4 Longevity Tips, According to a Scientist Who Studied the World’s Oldest Person

Story by Dean Stattmann

Nowadays, it seems like everyone is selling longevity, from supplements touting life-extending benefits to blood test subscription services that promise to lower your biological age.

On paper, this all sounds great and, unsurprisingly, the global longevity market—valued at $21.3 billion in 2024—is projected to almost triple over the next 10 years, according to data from Market Research Future. However, until we’re able to start doing in-depth scientific analysis on people who have actually achieved meaningfully longer-than-average lifespans, much of the hype around longevity remains theoretical.

Cue a breakthrough new study, published in the journal Cell Reports Medicine, which reveals the findings of a group of researchers who studied the world’s oldest living person. Before passing away last year at the age of 117, Maria Branyas Morera topped the list of known supercentenarians (people over the age of 110), and in 2023 she invited scientists to study her biology—and her lifestyle—to help determine what factors might have contributed to not only her impressive longevity, but also a surprising absence of age-related diseases.

“Maria was extremely old, but at the same time very healthy, and this is very unusual,” says Manel Esteller, MD, PhD, chairman of genetics at the University of Barcelona and researcher at The Josep Carreras Institute, who led the study. “We wanted to uncover clues about her healthy and extended lifespan.”

Interestingly, the research paints a picture that is as much about good genetics as it is about maintaining a healthy lifestyle. “It’s half and half,” Dr. Esteller says. “Half is genetics, and the other half is what we do with our lives—our behavior, what we eat, and whether we exercise or not.”

From diet and exercise to social activity, here’s everything Dr. Esteller told us about the lifestyle choices that might have enabled Branyas to live such a long and healthy life.

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1. Follow the Mediterranean diet

Branyas followed a mostly Mediterranean diet, which several studies have found to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and type-2 diabetes, while also supporting longevity. One research review published in the journal Current Opinion in Clinical Nutrition & Metabolic Care called the diet “the gold standard in preventive medicine,” due to the anti-inflammatory and antioxidant-rich nature of the healthy fats, oils, and plant-based foods we associate with it.

In keeping with the Mediterranean diet, Branyas’s animal-based protein intake came primarily from chicken and fish. She favored bluefish in particular, a species notably popular in Japan, which is home to a disproportionately large percentage of supercentenarians (although it can also be found in Africa, the Mediterranean, and off the eastern coast of the United States).

The study also points out that Branyas ate a lot of yogurt. As in, three times a day, which Dr. Esteller points out, “maybe was too many.” But who are we to say? Either way, the researcher’s credit Branyas’s yogurt habit with cultivating a top-tier gut microbiome.

“This is very relevant, because yogurt contains bacteria that create a defense against inflammation,” Dr. Esteller says. “People that have chronic inflammation, they look older, and they age very fast.”

2. Exercise daily—and don’t skimp on strength training

When it comes to longevity, “it is generally thought that daily exercise is better than exercising just one or two days a week—and this is something [Branyas] did for years,” Dr. Esteller says. Thankfully, this doesn’t mean you have to do seven HIIT workouts a week. Rather, Branyas’s daily exercise consisted simply of a brisk walk done at a pace just shy of a jog.

In addition to her daily walks, Branyas also did strength training two to three times a week. “This increased the strength of her bones and muscles—something that we typically lose as we age,” Dr. Esteller says, noting that consistency was an important factor as well. “She was very active in her life, right until the end.”

Dr. Esteller considers this consistent fitness regimen to be a major factor in Branyas’s impressive longevity, pointing out that a sedentary lifestyle can accelerate aging. “Maybe you’re 40, but your cells look like they’re 55 or 60,” he says. “In Maria’s case, her cells were 23 years younger. And [her active lifestyle] is probably part of the reason she was alive. Because, despite being 117, her cells looked like they were 94 or 95 years old.”

3. Build community

Researchers agree that community plays an important role in overall longevity and, according to Dr. Esteller, there is a biological basis for this theory. “When you interact with your family and your friends, and you have a good relationship with all these people, what is created in you is like an extra shot of hormones and neurotransmission,” he says. “It’s similar to how, when we are satisfied, our brain releases dopamine; and when we’re happy, we release endorphins. There are a lot of hormones and molecules that work in our brain and release upon social interaction.”

Branyas was known to surround herself with family and friends. “She still had a beautiful mind,” Dr. Esteller says. “Very clear, and able to think logically until the end. And this was in part associated with strong ties with family and friends.”

