'Don't Drink a Lot, Get Good Sleep, Don't Smoke': America's Oldest Man at 111 Shares His Secrets to a Long Life

He has lived through two World Wars, served in an army, raised ten children, built a business, moved countries in his seventies, and made it all the way to 111. On April 26, 2026, Luis Cano of Linden, New Jersey, born on December 9, 1914, in Colombia was confirmed as the oldest living man in the United States. Ranked 112th among the world's oldest people by LongeviQuest, the organization that tracks supercentenarians globally, Cano is a quiet legend in his neighborhood. And when asked what kept him alive this long, he didn't talk about special diets, expensive supplements, or complicated routines. He offered three words: don't drink a lot, get good sleep, and don't smoke.

The Man Behind the Milestone

Luis Cano didn’t chase longevity, he lived it, one steady choice at a time. Born in Colombia, his early years were shaped by discipline in the army, followed by decades navigating life and roads as the owner of a bus fleet. In 1948, he married Alicia Angelo Cano, and together they built something even bigger than a career: a family of ten children, now expanded into generations.

What makes his story remarkable is not just how long he has lived, but how fully. In the 1990s, at an age when most people retreat into routine, Cano began again, moving his entire family to New York, embracing change instead of fearing it. He eventually settled in Linden, New Jersey, where his presence still anchors a large, close-knit family.

Well past 100, he remained active, grounded in simple habits, home-cooked meals of vegetables, beans, and avocado, proper rest, and a life free from smoking or excess drinking. No extremes, no shortcuts, just quiet discipline.

In Linden, he isn’t seen as a statistic or a record. He’s a living story, a reminder that longevity isn’t luck alone, but a lifetime of resilience, reinvention, and remarkably ordinary choices done right.

Three Habits That Sound Simple But Are Anything But

Most people hear "don't drink, sleep well, don't smoke" and nod. Then they stay up too late, pour another glass of wine, and tell themselves they'll quit someday. The gap between knowing and doing is where most lifespans get quietly cut short.

What makes Cano's advice worth paying attention to isn't just that he's 111. It's that each of his three habits has been studied extensively and the findings are far more serious than a grandfather's gentle wisdom might suggest.

What Happens When You Skip Good Sleep

Sleep Is Not Rest, It's Repair

Researchers at Stanford Medicine describe sleep and mood as having a deeply connected, two-way relationship. When you sleep well, your brain processes emotional information, clears out waste products, consolidates memory, and resets the systems that help you regulate how you feel. When you don't even for one or two nights negative emotional reactivity increases, positive reactions to good events decrease, and the brain's ability to make sound judgments starts to deteriorate.

The Mood and Mind Connection

Research published across multiple institutions confirms that improving sleep quality leads to meaningful improvements in depression, anxiety, and the tendency to ruminate on negative thoughts. A large meta-analysis found that people who slept better reported significantly better overall wellbeing and life satisfaction and that the connection works in both directions. Better mood leads to better sleep. Better sleep leads to better mood.

What Chronic Poor Sleep Actually Does

Sleep is as essential to the body as eating, drinking, and breathing, and is vital for maintaining good physical and psychological health. Sleeping helps repair and restore the brain, not just the body. Yet up to one third of the population struggles with poor sleep or insomnia and many don't connect their low mood, poor focus, or emotional exhaustion back to it.

Sufficient sleep, especially REM sleep, helps the brain process emotional information. A lack of sleep is especially harmful to the consolidation of positive emotional content, which can influence mood and emotional reactivity and is tied to the severity of various psychological conditions.

How to Actually Improve Your Sleep

The good news is that sleep is one of the most responsive areas of health, small, consistent changes can produce noticeable results relatively quickly.

Keep a consistent bedtime. Going to sleep and waking up at the same time every day including weekends, helps regulate your body's internal clock. Even if the sleep isn't perfect, the regularity matters.

Make your bedroom a sleep-only space. Research on cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia consistently shows that associating the bed with relaxation — rather than scrolling, working, or anxiety — helps people fall asleep faster and wake up less often.

Limit screens before bed. The light from phones and laptops suppresses melatonin, the hormone that signals your brain it's time to sleep. Even 30 minutes of screen-free wind-down time makes a measurable difference.

Exercise regularly, but not too late. Brief bouts of physical activity, even 10 to 30 minutes have been shown to improve the quality of deep sleep by stimulating the release of endorphins, which reduce stress and help regulate the body's circadian rhythm.

