A 101-year-old woman has shared her tips to a long and healthy life – and has revealed the surprising secret to keeping her skin looking so young.
Anita Astor, who was born in 1924, from the UK, recently became an unexpected viral star after her grandson, James Marsh, 42, started recording videos of her sharing tidbits about her childhood and uploading them to his TikTok account.
In her most popular video, she opened up about the bizarre and horrific way doctors treated common ailments like ear infections when she was younger before the introduction of antibiotics, and it left millions of people across the globe shocked.
But what also surprised viewers was how young Anita looked despite being over 100 years old.
Now, she has revealed just how she has stayed healthy all these years exclusively with the Daily Mail through her grandson James.
James explained that she credits three main things with aging so gracefully: not drinking alcohol, eating lots of fruits and vegetables, and exercising.
He said she stays active by ‘walking up and down the stairs’ and is very careful about what she consumes.
‘I always ate plenty of vegetables. When I was brought up, my mother was a great believer in vegetables,’ Anita shared in one of James’ TikTok videos.
Anita Astor (seen with her grandson), aged 101, has shared her tips to a long and healthy life – and has revealed the surprising secret to keeping her skin looking so young
Anita (seen when she was younger), from the UK, recently became an unexpected viral star after her grandson, James Marsh, 42, started sharing videos of her speaking to TikTok
‘My father grew lots of vegetables in the garden, so I always ate vegetables and I still always do. I love them.’
James told the Daily Mail that Anita also eats ‘lean meats’ like chicken, and avoids consuming too many sweets like candy or desserts.
‘I never ate anything particularly sweet either, just always a lot of fruit,’ she said. ‘I’m very careful with what I eat. Not many sweet things, really just lots of veggies and fruit.
‘We never had that much [meat] when I was young. Today, I don’t eat that much [meat]. I like a bit of meat, I’m not that keen on fish but I eat it a bit.’
As for her skincare routine, James revealed to the Daily Mail that she actually doesn’t do anything special to keep her youthful complexion.
He said she uses lotion here or there if her skin feels dry, and doesn’t have a favorite brand. Instead, she grabs ‘any’ from off the shelf.
Anita first went viral after opened up about the horrific ordeal that she was put through after she developed an ear infection as a toddler.
She explained in the TikTok that she had to get a procedure known as a mastoid operation that involved doctors drilling a hole into her skull to stop it from spreading to her brain.
Now, she has revealed just how she has stayed healthy all these years exclusively with the Daily Mail through her grandson James. She’s seen when she was younger
James explained that she credits three main things with aging so gracefully: not drinking alcohol , eating lots of fruits and vegetables, and exercising
She underwent the surgery, which is done to remove infected tissues from the mastoid bone located behind your ear, once at age two and again at age five.
‘In those days, the infection would go into your brain and you’d be finished in a few weeks,’ she said.
‘So if they wanted to save your life, they had to make a hole – I’ve got a hole literally in my head.’
While speaking exclusively with the Daily Mail about it, James explained that his grandmother told him that to make matters worse, the anesthetic used during surgery wasn’t as strong then as it is now.
‘The anesthetic was terrible, it wasn’t like you went to sleep and you woke up after you had been operated on,’ he shared.
‘My grandma said there were lots of whizzing and banging sounds – you were part conscious during operations.
‘It was a terrible thing and highly traumatic for her. But this was the norm back then.’
While she was recovering in the hospital James told the Daily Mail that his grandmother said she was treated ‘like dirt’ because her family was poor.
She recalled her parents being ‘interrogated’ about ‘how much they earned and if they owned a house or a car’ to determine how much they’ve have to pay.
He said Anita, seen years ago with her husband, stays active by ‘walking up and down the stairs’ and is very careful about what she consumes
As for her skincare routine, James revealed to the Daily Mail that she actually doesn’t do anything special to keep her youthful complexion. She’s seen when she was younger
Anita first went viral after opened up about the horrific ordeal that she was put through after she developed an ear infection as a toddler
She explained in the TikTok that she had to get a procedure known as a mastoid operation that involved doctors drilling a hole into her skull to stop it from spreading to her brain. She’s seen as a child
‘The pressures on poor people at the time was really intense. Her mother and father were refugees from Russia,’ he continued.
‘It wasn’t just seeing their child sick, it was also the financial stress. If you didn’t have money you couldn’t get access to medical services.
‘She said they treated like dirt, she wasn’t treated like a human being at all, but more like a thing.’
Despite getting two surgeries, Anita said she spent years struggling with the effects from the ear infection.
But finally, in her 20s, antibiotics became readily available, which she described as a ‘miracle.’
‘Antibiotics were reserved for soldiers at first, they weren’t given out to the general public until the war finished,’ James explained.
‘Her ear was still giving her trouble in her 20s – she was two and a half when it started and in her 20s she was still having problems from her infected ear.’
But when her doctor finally gave her antibiotics it ‘cleared up’ within days, and she ‘never had any problem again.’
