Maysie Strang’s lifestyle is a little illustration of how correlation doesn’t always equal cause. The centenarian from Glasgow has just c...
Maysie Strang’s lifestyle is a little illustration of how correlation doesn’t always equal cause.
The centenarian from Glasgow has just celebrated her milestone 102nd birthday.
And she’s not saying the secret of her amazing lifespan is smoking 20 cigarettes a day for 75 years but, well, it doesn’t seem to have done her any harm.
She also looks forward to a glass of wine every evening before she goes to bed – just the one.
Added to these vices, she has one more daily indulgence.
‘She is a fanatical banana eater,’ her son Sandy, aged 65, said.
The fruit habit started when she worked in journalism as an editor’s secretary at the Daily Express, ‘always smoking at her typewriter.’
Often rushing to tight deadlines, she would eat a banana as a quick lunch and the practice stayed with her.
After starting to smoke as a teenager she only gave up once, after a five-week stint in hospital when she broke her femur during her mid nineties.
But when she got home, she moved right onto the Chardonnay.
Sandy said: ‘It’s absurd thinking that some people who smoke for a while get all these health problems. It is the ultimate paradox.
Ironically, her husband Alex died aged 65 despite being super fit and working as a PE teacher.
‘Smoking was an anathema to him,’ Sandy said.
Despite decades of smoking, Maysie doesn’t have any medical problems.
Sandy said: ‘She’s on no medication at all. There’s not many people at 102 that can say that.
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