 

The Real Cost of Drinking "Just a Little Too Much"

What Alcohol Actually Does to the Brain and Body

Many people believe alcohol helps them sleep. It does help them fall asleep faster. But that's where the benefit ends. While alcohol may reduce sleep onset latency, it disrupts sleep architecture, suppresses REM sleep, increases sleep fragmentation, and impairs breathing during sleep, particularly in the second half of the night.

The Psychological Toll

Research published in 2025 found that heavy alcohol consumption was associated with declines in both psychological and physical health with effects becoming apparent as early as the mid-thirties. Smoking was mainly linked to poorer psychological health, while heavy drinking showed significant decline in both areas.

Studies have also found that increased alcohol use is strongly associated with higher likelihood of developing mood disorders a connection that holds even for people who don't consider themselves heavy drinkers but whose consumption has quietly crept up over time.

The Bigger Picture

Luis Cano didn't say never drink. He said don't drink a lot. That distinction matters. The research largely agrees, it's habitual heavy drinking that accelerates aging, disrupts sleep, impairs brain function, and raises the risk of anxiety and depression over time. Moderate, occasional drinking in the context of an otherwise healthy lifestyle is far less concerning than the slow, consistent overconsumption that most people don't notice they've slipped into.

Practical Steps to Cut Back

Track it for one week. Most people underestimate how much they drink. Writing it down, without judgment is the first step to making an informed choice.

Replace the ritual, not just the drink. Often it's the end-of-day ritual that people are attached to, not the alcohol itself. A warm drink, a walk, or ten minutes of quiet can serve the same psychological purpose.

Identify the trigger. Stress, boredom, social pressure, and habit are the four most common drivers of drinking. Knowing which one applies helps you address the root cause rather than just the behavior.

Why Smoking Cuts Life Short in More Ways Than One

The Connection People Miss

Most people know smoking harms the lungs. Fewer know how directly it affects the brain. Research has found that smoking is particularly linked to poorer psychological wellbeing with depressive symptoms rising measurably among people who smoke long-term compared to those who don't.

Nicotine creates a cycle that is easy to mistake for relief. It temporarily reduces anxiety but only anxiety that was itself caused or worsened by nicotine withdrawal. The net effect over time is increased baseline anxiety, lower mood, and disrupted sleep.

What Quitting Actually Does

Within weeks of stopping smoking, many people report improvements in mood, energy, and sleep quality. Within months, lung function improves significantly. Within years, cardiovascular risk begins to drop toward that of a non-smoker. The body is remarkably good at recovery, if given the chance to start.

How to Make It Easier

Don't rely on willpower alone. Nicotine dependence is a physical condition, not a character flaw. Nicotine replacement therapy, prescription medications, and behavioral support have all been shown to significantly increase quit rates compared to going cold turkey.

Tell someone. Social accountability even just telling a friend or family member, increases the likelihood of following through. Luis Cano has spent over a century surrounded by family. That connection, research increasingly suggests, is itself a factor in longevity.

Replace the habit loop. Smoking is often tied to specific cues, after meals, during stress, with certain people. Identifying those cues and consciously building a different response to them is one of the most evidence-backed approaches to long-term cessation.

The Quiet Ingredient 

Luis Cano's three habits are well documented. But the people who have followed his story closely note something else, something he didn't put into words but demonstrated through 111 years of living.

He stayed connected. To family. To purpose. To a daily routine that gave his life structure and meaning. He has stressed that a calm routine, close contact with family, and gratitude for each day lived have been a way of life that accompanied him for more than a century.

Research on longevity consistently finds that social connection is among the strongest predictors of a long and healthy life more powerful than diet, exercise, or even some medical interventions. People who feel connected to others live longer, get sick less often, and recover faster when they do.

Cano, now spending his days remembering, reflecting, and sharing moments with his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, seems to understand this instinctively. The habits kept his body going. The people gave him a reason to.

Three Habits. One Century. One Man.

There is something quietly powerful about advice from a 111-year-old that matches what scientists have spent decades trying to prove. Don't drink a lot. Get good sleep. Don't smoke.

These aren't complicated. They don't require money, technology, or a personal trainer. They require consistency, which, when you think about it, is exactly what a century of living demands.

Luis Cano didn't stumble into his 111th year. He built his way there,  one unremarkable, well-slept, smoke-free, mostly sober day at a time.