My Plan For Health

From Shelly Dembe's Web site, A Healthier Balance

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

This blog has given me a lot to be thankful for. I’ve learned that I can make changes in my life at age 39 that make me feel better and help me enjoy life more. I’ve discovered that there are many resources at Ohio State to help me accomplish my goals.  I’ve had the chance to write about health and fitness for the first time in years. And I’ve enjoyed the support of so many people across campus — including those who notice when I don’t post updates for a while. For that I am thankful indeed!

But this year, the thing that I am most thankful for is dancing.

I’ve been studying belly dance at Habeeba’s in Grandview, and yoga dance at Ohio State through Lunch & Learn. The classes are very different — Habeeba’s technique is very controlled, while yoga dance is about moving however your spirit takes you.

Habeeba's dancers at the Upper Arlington Labor Day Arts Festival 2009

Yoga dance teacher Shelly Dembe, RN, tells us to “move like no one is watching.” There is just something about Shelly. She can get a roomful of self-conscious people to open up and dance as if we’ve been doing so all our lives. Her class is the most fun I’ve had since kindergarten.

“Think about how you felt when you got here,” she said to me after class, “and how you feel now. That’s what it’s all about.” She’s right — I always arrive tense from the office, and leave relaxed and buoyant.

Belly dancing has been a different experience. The class has been difficult, and I must have quit and unquit dozens of times early on. Now I love it and can’t imagine not doing it.

Me dancing on stage after the show. It's the shades that make the look.

I worked backstage at a Habeeba’s performance at the Upper Arlington Labor Day Arts Festival, and one of my teachers even pulled me onto the stage afterwards. More recently, after we’d just finished learning a new move in class, teacher Sharon Buhrts got me to think about how far I’ve come. “When you got here, you were afraid to move your arms,” she said, “and now look at you!”

I turned to Susan Van Pelt Petry, professor and chair of the Department of Dance at Ohio State, for an academic perspective on all this fun I’ve been having. The following text is from our email Q&A.

Enjoy, everyone, and have a healthy and happy Thanksgiving. Dance with those you love — to burn some holiday calories, and let your spirit soar.

PFG: Do you have any advice for people who are pursuing dance for fitness, such as myself?

Susan Van Pelt Petry

SVPP: Find a teacher who has some dance credentials - either a degree in dance, professional experience, membership in a professional dance organization, etc. Notice if the teacher communicates instruction about movement with clarity and anatomical awareness. They should be able to address things such as how to protect knee joints, how to develop core strength so the back is not at risk of injury, and how to pace a class for appropriate levels of muscle fatigue, stamina building, warmth, and flexibility.

A dance class should have an aesthetic component – it is an art form and one of the reasons it can be an attractive way to “exercise” is that it has that very quality of the mind that makes moving a pleasurable, engaging activity, and not just something to check off your list. Seek an experience where you feel the quality of your body and moving changes, where there are sensations of lightness, resistance, speed, etc. and not just the making of exterior “shape.”

PFG: I am taking two dance classes right now — belly dancing and yoga dance. The form of belly dance I’m studying is Habeeba’s, which is largely based on ballet, and thus very structured and controlled (and up on our toes!). The yoga dance is unstructured, freeform. I enjoy both very much! Can you tell me — what different benefits might I gain from the structured dance versus the unstructured?

SVPP: More structured classes teach dance “vocabulary” and instruct in the building blocks of a style. Often the style will have a cultural or historical context and that can be a very interesting and satisfying experience. In a more structured class one might be able to assess one’s progress quite clearly, as skills get added as you progress through movement sequences. In a less structured class, such as an improvisation group, or some forms of modern dance, or hybrid styles such as “yoga dance,” you have the advantage of learning more perhaps about yourself and you learn how to observe your movement from inside and not from outside instruction. In a less structured class there is often a higher degree of creativity, and that can be very fun. There might be less physical rigor as it is more self-driven.

PFG: Dancing is uplifting, psychologically. For instance, I’m more confident and I don’t mind wearing more revealing clothing (especially while I’m belly dancing — it helps me see my moves in the mirror, right?). The yoga dance is uplifting because it’s just wild and crazy and fun. Would you have any comment about how dance has been uplifting for you personally? Do you find that many people (dilettantes such as myself) get this kind of emotional boost from dancing?

