The majority of the oldest people in the world are women and were all born in the 19th century. A supercentenarian (sometimes hyphenated as super-centenarian) is someone who has lived to or passed their 110th birthday. This age is achieved by about one in 1,000 centenarians or people who have lived to be 100.
Many of these are still around to show their wisdom about what they’ve learned over the past 100 plus years. Before she passed away, one of those great women was Lessie Brown.
Mrs. Brown was born in 1904 and said she moved to Cleveland from the south when she was a teenager in 1922. It was there that she met her husband and raised five children.
During her life in Cleveland, Brown worked at the Statler Hotel and Mount Sinai Hospital. After her husband’s death, Brown moved to live with her daughter Veerline in University Heights. Later on, the two moved to the Concord Apartments in 1996. Brown said she had had surgery twice in her life, but never for anything serious. Brown attended services at the Emmanuel Baptist Church.
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Mrs. Brown said it is God’s will that she has lived this long, but a steady diet of sweet potatoes also may have helped her health.
“Oh I don’t know. A lot of them say it’s because I ate a lot of sweet potatoes, but I don’t think that’s it. I don’t know, God’s will,” said Mrs. Brown. "God has blessed me and spared me to live this long."
But her eating a lot of sweet potatoes certainly didn't hurt.
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In addition to being great at fighting inflammation and diabetes, they also are effective for helping people quit addictions like smoking, drinking and taking certain narcotics. They are good for the health of the arteries and veins, as they protect their walls against hardening. And sweet potato's high concentration of beta carotene (an alternative form of vitamin-A) and phosphorus are excellent for both ocular and cardiac health.
Lessie's daughter, Bernie Wilson, told us that her mom used to love sweet potatoes. She even told a lot of people that would eat sweet potatoes. They thought that would give them longer lives too."
Mrs. Brown has 24 grandchildren, 44 great-grandchildren and 26 great great-grandchildren. That includes her oldest child who was 90 at the time to keep, which she had to keep track of every year. Whew!
It is overwhelmingly women who live to age 100. In 2010, 82.8 percent of centenarians were female. For every 100 females age 100 or older, there are only 20.7 males the same age. Females also make up 61.9 percent of those in their 80s and 72.2 percent of people in their 90s.
"We know that women are more social than men. Other studies have found that staying socially connected predicts greater life expectancy," says Gary Small, a professor on aging and director of the UCLA Longevity Center in Los Angeles, who is not affiliated with the Census Bureau report. "If you are social, it may reduce stress levels because you can talk about your feelings and things that stress you out and it seems to help many people. If you need a ride to the doctor or you fall, they can take you to the hospital or help you find the best doctor."
