The skeptical cardiologist is very excited to share with you that he has discovered the long sought elixir of life. Fortunately, this Skepcard Elixir©1, unlike that of California start-up Ambrosia or your local vampire, does not require the infusion of blood from a young victim.
I have discovered this elixir by a close examination of a recent paper describing in detail the “multiomics” of “the world’s oldest verified living person (Maria Branyas, aka M116) from January 17th, 2023, until her passing on August 19th, 2024.” She reached the age of 117 years and 168 days.
I can’t prove this but I have a very strong feeling that this is the longest paper ever written on a single individual.
The authors of “The multiomics blueprint of the individual with the most extreme lifespan” reveal that Maria was Caucasian, born on March 4th, 1907, in San Francisco, USA, from Spanish parents and had lived in the Catalonia region in Spain since she was 8.
Supercentenarians (over 110 years old) are still a rarity in Catalonia, the historic nation where Maria lived, the life expectancy for women is 86 years, so she exceeded the average by more than 30 years.
Although the researchers performed a plethora of “omic” analysis my attention was captured by these lines in the discussion:
our supercentenarian ingested a high amount of yogurts, a trait associated with reduced body weight and type-2 diabetes incidence and diminished body fat and insulin resistance. In our case, whether the dominance of the Bifidobacterium related genus is fully attributable or not to the yogurt diet cannot be completely confirmed since that would have required a longitudinal study with sample collection over several years. However, we believe that it is likely that a beneficial effect of yogurt ingestion via modulation of the gut ecosystem could have contributed to her well-being and advanced age
Thrice Daily Yogurt
I downloaded the supplements to the paper and found a detailed log of what Maria ate for 3 weeks. Here’s a representative snipped:
Lo and behold, we see milk in the morning and yogurt for lunch, aftenoon snack and after dinner EVERY DAY!
After some sleuthing I discovered that Maria always consumed the same yogurt, made locally by La Fageda.
Based on the company’s description of its yogurt and the low uptake of low-fat products in Catalonia, I suspected Maria was eating full-fat yogurt:
I sent emails to the corresponding author of the multiomics paper and to La Fageda asking for details and received this email:
¡ahí está!
It is full-fat, unadulterated by skimming process or sugary additives, yogurt that made Maria the oldest living person in the world!2
The Diet in Olot
Much has been written of the diet in areas where people seem to live longer. Much of this is malarkey.
