What the Oldest Living People Keep Doing

Reach 110 with paperwork that holds up, and gerontologists call you a supercentenarian. Stay there, and every birthday becomes a request for a secret. The people who currently occupy that list rarely offer a protocol. They offer a temperament, a lifetime of ordinary movement, and a stubborn preference for other human beings.

This is not a sequel to the site’s centenarian interviews or the longest-living men piece. Those were habit stories. This is a ranking with names that can be checked, then a habit audit of the five people near the top who have actually sat for interviews. The list will change. The pattern, so far, has not.

The list, while it lasts

Ages below are completed years as of 11 September 2026. Validation is from the Gerontology Research Group, not from a viral carousel. Guinness uses LongeviQuest for the same title. Pending cases exist, so treat “oldest” as “oldest with documents that currently hold”.

Most of the top ten have almost no public habit record. That is not a plot hole. It is the point. Extreme age is rare, privacy is common, and journalists only get a sentence or two. The five profiles below are the ones with enough interview material to audit. Treat the rest as a reminder that a ranking is not a dataset.

Five lives, not a protocol

Ethel Caterham, 117, United Kingdom. Born 21 August 1909 in Shipton Bellinger, Hampshire. Second youngest of eight. Worked as an au pair in India at 18, later lived in Gibraltar and Hong Kong, where she ran a nursery. Drove until 97. Walked her dogs briskly, hands clasped behind her back, rain or shine. Gardened. Took up contract bridge after she stopped working, and kept a blow-up passenger in the car so late-night drives home from the table felt less solitary. Lives in a Surrey care home. Survived Covid at 110. A sister, Gladys, lived to 104. On her own longevity she is almost aggressively unspecial: there is no particular secret. She agrees she was “dealt a good hand, then played her cards right.” The line she keeps repeating is blunter. “Never arguing with anyone, I listen, and I do what I like.” Earlier she told the Salisbury Journal to say yes to opportunity, keep a positive attitude, and have everything in moderation. LongeviQuest found her on her patio with tea and Victoria sponge. That is not a fasting protocol.

Naomi Whitehead, 115, United States. Born 26 September 1910 in Georgia, now the oldest validated American, living in Pennsylvania. Farm work for years: ploughing, cotton, tobacco. Constant movement was the job, not a hobby. She has said she never smoked and never drank. Her grandson calls her a godly woman; she has said she will live as long as the Lord lets her. Her one-line advice, given to a YouTuber with a straight face, was “work hard.” Genetics probably sat underneath the plough. The interview still names three things you can actually copy: labour that keeps you moving, no cigarettes, no alcohol.

Lucia Laura Sangenito, 115, Italy. “Nonna Laurina” of Sturno, Campania. Agricultural labourer and village midwife. Mother lived to 101; her husband died at 98. Lives with her daughter Maria. Ate from her own land for most of a century: homegrown vegetables, homemade fusilli and tagliatelle, a light evening broth. Family say she has never been a sweet tooth, does not drink wine, and avoided smoking. She prays, listens to Radio Maria, and makes two exceptions for television: Fiorello, because he makes her laugh, and a cooking show she likes for its manners. At 108 she survived a femur operation. At 112, six months of chemotherapy for nose cancer, then recovery. Her own recipe is not a supplement stack. “I do not drink wine, so I still keep a clear head.” And: take life as it comes, do not complain more than you have to, help the next person, thank God for the years and take them.

Fuyo Kishimoto, 114, Japan. Born in Hyōgo, now in a Kyoto nursing home. Widowed in the war, raised children alone, worked in a mine alongside men, then cooked school lunches into her mid-eighties and walked kilometres to the kitchen each day. Until about 107 she kept a three-hour daily sutra practice, sometimes waking in the night to finish it. Family were told to prepare for the end at 103; she recovered. Hip fracture at 113; out of hospital in a week. LongeviQuest’s visit captured the gesture she still makes when something is good: both arms up, a cheerful banzai. Diet is thinly reported for her specifically, so this piece does not invent one. The documented spine is work, walking, and a religious practice that doubled as a reason to get up.

