SECRETS OF THE CENTENARIANS: Life Begins At 100. “It is becoming clear that people who break through the 90-plus barrier represent a physical elite, markedly different from the elderly who typically die younger than them. Far from gaining a longer burden of disability, their extra years are often healthy ones. They have a remarkable ability to live through, delay or entirely escape a host of diseases that kill off most of their peers. Supercentenarians – people aged 110 or over – are even better examples of ageing gracefully.”

But it’s not just genetics, because there are a lot more of them than there used to be.