Two 100-year-old Turkish women have confirmed that the way to a long life without much trouble is to rely on natural food that protects humans against doctors and treatments.
Aisha Gul Shahin, 104, lives in the southern area of Kilis, on the borders with Syria. She was born on July 1, 1913, and got married at a young age. She has 3 children, 30 grandchildren, who also have children. Shahin has made headlines, as she lives in good health, and says she spent most of her life in farming and raising livestock, and has only visited the doctor twice in her life.
She added: "Throughout my life, I consumed large amounts of molasses, natural buttermilk, milk, eggs, vegetables and fresh fruit."
She noted that she is still able to respond to her own needs without others’ help, and that she don’t feel any fatigue. Until the last four years, she woke up early in the morning and made her own bread, but she has not been able to move much lately.
Gul Shahin said she depended on natural food all along her life, and added: "I want to go out and walk around the village and talk to people as I used to do in the past."
The old woman from Kilis advises her children and grandchildren to consume large quantities of molasses and grapes. Her son Mohammed Shahin, 70, says he used to go regularly to the mountain with his mother to work before her health deteriorated.
On the other hand, the oldest Turkish woman, Asia Sutlu, who reached her 119th year, dreamed of being listed in the Guinness Records as the eldest woman in the world.
Sutlu, who lives in Turkey's southeast province of Bitlis, has attracted the Turkish and foreign media after celebrating her 118th birthday in April. Her identity card says she was born on April 17, 1899.
Sutlu says the secret to her long life is the consumption of organic food which she cultivates in her land; the old woman who only eats food from her village says: "We have always eaten the food we make with our own hands, such as yoghurt, “Kishk” made of lamb, chicken and wheat, and we have drunk Ayran (a drink made of milk and water) and medicinal herbs that we collect from the mountains ... there is no more healthy food these days."
The Ministry for Women and Family in Turkey celebrated Sutlu’s birthday on May 23, when a delegate from the Ministry visited her village in the Hizan district of Bitlis with a cake.
Sutlu recalls the days she used to go to the mountain to feed and milk cows, and carry firewood to her village. She lost her husband 46 years ago at the age of 73.
The old woman from Bitlis has 69 grandchildren and lives with her daughter-in-law. The municipality is responsible for providing her needs and her health care.
No international body has yet taken action to classify Sutlu as the oldest in the world, but the woman aims to hold the title before her death and to be listed in the Guinness Records.
The birth date featured on her identity card would make her the oldest person in the world, older than Emma Murano, who was announced the oldest person in the world before her death in Italy last April at the age of 117, and was the last person in the world born in the nineteenth century.
Sutlu was also born before Jamaican Violet Brown, born on March 10, 1900, now classified as the world's oldest person by the Gerontology Research Group, which documents people's ages through reliable birth documents.