4. Avoid smoking and drinking

While Branyas maintained a healthy social life, it’s worth noting that she prioritized sleep—getting around eight hours a night—and avoided drinking alcohol and smoking tobacco. “Alcohol changes our gut microbiome and is associated with poor health and accelerated aging,” Esteller says. “And we know that smokers have accelerated aging for sure.”

5. Genetics go only so far

After analyzing Branyas’s DNA, it was clear to the researchers that she had some top-shelf genes, particularly of the sort known to help fend off heart disease, cognitive decline, and diabetes. However, according to Dr. Esteller, good genes alone likely wouldn’t have been enough to carry Branyas all the way to her advanced age.

“The genes we inherit from our parents are like the cards we are dealt at the beginning of a poker game,” he says. “But somebody that is not very good at poker can still lose, even with good cards.”

Dr. Esteller insists that, despite the genetic hand that Branyas was dealt, the way she ate, exercised, and generally lived her life were of equal value. “There are things that we do in our lives that leave a chemical fingerprint on our DNA,” he says. “What she did in her life was very important in keeping her cells younger for longer.”

Maria Branyas Morera on her 117th birthday Arxiu de la família Branyas Morera via Wikimedia Commons

Maria Branyas Morera (Catalan: [məˈɾiə ˈβɾaɲəs]; 4 March 1907 – 19 August 2024) was an American-Catalan supercentenarian who, until her death at the age of 117 years, 168 days, was the world’s oldest verified living person, following the death of Lucile Randon on 17 January 2023.

Before passing away last year at the age of 117, Maria Branyas Morera topped the list of known supercentenarians. In this Catalan name, the first or paternal surname is Branyas and the second or maternal family name is Morera; both are generally joined by the conjunction “i”.

Personal life

Branyas, then age four, sitting on a wooden fence with her family in 1911 in New Orleans

Branyas was born on 4 March 1907 in San Francisco, California. She was the first child and eldest daughter to Joseph Branyas Julià (1877–1915) and Teresa Morera Laque (1880–1968). Maria was part of an expatriate family (of Catalan origin) who had moved there in 1906, the year prior to her birth.^[3]^[4] She and her family later moved to Texas, then subsequently to New Orleans.^[4]^[5] While in New Orleans, her father Joseph worked as a journalist and founded the Spanish-language magazine Mercurio.^[5]

The family decided to return to Catalonia in 1915 due to major events that impacted Branyas’s father.^[4]^[5] He was both struggling financially, declared bankruptcy, and his doctor recommended a move amid his declining health.^[4]^[5] Due to the German naval presence in the Atlantic Ocean during World War I, their boat had to travel via Cuba and the Azores to ensure a safe passage.^[3] During the voyage, Branyas became deaf in one ear^[6] after falling from the upper deck to the lower deck while playing with her brothers.^[7] Branyas’s father also died of tuberculosis on the voyage, and her mother later remarried.^[4]^[8] The family settled first in Barcelona and subsequently moved northeast to the city of Banyoles.^[8]

Branyas, 1925

On 16 July 1931, Branyas married Joan Moret, a traumatologist, with whom she had three children.^[9]^[10]^[11]^[12] During the Spanish Civil War, Branyas was employed as a nurse working by her husband’s side at a Nationalist field hospital in Trujillo, Extremadura.^[4]^[8] While later living in Girona, Moret became the regional leader of the healthcare organisation Obra Sindical 18 de Julio [es].^[4] He was also the director of the Josep Trueta Hospital, then called Residencia Sanitaria Álvarez de Castro, in Girona from 1972 to 1974.^[4]^[13] Branyas worked as a nurse and as her husband’s assistant until his death in 1976.^[5]^[14]

In the 1990s, Branyas travelled to Egypt, Italy, the Netherlands, and England and took up sewing, music and reading.^[4] In 2000, she moved to a nursing home in Olot, Catalonia at the age of 93.^[4]^[15] Branyas was described as an active resident there, continuing to perform exercises until her mobility deteriorated.^[8] Branyas played the piano until she was 108, and used a voice-to-text platform to communicate due to hearing loss.^[16]^[17]^[18] She had 11 grandchildren.^[4]

Health and longevity

Branyas became a supercentenarian in 2017, which is achieved by about one in a thousand centenarians.^[19] In March 2020, Branyas became the then-oldest^[a] person to recover from COVID-19.^[20] In an interview with The Observer, she called for better treatment of the elderly: “This pandemic has revealed that older people are the forgotten ones of our society. They fought their whole lives, sacrificed time and their dreams for today’s quality of life. They didn’t deserve to leave the world in this way”.^[21] In July 2020, a research study into the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on elderly care home residents was conducted by the Spanish National Research Council and Dalt Pharmacy. The study was called Proyecto Branyas (‘Project Branyas’) in her honour.^[4]^[22]