SVPP: Absolutely! Very uplifting. Dancers even joke they get addicted to it…. And there are studies that show there is real brain chemistry that changes as exercise, music, and expression conjoin for powerful rise of seratonin levels. I am at my desk a lot more these days, and I do feel fundamentally somewhat diminished without dancing as much as I used to.

The latest edition of Netwell arrived in my mailbox this morning, and… Yes! Registration for Autumn Quarter Lunch & Learn is open. [The new Netwell doesn't appear to be online yet, but when it is, I suspect it will appear here.]

I’m really excited about this quarter, because almost all of the offerings are new. Longtime L&L yoga instructor Marla Musyt is teaching pilates, as well as a class on back strengthening catchily titled “Back at ‘Cha.” (Back at ‘cha, Marla!)

Shelly Denbe, RN, is bringing her “Danskinetics” yoga-dance class to L&L, and I’ve already signed up. Yoga is great, dancing is great –  so the combination must be really great, right?

There are also lunchtime seminars on eating local and eating mindfully, as well as a healthy holiday luncheon at the Faculty Club.

All events are free except the Faculty Club lunch, which costs $11. I am so there.

The cities of Hilliard and Upper Arlington are offering some free fitness classes and special deals this fall.

Shannon L. Chaney, Upper Arlington LifeLong Learning & Leisure (LLL) Director, tipped me off to a week of free classes and a discount:

LifeLong Learning & Leisure is featuring a free fitness week from September 14-18 for any of the LLL exercise classes listed on the fitness grid in our 2009 fall catalog. Current and new students are welcome to try out a class they are not currently enrolled in and will need to sign the waiver form provided. Because there is no way for us to monitor attendance, participation will be dependent on space availability. Call 583-5333 for more information.

Take Zumba and Floor, Core & More and Save!
Take advantage of this limited-time fall fitness promotion. Students who register for the same full sections of Floor, Core & More and Zumba in one transaction will receive a 50% discount on their class fee for Floor, Core & More. The pairing of these two complementary classes gives students a well-rounded two-hour workout to enjoy twice a week as part of their regular fitness routine.

LLL class descriptions and online registration are here.

I highly recommend Molly Ohsner’s “Morning Total Body Workout.” Here’s the description:

Morning Total Body Workout
with Molly Ohsner, AFAA Certified, Exer-Safety Certified
This well-rounded class offers variety – simple aerobic movements, weight training using hand-held weights, abdominal strengthening, stretching and relaxation. Bring good aerobic shoes, a mat and a water bottle. Weights are provided. Class can be prorated for two days a week.
TIME: 9:30-10:30 AM, Monday, Wednesday & Friday
LOCATION: Marjorie Jones School of Ballet

I wish I could make it to a mid-morning class, but I just can’t… Molly’s Full Size Fitness class was my first foray into fitness classes all those years ago, and she put me on the road to losing my first 100 lbs. I would describe her class as mostly aerobic dance, as it contains lots of music and simple choreography.

It always meant a lot to me that she had the Exer-Safety certification, because I knew she would offer good counsel on preventing injury. Plus Molly is such a kind and genuine person that she made the class fun. I’m still good friends with some of the people I met there.

Meanwhile, as a Hilliard Recreation and Parks member, I received this email:

The Hilliard Recreation and Parks Department has a few new offerings!

Free Yoga Wellbeing Class
Stop in the Community Center on Wednesday, September 16 at 6:45PM to try out our Yoga Class for FREE!  This movement class follows the classical Hatha Yoga postures of breathing, meditation and relaxation techniques.  Gain flexibility, energy and strength.

The Hilliard Fall and Winter Program Guide and online registration are here.

I have to say, Upper Arlington has Hilliard beat for the sheer breadth of course offerings and ease of online registration. And while the UA course book is in PDF format, Hilliard inexplicably chose to offer its book as a series of high-resolution bitmap images which take a long time to load in a Web browser. Go figure.

