Longevity tips from the world’s oldest person
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Raw eggs, fresh pasta, homemade brandy and living the single life are just some of the secrets that helped the world’s oldest person reach a staggering 116 years of age.
Emma Martina Luigia Morano from Italy became the world’s oldest living human after the previous Guiness World Record holder, Susannah Mushatt Jones (also 116), died in New York City last week.
As news of Ms Morano’s record spread, so too did her tips for living the lengthy life that she has enjoyed.
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Ms Morano, the only surviving person born in the 1800s (November 29, 1899), was told as a teenager that eating one raw egg and one cooked egg a day would ward off anaemia.
It’s a ritual she steadfastly continued since she received the advice as a teenager when diagnosed with the illness.
Emma Morano says “thinking positively” has held her in good stead for most of her life. Photo: Getty
In 2015 she revealed to La Stampa newspaper another of her secrets: homemade brandy. Ms Morano said she drank a glass of the spirit each day.
“For lunch I’ll eat pasta and minced meat then for dinner, I’ll have just a glass of milk,” she said.
The “supercentenarian” also said sleep was vital to her good health. She gets into bed before 7pm every evening, and rises before 6am.
She said she occasionally enjoyed some chocolate, never took drugs and always tried to think positively about the future.
Ms Morano’s physician told Associated Press there had to be a genetic component to her 116-year life.
“Emma seems to go against everything that could be considered the guidelines for correct nutrition: she has always eaten what she wants, with a diet that is absolutely repetitive,” De Carlo Bava said.
“For years, she has eaten the same thing every day, not much vegetables or fruit. But she’s gotten this far.
“She can be considered a phenomenon.”
Susannah Jones, here embraced by her niece, was the world’s oldest living person until her recent death. Photo: AAP
Ms Morano was raised in Vercelli and then moved to Verbania on the shores of Lake Maggiore. Both are in the northern Italian region of Piedmont, close to Switzerland.
She married in 1926 but split with her partner in 1938. Her only child died when he was six months old.
Ms Morano did not marry again, although she told Associated Press reporters in 2015 that “men on the road stopped to hear me singing. And then they had to run because they were late and should go to work!”.
Until 1954 she worked in a factory making jute, a plant fibre that can be spun into threads.
She then had another job in the kitchen of a boarding school until she retired at the age of 75.
Ms Morano became the oldest living person in Italy and Europe in 2013. In November 2015, for her 116th birthday, she received congratulations from Pope Francis.
Ms Morano hung the signed congratulatory telegram from the Pope on her wall.
She is the second-oldest person in European history, behind Jeanne Calment of France, who died in August 1997 at age 122.
Her sister lived to the age of 102.
The oldest living man is 112-year-old Israeli Holocaust survivor Israel Kristal, Guinness World Records reported.