Branyas officially became the oldest living person in the world on 17 January 2023, after the death of Lucile Randon of France.^[23] In 2023, she became the subject of scientific research as a result of maintaining good health and memory at an advanced age.^[24] Branyas died of natural causes in her sleep on 19 August 2024 at the age of 117 years and 168 days.^[25]^[26]^[27] After her death, Tomiko Itooka became the world’s oldest living person.^[28]

On 25 February 2025, Santos-Pujol, Esteller and colleagues unveiled a comprehensive multiomics analysis of her genomic, transcriptomic, metabolomic, proteomic, also microbiomic and epigenomic landscapes in different tissues, and compared the results with those observed in non-supercentenarian populations. Their study also suggests “extremely advanced age and poor health are not intrinsically linked.”^[29]

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Sara Hashemi

Sara Hashemi is a science writer and fact-checker currently based in New York City. Her work has appeared in Sierra, The Body, Maisonneuve magazine and more. Maria Branyas Morera was the world’s oldest person when she died at 117 last year. Now, scientists have searched within her genes for the answers to her long life.

Before she died, Branyas allowed doctors to collect samples of her blood, saliva, urine and stool to shed light on her biology and what had allowed her to live for so long. “We wanted to learn from her particular case to benefit other people,” says Manel Esteller, a physician at the University of Barcelona who led the work, to Mariana Lenharo at Nature.

Esteller and his colleagues compared Branyas’ profile with that of other Iberian women. (The supercentenarian was born to a Spanish family in the United States and spent most of her life in Spain.) The findings, which were published in the journal Cell Reports Medicine on September 24, point to a combination of genetic luck and lifestyle choices. Branyas did not smoke or drink, she exercised regularly, and she had an active social life. This all certainly helped, Esteller tells Ian Sample at the Guardian.

At the same time, she had variants in her genes that are associated with longevity and that protect against dementia, heart disease, diabetes and other illnesses. “She had cells that seemed younger than her age,” adds Esteller to Gina Kolata at the New York Times.

Her gut microbiome was also like that of a younger person, the study found. She had lots of Bifidobacterium, beneficial bacteria that probably got a boost from the three servings of yogurt she reportedly ate every day. Those microbes likely also protected her against inflammation.

“It shows that maybe a dietary intervention can be associated not only with avoiding obesity and other pathologies, but also with prolonged life, acting through the microbiome gut landscape,” Esteller explains to James Woodford at New Scientist.

Still, eating three yogurts a day will not necessarily make for a long life. Other researchers caution that the results of a study of one person can’t be extrapolated to entire populations. Richard Faragher, a biogerontologist at the University of Brighton in England, tells New Scientist that to prove Branyas’ long life wasn’t just the result of luck, the researchers would have had to show that other members of her family also had long lives.

Dr. Mary Armanios, MD. an oncologist and geneticist at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, is also skeptical, reports the New York Times. “The genetics of longevity are notoriously confusing,” she says to the outlet. It’s hard to predict how long someone will live—when researchers looked for variants linked to a long life, they compared the genes of centenarians with those of younger people. But there’s no way to know how long those younger people will live.

She also points out that other factors, like socioeconomics, can affect how long someone lives, even if they have a good genetic profile. “I do think there are obviously bad genetics that limit life span,” she adds. “But I am not sure good genetics are sufficient to overcome socio economic limitations.”

Esteller, for his part, hopes to use the information gleaned from the study to develop medications that can help older people stay healthy. “We can develop drugs to reproduce the effects of good genes,” he explains to the Guardian. “Maria’s parents gave her very good genes, but we cannot choose our parents.”

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Discover how María Branyas Morera’s gut microbiome—packed with youthful Bifidobacterium—may have helped her live to 117. In this Mind & Marvel deep dive, we unpack the Cell Reports Medicine findings, explain how fermented foods (three yogurts a day), the Mediterranean diet, probiotics vs prebiotics, and lifestyle choices shape longevity.

Learn practical, science-backed steps to support your microbiome: fermented foods, diverse plant fibers, exercise, sleep, and stress management. Perfect for health and longevity seekers curious about gut health, biological age, and practical diet tips. If you found this insightful, please like and share the video to help others learn about gut-driven aging. #Microbiome #Longevity #GutHealth #MediterraneanDiet

Longevity Tips