World's oldest person Emma Morano dies at 117(bbc.com)
bbc.com
World's oldest person Emma Morano dies at 117
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39610937
129 comments
My grandpa who still legally drives turned 100 last year. He loves to eat meat (rare to raw), rich foods, and wanted to share with me his stash of liver pate in the refrigerator on my last visit. When I asked him about how he could hook me up to connections while he bragged about his successes he replied "They're all dead!!!". He's said that happiness is a racket and myth; that success is different for each person; that you should never say you are sorry; that you should put your track shoes on early, run like hell, and never look back. There's more. But I think, the long-lived, are not the best sources of information on how to live long.
> I think, the long-lived, are not the best sources of information on how to live long.
Yes, my great grandmother died at 101, smoked until 90, and generally didn't have much positive to say in her final years (she may have been suffering from dementia or other old age related disease).
I agree, advice from the long lived doesn't seem particularly useful when compared to scientific study
Yes, my great grandmother died at 101, smoked until 90, and generally didn't have much positive to say in her final years (she may have been suffering from dementia or other old age related disease).
I agree, advice from the long lived doesn't seem particularly useful when compared to scientific study
> But I think, the long-lived, are not the best sources of information on how to live long.
Daniel Kahneman has a similar sentiment about successful people turned self help gurus.
Daniel Kahneman has a similar sentiment about successful people turned self help gurus.
You're not wrong, but I bet their genes are.
It's a simple two-step process:
1. Have good genes.
2. Don't have bad genes.
If I can do it, everybody can!
1. Have good genes.
2. Don't have bad genes.
If I can do it, everybody can!
> But I think, the long-lived, are not the best sources of information on how to live long.
That's a mighty fast conclusion there, young shot! Given that historically, "most of the people were wrong most of the time", combined with the fact that most centenarians seem to live and advise entirely against widespread modern beliefs about mental nutritional medicinal and social health, all leads to the very real possibility that they're in fact inadvertently on to something.. =)
That's a mighty fast conclusion there, young shot! Given that historically, "most of the people were wrong most of the time", combined with the fact that most centenarians seem to live and advise entirely against widespread modern beliefs about mental nutritional medicinal and social health, all leads to the very real possibility that they're in fact inadvertently on to something.. =)
It is probably just random. Out of seven billion people some of them will make it over 100 years old. People do win the lottery, after all.
I think we will see more of centurians as health keeps on getting better and natural and artificial selections do their things.
natural selection does not play a role past reproductive age. If you die at 50 or 130 (for the vast majority who do not bear children in their 50s or later), your chances of propagating your genes to the next generation are the same.
This is definitely wrong, in general. The current consensus for why menopause may be adaptive is kin selection acting through grandparents' contribution to their grandkids' lives. (ie that the decline in fitness of hypothetical new children past a certain age makes indirect contributions to descendants' fitness relatively more useful than continued reproduction).
i stand corrected!
I think this is a tautology.
Health getting better doesn't necessarily mean a longer life. Sure there's a strong correlation, but it's not a tautology.
What's amazing is that there's not more variation between people's lifespan out of seven billion.
Her diet of only 3 eggs and some biscuits a day, made me wonder if any of her longevity can be credited to having a severely calorie restricted diet [0]. Assuming that's true that means she was probably ingesting 600 calories a day or less.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorie_restriction
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorie_restriction
I doubt it. In my experience the elderly tend to have weird diets, especially towards the end. I'm guessing it's due to a bunch of factors: trouble chewing/swallowing means eating is more of an ordeal, reduced need for calories because of reduced physical activity, and reduced sense of taste and smell makes eating unrewarding. My great grandmother spent her last year or two subsisting almost entirely on Kit Kat bars. We used to joke she could have appeared in a commercial for them, implying the Kit Kat bars were the reason for her longevity (she was 98).
She ate this way for 90 years so it sounds like her motivation wasn't lack of teeth or being old. I'd suggest reading the article before making conclusions.
