Yahoo News The secret to living past 110, according to Britain's supercentenarians
Olive oil, chocolate, the occasional Dunhill cigarette and an after-dinner port: these were said to be the secrets of the oldest human in history.
When Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment died in 1997, at the age of 122, she had lived through 25 US presidents, six British monarchs, survived both World Wars and met Vincent Van Gogh.
She also swore by a ‘puff of powder’ to preserve her youthful looks. If Calment were alive today, one imagines she might raise a coiffed eyebrow at the attempts of the super-rich to catch up with her.
Discovering the elixir of life has become the latest preoccupation of Silicon Valley billionaires who, in their desire to live for ever, are increasingly delving into the realms of science fiction.
They are pursuing so-called ‘biohacks’, including stem-cell injections, cryogenic freezing, even ‘young blood transfusions’, where plasma from teens and early 20-somethings is pumped into the bodies of older people. One tech entrepreneur has paid a deposit to have his brain uploaded to a computer.
Many of the techniques are still in the exploratory stages, and former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is reported to have invested in Altos Labs, a Silicon Valley company developing new ‘reprogramming technology’ in order to extend life. It was recently reported that GlaxoSmithKline's superstar chief scientist had been poached to run it.
Yuri Milner, the Russian-born billionaire and friend of Mark Zuckerberg, is said to be another investor. Paypal co-founder and one-time Trump backer Peter Thiel has also pledged millions towards anti-ageing research.
Meanwhile, male supermodel Fabio Lanzoni, known simply as ‘Fabio’ in the ’90s when he adorned billboards across the globe as a chiselled Adonis, has recently admitted that at the age of 62 he has started sleeping in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, which apparently ‘reverses the ageing process’. Justin Bieber has two of them – one in his studio and another at home.
Then there is Dave Asprey, a 49-year-old Silicon Valley entrepreneur who launched Bulletproof Coffee, which is enriched with coconut oil and butter.
His plan is to live to 180 and he has spent a reported $2 million in pursuit of this, mainly by ‘biohacking’ his body with stem-cell injections all over – from his arms to his penis. He also likes to bathe in an infrared light and takes a barrage of supplements every day.
Daniel Ives is one of the British pioneers in the field. The 35-year-old mitochondrial biologist established his business, Shift Bioscience, in 2017, focusing on cell reprogramming.
He describes the science as a ‘black box’ waiting to be unlocked and is confident cellular reprogramming will quickly spread from the super-rich to public healthcare systems because of the vast savings it could lead to. But, he points out, the pursuit of longer life also raises broader ethical questions.
As well as whether we actually want to outlive all of our friends and family, how much longevity, he questions, is morally acceptable? He cites the example of the Galápagos Islands, where tourist numbers are restricted to preserve ecosystems.
As humans continue to rapidly expand their lifespans, over time will we need to operate a similar policy of ‘one in, out out’?
Ives also stresses that reaching an advanced age is nothing without good physical and mental health. ‘Can we maintain quality of life until the very end?’
Ethel Caterham has a few words of advice for the tech bros of Silicon Valley. At 112 years old, she is not only the oldest person in Abbeywood care home in Surrey, but the second oldest living Briton and one of around a dozen ‘supercentenarians’ (or those aged 110 and above) in the UK.
‘It’s against nature,’ she says of the new biohacking technology. ‘There is an order to things and when your time’s up, it’s up.’
So, would she recommend being a supercentenarian? ‘I suppose if you could magically maintain your energy, good health and sense of adventure then it seems a good idea,’ she concedes. ‘But not if you have to live in an oxygen tent. Life is for living.’
Caterham herself remains in extraordinarily good health, besides her failing eyesight – she even shrugged off a bout of Covid-19 early on in the pandemic – and is nicknamed ‘Queen Ethel’ by her carers (she has received seven birthday telegrams from the real Queen).
Settled in an armchair wearing a bright-blue dress and sequin slippers, she possesses a sparkling wit and razor-sharp recall of a life that has spanned two World Wars and two pandemics.
But she also feels that long life is not all it’s cracked up to be. Occasionally she wishes her time was already up. ‘I’m too old and there are times when I want to be left alone,’ she says. ‘I keep thinking it’s time I was gone.’
