France lost its dean on Wednesday, December 15. On this date, Marcel Meys, aged 112, breathed his last at the hospital center in Vienne, in Isère. What are the chances of living as long as this supercentenarian? A study has provided some answers.
- The doyenne of the French and Europeans is Sister André, 117 years old.
- In France, life expectancy is currently estimated at 85.2 years for women and 79.2 years for men.
On October 5, Marcel Meys, a 112-year-old former paramedic and mechanic, became the dean of the French, after the death of Jules Théobald, a former fisherman from Martinique. On the night of December 14 to 15, the oldest man in the country died at the hospital center in Vienne, in Isère, where he was admitted for several days, according to the Dauphiné Libéré. The supercentenarian had lived in his house in Saint-Romain-en-Gal, near Vienna, since 1957. “He was happy because he was at home, he had all his mind, he lived alone but he was well helped”, said his only daughter, Nicole Boiron, 84 years old.
She revealed the secret of longevity to her father, who was hard of hearing and nearly blind. According to the octogenarian, Marcel Meys was a working person “Verry much” and that “traveled little”. The Isérois, who drank “very very little”had spent half his life in retirement because he took it at 58. “He liked to play Scrabble but he didn’t play sports, he walked a little, played pétanque”, remembered Nicole Boiron.
What is the maximum number of years a human being can live?
According to a study published in the journal Royal Society Open Science last september, a human being could live to be 130 years old. However, the latter clarified that the chances of reaching this age are slim.
To reach this conclusion, Swiss scientists from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) looked at data from people aged at least 105 and those over the age of 110. “The data make it implausible that there is a lower limit at 130 years. There is no evidence of differences in survival between women and men after 108 years in the Italian data and in the international database on longevity, but survival is lower for men in the French data”, can we read in the works.
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