Can Yogurt Help You Live to 117? Scientists Analyzed the Gut of the World's Oldest Woman to Find Out
Aging research just got a rare data point. When María Branyas Morera died last year at 117 as the world’s oldest verified living person, she left scientists something almost no supercentenarian ever provides. She gave researchers a full set of biological samples taken while she was still alive. The published results upend a tidy assumption about what extreme old age looks like inside the body, and the gut microbiome sits at the center of the story.
A team led by Dr. Manel Esteller at the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute in Barcelona, with the work coordinated by Eloy Santos, analyzed her genome, proteome, epigenome, metabolome and microbiome. Their multi-omic analysis, published in Cell Reports Medicine, is described as the most exhaustive study ever conducted on a supercentenarian.
What Scientists Found in the World’s Oldest Person’s Gut
The headline finding sits in the stool sample. Branyas’s gut microbiome was dominated by Bifidobacterium, a type of bacteria typically abundant in infants and known to decline sharply with age. In her case, it made up about half of her gut bacteria, roughly five times the levels seen in adults aged 61 to 91. Her gut, in other words, looked more like a child’s than an elderly person’s.
That youthful pattern showed up elsewhere in her biology. Measured across multiple DNA methylation clocks, her biological age came in at an average of 17 to 23 years younger than her chronological age. Her genome also carried rare protective variants linked to a stronger immune system, reduced cancer risk, heart protection and neuroprotection. Seven of those variants had never been seen before in European populations.
Why the Gut Microbiome Finding Surprised Researchers
Esteller’s team expected to find a body that had aged slowly across the board. Instead, they found what he called a “fascinating duality.” Branyas carried markers of extreme aging and markers of healthy longevity at the same time. Supercentenarians, he suggested, do not reach extreme age by gently slowing the clock. They reach it through a coexistence of opposing biological signals.
A broader review of the gut microbiome and aging has noted that health-associated bacteria such as Bifidobacterium tend to increase in long-lived populations. But the picture is genuinely mixed. Some pro-inflammatory bacteria also rise with extreme age, so the science is not a clean story of more Bifidobacterium meaning a longer life.
What About Yogurt’s Connection To Aging?
Researchers flagged several lifestyle factors in Branyas’s life, including a Mediterranean diet, regular physical activity, an active social life, good sleep and the absence of smoking and alcohol.
They also discovered she ate three servings of yogurt daily. Yogurt contains bacteria that favor Bifidobacterium growth, which is part of why it drew attention. Outside experts cautioned against reading the yogurt habit as a proven cause of her longevity, but this point is certainly interesting.
This is a study of one person. It cannot establish cause and effect. Her youthful gut may have driven her health, or it may simply reflect that she was a good host to those microbes because of everything else going right in her biology.
Genetics also played a major role, and rare protective variants cannot be replicated through diet. What you can act on is the part that overlaps with the lifestyle habits that support healthy aging from the inside out.
Esteller’s broader takeaway is the line worth holding onto. “Extremely advanced age and poor health are not intrinsically linked,” he said. The body of the world’s oldest person suggests that living a very long time and living well at the end of it may not be the trade-off researchers once assumed.
This article was created by content specialists using various tools, including AI.
