She lived to be the oldest person in the world. A new study attributes genetic variants – and perhaps its habit of yogurt.

When Maria Banyas Morera died last year At 117 and 168 days old, she was the oldest known person in the world. Before her death, she asked doctors to study it.

Dr. Manel Esteller, president of genetics at the University of Barcelona medical school, spent three years analyzing the health of Branryas. A study, published online Wednesday, by Esteller and a cohort of colleagues, revealed that a mixture of factors contributed to the longevity of Branryas.

“The conclusion is that the clues of extreme longevity are a mixture between what we have inherited from our parents and what we do in our lives,” said Esteller. “And this mixture, the percentage depends, but it can be … half and half.”

Branryas “had very good genes that protect against many disorders, many genetic variants that no one has seen before,” said Esteller. She also had “very good habits”. According to Esteller, she did not smoke nor drinking alcohol and did not drink alcohol and had a diet rich in fish, in olive oil and eating three yogurts per day.

The yogurt was simple without added sugar, which reconstructs the intestine with good bacteria, helping to fight against inflammation, said Esteller.

Chronic inflammation is one of the main causes of aging and illness, he said.

“These are good bacteria that provide humans an advantage,” added Esteller.

The study noted that “if the domination of Bifidobacterium [beneficial gut bacteria] The related genre is fully attributable or not to the yogurt regime cannot be completely confirmed because it would have required a longitudinal study with a collection of samples over several years. However, we believe that it is likely that a beneficial effect of the ingestion of yogurt via the modulation of the intestinal ecosystem could have contributed to its well-being and its advanced age. “”

Branryas published once on social networks on her love for yogurt, saying that “gives life” and hers was long. She was born in 1907 in San Francisco and had lived in Spain since she was 8 years old. She survived two world wars and two pandemics, and had three children and 13 great-grandchildren.

In addition to living a long life, she also lived healthy – without cancer, cardiovascular disease or dementia, according to Esteller.

The image that emerges from the branryas study “shows that extremely advanced age and poor health are not intrinsically linked and that the two processes can be distinguished and dissected at the molecular level,” explains the study, published in Cell Reports Medicine.

The researchers said that to conduct the study, “samples of the subject were obtained from four different sources: total peripheral blood, saliva, urine and saddles at different times.”

He also noted certain limits, especially that extreme aging and longevity “are probably highly individualized processes”, therefore “drawing conclusions largely applicable from a single subject should be taken with caution”.