She has outlived her husband, Norman, who died in his mid-60s, and both of her daughters. The first, Gem, died nearly 20 years ago, while her other daughter, Ann, died of cancer at the age of 82 in February 2020. Ethel had lived independently in an annex of Ann’s house but was forced to move into the care home following her death.
After Norman died, she inherited his beloved Triumph Dolomite (off-white with a walnut dashboard) and was still driving up to the age of 97 – indeed she had something of a fresh lease of life.
Even today she remains stoical, but admits that being the last of a generation is a lonely place. ‘It’s a young person’s world and when you become that old you lose touch with what is going on and the issues that are affecting the majority of people,’ she says.
Despite a recent dip during the pandemic, lifespans are steadily increasing around the world. By 2100, it is likely that at least one person will live to between the ages of 125 and 132, according to new research from the University of Washington.
Scientists in Montreal, meanwhile, suggest we could live to 180 by then. Within our own lifetimes we may start to see the effect on future generations, as a quarter of all newborn girls in 2043 in Britain, and a fifth of all newborn boys, are expected to live to at least 100.
Around 40 supercentenarians are believed to be alive in Europe. In Japan, the country with the most – and home to the world’s oldest living person, 119-year-old Kane Tanaka – the number grew from 22 to 146 between 2005 and 2015, and looks set to only increase – partly due to the eradication of certain diseases and advances in healthcare, but also due to the ever more extreme measures that people are going to in order to prolong their years.
There is nothing in her family history to have suggested Ethel Caterham would live so long. ‘I’ve been fortunate,’ she admits. ‘I’ve always been slim.’ She kept fit by doing yoga (which she took up at 50), often walked her dogs and tended her garden, played bridge which kept her brain active and had a wide network of friends.
She used to enjoy the occasional glass of merlot and a Croft Original pale cream sherry, and smoked socially early on in her marriage, but she never drank to excess and these days is teetotal. ‘I’ve indulged in everything, in moderation.’
Genetics only comprise around 25 per cent of the factors that determine longevity, and research has found that reducing calorie intake may play a part.
Studies of grey mouse lemurs, a primate widely used for models of human ageing, have shown that reducing calories by a third can extend their lifespans by 50 per cent. But above all, advances in science and healthcare are at play.
Tom Kirkwood, 70, emeritus professor at Newcastle University, has researched the field of ageing and health for nearly 50 years; in the 1970s he published a groundbreaking paper that helped redefine the idea of how we age.
Scientists had previously assumed there was a ceiling on the human lifespan but Kirkwood’s ‘disposable soma theory’ argued instead that our bodies are not programmed for death but survival, and it is the accumulation of cellular damage in them that ages us.
As the conditions of modern life mean we are exposed to far less that can cause the damage, our lifespans will continue to increase. He points to public health interventions (like improved sanitation), improved nutrition and medical advances, which all account for prolonged health.
In 1915 the average UK life expectancy at birth for a man was 48.4 years, whereas women could expect to live to 54; infections were the leading cause of death.
In the century since, polio, tetanus, whooping cough, measles, mumps, rubella and numerous other diseases were all massively reduced or virtually wiped out in the UK through the introduction of childhood immunisation, and today life expectancy in England stands at 79.3 for men and 83.1 for women.
Nonetheless it varies significantly depending on where you live. Parts of Southport, home to Britain’s oldest man, 109-year-old John Tinniswood, have some of the lowest life expectancy in England (in the area where Tinniswood lives, 76 for a man and 82 for a woman), while in London, it is far higher (at 80.9 for a man and 84.7 for a woman).
The majority of Britain’s supercentenarians reside in wealthier parts of the south. Globally, they are concentrated in wealthy countries. The billionaire enclave of Monaco boasts an average lifespan of 89.5. Even without biohacking technology, the super-rich are already outliving the rest of us.
That said, money alone can’t buy you a long life. And Tinniswood has never had all that much to his name.
Life at the Southport care home where he has lived for the past decade is nonetheless comfortable. A retired accountant, he reads the newspaper each morning while eating his toast and marmalade, listens to Radio 4 and speaks with his daughter, Susan, once a day.
