Life simply goes on for the super-centenarians
The world’s oldest living people are just not too taken up with the secret to longevity
Her 118th birthday wish is “to die soon”. But in the meantime, Lucile Randon, better-known as “Sister Andre”, always keeps her door open for any visitor who might want to say hello.
Sister Andre is the oldestknown woman in France and Europe, and the secondoldest in the world after Kane Tanaka, a 119-year-old who lives in Japan.
Sister Andre, the eldest French and European citizen, sits in a wheelchair in a room, on the eve of her 117th birthday in an EHPAD (Housing Establishment for Dependant Elderly People) in Toulon, southern France, where she’s been living since 2009.
She was born in Ales, southern France, on February 11, 1904, the year that New York opened its first subway, the Tour de France had only been run once and the First World War was still a decade away.
“It’s awful that I depend on others for everything I do,” says Sister Andre, who worked full-time until the late 1970s and took care of other, often younger, home residents until she was 100.
Most centenarians are found in the world’s so-called blue zones where people live longer than average: Okinawa in Japan, the Italian island of Sardinia, the Greek island of Ikaria, the Nicoya peninsula in Costa Rica and the Californian city of Loma Linda.
France, although no blue zone, was still home to the world’s oldest person with certified birth records, Jeanne Calment, who lived in Provence, dying in 1997 in Arles when she was aged 122.
The man presumed to be the oldest in France also calls the south of the country home. Andre Boîte, 111, is one of the very few male supercentenarians, a term defined as living beyond 110 years.
In 2015 there were half a million people over 100 in the world, with the UN saying this figure could grow to 25 million
Frenchman Andre Boite is one of the very few male supercentenarians, a term defined as living beyond 110 years.
by the end of the century. Centenarians such as Sister Andre often get by without pharmaceutical drugs, which is “probably one of the secrets of their longevity,” said Sister Andre’s doctor, Genevieve Haggai Driguez.
“Longevity goes hand-inhand with material wealth, and with democracy, specifically social democracy,” said Jean-Marie Robine, a demographer and gerontologist at Inserm, a biomedical research institute. While good genes play a part, healthy living seems to be fundamental.
“Jeanne Calment ticked all the boxes for longevity, her lifestyle was flawless,” said Catherine Levraud, head of the geriatric ward at Arles hospital. “She avoided all excesses.”
Says Daniela S. Jopp, a professor for the psychology of ageing at Lausanne university in Switzerland: “We know that an optimistic outlook has a direct link to the mechanics of the immune system.”
In her research into German and American centenarians, she found they were often extroverts, passionate about something, goal-oriented and able to find adaptation strategies when dealing with problems.