Faculty and staff can find similar classes for free through the university Wellness Program, or through membership in RPAC, the Faculty and Staff Fitness Program, or the Center for Wellness and Prevention. But if you want to take fitness classes with friends or family members who don’t work at the university, or if you just want a class that’s closer to home, I think these community classes are a bargain for the money.

Reader and FSFP water aerobics compatriot Susan just posted a comment on my review of the Healthy Grocery Lunch & Learn asking for recipes. You can scroll down here to read my reply to her for some suggested resources, but below is a list of recipes that I happened to put together for a friend recently. These are favorites around the Gorder household. If you try them, let me know how they turn out.

1. Tex-Mex Lasagna (could be vegan if you use soy cheese). Really easy to make. I like to put it together the night before we have guests, and then cook it right before they arrive. It stores very well.

2. Orange rice (recipe calls for cooking the rice in chicken stock, but you can use vegetable stock with no problem). I’ve played around with this recipe a bit by using pineapple instead of mandarin oranges, and it turned out tasty! I just cook it in the rice machine (without the pork chops, of course).

3. Pasta with Szechwan Peanut Dressing. Highly addictive! If you are interested in vegetarian cooking in general, I highly recommend the book this comes from: The 15-Minute Vegetarian Gourmet by Paulette Mitchell. It’s the first cookbook I ever owned, and the most loved. It describes all the different grains, and different kinds of tofu, and how to make sure you get enough protein, etc. Technically, it’s a lacto-ovo vegetarian book, meaning that some of the recipes use real milk and eggs. I substitute “fake” peanut butter made from yogurt to reduce the fat in this one.

4. Quinoa Pie with Butternut Squash. Insanely complicated recipe, ’cause it’s from Martha Stewart. But tasty.

5. Smoky White Bean Soup

6. Creamy Porcini Barley Soup

7. Ginger sauce

A few comments:

• One of the things that the dietitian stressed during the Lunch & Learn is that spicing food is a good way to add flavor without adding fat and calories. The orange rice recipe above is from Penzeys Spices, and I can’t tell you how lucky I feel to live in a city with an actual Penzeys store. You should go there. It’s like an amusement park for your nose.
• Cooking healthy does not necessarily mean cooking vegetarian. This is just the route that I have elected to follow, and I don’t even follow it religiously. I still eat meat once in a while, usually at restaurants. I just can’t remember the last time I cooked meat at home.
• I describe the quinoa recipe above as “insanely complicated,” and it is by my standards, since I tend to cook dishes where you just throw everything in a pot, and this recipe has multiple steps. But even if you don’t want to make it, it does give you one example of foods/flavors that work well with quinoa.

Have any recipes to share with me? Send them along, or leave them in the comments below.

After attending the Lunch & Learn program “Knowing Your Medicines: How to Be an Effective Consumer,” I am both amazed at the number of medications available on the OSU health plan, and glad that there are pharmacists on staff to help us understand them all.

Amanda Bain, a pharmacist with OSU Managed Healthcare Systems, talked us through the prescription benefit plan. She pointed to an online formulary which lists all the drugs that are covered.

Most importantly, she listed some questions every patient should ask his or her doctor when taking a new drug.  Obviously, we need to know how often to take a drug, but Bain said that we should also ask what time of day to take it, and then ask why.

She gave the example of a patient who was taking a drug that caused her to take frequent bathroom breaks at work. Her doctor had told her to take the drug every morning, because he assumed that she wouldn’t want to wake up at night to go to the bathroom, but the patient didn’t know that. By talking to her pharmacist, the patient discovered that she could choose to take the drug at night, in order to avoid interruptions at work.

I asked Bain something I’ve always wanted to know, which is what to do when I miss a dose of a daily medication. How many hours have to pass before I should just decide to wait until the next day to take my normal dose? She said that, in most cases, if you remember to take the drug within 12 hours, to go ahead and take it. But it’s best to call the pharmacy or Express Scripts if you have any doubts.

I also asked about pain medication. Since I exercise nearly every day, I also find myself taking over-the-counter pain meds nearly every day. Bain said that if I am taking meds that often I should probably talk to my doctor about it. She also wondered if I was overdoing my exercise routine, and I’m pretty sure I’m not — the good folks at the Faculty and Staff Fitness Program have me covered.

Shopping healthy requires knowledge and organization.

That was the lesson of the Lunch & Learn seminar on healthy grocery store shopping.  Jenny Anderson, a registered dietitian and newest member of the OSU Wellness team, offered tips on how to shop smart.

Surveys show that 70 percent of people bring lists with them to the grocery store, but only 10 percent actually adhere to them, Anderson said. And for every item on our shopping list that we put into our carts, most of us add two impulse items. Where do those impulse items come from?

“From the moment we pull into the parking lot, we are marketed to,” Anderson said. In the aisles and in the check-out line, products are placed to get our attention. These are not necessarily healthy products; they are the products that bring grocery stores the most profit.

Healthy foods on display at the Lunch & Learn

Not surprisingly, Anderson said that a healthy diet contains low-fat, high-protein foods and whole grains, and lots of fruits and vegetables. The easiest way to get all these foods into your diet is to cook healthy food at home.

This is usually where I stall out of the healthy eating process… I don’t do all that much cooking from scratch. I buy a lot of convenience foods.

But, to my surprise, Anderson mentioned some healthy convenience foods, and I was pleased to find that I already had most of them at home: frozen edamame, whole wheat couscous, low-fat yogurt, and frozen veggie burgers. She also mentioned grains such as quinoa, which I can happily cook in my rice maker with little effort.

Quinoa (pronounced KEEN-wah) is a South American grain, and it’s unusual in that it contains a complete protein. We can get complete proteins from meat, but getting them from vegetables requires a little ingenuity (just ask a vegetarian) and combinations of foods, such as rice and beans. Quinoa has the protein goin’ on all by itself.

Red quinoa -- has kind of a red pepper flavor

Anderson handed out sample grocery lists and menus for cooking at home. Click here for a PDF. She advocates planning a week’s worth of meals ahead of time, and buying only the fresh food you need for that week. Pantry staples like grains and canned goods make up the rest.

All this healthy shopping and cooking is easier if you’re organized, and Anderson recommended cleaning and prepping your food as soon as you get home. Her coolest tip: store lettuce in your salad spinner (note to self: buy a salad spinner). When you bring a fresh head of lettuce home, pull it apart and wash it in the salad spinner, then leave it there in the fridge. The sald will have just a little moisture with air freely flowing around it — the ideal conditions for keeping it fresh longer.

She also recommended buying pre-chopped vegetables (from salad bars and such) to save time. I was way ahead of her on that one. I joke that I like my food pre-washed, pre-chopped, and hermetically sealed… Actually, now that I think about it, I’m not joking. Pre-prepared foods are incredibly convenient. One lesson from Anderson’s Lunch & Learn was that prepared foods don’t have to be unhealthy if you know what you’re buying.

Bonus: Today on one of my favorite blogs, I’m an Organizing Junkie, a guest blogger shares some tips on kitchen organization for healthy eating.

Yes, I read a blog called I’m an Organizing Junkie. I like to optimize, thankyouverymuch!

Forgive me if my blog seems a little off today. I’m having trouble reading my computer screen. The text seems jagged and jumpy. I’m also groggy and feeling a lot of sinus pressure.

Yesterday, I had a migraine. Still feeling the after effects.

I could blame it on some absolutely delicious smoked turkey that I bought at the North Market on Saturday. But he culprit could also have been the red wine I drank with dinner, or the storm front that came in over the weekend.

More likely, it was a combination of all three. That’s what I learned at the Lunch & Learn program on Diet and Migraine offered by Michal Hogan, registered dietitian at Nutrition Results.

Researchers have studied diet and migraine for decades, but such studies are very difficult to do. There are many possible food triggers, and sometimes it’s not one food but the cumulative effects of several foods eaten within a certain time frame that triggers the migraine.

Hogan presented a detailed lecture on diet and migraine, including a survey of the scientific literature (email me if you’d like to see the references). Food is only one cause of migraines — other causes include weather changes and stress. In one study, eliminating trigger foods helped 2/3 of migraine sufferers.

Image from Nutritionresults.com

Migraines are caused by inflammation, which is the body’s  immune response to injury or invading pathogens. While scientists are still unsure how this happens in a migraine, some people’s immune systems appear to be irritated by certain foods, and the immune response causes inflammation of the blood vessels around the brain.

Hogan recommends mediator release testing (MRT) — a blood test that measures how a person’s white blood cells and platelets respond to 120 staple foods and chemicals. The patient then removes trigger foods from his or her diet, and gradually re-introduces foods one at a time to make the diet as inclusive as possible.

WebMD offers an extensive list of foods that are known to trigger migraines. Armed with this information, some people can try to remove foods from their diet without seeking medical help. But with so many foods on the list (and allowing for the possibility of interactions between them), it would be very hard for a person to guess the right combination of foods to remove from their diet. “Guessing right would be like winning the lottery,” Hogan said.

One snag: this therapy is not completely covered by the university medical plan. The office visit is covered, but the MRT test itself is only discounted. Hogan said the situation is similar to the university vision plan, where visits to the eye doctor are covered but glasses are not completely covered.

Maybe that situation will change, as researchers learn more about the link between diet and migraine. The costs to society are already substantial. Hogan cited a 2006 study that found that migraines cost U.S. employers $24 billion annually — $12 billion in direct costs such as medicines and emergency room visits, and another $12 billion in lost worker productivity.

I mentioned when I drew up my vision board that one of my health goals is to better understand what causes migraines, and learn how to prevent them.

The Faculty and Staff Wellness Program is offering a Lunch & Learn event on diet and migraines on May 14. I signed up, and I see from the Web site that spots are still available.

Nobody knows the exact cause of migraines, but certain foods appear to trigger migraines in some people. So I would like to learn more about the clinical research in this area and how I can prevent my own migraines.

Here’s the event description:

DIET AND MIGRAINE - Is Your Food Making You Sick? 12:00 Noon - 1:00 P.M.

Date: Thursday, May 14, 2009

Location: Research Foundation, 1960 Kenny Road, Room: 113

Details: Inflammation is part of the body’s defense against microbial invasion, but what if your body thinks food is the enemy? New advances in technology shed light on painful conditions previously thought to be merely functional or psychological. Explore new therapies pinpointing these enigmatic triggers of migraine symptoms.

Instructor: Michal Hogan, RD,LD,CLT, Nutrition Results

Here’s what I know from talking to my doctor: migraine pain is caused by inflammation of the tissues surrounding the brain. The inflammation is caused by blood vessels dilating. This is the opposite of a tension headache, in which the blood vessels constrict. Migraines also bring symptoms that tension headaches do not, such as nausea and sensitivity to light and sound. People often see little flashes of light, called auras, just before a migraine starts.

I’ve suffered migraines since I was a teenager. When one’s about to strike, I do see auras — they look like little flashes of lightning out of the corner of my eye — but I also smell a certain smell. It’s a very strong, sweet smell — sort of like a cross between burnt sugar and gasoline — and it comes in little bursts, like the lightning.

As much as I hate migraines, I think it’s sort of neat that my brain produces these sensory hallucinations in response to blood vessel behavior. And in a way, I’m lucky that I get these little warning signs — it’s my brain’s way of saying “Medicate — NOW.”

While I can often pre-empt migraines by taking an anti-inflammatory drug such as ibuprofen before the pain starts, that doesn’t always work. So my doctor gave me a prescription for a vasoconstrictor. This is a drug that forces my blood vessels to constrict, thus shutting off the migraine. At least, that’s what it feels like. I feel a flush, and then the throbbing in my head just stops.

Not everybody can take this kind of drug, though. People with high blood pressure, for example, can’t take a vasoconstrictor. There are other migraine drugs that work in different ways. So, as the commercials say, talk to your doctor.

I was actually afraid to ask my doctor for migraine medication. I thought she might suspect me of fishing for narcotics. But today’s migraine drugs aren’t painkillers — they work by other means, like my vasoconstrictor.

While I’m glad to have pharmaceutical science on my side, I would still like to prevent migraines from happening altogether. If I can make small dietary changes that help, well, I’m all for it.

Sign up for Lunch & Learn here.

WebMD also has an excellent Web site all about migraines.