust society back then.

My grandmother just turned 90 and still mows her own lawn and does her own gardening every week. I talk to her on Skype fairly often and she’s still really sharp. I am convinced that she will be the next record holder in 30 years

Ed Thorp is still going strong at 92.

https://youtu.be/CNvz91Jyzbg?si=4H7fOag3DTLyLpwF

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_O._Thorp

The scariest thing about being the world's oldest person. Everyone on the planet at the time of your birth is gone.

On the flip side.. everyone was at one moment the youngest person alive.. if just for a moment.

Wow, when you put it like that... Incredible.

As someone who was briefly the world's youngest person, I can confirm it is an interesting alternate feeling to have no one on the planet alive after you.

I don’t think one is still „old“ if they died. The oldest person is normally the oldest person alive and that’s the opposite of dead.

So, no: there is still an oldest person. It just switched to someone else, happens all the time. It’s a bit more apparent with the youngest person, everyone was the youngest person at birth - at least for a short amount of time and then it switched to the next one.

I had always hoped that the improved healthcare of the 20th and 21st centuries would enable the supercentenarians to keep pushing the boundary for this record, but nobody is getting close to Jean Calment’s record of 122 (I’m aware it’s been disputed, and the continued lack of peers is either more reason to doubt it, or a challenge to the perception of modernity as healthy).

I can't tell whether this is sad or not.

I'd vote for not sad; a long life without significant health impediments is not something everyone is lucky enough to get.

Lagniappe: https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c08178c1137a6...

That title is cursed! /s Rest in peace.

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