The article doesn't say this at all. It says that she used to eat more eggs - 3 raw, plus an omelette at lunch and chicken at dinner. She had cut down to 2 raw eggs a day and had added in some biscuits.
The poster could easily be correct.
The poster could easily be correct.
It seems you are also having trouble reading the article so let me paste a quote directly from the article to help you:
"But it was also down to a rather unusual diet of three eggs - two raw - each day for more than 90 years."
I'm not sure how else to interpret this statement.
"But it was also down to a rather unusual diet of three eggs - two raw - each day for more than 90 years."
I'm not sure how else to interpret this statement.
You should read further. It goes on to say the rest:
It was a regime she took up as a young woman, after the doctor diagnosed her with anaemia shortly after World War One. She had cut down to just two eggs a day, and a few biscuits recently. Her doctor of 27 years, Carlo Bava, had told AFP news agency that she rarely ate vegetables or fruit. "When I met her, she ate three eggs per day, two raw in the morning and then an omelette at noon, and chicken at dinner."
I did misquote the number of eggs, but not the fact that she had cut down on the amount she was eating.
It was a regime she took up as a young woman, after the doctor diagnosed her with anaemia shortly after World War One. She had cut down to just two eggs a day, and a few biscuits recently. Her doctor of 27 years, Carlo Bava, had told AFP news agency that she rarely ate vegetables or fruit. "When I met her, she ate three eggs per day, two raw in the morning and then an omelette at noon, and chicken at dinner."
I did misquote the number of eggs, but not the fact that she had cut down on the amount she was eating.
But that doesn't mean she ate only eggs, just that she ate a lot of eggs.
Ask a lottery winner how you can get rich and they'll tell you to buy lottery tickets.
Still, if it's a process as poorly understood as dying of old age, saying "made me wonder if any of her longevity can be credited to having a severely calorie restricted diet" seems like a reasonable response.
I actually wondered if it had to do with eating an odd number of foods (3 eggs). Seems like it worked for her!
Some research on worms, mice, and monkeys has pointed at caloric restriction and/or a carb-free diets helping with longevity. If I recall correctly, these two strategies help with insulin sensitivity and other hormones that are known to serve as regulators in certain DNA repair pathways.
I think posters above are not supposing that caloric restriction could have helped at random. Rather, they have read about it helping with longevity -- unlike odd numbers of food.
Thanks for your comment.
I think posters above are not supposing that caloric restriction could have helped at random. Rather, they have read about it helping with longevity -- unlike odd numbers of food.
Thanks for your comment.
The article says she typically also ate an omelette for lunch and chicken for dinner. The biscuits and eggs were just her breakfast.
It doesn't say that, also, the article mentions she "cut down" to that, and used to eat more.
I'm more interested in when various athletic old people are going to die. Ernestine Shepherd, or Charles Eugster, or any of these ancient japanese bodybuilders.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5om6gbDwA8
I'm more interested in when various athletic old people are going to die. Ernestine Shepherd, or Charles Eugster, or any of these ancient japanese bodybuilders.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5om6gbDwA8
I don't think so because many of her family members surpassed the 90s. We need to check if everyone shared the same diet or it is more about her DNA.
yeah many of the elders had weird diets. There was always eggs involved also.
Calorie restriction is really interesting
Calorie restriction is really interesting
Do you have evidence about your egg claim? As someone very interested in diets I'd be curious...
The most critical element for survival with any diet - particularly with low calorie intake - is protein. Eggs just happen to be the easiest form factor. Personally when I'm on a weight loss regimen, I take in more canned Wild Pacific Salmon than eggs. Salmon, containing less mercury than many other fish, is a fairly safe bet for frequent consumption.
I'm curious how someone with a constant diet of something like eggs and biscuits for 5+ years fares regarding severe deficiencies in truly necessary vitamins and minerals. I do think the body is a miraculous machine that will successfully adapt to many diets that experts would otherwise claim as being dangerously deficient.
I'm curious how someone with a constant diet of something like eggs and biscuits for 5+ years fares regarding severe deficiencies in truly necessary vitamins and minerals. I do think the body is a miraculous machine that will successfully adapt to many diets that experts would otherwise claim as being dangerously deficient.
