How Women Could Be the Key to Unlocking Longer Life

For every man older than 110, there are nine women. Before she died in August at age 117, supercentenarian Maria Branyas — the world’s oldest verified person — credited her bonus years not to any high-tech interventions but to eating lots of plain yogurt.

Her successor is also a woman, 116-year-old Ethel Catherman. And the record for longevity is held by another woman, Jean Calment, who lived to see her 122nd birthday.