Nick NorwitzMD PhD, Oxford-Harvard | Metabolic Health Educator | “Stay Curious”

Oldest Woman (117) Had “High” Cholesterol?!

30 Sept 2025 · 1 min

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0:57

In this YouTube commentary, the speaker reviews a newly published study of a 117‑year‑old woman who achieved extreme longevity. The video notes that the paper emphasizes the subject’s unusually high HDL (“good”) cholesterol but completely omits any discussion of LDL (“bad”) cholesterol in the main text. The presenter discovers that LDL data are hidden in Supplemental Figure 8B, where the LDL level is reported as above the recommended clinical range. The speaker questions the significance of this omission and what elevated LDL might mean for interpreting the woman’s health and the broader narrative that high HDL alone explains her longevity.

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This is awesome. This is a new paper that was just published on the oldest woman. She lived to 117, and you don't need to be a metabolism scientist or a doctor to want to know what makes her tick. So I was eager to delve into the data, and I did, and I'll link more information below. But one thing I found funny was, yeah, the paper was filled with surprises. It was a mountain of data, but nowhere could I find any information about her LDL bad cholesterol, at least not in the main text. Now they do talk about her lipids and cholesterol, noting her high high HDL "good cholesterol," but LDL cholesterol was conspicuously missing. Until I went beyond the main text and delved into the supplement, down to Supplemental Figure 8, Panel B, with a little line that noted her LDL cholesterol was there and it was actually above the recommended range. Isn't that interesting? What does that mean?