Not evidence, but it makes sense if you think about it. Eggs are nutritious, easy to eat (especially for people whose teeth have fallen off) and quite filling.
Making any assumptions on a sample of size 1 for something as multicausal as human longevity is ridiculous
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Imagine being a person so old that all people on earth ~7 billion people are younger than you.
Well, at some point in time, everyone was once so young that everyone else in the world was older than them.
Ok, but very few people are ever older than everyone else.
If you're male it's (effectively) impossible.
If you're female it looks like the oldest living person title is typically held for around a year[1]. Lets say that means 120 currently living people can hold the title, that gives you a 1 in 29 million[2] chance. Which feels far more likely than I would have intuitively guessed.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_people#Chronological_li... [2] Or half the odds of a given ticket winning the lottery
If you're female it looks like the oldest living person title is typically held for around a year[1]. Lets say that means 120 currently living people can hold the title, that gives you a 1 in 29 million[2] chance. Which feels far more likely than I would have intuitively guessed.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_people#Chronological_li... [2] Or half the odds of a given ticket winning the lottery
117. I can't even imagine that span of time. Seeing fashion change must annoy you. "Damn hipsters, we did that in the 20s!"
I think you withdraw after a time and become deeply cynically. For her trump, stalin, mao, the duce, hitler, the italian king.. it must all look like endless repetitions of the same boring theme, broken by endless promises of learning from past mistakes. All your friends are gone- only you - the relic dwell on. Even your sons and daugthers are dead. The lonesome george of mankind.
One of my ancestors comes from a Italian mountain village near Lago di Garda. Those villages are very poor, but also fascinating. They did a study on longevity and health - in which they found that farmers whos field would run up the mountain and down the mountain lived longer then farmers who fields did not have such height difference.
One of my ancestors comes from a Italian mountain village near Lago di Garda. Those villages are very poor, but also fascinating. They did a study on longevity and health - in which they found that farmers whos field would run up the mountain and down the mountain lived longer then farmers who fields did not have such height difference.
Mao - 40,000,000 http://necrometrics.com/20c5m.htm#Mao
Stalin - 20,000,000 http://necrometrics.com/20c5m.htm#Stalin
Hitler - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust#Victims_enumerat...
Trump?
Yea, I'm sure she thinks Trump is as bad as the 20th century's most brutal dictators.
I'm sure she doesn't think the millennial's who think this are embarrassingly and shamefully naive and exaggerating, if the word exaggerating even captures the absurdity well enough.
Stalin - 20,000,000 http://necrometrics.com/20c5m.htm#Stalin
Hitler - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust#Victims_enumerat...
Trump?
Yea, I'm sure she thinks Trump is as bad as the 20th century's most brutal dictators.
I'm sure she doesn't think the millennial's who think this are embarrassingly and shamefully naive and exaggerating, if the word exaggerating even captures the absurdity well enough.
The parent you're replying to did not draw conclusions, merely talked about patterns. Kinda like I see a pattern in you, within 48 hours, defending climate change denial, religious oppression and now Trump.
Humans do that - they look at the world and see patterns all the time. Some people are worse at it than others.
Humans do that - they look at the world and see patterns all the time. Some people are worse at it than others.
The weak "you've stated opinions of the wrong tribe in other discussions, therefore nobody should believe you" character attacks are a boring waste of time. Please respond to the comment at hand; digging through post history to find character attack material really isn't great on multiple levels.
I didn't say "nobody should believe" the poster, I said I'm seeing a pattern. And I didn't have to dig deep, it's quite literally the last three comments the poster made.
When I'm replying to someone, I very often look at their other comments. It gives me more context about who they are, how they think, and more often than not leads me to other interesting articles. It's an exercise I recommend.
When I'm replying to someone, I very often look at their other comments. It gives me more context about who they are, how they think, and more often than not leads me to other interesting articles. It's an exercise I recommend.
Absolutely fair - but to bring up their past comments in a debate you're having with them is extremely tacky, in my opinion.
Part of the reason discourse on this website is considered so much better than reddit is that it's generally considered poor form to dig through users past comments.
Part of the reason discourse on this website is considered so much better than reddit is that it's generally considered poor form to dig through users past comments.
> digging through post history to find character attack material really isn't great on multiple levels.
Not to mention being kind of pathetic
Not to mention being kind of pathetic
*catastrophic climate change. Not that its not changing, since that is literally always true. But that the fear mongers making outlandish predictions haven't been accurate.
And that the prescriptions they advocate would cause a whole lot of suffering especially for the poorest people.
And that the prescriptions they advocate would cause a whole lot of suffering especially for the poorest people.
What kind of scientific projections were outlandish if I may ask?
By percentage, those guys are minor league. Pol Pot caused the death of approximately 25% of the Cambodian population.
Today you can take a tour to see "The Killing Tree", an actual tree that kids heads were smashed against. There is a movie called "The Killing Fields" that does a decent job of conveying the suffering under Pol Pot. Pol Pot was so horrible that even the Vietnamese communists were disgusted enough to invade.
Today you can take a tour to see "The Killing Tree", an actual tree that kids heads were smashed against. There is a movie called "The Killing Fields" that does a decent job of conveying the suffering under Pol Pot. Pol Pot was so horrible that even the Vietnamese communists were disgusted enough to invade.
It's all in perception, she could also have seen those as triumphs of humans coming together, including space travel which wasn't even considered remotely possible or understood when she was a young woman. I have doubts anyone can live to be that age with a perpetually negative outlook on life
And at 117 you might have to specify which 20s!
Actually ... not in this case. She was born around 1900 and was twenty in the 1920s.
the fashion bit is a small part: it must have been hard to stay sane - look at all the political changes that happened during the last 117 years in Italy
Just think about the changes in technology since 1900. There are adults living today who don't remember a time before the internet, imagine being able to remember when pretty much every technology in your home was introduced. This woman would (hopefully) remember when households started acquiring fridges, when she was in her teens!
Interesting if she had a cell phone.
So I'm guessing this means we are officially out of people who were alive before 1900.
Given that it is 2017 I'd say that's a pretty good guess.
Nope, there is yet another one: https://www.ratsit.se/18990601-Saro_Dursun_Vasteras/qEQWdEbn...
Not many left I guess...
EDIT: Stolen from some uncle comment which I have also plussed.
Not many left I guess...
EDIT: Stolen from some uncle comment which I have also plussed.
The article says she was the last known living person from the 1800's.
this is interesting from a developer point of view. no more birth year below 1900.
sorry for the black humour
sorry for the black humour
And that's the last of the 19th century people.
Technically, the new oldest person was born in the nineteenth century: Jamaican Violet Brown, who was born on March 10, 1900. And presumably, there may be others alive who were born before the twentieth century began 1/1/1901.
Yeah, we all remember the worldwide celebrations at the turn of the last century, 2001-01-01.
Some people who had to work 1/1/00 or were on call (e.g. for Y2K) did in fact celebrate the technical new millenium a year later. Probably a few pedants did too.
So obvious, and yet I somehow did not think about this. Thanks!
In addition to the 19th C didn't end until 23:59:59 31:12:1900, there is also the very real possibility that the oldest person alive can't prove when they are born. Large parts of the world don't have reliable birth records from the 19th C.
How would you calculate the average time between deaths of the currently oldest person, assuming a constant population and constant max age?
That's a rabbit hole I'll be digging up now. It was quite interesting. There should be a dedicated website for such obscure things. Reddit helps but doesn't cover a lot of ground.
A quick approximation is the life expectancy of a person that is around 117 years old.
Looking at https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html it's around 0.72 years.
Looking at https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html it's around 0.72 years.
The world's oldest person is dead. Long live the world's oldest person.
This is pretty solid, and actually makes more intuitive sense than the King version.
