Want to live long and prosper? Well, nerdy Star Trek references aside, you should sleep a lot!
Don’t take our word for it: the world’s oldest woman attributes her longevity to getting “lots of sleep”…along with prodigious amounts of bacon eating.
Susannah Mushatt Jones just turned 116 on Monday, making her the oldest living human and holder of the current Guinness World Record for longevity. (The longest-living human known died at 122.)
When asked for her secret, Jones reportedly replied, “Sleep!” A decade earlier, she also said she never drinks or smokes and surrounds herself “with love and positive energy.”
(Oh, and married people will laugh at this one: she reportedly said being single has helped to prolong her life, too.)
According to The Telegraph, Jones eats eggs with four strips of bacon each morning for breakfast. And a sign on her kitchen wall reads, “Bacon makes everything better.” Doesn’t sound illogical. Especially after a great night’s rest!
Born in 1899, Jones has seen a lot of change in her lifetime. As a young girl she picked cotton with her father, a sharecropper, in the South before moving to New York City and working as a nanny for many years. She now lives in Brooklyn, one of only two living people who were born in the 1800s.
To put it in perspective, she has lived through two world wars, the civil rights movement, technological innovations that were practically unimaginable when she was born and much, much more.
Although she went blind about 15 years ago and can barely hear, Jones is not bedridden, takes only two medications per day (she needs medication only for high blood pressure) and sees a doctor only three times a year. Not bad for 116 years!
She celebrated her birthday with some of her 100 nieces and nephews.
Jones isn’t the only centenarian to link sleep and longevity. Misao Okawa, who was born in 1898, said her secrets were lots of sushi and 8 hours of sleep each night.
So there you have it! Resistance is futile. If you want to live a long, healthy life, better give yourself plenty of time to eat good food and saw those zzz’s! Make it so. 😉