5 Dubious Sounding Tricks People Are Claiming As Keys To Longer Life

5 Woman Eats Nine Gin-Soaked Raisins Every Morning

Lucia DeClerck is a resident of a nursing home in New Jersey. In January of 2021, she celebrated her 105th birthday, just a day after receiving her second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. Oddly enough, her birthday brought the news that she had indeed contracted the virus anyway. Some would take that as a not-so-subtle sign that their time was up. Lucia was not that kind of lady. 

She'd been through the flu craze of 1918 that killed millions around the globe, so she was already pretty handy with pandemics. COVID never stood a chance; she beat it within two weeks, even as it claimed lives around her in the nursing home. But she had a little secret to health and longevity, tucked away in a Mason jar. 

For most of her life, DeClerck claims to pluck nine raisins out of a jar each morning and eat them -- raisins which had been soaking in gin for nine days. Nine days, nine raisins. If you're looking for a method to the madness, you probably won't find one, but do not mess with this woman's recipe. 

That wasn't her only quirk; she would also brush her teeth with baking soda (no cavities until the age of 99) and chug aloe vera juice from the bottle. So she was a little ... holistic in her approaches. What the raisins did for her after absorbing some of the most ghastly liquor ever known to man isn't clear. Maybe you could soak a box of Milk Duds in absinthe for a week and glean the same results, but then again, you sure aren't Lucia DeClerck. 

4 Cat Drinks A Little Bit Of Wine Daily

The debate of whether or not there is a higher power seems to come down to one argument -- dogs only live about half as long as cats do. Cats are aware of this discrepancy, and that's why they walk around like they're tiny little tigers. It's an arrogance that's only earned because they can easily live into their 20s. Whatever. Good for them. There are theories about why cats just seem to have a longer life on average. Most of them boil down to felines' inherent solitary nature: they keep to themselves, so they don't really spread harmful germs. 

Then there's Creme Puff. This cat based out of Austin, Texas, lived to be 38 years old, which if we were in 1850 would be a ripe old age for a human person. Creme Puff belonged to Jake Perry, who has a history of raising some old ass cats -- Creme Puff actually set the Guinness World Record for the oldest cat ever. 

So what was Perry's secret to raising a cat to the age where it starts considering divorce and cashing in its 401k? Well, regular cat food to start, some bacon and eggs (nice), coffee with cream (weird), and a daily eyedropper squirt of red wine. Perry claimed that the wine helped the cat's arteries circulate better, which sound vaguely like the type of excuse your aunt would post to Facebook to explain her 13 different wine of the month club subscriptions, but you do you, cat man. Still, there is no more egregious example of a cat being treated like royalty than being offered a daily sip of wine. 

Perry also screened nature films for his kitties in the garage, so that level of pampering may have contributed to a cat wanting to stick around. Almost every single vet in the world will tell you that caffeine and alcohol are absolutely toxic to felines, but hey, maybe Creme Puff was the exception to that?

3 Extreme Life Extension

Did you know that there is a fervent community of folks who pour their money and daily motivations into extracting every second of life they can? Think of it kind of like analytics in baseball: scientists scan things like the spin rate of fastballs and velocity of the ball off of the bat to create and nurture Frankenstein-like baseball players. It's all in the numbers, they say. So let's analyze genes and cells and unorthodox ways to stave off death. Take businessman James Strole, a man who created a nonprofit called the Coalition for Radical Life Extension. He believes that humans shouldn't strive to live to be just a hundred years old. That's child's play. He aims to extend life by a century or more. 

Strole is doing his part to test his theories on himself. He starts with a daily cornucopia of supplements (sometimes up to 70), followed by a cold dip in a pool, and then a good lay on an electromagnetic mat. He steers clear of bread and dairy. He gulps down one live quail every Tuesday. We only made one of those things up. 

But what Strole does is kind of the baseline normal for life extension followers. Some are a little more weird, like those who read the newspaper upside down or have stem cells implanted into their faces (that's how that works, right?). Some people get the blood of young people transfused into their elderly bodies, which is exactly what we have admonished vampires for.

But mainstream science is on the fence with all of this. Of course, there isn't one single method for extending life, as humans are intricate little meat bags. Studying cells of the body and learning how to remove the ones that cause issues as we age is still in its infancy, as far as research goes. 

This doesn't deter James Strole, or many like him who will undoubtedly throw huge wads of cash at the problem. The market for anti-aging hormones alone is reported to be around $50 billion. And if we have learned anything, it's that if rich people want something badly enough, at some point, they're probably going to get it. 

2 Have Strong Initials In Your Name? You'll Probably Live Longer!

Is there anything more confidence-inspiring than a good name? A strong, masculine moniker like Ronald J. Thirstyfist. It just makes you want to follow that person into a battle. We love coming up with names for our babies and making sure that they have meaning. The initials are important, too -- you want to make sure you aren't sending a Frank Ulysses King out into the world without letting him know that some kids are going to douchily acronym him to death. 

It turns out that the initials that comprise your name might have some effect on how long you live. A 1999 study from the University of California analyzed a bunch of names and found that people who had initials associated with positive things (A.C.E., or V.I.P.) tended to live almost five years longer than most people, and definitely more than those who had "bad initials" (D.I.E., or P.I.G.). 

The bad group averaged about two fewer years in their lifespans. This trend applied to almost all kinds of things that would kill a person, be it disease, or suicide, or wasp attacks, meaning that all of those factors were less of a factor with the positively initialed group and were not skewed by race or gender factors. 

So it seems that having a positive name means you'll likely think more highly of yourself. And some weird trends did show up. Of the 2,287 males in the "negatively named" group, 79 committed suicide, as opposed to only six in the positive group. Even accidental death percentages were higher in the bad group. But just know that we think the world of you, and nothing and no one can change that, Aaron Stanley Stankiewicz. 

1 Have A Bigger Butt (Ladies)

Through all the eons of history and all the human advancements in science, it's taken until recently to find out something we had an inkling about all long: big butts are truly wonderful. And so, during the course of these legitimate studies to scientifically articulate just why, imagine the reactions when they discovered they would have to study the rear ends of women. 

That's just what they did at Oxford University; the study claims that females with bigger donkadonks have lower levels of cholesterol and more omega-3 fatty acids, which seems counterintuitive with a larger, fatter body part. A large butt also has a relation to leptin levels in the body, which is good by itself at regulating weight, and other hormones with antidiabetic properties that also fight inflammation and OH GOD, THE FEMALE BUTT IS BASICALLY MAGIC. 

The top researcher of the bottom study spoke to the fact that they've known for some time that fat distribution is critical to overall health, but "it is only very recently that thigh fat and a large hip circumference have been shown to promote health; that lower body fat is protective by itself." So there you go -- maybe Aaron Stanley Stankiewicz can finally have a better image of himself. 

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