I'd say it makes very little sense. You can say "long live the world's oldest person" all you want; everyone realizes it's not going to happen.
that's the point.
The world's now oldest person Saro Dursun - born 1899 june 01 - lives in Västerås Sweden.
Public record of age: https://www.ratsit.se/18990601-Saro_Dursun_Vasteras/qEQWdEbn...
Public record of age: https://www.ratsit.se/18990601-Saro_Dursun_Vasteras/qEQWdEbn...
Now I'm confused. Emma Morano who was the oldest person alive, was born in 29 November 1899 according to the article. Is the article wrong?
No, Saro Dursun is a fraudster. I don't remember all the details but she Imigrated to Sweden in the 60/70s with another persons papers stating she was 65+ when she was in fact 40-something. 65 is the retirement age in Sweden...
She didn't leave her apartment since she was 97. That is truly amazing. I can't stand mine for more than a couple days.
It sounds like she spent 15-17 by herself too (article says she only recently got care). I can't imagine what that isolation would be like.
Give it 70 years, and you might change your mind.
"World's oldest person" sounds like such a depressing title to have. Most people don't hold the title for even a year, with Jeanne Calment being the exception.
It is one I would not mind having. Sure your future life expectancy is not great, but the journey getting there is not bad.
Damn, she was able to see the first flight of an airplane (1903), and the first successful return and relaunch of a rocket (2017) within one lifetime.
>>Damn, she was able to see the first flight of an airplane (1903)
Well, no... She was alive during it, but remember they didn't have television back then. ;)
Well, no... She was alive during it, but remember they didn't have television back then. ;)
Also, she was four.
Dang 117 years. I remember reading an article about her birthday last year. Rest in peace.
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One more datapoint for the cliff at 120. No supercentennials are able to pass that age...
Except Jeanne Calment, who made it to 122
The cliff is obviously with some statistical error.
seems like we are running out of people born in the 1800s
edit: "She was officially the last person born in the 1800s still living"
nm, we are fresh out
edit: "She was officially the last person born in the 1800s still living"
nm, we are fresh out
World's former oldest person
You know this headline shows up every year or so - dying seems to be something that world's oldest people keep doing - it's probably time we stopped being surprised ...
I do know that people keep dieing. I haven't seen anyone surprised about this though. Is that really a thing that happens often enough that you need to call a stop to it?
Trying to understand why someone lived this long is something of a pointless endeavor. It is random chance, plus a little genetics. If genes double your odds of making it past 100, then that is still 2% odds for people reaching that age now. By 117, with ~50%+ yearly mortality past 110, well, the odds are not good whatever your diet and past lifestyle might have been.
Running around analyzing the genetics of supercentenarians isn't really all that useful from the point of view of making people live longer. Doubling a tiny chance is still a tiny chance, and their longevity has a lot more to do with randomness than with anything else.
Perhaps more interesting is asking why these people die, what are the causes. Different ages are characterized by a different prevalence of disease; cancer hits a maximum mortality rate and then fades as a major cause in the oldest old, for example. From the few autopsies performed, supercentenarians appear to predominantly die of senile systemic amyloidosis, a clogging of the cardiovascular system with misfolded transthyretin that appears to play a lesser role in heart failure in younger old age.
If we want to ask why human life span seems to have a rough upper limit (though 50%+ yearly mortality for any combination of causes is going to look a lot like a hard limit when stretched over 20 years), then this form of amyloidosis seems to be one of the places to look.
Interestingly, this form of amyloidosis has an inherited version that shows up in young people, so despite the institutional reluctance to work on medicine to treat the causes of aging, there are actually a number of therapies in development and trials, some of which can selectively remove this form of amyloid. At some point the research community will wake up to this form of amyloid being a contributing cause of heart failure (a process underway judging by recent papers on the topic), at which point we might well see a leap in the observed upper limit to human life in the decades following more widespread use.
Running around analyzing the genetics of supercentenarians isn't really all that useful from the point of view of making people live longer. Doubling a tiny chance is still a tiny chance, and their longevity has a lot more to do with randomness than with anything else.
