Eleanor Brownn founded Life-Long: Sisters Staying Healthy after having an “aha!” moment at a women’s health conference in San Francisco.
Jake Stevens /
Los Angeles Times
Bad habits are a target for Sisters Staying Healthy, a group of African American women learning how to grow old well.
By Maria L. La Ganga
Etta Cummings stood in the back of a small room filled with sympathetic faces. Her failing eyes were obscured by big, dark glasses. She leaned on her cane, clutched her bright caftan and prepared to take one very big step.
"My name is Etta Cummings. I'm a diabetic. My diabetes is totally out of control. I didn't take it seriously for many, many years," she said by way of introduction. "By this time, my health started deteriorating, so I'm on the run to correct it."
Heads nodded in support. Other women's stories poured forth. Of diabetes and struggles with weight. The difficulty of caregiving and the effort of exercise. The temptation of unhealthy food and the jettisoning of "toxic relationships." The fear of doctors and the burden of stress -- code, to many of those present, for depression.
One Thursday evening each month, a dozen or so African American women in their 50s or older make their way to the third-floor lounge at Olympia Medical Plaza in Mid-Wilshire to learn how to grow old well. After half a century or more of putting other people first, of bad habits and backsliding, they have decided they want to change their lives and help one another do the same.
For this sisterhood of the hopeful and health-minded, Cummings was both fellow striver and cautionary tale. The wiry 69-year-old had discovered a diabetic ulcer in her foot. She went to the doctor, she told the group during this, her first meeting, because she couldn't see the wound, couldn't bandage it, "but I could smell it."
The fact that these women, a.k.a. Sisters Staying Healthy, meet each month to talk about dementia and brain fitness, menopause and sexual health, stress reduction and vegetarian cooking is unusual enough in an era in which Americans spend billions of dollars to avoid aging altogether.
But what they are trying to do is even harder because of who they are. African American women are among the least healthy women in America. Even in health-conscious Los Angeles, they have the highest death rates from all causes, but especially from heart disease, stroke, diabetes and cancer.
"There is inequality in life expectancy," said Eleanor Brownn, the group's founder, champion, cheerleader and increasingly slender poster child. "It's not just the length of your life, but also, when you start looking at African Americans, we're sicker than everybody."
But not if Brownn can do something about it. [rc]
Click here to continue reading
Maria L. La Ganga
E-Mail: maria.laganga@latimes.com
Copyright 2009 Los Angeles Times
July 13, 2009
USA: They're doing a feel-good thing
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LOS ANGELES, California / Los Angeles Times / Top News / July 13, 2009
Column One
They're doing a feel-good thing
Eleanor Brownn founded Life-Long: Sisters Staying Healthy after having an “aha!” moment at a women’s health conference in San Francisco.
Jake Stevens /
Los Angeles Times
Bad habits are a target for Sisters Staying Healthy, a group of African American women learning how to grow old well.
By Maria L. La Ganga
Etta Cummings stood in the back of a small room filled with sympathetic faces. Her failing eyes were obscured by big, dark glasses. She leaned on her cane, clutched her bright caftan and prepared to take one very big step.
"My name is Etta Cummings. I'm a diabetic. My diabetes is totally out of control. I didn't take it seriously for many, many years," she said by way of introduction. "By this time, my health started deteriorating, so I'm on the run to correct it."
Heads nodded in support. Other women's stories poured forth. Of diabetes and struggles with weight. The difficulty of caregiving and the effort of exercise. The temptation of unhealthy food and the jettisoning of "toxic relationships." The fear of doctors and the burden of stress -- code, to many of those present, for depression.
One Thursday evening each month, a dozen or so African American women in their 50s or older make their way to the third-floor lounge at Olympia Medical Plaza in Mid-Wilshire to learn how to grow old well. After half a century or more of putting other people first, of bad habits and backsliding, they have decided they want to change their lives and help one another do the same.
For this sisterhood of the hopeful and health-minded, Cummings was both fellow striver and cautionary tale. The wiry 69-year-old had discovered a diabetic ulcer in her foot. She went to the doctor, she told the group during this, her first meeting, because she couldn't see the wound, couldn't bandage it, "but I could smell it."
The fact that these women, a.k.a. Sisters Staying Healthy, meet each month to talk about dementia and brain fitness, menopause and sexual health, stress reduction and vegetarian cooking is unusual enough in an era in which Americans spend billions of dollars to avoid aging altogether.
But what they are trying to do is even harder because of who they are. African American women are among the least healthy women in America. Even in health-conscious Los Angeles, they have the highest death rates from all causes, but especially from heart disease, stroke, diabetes and cancer.
"There is inequality in life expectancy," said Eleanor Brownn, the group's founder, champion, cheerleader and increasingly slender poster child. "It's not just the length of your life, but also, when you start looking at African Americans, we're sicker than everybody."
But not if Brownn can do something about it. [rc]
Click here to continue reading
Maria L. La Ganga
E-Mail: maria.laganga@latimes.com
Copyright 2009 Los Angeles Times
Eleanor Brownn founded Life-Long: Sisters Staying Healthy after having an “aha!” moment at a women’s health conference in San Francisco.
Jake Stevens /
Los Angeles Times
Bad habits are a target for Sisters Staying Healthy, a group of African American women learning how to grow old well.
By Maria L. La Ganga
Etta Cummings stood in the back of a small room filled with sympathetic faces. Her failing eyes were obscured by big, dark glasses. She leaned on her cane, clutched her bright caftan and prepared to take one very big step.
"My name is Etta Cummings. I'm a diabetic. My diabetes is totally out of control. I didn't take it seriously for many, many years," she said by way of introduction. "By this time, my health started deteriorating, so I'm on the run to correct it."
Heads nodded in support. Other women's stories poured forth. Of diabetes and struggles with weight. The difficulty of caregiving and the effort of exercise. The temptation of unhealthy food and the jettisoning of "toxic relationships." The fear of doctors and the burden of stress -- code, to many of those present, for depression.
One Thursday evening each month, a dozen or so African American women in their 50s or older make their way to the third-floor lounge at Olympia Medical Plaza in Mid-Wilshire to learn how to grow old well. After half a century or more of putting other people first, of bad habits and backsliding, they have decided they want to change their lives and help one another do the same.
For this sisterhood of the hopeful and health-minded, Cummings was both fellow striver and cautionary tale. The wiry 69-year-old had discovered a diabetic ulcer in her foot. She went to the doctor, she told the group during this, her first meeting, because she couldn't see the wound, couldn't bandage it, "but I could smell it."
The fact that these women, a.k.a. Sisters Staying Healthy, meet each month to talk about dementia and brain fitness, menopause and sexual health, stress reduction and vegetarian cooking is unusual enough in an era in which Americans spend billions of dollars to avoid aging altogether.
But what they are trying to do is even harder because of who they are. African American women are among the least healthy women in America. Even in health-conscious Los Angeles, they have the highest death rates from all causes, but especially from heart disease, stroke, diabetes and cancer.
"There is inequality in life expectancy," said Eleanor Brownn, the group's founder, champion, cheerleader and increasingly slender poster child. "It's not just the length of your life, but also, when you start looking at African Americans, we're sicker than everybody."
But not if Brownn can do something about it. [rc]
Click here to continue reading
Maria L. La Ganga
E-Mail: maria.laganga@latimes.com
Copyright 2009 Los Angeles Times
