A 78-year-old Oklahoma woman who was diagnosed with polio as a child and was the last American to rely on an iron lung to live has died.

Martha Lillard found out she had the once-feared disease when she was 5 years old, which left her paralyzed from the neck down, and required her to use the machine to help her breathe while she slept.

Lillard contracted COVID-19 twice during the pandemic, which left her in the machine nearly 24 hours a day.

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“They told her she wasn’t supposed to live past 20 years old,” her younger sister, Cindy McVey, told The Associated Press on Friday. “She had the enthusiasm and the drive to continue living and make the best of her life.”

Despite having polio, Lillard was able to go to school two hours a day as a child, and she had tutors the rest of the time. She also used an intercom phone system that allowed her to interact with her teachers and classmates from home.

Lillard was even able to take road trips as a child because of a custom trailer that could accommodate the iron lung and her father making sure their hotels had wide enough doors for the machine.

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An iron lung is a negative-pressure ventilator that would help a patient with paralyzed lung muscles breathe.

The disease once caused thousands of cases of paralysis in children during outbreaks each year in the first part of the 20th century before a vaccine became available in 1955.

By 1979, polio was considered eliminated in the U.S.

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Later, Lillard was able to regain the use of her left arm and legs through therapy and was even able to drive for a time.

She lived independently for many years, even getting married earlier this year to a man from Egypt she corresponded with for two decades after he was able to obtain a visa.

“They were really soul mates,” McVey said. “He’s extremely brokenhearted.”

Lillard, who wrote poetry and volunteered with the Humane Society, according to her sister, had just 25% lung capacity before she was diagnosed with COVID.

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She died of chronic pulmonary failure and post-polio syndrome, according to her death certificate.

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Her sister added that it was related to the effects of long-haul COVID.

The Associated Press contributed reporting.

Reducing your risk of cancer death may be as simple as taking brief breaks for physical activity throughout the day, according to a new observational study.

The study, led by researchers from the University of Glasgow studying the association between cancer and prolonged sedentary behavior, found that participants who regularly interrupted prolonged sitting with physical activity had a lower risk of cancer death.

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“This study adds to growing evidence that prolonged sedentary behavior is an independent health risk,” Dr. Georgia Spear, chief of breast imaging at Northwestern Medicine, told Fox News Digital.

“While it does not prove that sitting causes cancer, it suggests that long, uninterrupted periods of sitting are associated with a higher risk of cancer mortality,” Spear explained. “The findings reinforce existing public-health recommendations that regular movement throughout the day is an important component of cancer prevention.”

The researchers monitored 91,292 volunteer participants in the U.K. who wore movement-tracking devices on their wrists for seven days to track their sedentary habits. The scientists followed the volunteers’ health outcomes over the course of about 12 years.

The researchers defined prolonged sedentary behavior as any bout that lasted “at least 30 minutes and during which at least 90% of the time was sedentary.”

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They defined interrupted sitting as sessions that lasted fewer than 30 minutes or were interrupted by brief periods of physical activity.

Each additional hour per day of prolonged sedentary behavior was associated with a 10% higher risk of cancer death, the researchers reported in their study, published by PLOS Medicine.

Replacing one hour of sitting each day with light activity was associated with a 12% lower risk of cancer death. Replacing 30 minutes with moderate activity was linked to an 8% lower risk, and replacing just five minutes with vigorous activity was associated with a 22% lower risk.

The researchers classified light physical activity as walking at a low speed and performing household chores, such as ironing a shirt or washing dishes.

These findings should be interpreted with caution, the researchers wrote, “because the study cannot prove causality.”

The volunteers may not represent the wider population, they noted, “and the activity monitor captured behavior only during a limited period without showing the context of sedentary behavior, such as work, television viewing or driving.”

Spear said that existing research has linked sedentary behavior to obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and several cancers.

“What is notable here is the finding that how people sit appears to matter, not just the total amount,” she said. “Breaking up sitting with regular movement may provide measurable health benefits.”

According to Spear, other simple lifestyle strategies can be highly effective at reducing cancer-death risk.

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“Stand and move every 30 to 60 minutes, take short walking breaks, including after meals, use the stairs, walk during phone calls and incorporate light activity throughout the day,” she recommended.

“Combined with regular exercise, maintaining a healthy weight, limiting alcohol, not smoking and staying current with recommended cancer screening, these habits can help reduce the risk of breast cancer and other chronic diseases.”

A simple lifestyle adjustment could potentially slow down the body’s biological aging process, according to new research.

The study, published in the journal Aging, investigated how a diet change and easy exercise regimen affected men between the ages of 50 and 74 over a three-month period.

Researchers designed a clinical trial involving 48 overweight men in Japan. Over a 12-week period, half of the participants followed a strictly structured wellness routine, while the other half maintained their usual habits.

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For the intervention group, the routine required consuming 100 grams of plain yogurt every day.

This group also received individualized dietary counseling that advised them to curb overeating, avoid excessive snacking and cut out sugary drinks.

They were also instructed to walk or use a stepper machine for roughly 30 minutes a day, at least three days each week.

To measure the impact of these changes, the scientists collected blood samples from all participants before and after the study, and also analyzed DNA for chemical changes that act as indicators of cellular age.

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Specifically, they used a measurement tool called DunedinPACE. Rather than assessing a person’s chronological age in years, this tool calculates the precise rate at which an individual’s body is currently aging.

The men who consumed the probiotic yogurt, adjusted their diets and exercised showed a statistically significant reduction in their pace of aging compared to the control group, the researchers said.

On average, the speed of their biological aging slowed by approximately 2.2%. This reduction is roughly comparable to the slowing of biological aging observed in a previous two-year U.S. study, in which participants reduced their daily calorie intake by 25%.

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This reduction in aging speed happened independently of weight loss , meaning it did not directly correlate with changes in the participants’ body mass index or the exact number of exercise sessions they logged.

The researchers also recorded a noticeable improvement in a specific DNA marker that is linked to kidney function.

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Because this study combined three distinct factors — probiotics, diet and exercise — the authors concluded that the anti-aging benefits cannot be attributed to any single component. Instead, the slowed aging rate appears to be the result of a combined effect.

The researchers also acknowledged clear limitations of the study, including its small sample size and short duration. Also, the participant pool was restricted to overweight men of a single nationality.

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More research is needed to determine whether these short-term biological shifts can translate into permanent, long-term health benefits, the study stated.