Welcome to Running: A FEVER. My name is Michael Davis. This is a podcast about fitness, diet, and medicine. My goal is to live a long, healthy, happy, active life right up to the very end. And I’ll do that by loving my life enough to make it last as long as possible.
Last week, you got the list of the 10 longest-lived people, and a new person was on the list. Unfortunately, she died in August of 2024, so there are no living people on the list for now. But she made it, nonetheless. What did she do that got her to the ripe age of 117? Are there any clues that might help some of us get there? This episode aims to determine that by looking at the life of Maria Branyas, the 8th oldest-lived person ever.
Unlike many of the super-centenarians I have profiled, Maria has a good deal of documentation of her life, though most of it is in Spanish. There is a fairly complete article on the English Wikipedia site, though, and I recommend you check it out. By the way, the Wikimedia Foundation is the non-profit organization that hosts Wikipedia. I recommend, if you can, sending a few dollars their way. I have given a couple of times, just 2 or 3 dollars. I want them to stay ad-free and arguably neutral. And I use it almost every day.
Maria Branyas was born in San Francisco, California, United States, on March 4, 1907. Her parents were expatriates from Catalonia in Spain, to which they, along with Maria and her siblings, returned in 1915. During the journey, Maria lost hearing in one ear after a fall on the ship. Her father died on the voyage. Her mother remarried, and they settled in Barcelona.
Branyas was married and had three children, two still living. She became a nurse and worked in a field hospital on the Nationalist side in the Spanish Civil War. She later worked as a nurse and assistant to her husband, a traumatologist, until his death in 1976.
In her late 80s, Maria traveled to Egypt, Italy, the Netherlands, and England and learned sewing and music. She lived independently until the age of 93, when she moved to a nursing home in Olot, Catalonia, Spain. There, she played piano until she was 108 and exercised regularly as long as she could.
Maria survived a bout with COVID-19, the second-oldest person to do so. She was outspoken about the care of the elderly, once saying, “Older people are the forgotten ones of our society…They didn’t deserve to leave the world in this way.” She died in her sleep on August 19, 2024, at the age of 117 years and 168 days.
Well, one thing we learned here is that being active, both physically and mentally, and perhaps even socially, appears to have been part of the longevity of Maria Branyas, the 8th longest-lived person ever. So keep that in mind as you seek that long, healthy, happy, active life.
I hope you enjoyed this brief biography of Maria Branyas. As always, if you’ve got the fever, keep it burning, and if not, catch the fever, and I will see you next time on Running: A FEVER.
References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_verified_oldest_people
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Branyas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalonia