The Delany Sisters' Tips For Healthy Living

At 105 and 103 years old, Sadie and Bessie Delany might very well have a few "secrets" to their healthy longevity. In this second of two excerpts from their new book, "The Delany Sisters' Book of Everyday Wisdom," the sisters share their nutritional and exercise regimes, and give some pointers to "older folks" on how to maintain personal dignity and control of their lives during their later years.

Bessie Delany: Folks constantly ask about the "secret" that has kept us alive so long. Well, that's something only the Lord can say! We try our best to preserve our health, and one way we do it is to watch what we eat and drink.

We start our day by drinking a full glass of water, followed by a teaspoon of cod liver oil and a whole clove of garlic. A whole, raw clove - that's right. Garlic is good for preventing colds, and it's good for your bowels. We chop the clove as finely as we can, then scoop it up with a spoon, and swallow it all at once, without chewing, to prevent odor. We wash it down with one glass of cold water, then one glass of hot water.

Then we fix our breakfast. In the past few years we've found that breakfast is our most important meal. It's our biggest meal of the day, and we eat it right after we do our exercises. We have a scrambled egg each, a hard roll and fruit, along with a bowl of oatmeal. I mean home-cooked oatmeal, not that instant stuff.

We have a good meal at midday. Northern folks call that lunch. We Southern gals call it dinner. We eat chicken or beef - although we love fish, we don't eat it much today. We worry about its being contaminated. In the evening, we make ourselves a big vanilla milk shake. It's not good to eat your big meal toward the end of the day.

Plenty of vitamins

Every day we take vitamin supplements: vitamin A, B complex, C, D, E, along with zinc and tyrosine. We vary the amount depending on how we've been feeling lately. For example, if I start to get a little tickle in my throat like I am going to get a cold, I take more vitamin C. Antioxidant vitamins are the best. We think it's best to get your vitamins naturally, from foods you eat, but supplements are a good idea.

I keep saying "we," but the truth is Sadie's the one in charge of our health. She makes me take my cod liver oil - I can't stand the nasty stuff - and eat what she tells me.

She drives me a little crazy but I guess she's doing something right! I have 103 years of living to show for it.

Sadie Delany: There's another thing I make Bessie do that she doesn't like too much, and that's exercise. You've got to exercise, not just for your heart and lungs, but to keep from stiffening up. It keeps you limber, and that's important when you get older.

We started doing yoga about 40 years ago. You don't have to get down on the floor and do yoga. You can get exercise from doing housework, gardening, all kinds of things - anything's better than sitting on your behind all day long.

Bessie: Alcohol is a little indulgence that's OK, as long as you use it in moderation. It can help you relax and that's good. But we don't go in for that store-bought stuff. Instead, we make our own with the rose petals from our garden.

Water, of course, is the most important drink, and so we're very careful about ours. Why, we'd never dream of drinking it straight from the tap. We boil it first to purify it, then when it cools down, we store it in glass jars.

That's what smart folks did in our day. Another thing we do is wash our hands the minute we walk in the house, the way Mama taught us. She was the cleanest woman alive!

Clean livin' - that's what we believe in. And hygiene's only part of it. We also try to stay pure of heart.

A word to older folks:

1. Keep your own calendar. The most important thing in your life is your time, and nothing will make you feel as helpless as having other people run it for you.

2. Manage your own money, but be careful about it. Pay your own bills and balance your checkbook for as long as you can. When the time comes that someone has to take a hand in your finances, make sure you understand everything he does. If other people take charge of your money, it's easy to lose control of your life.

3. Have your own doctor, who answers to you. If you don't, when the time comes that you get mixed up with hospitals, they'll treat you like a fool. You're bound to lose your health at some point, but you don't have to lose your dignity, too.

4. Don't depend too much on any one person. If you have a lot of helpers, you can be sure that someone will always be available when you need it.

5. Don't be too proud to accept your limitations. The hardest thing is discovering that you can't do everything the way you used to. But make sure you hire folks who do what you want. It's still your house, and you're still the boss!

Sadie: This is going to sound kind of crazy to some folks, but we aren't worried about dying one bit. We're hopeful that we'll get to heaven. And won't it be the greatest pleasure to see Mama and Papa again?

But you know, we aren't ready to give up yet, unless the Lord makes up His mind that it's finally time to call us. In the meantime, like all human beings, we want to keep on living. As Bessie says, "Heaven is my home but, honey, I ain't homesick!"

When our time comes, we're going to be buried in the family plot in Raleigh. Bessie and I will be buried side by side - right next to Mama and Papa.

We couldn't ask for anything more.

Excerpted from "The Delany Sisters' Book of Everyday Wisdom," by Sarah and A. Elizabeth Delany with Amy Hill Hearth. Copyright 1995, Having Our Say Again Inc. Published by Kodansha America Inc. Distributed by Universal Press Syndicate)