He remains strict about his diet, indulging only in the occasional slice of cake at 3pm and fish and chips every Friday. Never a big drinker, he has long avoided alcohol.
‘I don’t overeat,’ he says, refusing the biscuit I offer him. He always enjoyed walking – he and his wife Blodwen regularly took walking holidays on the North Wales coast. Peering out of the window of the care home living room, he tells me he could still hike a good few miles.
Like Caterham, his greatest sadness is not being able to share his final years with his spouse: Blodwen, whom he married during the Second World War, died of lung cancer after 44 years of marriage.
Following her death he was crushed, and for eight months, he ‘lived like a hermit’. ‘But her last instruction to me was to carry on as normal,’ he says. ‘I don’t get too emotional about her death. She wouldn’t want me to be.’
So what are his secrets for a long life? Limiting his calorie intake is, he believes, one of them, together with remaining temperate in his thoughts.
‘At my age you don’t worry about anything really,’ he insists. Climate change? ‘Not in the least because there is nothing you can do about it.’ Death? ‘I don’t worry about death, and it doesn’t scare me.’
‘It is generally true to say there is a social gradient in healthy life expectancy,’ says Professor Kirkwood. ‘To become a supercentenarian you will most likely not have suffered extreme deprivation.’
But he points out that wealth is not the only factor. The Italian town of Acciaroli, south of Naples, has nearly 300 people who are over 100 years old, while the village of Ogimi on the Japanese island of Okinawa has 15 centenarians among its 3,000 population and 171 people in their 90s.
Clearly social connections do play a part in longevity. In Japan, for example, the responsibility for caring for people falls squarely on the family. ‘Not to properly look after elderly relatives would be seen as a source of great shame,’ says Professor Kirkwood.
Ethel Caterham warns the super-rich that for all their luxury homes and many millions stashed away, in the end, family is the most important thing. And the older you get, the less possessions mean.
These days she keeps herself occupied in the care home garden, where she enjoys listening to the birds, and last summer watched a pair of budgies in an aviary rear six chicks.
Mealtimes are a highlight – her favourite is poached fish and parsley sauce and she indulges in the occasional chocolate eclair. For her 112th birthday in August her family took her out to tea at a nearby hotel.
‘Family is the most important thing in life,’ she says. ‘To be able to leave memories with your children and grandchildren. Possessions don’t matter a bit, in the end. All you need is someone to look after you.’
Six ways the rich and famous pursue eternal youth
Stem-cell injections
Silicon Valley entrepreneur Dave Asprey, 49, claims that he has spent $2 million ‘hacking his own biology’ in his quest to live to 180. Techniques include injecting stem cells (apparently to switch off inflammation, and therefore ageing) into all parts of his body, including his penis.
Young blood
Parabiosis, which involves having plasma transfusions from a younger person, was first experimented with in the 1950s. It was criticised in 2019 for lack of clinical benefit but start-ups have recently reinvestigated the idea. PayPal’s Peter Thiel (above) is said to be among those interested, though whether he has tried it is unconfirmed.
The big freeze
Paris Hilton is rumoured to have signed up for cryonics – along with her beloved dogs. The process involves deep-freezing the body (or even just the head), in the hope that scientific advances after death will effectively bring you back to life.
O2 have a blast
When Justin Bieber, 27, posted a picture of himself in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, fans were baffled, if transfixed. Each tube-like chamber is pumped with pure oxygen, causing the levels in the bloodstream to increase. The treatment is said to help heal burns, relieve infections and anxiety, and even boost longevity.
Apocalypse-ready…
From underground bunkers to overseas escapes, it is reported that around half of Silicon Valley’s billionaire set have a backup plan in place, should the worst ever happen. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos reportedly owns around 300,000 acres of West Texas which could be used as his ‘panic room’.
The brain drain
Tech entrepreneur Sam Altman, above, put down a $10,000 deposit in a bid to have his brain uploaded to a computer. Nectome, a start-up based in San Francisco, hopes eventually to offer a way of preserving memories using a process called ‘aldehyde-stabilised cryopreservation’.
