Posted on 02/22/2023 8:10:10 AM PST by Red Badger
Jeanne Calment, a French woman, achieved an incredible feat of living to age 122, thus earning the honor of being the world’s oldest person on record.
But before her passing, Calment met and discussed her life with Jean-Marie Robine, an expert demographer who studies the links between health and longevity.
As a disclaimer, Robine says: “We have to keep in mind that a big part of the longevity of Jeanne Calment is due to just chance because it’s just so exceptional.”
However, there are some aspects of her life that likely contributed to her ability to live so long, he says.
3 likely reasons the world’s oldest person lived to 122
1. She was wealthy
Calment benefitted from “growing up in a bourgeois family in the south of France, so she was living in a nice neighborhood,” says Robine.
This allowed her to go to school until the age of 16, which was not very common for women during that time period, he adds. She also went on to receive private classes in cuisine, art and dance until she got married at 20 years old.
Another factor that likely helped her live longer, and stress less, was that “she never worked,” says Robine.
“She always had someone at home to help her,” and didn’t have to cook for herself or even shop for her necessities.
2. She didn’t smoke cigarettes until much later in life
Until marriage, Calment was not allowed to smoke, says Robine. “We have to remember where we were, at the end of the nineteenth century in a little town in the South of France,” he says.
“Of course it was absolutely forbidden, and impossible, for a girl, and specifically in a bourgeois family, to do that.”
Yet just after getting married, Calment’s husband offered her a cigarette. And though she was extremely happy to do something that she wasn’t allowed to do before, “when she was smoking for the first time, she did not find it nice, and she quit smoking.”
Interestingly enough, Calment didn’t smoke for most of her life, but picked up the habit at around age 112 while living in a nursing home.
3. She had a great social life
With so much free time, Calment had “absolutely nothing to do except to take care of [herself], to visit France and have social activities,” says Robine.
She spent most of her time attending social events and meeting new people, especially because “people were organizing balls at home.”
With her husband, she was also able to travel often and go to Paris to see the Eiffel Tower, which was under construction at the time. “She was discovering this fascinating world at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century.”
“Even if she [died] at the age of 119, it would have been exceptional, and it would have been the same with 120,” says Robine. “But she [lived] to 122 and a few more days.”
At one point I was talking to her about the assisted living where she lived and I asked her if she had any complaints or concerns.
Her answer:
“The men around here don’t seem to like or be very good at dancing.”
She was 98 at the time!
Started smoking at age 112 and didn’t live but another 10 years.
It’s true. Cigarettes will kill you! Probably could have made it to 140
Darn, I had hoped to see that she had a snort of single malt each and every evening. ;-)
In other words, why some people have longevity genes and others don’t. Most centenarians can do pretty much anything with protective genes that delay aging and offering protection against age-related diseases or they would not have made it that far.
Actually, I think there is evidence we can extend our lives and reverse some of the accrued damage we get.
There are some amazing insights that are reversing blood signs of chronic inflammation. You can even reverse arterial soft plaques and the hard plaques that usually are on top of them.
We do a lot to ourselves that makes us die early. Unleashing those from our lives can do wonders.
My dad is 93 ... he quit smoking back in the 70s as did 1 of my uncles. The two that quit smoking made it past 90 ... the grandfather and uncle that smoked died in their 70s.
In our family not smoking seems to help.
YMMV.
Oh that’s a wonderful story
“The anti-smoking “experts” refuse to differentiate between having a cigarette or two a day vs a pack or two a day.”
I smoke the Marlboro Red 72’s and they’re shorter than a standard length of cigarette, so if I smoke them about 3/4 of the way down and average 2 1/2 of those a day like that...I’m not really “killing” myself or addicted to nicotine, right?
The key is attitude.
If your doctor tells you to stop smoking just tell them you plan to attend their funeral—and will have a smoke afterwards.
;-)
Fortunate enough to have good genes.
I KNOW!
GENETICS. (and avoiding land mines)
GENETICS. (and avoiding land mines) Like the JABS!
She certainly had an interesting younger life: WWI, Russian Revolution, Spanish Civil War, WWII, Cold War.
Have the globalists made her their patron saint yet?
One of the members of my Sunday School class was a pulmonologist. He smoked a pack per week but never smoked a cig past halfway down. said the vast majority of the carcis are in the second half of the tobacco which has acted as a filter/collector for the first half.
For data analysis purposes, the CDC considers you a smoker if you have had more than 100 cigarettes in your life time.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhis/tobacco/tobacco_glossary.htm
And even then, a lot of those people didn’t want to smell like an ashtray all day, and also wanted to be able to taste their foodand drink normally.
Horse and buggy to moon landing to supersonic aircraft...........
Well, I just read that long winded chatty article and the guy claiming fraud seems a bit of a nutter. And those disputing his claim have logic and documents on their side.
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