João Marinho Neto, 113, Brazil. Oldest validated living man, ninth on the overall list. Born 5 October 1912 in Maranguape, Ceará. Farm child from about four: cattle, juazeiro fruit, later corn and beans, goats, pigs, chickens. A sister reached 103. He now lives in a retirement home in Apuiarés, blind, hard of hearing, and, according to his nurse, on no medication for hypertension, diabetes, stroke, or cancer. His current table is not a Blue Zone postcard. Care-home staff describe coffee, grapes, rapadura (unrefined cane sugar), and free-range chicken. Sleeps well, talks, knows everyone by voice. Asked for a secret, he does not mention the grapes. He mentions people: “being surrounded by good people, avoiding too much solitude, and having his children close.”

Madeleine Dellamonica, 114, sits fifth with a thinner habit file and a thicker intellectual one. Paris-born, a 58-year marriage, Egyptology at the École du Louvre, books on pharaohs published into her nineties, and membership of the French Society of Egyptology from 1993. That is late-life curiosity with footnotes, not a meal plan. The others in the top ten are, for now, mostly names and birth dates. Resist the urge to fill the blanks.

Who actually does what

Strip those interviews to behaviours, and you get a messy matrix rather than a clean stack. Filled circles are things the person or their family described. Amber is mixed or only loosely documented. Empty means the interviews do not say. Empty is not “no”. Empty is “we do not know”.

The matrix is lopsided on purpose. Movement, people, and a reason to get up light up for everyone with a file. Smoking and drinking only light up where someone was asked. Food is the column wellness culture wants to win, and it is the messiest: Laurina’s garden produce sits next to Ethel’s sponge and João’s cane sugar. If your model of longevity requires a single plate, these biographies will not sign it.

The habits that keep showing up

1. Move because the day required it

None of these people describe zone 2. They describe jobs. Ploughing, mining, school kitchens, midwifery, shepherding cattle before breakfast. Ethel’s version in later life was brisk dog-walking and a garden. João’s version now is short walks and sitting outside. Frequency beat intensity for decades, then intensity vanished and frequency tried to remain. That matches what Blue Zone fieldwork and the movement pieces on this site keep finding: natural, repeated work beats a heroic workout that never becomes identity.

2. Stay in the company of other people

João names it as the secret. Ethel’s bridge table was a social engine, not a brain game with extra steps. Laurina lives with her daughter and likes visitors. Naomi’s file is full of grandchildren. Kishimoto’s banzai is a social gesture. The Million Veteran Program scored social connection alongside smoking and diet for a reason, and Harvard’s Study of Adult Development has been circling the same conclusion for decades. Loneliness behaves like a major risk factor. Supercentenarians, in the interviews we have, are not stoic hermits optimising biomarkers alone.

3. Keep a reason to get up after the job ends

Ethel’s instruction on retirement is almost a reprimand: you must have a hobby, must keep active. Bridge counted because it was hard and you were always learning. Kishimoto’s sutras filled hours that could have gone empty. Dellamonica’s Egyptology society membership in her eighties is the same shape with different furniture. Aimlessness after work ends is a recognised risk. More on that tension in retirement and longevity.

4. Do not smoke; be honest about drink

Naomi never smoked or drank. Laurina skipped wine on purpose and avoided smoking. Ethel’s line is moderation, not abstinence, and she has not made alcohol a headline. João’s interviews do not mention either. The trial-grade evidence is not confused here. Smoking is one of the largest levers in the eight lifestyle factors study. Alcohol’s “moderate is healthy” story has been shrinking for years. Copy the no-smoking column with a clear conscience. Do not start drinking because a Sardinian postcard mentioned Cannonau.

