According to various sources, including the Guinness Book of Records, on August 4th, 1997 ( https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/oldest-person/), Jeanne Louise Calment died at the astonishing age of 122 years and 164 days. That means she was officially the oldest woman in history.
Some of the things in Calment’s lifestyle may indicate why she lived so long. For example, she had a lot of olive oil in her diet, which is recognized for its health benefits. Her alcohol consumption was fairly minimal, which also helps.
On the other hand, she was an avid smoker who started using cigarettes when she was 21 and didn’t stop until she was 117. She also ate more chocolate than most doctors would recommend as healthy. According to statistics, that should have made it much more difficult for her to live a long life, but she not only survived but thrived. She was still walking unaided and her mind remained sharp right until the end.
Now, we’re not all going to live to 122, but we’re certainly living longer than our ancestors. We have antibiotics and vaccinations. We understand hygiene and germs. We know so much more about how diseases are caused and how to treat them, if not avoid them altogether.
It may be a bit more complicated than that, though (https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20181002-how-long-did-ancient-people-live-life-span-versus-longevity). Life expectancy is about the average age that a population can expect to reach before they die. It’s not the same as lifespan, which is how long they actually live. A few outliers can widely skew an average.
In the case of historical life expectancy, high rates of infant and maternal mortality may have thrown off calculations. People who made it through or avoided those particularly dangerous moments could have lived a similar length of time as us. Throughout human history, it’s also pretty clear that the wealthy tend to have the advantage when it comes to longevity.
A look at Ancient Rome shows that the rich were still regularly living to their 70s, even though life was a lot shorter for those involved in heavy manual labor or those injured during military service. It’s difficult to know for sure because they didn’t keep records back then in the same way we do now. The people we know about are the ones historians thought it was worth writing about – the ones who had a major impact on wider society, not the average citizen.
So what does this mean for our longevity today? Geography, race and class still play an often inescapable role. We can’t do anything about our genes. Even things that we should be able to control, like diet, can sometimes be hard to manage. There’s also a lot of conflicting and sometimes dangerous advice about supposed magical solutions to the problems of aging.
In general, the healthier your lifestyle, the longer you can hope to live. Even little changes to what you eat or how you exercise may help, as can finding ways to manage any major stresses in your life. They may not be easy, but there are ways to improve your longevity with a little effort.
