Centenarian

A centenarian is a person who lives to or beyond the age of 100 years. Because current average global life expectancies are less than 100, the term is invariably associated with longevity. A supercentenarian is a person who has lived to the age of 110 or more, something only achieved by about one in 1,000 centenarians. Even rarer is a person who has lived to age 115 – as of October 2012, there are only 28 people in recorded history who have indisputably reached this age, three of whom are still living: Besse Cooper, Dina Manfredini and Jiroemon Kimura. In 2009, the United Nations estimated that there were 455,000 living centenarians worldwide.

The United States currently has the greatest number of known centenarians of any nation, estimated at 70,490 as of 1 September 2010. This corresponds to a national incidence of one centenarian per 4,400 people.

Japan has the second-largest number of centenarians, with an estimated 51,376 as of September 2012. Many experts attribute Japan's high life expectancy to the Japanese diet, which is particularly low in refined simple carbohydrates, and to hygienic practices.

Men and women who are 100 or older tend to have something else in common, an extraverted personality. Centenarians will often have many friends, strong ties to relatives and a healthy dose of self-esteem. In addition, some research suggests that centenarian offspring are more likely to age in better cardiovascular health than their peers.

In John W. Santrock's book "A Topical Approach to Life-Span Development", there are five factors that research has suggested are most important to longevity in centenarians:

• heredity and family history
• health, i.e. weight, diet, whether or not a person smokes, amount of exercise
• education level
• personality
• lifestyle

Santrock's book also noted that the largest group of centenarians are women who have never been married. Also, people who have been through traumatic life events, such as Holocaust survivors, learn to cope better with stress and poverty and are more likely to reach centenarian status.

In Okinawa, Japan, studies have shown five factors that have contributed to the large number of centenarians in that region:

• A diet that is heavy on grains, fish, and vegetables and light on meat, eggs, and dairy products
• Low-stress lifestyles, which are proven significantly less stressful than that of the mainland inhabitants of Japan
• A caring community, where older adults are not isolated and are taken better care of.
• High levels of activity, where locals work until an older age than the average age in other countries, and more emphasis on activities like walking and gardening to keep active
• Spirituality, where a sense of purpose comes from involvement in spiritual matters and prayer eases the mind of stress and problems.

My grandmother lived 90 something. So we must have some gene of longevity in my family :-))))