This 122-Year-Old Smoked Tobacco Until 117 and Ate 2 Pounds of Chocolate Every Week – Her Secret?

Jeanne Calment had lived for 122 years, from February 1875 to August 1997. Despite standing only 4’11” tall and weighing 99 pounds, Calment was a bright and tough woman. She had often bragged about never getting sick. Long lives tended to run in her family, with her mother dying at age 86, her father at 93, and her brother at 97. But she surpassed them all. Surprisingly, she didn’t keep a particularly healthy lifestyle. She famously smoked until she was 117 and ate two pounds of chocolate every week.

The Life of Jeanne Calment

Calment’s life started out charming. Her family had a strong drapery business so she lived comfortably, completing her education at 16 and spending her time playing piano and painting. When she was 21, she married her cousin Fernand Nicholas Calment. They lived above the family store with servants who took care of the chores. Calment spent her time playing tennis, roller skating, swimming, cycling, and playing music with her friends. However, there was trouble around the corner.

She gave birth at the age of 21 to her daughter Yvonne. But her daughter died of tuberculosis in adulthood, leaving Calment to take care of her seven-year-old grandson Frédéric with her son-in-law colonel Joseph Billot. She looked after him during World War II. During that time, her husband died at the age of 73. Living in France, German soldiers boarded in her home but they didn’t pester her for anything else.

In the 1960s, she faced tragedy after tragedy. In 1962, her brother died, then her son-in-law in 1963. Then her 26-year-old grandson died in a car crash. At 90 years of age, Jeanne Calment was left without any family. She thought she was going to die soon, so she signed a life estate contract with notary André-François Raffray in 1965. Funnily enough, she outlived him when Raffray died in 1995. At that point, she had received double the monetary value of her estate. Neither of them expected her to live 32 years after signing the contract. [1]

Famous in Her Old Age

Jeanne received attention when she claimed to have met Vincent Van Gogh when she was a tween. She described him as “ugly” and “reeked of alcohol”. Unlike the painter, Calment took better care of herself. She remained physically active throughout her life, taking a break at age 100 when she broke her ankle. She admitted to getting sick with conjunctivitis when she was 20. The doctors said she had cataracts in both eyes but her lifestyle didn’t require her to exert herself.

Additionally, she lived alone until 110, when she moved into a nursing home. There, she kept up her routine, waking up at 6:45 a.m. and praying. Then she would listen to classical music while doing some gentle exercises. Many nurses commented she moved faster than those 30 years her junior. She ate simply although she preferred spicy food over the plain options offered. And after every meal, she’ll smoke a cigarette and drink some wine. She also kept a stash of chocolate, sometimes eating 2 pounds in a week. Then she’d nap, visit friends, and have another cigarette before bed at 10 p.m.

Calment passed away suddenly in 1997. Doctors failed to determine the cause of her death. She was in good health, aside from becoming deaf and blind one month before passing away. Her long life became renown — until her authenticity fell under questions.

Read: ‘Garlic tablets and a weekly tipple’…the secret of a long life!

Did Calment Actually Live to 122?

In 2018, Valery Novoselov, a geriatrician and the director of the gerontology chapter of the Moscow Society of Naturalists, declared he would disprove Calment’s allegedly long life. He examined photos of her and thought she looked younger than 90, not nearly 122. He teamed up with mathematician Nikolay Zak, who began to dig through Calment’s claims and found some contradictions and ambiguity. Zak created the theory that “Jeanne Calment” was actually Yvonne, her daughter. Jeanne had actually died in 1934 but the family told authorities the body was Yvonne to dodge inheritance taxes. [2]

However, this theory was severely contested by researchers Jean-Marie Robine, Michel Allard, François R. Herrmann, and Bernard Jeune. They actually got to meet Calment in person and Robine had helped validate Calmet’s age in the 90s. “All of this is incredibly shaky and rests on nothing,” adding that Calment knew details a daughter couldn’t have known.

Additionally, the whole city of Arles had to have agreed to keep this secret.

“Can you imagine how many people would have lied? Overnight, Fernand Calment [Jeanne’s husband] would have passed his daughter [off] for his wife and everyone would have kept silent? It is staggering,” Robine said. [3]

They concluded their study saying that Calmet’s life and age was well-documented.

“In conclusion and coming back to the paper published by Zak, we would like to stress the unacceptability of publishing an article with such unfounded accusations claiming that members of the Calment and Billot families collectively committed fraud. How was it possible that a paper so full of unsubstantiated assertions could survive a responsible peer review and subsequently be published in Rejuvenation Research? Based on the evidence that we bring in this paper, we call for a retraction of Zak’s article.”

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