Emily WilsonWhat are the real secrets of longevity from the world’s oldest people? In the still hours of April 30th, 2025, the world quietly bid farewell to its oldest known citizen. Sister Inah Canabarro Lucas, a Brazilian nun born in 1908, died at the astonishing age of 116. Her life spanned three centuries, survived two world wars, and outlived not only her contemporaries but also the concept of age as most of us understand it. Her longevity wasn’t nurtured by kale smoothies, biohacking wearables, or cryotherapy. Instead, she lived humbly, prayed constantly, and credited her faith in God as the ultimate elixir of life. “He is the secret of life. He is the secret of everything,” she once said.
Just days later, the metaphorical baton passed quietly across the Atlantic to a care home in Surrey, England, where 115-year-old Ethel Caterham became the new face of human longevity. Born in 1909, Ethel’s approach is less ascetic, but no less revealing. When asked her secret, she simply offered, “Never argue. I listen, then I do what I like.”
It would be tempting to look at these two women and conclude that extreme longevity requires either spiritual discipline or cheeky defiance. And perhaps that’s partly true. But neither Sister Inah nor Ethel lived in the places the longevity-obsessed have fixated on for the past two decades: the so-called “Blue Zones.”
What the World’s Oldest People Teach Us About the Secrets of Longevity
“Blue Zones” are regions identified by National Geographic Fellow Dan Buettner and a cohort of demographers and researchers where people live longer and healthier than average. These longevity hotspots include Ikaria (Greece), Okinawa (Japan), Sardinia (Italy), Nicoya (Costa Rica), and Loma Linda (California). Their shared lifestyle traits are now immortalized in wellness blogs, Netflix documentaries, and the Instagram feeds of modern-day health apostles.
In Blue Zones, centenarians tend to garden daily, walk everywhere, eat beans, drink wine, and spend time with extended family. They have a reason to wake up (ikigai), faith communities, and a tendency to avoid processed food. These patterns, known collectively as the “Power 9,” are credited with helping residents blow past average lifespans by a decade or more.
So how did Sister Inah, in southern Brazil, and Ethel Caterham, in England, achieve such extraordinary lifespans outside these so-called epicenters of immortality?
Why the Oldest People on Earth Don’t Live in Blue Zones
Despite the clean narratives offered by Blue Zone enthusiasts, the fact that neither of the two most recent supercentenarians lived in Blue Zones is telling. It doesn’t disprove the value of a plant-rich diet or daily movement, but it does caution against overly deterministic interpretations.
In the case of Sister Inah, the secret was less in her plate and more in her posture—one of prayer, humility, and service. Her days were structured, her stress low, and her social life (within her convent) remarkably consistent. Ethel Caterham, by contrast, was adventurous in youth, independent in thought, and apparently unbothered by social conflict. In one sense, they represent behavioral traits sometimes seen in Blue Zones. In another, their stories suggest longevity may hinge more on the preservation of purpose, autonomy, and low chronic stress than any single diet or zip code.
This nuance is increasingly important as researchers scrutinize Blue Zones more critically.
The Truth About Blue Zones
Some researchers have raised flags about data integrity in Blue Zones. Dr. Saul Justin Newman from the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing has argued that longevity claims, especially in Sardinia and Okinawa, may be inflated due to poor birth records and even pension fraud. If you remove the faulty paperwork, he suggests, the magic might look more like math.
Further, a recent 2025 exposé in The Times suggested that some supposed Blue Zone benefits might be survivorship bias: the healthiest survive and then get studied, while countless others in the same region do not. That doesn’t nullify the lessons of community, diet, or movement, but it does complicate the mythology.
And yet, well-designed studies still support aspects of the Blue Zone model. The Okinawa Centenarian Study, a landmark investigation of over 600 long-lived individuals, showed dramatically lower rates of heart disease, stroke, and cancer. Genes like APOE2 showed up more frequently, offering a partial genetic foundation. But lifestyle still mattered. Caloric moderation, consistent physical activity, and robust social integration were all statistically significant predictors of longevity.
Meanwhile, on the Greek island of Ikaria, researchers found virtually no cases of dementia among the elderly. Wild greens with potent anti-inflammatory compounds (like dandelion and arugula) are staples, and daily movement isn’t a choice—it’s built into the landscape.
What Sister Inah and Ethel Caterham Reveal About Living to 115+
What the stories of Sister Inah and Ethel Caterham remind us is that longevity isn’t algorithmic. It resists easy replication. Neither woman took NMN supplements or did intermittent fasting. What they did share, however, was a deliberate lifestyle. Fixed routines. Low drama. A stable social ecosystem. A calm mind.
Blue Zones are valuable not because they contain the answers, but because they ask the right questions. What kind of life leads not just to more years, but to more years worth living? Where do faith, purpose, and autonomy fit into a framework of public health? And can we engineer cities, companies, or communities that emulate the best parts of Ikaria or Okinawa without pretending that geography is destiny?
The torch has passed from a nun with an unshakable faith to a widow who doesn’t care what others think. Neither lived where science tells us they should have. But maybe that’s the point. Maybe the next frontier in longevity isn’t discovering where people live the longest, but why they choose to keep going.
Sources and Further Reading
- People Magazine. World’s Oldest Person, Sister Inah Canabarro Lucas, Dies at 116: ‘A Legacy That Transcends Time’. May 7, 2025.
- Guinness World Records. UK’s Oldest Ever Person Ethel Caterham Becomes World’s Oldest Person at Age 115. May 2025.
- The Times (UK). Scientist exposes secret behind ‘blue zone’ diet myth: pension fraud. February 2025.
- New York Post. Greek Island With Almost No Dementia Follows a Twist on the Mediterranean Diet—The Two Drinks They Love. February 17, 2025.
- Okinawa Centenarian Study. University of the Ryukyus, Department of Geriatrics. Ongoing. (Note: Update from 2016 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27845177/)
- Business Insider. Don’t Follow Healthy Aging Tips from 100-Year-Olds, a Longevity Scientist Said. These 4 Things Could Help You Live 14 Years Longer. February 2025.
- Catholic News Agency. 116-Year-Old Brazilian Nun Is World’s Oldest Human Being. March 2025.
- LongeviQuest. Validated Supercentenarians: Sister Inah Canabarro Lucas. April 2025.
- National Geographic. The Secrets of a Long Life by Dan Buettner. November 2005.