5. Eat simply, not perfectly

Laurina is the closest to the plant-forward peasant pattern: garden vegetables, homemade pasta, broth at night, no sweets. João eats what Ceará and a care home provide, including sugar. Ethel enjoys cake. Kishimoto’s diet is not well enough reported to sermonise about. The shared fact is closer to “decades of unfussy food, mostly at home” than to a named longevity diet. For the population data behind plants, legumes, and fish, use the site’s food-group and foods pieces, not a 117-year-old’s birthday menu.

6. Put the argument down

Ethel’s most quoted advice is conflict hygiene: listen, then do as you like. Laurina’s is not complaining, taking life as it comes. Kishimoto’s public register is cheerfulness. This is the least randomised column and the most repeated sentence. Chronic threat physiology is real. A policy of not letting rumination colonise the afternoon is closer to cognitive hygiene than to toxic positivity. It is also the part of the interviews that sounds like a temperament you were handed, not a habit you installed at 50. Borrow the behaviour anyway: fewer pointless fights, more unfinished sentences you are willing to leave unfinished.

Faith shows up for Naomi, Laurina, and Kishimoto. Treat it as a bundle of purpose, ritual, and congregation, not as a requirement to adopt someone else’s theology. The social fitness piece on this site is the secular translation.

What this is not

So treat the world’s oldest living people as convergent clues, the same way this site treats other centenarian interviews. The trial-adjacent evidence sits underneath: physical activity, not smoking, social connection, purpose, and a plant-forward default each have independent research behind them. The 117-year-olds are useful because they translate that evidence into behaviours a non-scientist can copy on a Tuesday. They are not useful as a promise that the Tuesday will get you to 117.

A short field guide

You do not need to be the oldest person in Surrey. You need a few habits you will still do when motivation is low.

1. Put daily movement on the calendar as infrastructure: a walk, a garden, a job that uses your legs.
2. Do not start smoking. If you smoke, quitting remains one of the largest levers in the literature.
3. Default meals toward plants, legumes, and food cooked at home. Leave room for sponge cake. Do not build a religion out of rapadura or out of avoiding it.
4. Keep one role where someone is counting on you, paid or not.
5. Put one recurring social obligation in ink: family table, walking partner, a game that requires other people.
6. After you leave work, install a hobby that is slightly too hard. Ethel’s was bridge.
7. Practise Ethel’s conflict rule in miniature: listen, then do as you like, and skip the argument that changes nothing.

The oldest living people are not a wellness brand. They are a reminder that the boring stack still shows up at the far end of the human lifespan, and that the far end is mostly women who kept moving, kept company, and declined to spend the afternoon on a fight.

Curious how your current habits stack up? The longevity calculator turns them into a rough life-expectancy estimate.

Sources

• Gerontology Research Group: World Supercentenarian Rankings List
• GRG: Ethel Caterham, world’s oldest living person, 117th birthday
• Guinness World Records: Ethel Caterham becomes first Brit to reach 117
• The Independent: Ethel Caterham on her secret to a long life at 117
• LongeviQuest: Meeting Ethel Caterham at 116
• People: Ethel Caterham on never arguing, saying yes, and moderation
• GRG: Madeleine Dellamonica profile
• TF1 Info: Madeleine Dellamonica, Egyptologist and France’s oldest living person
• Business Insider: Naomi Whitehead, oldest living American, on work, faith, and never smoking or drinking
• La Cucina Italiana: Lucia Laura Sangenito, what Italy’s oldest woman eats
• LongeviQuest: Visiting Lucia Laura Sangenito
• Agro24: Nonna Laurina at 114, diet and daily life
• LongeviQuest: Life stories of Japan’s oldest residents, including Fuyo Kishimoto
• LongeviQuest: João Marinho Neto profile
• The Mirror: João Marinho Neto on coffee, grapes, chicken, and care-home health
• Nguyen et al., Am J Clin Nutr, 2024: eight lifestyle factors and life expectancy
• Harvard Study of Adult Development