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What are the secrets to a long and healthy life? A longevity expert reveals
Bill Gifford shares diet, exercise and lifestyle tips on how to live to 100 and older, like Ethel Caterham, the world’s oldest person at 116
Reading Time:4 minutes
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There exist thousands of books that focus on longevity and healthy ageing, including bestsellers like Lifespan: Why We Age – and Why We Don’t Have To by David Sinclair, Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity by Peter Attia, and Ageless: The New Science of Getting Older Without Getting Old by Andrew Steele.
Recent years have also seen a huge rise in lifestyle medicine, consumer health products, longevity retreats, documentaries like The Man Who Wants to Live Forever, and published advice on how to live to 100 and beyond.
Ethel May Caterham, who is the oldest person in the world at 116, lives in a nursing home in Surrey, England. She managed to become a “supercentenarian” – a person aged 110 or older – without any of the above.
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Born in 1909, Caterham has lived through both world wars, the Great Depression, world-changing advances in technology and two major pandemics: the Spanish Flu and Covid-19, the latter of which she contracted and survived in 2020 at the age of 110. She has outlived her husband by half a century and both of her daughters.
And she has not just lived a long life. Reports indicate that she remains in good health.
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Her secrets to living to such an old age, she says, include never arguing with anybody, enjoying everything in moderation, saying yes to every opportunity – because you never know what it will lead to – and having a positive mental attitude.
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