Possibly the last person on the planet who knew the taste of the air in 1880 has died.
Antisa Khvichava, who claimed to be 132 years old, was enjoying her
47th year of retirement in Sachino, a remote village in the former
Soviet republic of
Georgia, when she
passed away, according to a British newspaper, the Independent. If she
was as old as she said, Khvichava would've been the oldest person to
ever live.
Though a birth certificate and passport indicate
Khvichava was born July 8, 1880, they are replacements of documents she
had lost over the years, raising skepticism over her claim.
But science can't rule out her feat absolutely. If there's a maximum possible human age, it hasn't been found yet.
In 1798, the then-oldest verified person died at 103, according to the
Gerontology Research Group. In 1997, France's Jeanne Calment, the
current verified oldest, died at 122. [Infographic: Global Life
Expectancy]
If Kvichava did, indeed, walk the Earth for well over a century, what did she do right?
Based on current science, the answer might be that, other than avoiding
obvious physical threats, she didn't do much to earn her longevity.
Researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva
University showed last year that, among a studied population of people
older than 95, bad health habits such as smoking, drinking, poor diet
and lack of exercise were about as common as in the general population,
meaning their longevity seemed to be largely based on genes.
But
this does not mean the general population should abandon healthy living
and adopt a doctrine of genetic fatalism. Rather, that study and others
suggest longevity outliers like Kvichava, a reported daily brandy
drinker, have rare genetic protections that transcend unhealthy habits,
propelling them into very old age in spite of lifestyle.
For people
who aren't prepared to take a gamble that they're genetically
predisposed to break 100 (the 2010 Census counted 53,364 centenarians in
the United States), the famously abstemious and healthy-living
Seventh-Day Adventists seem to hint at a practical regimen for
increasing lifespan.
Studies by Dr. Gary Fraser, of Loma Linda
University's school of medicine, and colleagues have linked the
Seventh-Day Adventists' unusually long lives to exercise, a high
incidence of vegetarianism, abstinence from smoking, and frequent
consumption of nuts.
Superstitious seekers of longevity also have
the option of moving to a place called Georgia. When Kvichava died, she
passed the torch for the oldest living person to 116-year-old Besse
Cooper in the United States' Georgia.
Cooper's birthday is verified to be Aug. 26, 1896.
