Longevity Secrets of 116-Year-Olds, Including Bananas

• Tomiko Itooka was the oldest person in the world when she died last month aged 116.
• Another 116-year-old, Inah Canabarro Lucas of Brazil, now holds the title.
• Here are the two women’s very different longevity secrets.

The world’s oldest person who died at the age of 116, and her successor, have very different secrets to longevity.

Tomiko Itooka, who lived in Ashiya, Japan, died on December 29 at the age of 116 years and 220 days.

She was succeeded by Inah Canabarro Lucas, a nun who lives in Porto Alegre, Brazil, who was 116 and 212 days old as of January 6. Lucas is one of only three living people confirmed to have been born before 1910.

It’s extremely rare to live to 116 — and just 0.03% of the US population is over 100, according to the Pew Research Center’s analysis of US Census data. A combination of genetics, lifestyle, and luck, are though to contribute to a person’s longevity — but we don’t know for sure why some people live so long.

Here’s what they both credited their longevity to.

Itooka said bananas and a Japanese drink helped her live to 116

Itooka married at 20 and was an office manager at her husband’s factory during World War 2, according to LongeviQuest, an organization that verifies the ages of supercentenarians. She was very active and enjoyed hiking. She twice climbed Mount Ontake, which is 10,062 feet high, and did a pilgrimage of more than 600 miles to 33 temples in the Kansai region in her 80s.

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Itooka also drank a popular Japanese fermented drink called Calpis every morning, LongeviQuest reported, and loved bananas — two things she credited her longevity to.

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There’s some evidence that lactic acid bacteria, which are found in Calpis, could be beneficial for longevity, according to a 2024 review published in the journal Aging and Disease. However, the researchers say further investigation is needed.

Fermented foods are generally great for gut health because they increase the diversity of microbes in the digestive system, epidemiologist and nutrition expert Tim Spector previously told Business Insider.

Hiking could also have contributed to Itooka’s longevity. Such activity can offset the life-shortening impacts of being sedentary, a 2016 American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine article found.

Lucas attributed her longevity to God

Lucas was a teacher who became a Catholic nun at the age of 26.

She thinks God is the secret to her longevity. “He is the secret of life. He is the secret of everything,” she told LongeviQuest last February.

Researchers from LongeviQuest previously told BI that religiousness is a common thread among the oldest people in Latin America they have verified.

A 2018 study by researchers at Ohio State University on 1,600 obituaries supports this. It found that people whose obituaries mentioned religious activities lived, on average, 10 years longer than those whose obituaries did not. The researchers thought this could be because religion gives people social support and opportunities to volunteer.