Perhaps more interesting is asking why these people die, what are the causes. Different ages are characterized by a different prevalence of disease; cancer hits a maximum mortality rate and then fades as a major cause in the oldest old, for example. From the few autopsies performed, supercentenarians appear to predominantly die of senile systemic amyloidosis, a clogging of the cardiovascular system with misfolded transthyretin that appears to play a lesser role in heart failure in younger old age.
If we want to ask why human life span seems to have a rough upper limit (though 50%+ yearly mortality for any combination of causes is going to look a lot like a hard limit when stretched over 20 years), then this form of amyloidosis seems to be one of the places to look.
Interestingly, this form of amyloidosis has an inherited version that shows up in young people, so despite the institutional reluctance to work on medicine to treat the causes of aging, there are actually a number of therapies in development and trials, some of which can selectively remove this form of amyloid. At some point the research community will wake up to this form of amyloid being a contributing cause of heart failure (a process underway judging by recent papers on the topic), at which point we might well see a leap in the observed upper limit to human life in the decades following more widespread use.
It is random chance, plus a little genetics.
Looking at the top 43 oldest people alive [1] I can see that 20 of them are from Japan. That's almost 50%! While not conclusive proof, I think it at the very least heavily suggests that living long isn't about random chance. Whatever is going on in Japan seems to be working very well.
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[1] http://www.grg.org/SC/WorldSCRankingsList.html
Looking at the top 43 oldest people alive [1] I can see that 20 of them are from Japan. That's almost 50%! While not conclusive proof, I think it at the very least heavily suggests that living long isn't about random chance. Whatever is going on in Japan seems to be working very well.
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[1] http://www.grg.org/SC/WorldSCRankingsList.html
The other standout fact is they're all women, except one. Either it's genetic (woman's metabolism does something?) or women have some sort of interaction with the environment that helps them survive to old age.
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Japan has a higher standard of living.
What definition of standard of living do you have in mind? I know of several and Japan doesn't lead in all of them. What's even more important is that even the definitions where Japan leads it doesn't do so by as big of a margin as it does in the extremes of human longevity.
Take Switzerland for example. It also has a high standard of living, and ranks #2 just after Japan in average life expectancy. [1] Yet there's not a single Swiss person in that top 43 oldest people list. Of course Switzerland has a much smaller population (8M) than Japan (127M). However we can use a combination of countries. Let's take the top 10 countries by average life expectancy. The first is Japan with its 127M people, and the other 9 (Switzerland, Singapore, Australia, Spain, Iceland, Italy, Israel, Sweden, France) have a combined population of 227M people. Yet even with almost double the population, in regards to the top 43 oldest people, this combination only gives us 6 entries (France 3, Italy 2, Spain 1) against Japan's 20.
A high standard of living certainly has an effect, but I feel it barely scratches the surface of the full answer.
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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe...
Take Switzerland for example. It also has a high standard of living, and ranks #2 just after Japan in average life expectancy. [1] Yet there's not a single Swiss person in that top 43 oldest people list. Of course Switzerland has a much smaller population (8M) than Japan (127M). However we can use a combination of countries. Let's take the top 10 countries by average life expectancy. The first is Japan with its 127M people, and the other 9 (Switzerland, Singapore, Australia, Spain, Iceland, Italy, Israel, Sweden, France) have a combined population of 227M people. Yet even with almost double the population, in regards to the top 43 oldest people, this combination only gives us 6 entries (France 3, Italy 2, Spain 1) against Japan's 20.
A high standard of living certainly has an effect, but I feel it barely scratches the surface of the full answer.
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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe...
I guess you've never heard of Blue Zones?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Zone
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Zone
Japan didn't 70+ years ago.
Actually they got pretty wealthy pretty quickly after the war.
Yeah but they spent the first 40 years of their life with a lower standard.
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lol that number cOmes from the fact that in japan nobody checks who is alive so that folks can get the pension of the deceased for a long time. thaT was uncovered a few gears agp. so Japanese data is utter bullshit.