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.

I ate organic food before “organic” was cool.

When I was growing up, many people in my small Ohio River town grew vegetables. My mother grew corn, zucchini, and tomatoes — so many tomatoes! Neighbors shared what they grew, so we ate home-grown potatoes, peppers, and cabbage, too, among many other choices.

Maybe that’s why the idea of farm sharing appeals to me. It’s a return to my youth.

Last year, an Ohio State study found that grocery shoppers are willing to pay more money for locally grown produce. The author of the news release, my Research Communications colleague Emily Caldwell, showed me a way to eat healthier foods while patronizing local growers and possibly saving some money.

This summer, her family purchased a farm share: they invested in a local farm, and received baskets of fresh fruits and vegetables every week. The investment required a good bit of money upfront, but over the course of the summer they received so much food that Emily feels she saved money on her grocery bills.

Some friends and I are looking into doing the same thing next year, using this Web site to pick a local farm. Until then, I’ve been enjoying some produce that Emily and other co-workers have shared around the office, and I’ve been shopping farmers’ markets.

Chow Line: a service of OSU Extension and the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center

That being said, I have to confess that in my adult life I’ve sort of lost the ability to deal with home-grown foods. I mean… if it doesn’t come out of a package, pre-washed and pre-processed (stems removed, etc.), I find myself at a bit of a loss as to what to do with it. For example, there might actually be dirt on it. (”Dirt? On food? Grown in the ground? How could that be?”)

So, how exactly should fresh food be washed? Should I just rinse things in water, or scrub them? Do I need to buy a vegetable brush? Or a bottle of fancy produce wash?

OSU Extension answered my questions today, in the latest edition of Chow Line.

Here’s an excerpt, from editor Martha Filipic:

Clean produce properly. Thin-skinned produce can be rinsed with cool water. Firm-skinned produce can be rubbed with a soft-bristled brush while rinsing. Food safety specialists at Ohio State University recommend washing produce just before consumption. If you clean it beforehand, drying it after washing will decrease the risk of any bacteria left on the produce from multiplying. Also: You don’t need special products for cleaning produce. While they may be effective, the evidence is not yet conclusive and so the CAST [Council of Agricultural Science and Technology] report authors do not recommend them.

Thanks, Martha and Emily!

How about you? Are you thinking about buying locally grown food? Or are you already living this trend, and have tips to share? Leave them in the comments below.

[Thanks to commenter Shaheen for the title to this post.]

I was very interested in Chris Mooney’s latest post in the Discover Magazine blog, The Intersection. He points to a review of the recent AAAS panel on science and the media, in which he commented on the current state of science blogging.

Chris Mooney's blog at Discover Magazine

While there are lots of science blogs out there, Mooney feels that the content is skewed toward polemics, with too many writers focusing on debate rather than offering verifiable science. There’s no “Cosmos” in science blogging, he says.

When I started this blog, I promised to apply the same criteria to my postings as I do to the rest of my science writing. Whenever possible, I interview experts from the OSU faculty and staff to explain the science behind fitness.

Judging by the reactions I’m receiving from colleagues around campus, I think I’m succeeding. The word I keep hearing is “analytical,” as in, “Wow, your blog is really analytical.” Even my FSFP water aerobics instructor Ya Ting commented during class, as she bobbed up and down in the water: “Pam is writing a fitness blog… It’s very analytical.”

My EKG, during a fitness test

Since fitness is just applied science, and my intended audience is the university community, I’m not sure why people find it notable that this blog is so factual. If anything, this kind of writing feels less factual to me, because I add my opinion and personal experience, and make occasional attempts at humor.

As long as people keep reading, and keep learning something about science, I’m going to keep writing this blog. With the wide variety of research done on this campus every day, I’ll never run out of topics to cover.

Mooney’s assertion — which I’m inclined to believe, given his expertise in this area — makes me feel pretty lucky. My job as a university science writer gives me the chance to blog about science as much as I want. I have a host of researchers to inform me and keep me honest. And, on a personal note, I see no better place to pursue fitness than a leading research university. All the answers I need are here.

I believe in the academy, and science will set me free!

The most valuable thing about yoga is that it teaches us to pay attention to our breath and the effect it has on the body. And if I learned any lesson from my refresher course the other day, it’s that I need to breathe more deeply.

In my comprehensive fitness evaluation, I learned that my endurance, or VO2max rating, was below average. It’s a measure of how much oxygen my body uses per minute, divided by my weight. So I know that if I lose weight, I will automatically boost my rating. Since the body uses oxygen to make energy, losing weight will make my body more energy-efficient.

But yoga caused me to look at the other side of the equation, to the amount of oxygen that I normally take in. When I’m exercising, my lungs breathe deeply because they are on auto-pilot, but I wonder: how much oxygen am I taking in the rest of the time?

Holly guides me through downward facing dog in my living room. I kept squinching my shoulders.

As the lesson began, Holly noticed that I was breathing shallowly through my chest. She suggested that I visualize my lungs as a glass of water. As you pour water into a glass, the bottom of the glass fills up first.  So she told me to fill the bottom part of my lungs first by breathing down into my belly. Then to exhale, I reversed the process. After a few minutes of this, I felt very relaxed.

Then she had me perform a series of stretches at my own pace, determined by how fast I was breathing in and out. Deep breathing takes longer than shallow breathing, so moving through the different stretches forced me to consider how quickly and shallowly I was breathing.

Once we began doing seated poses, my previous yoga experience paid off, as Holly thought my posture was “stunning.” She had me do eagle pose to loosen up my shoulders (see a video of how to do seated eagle here). This is a pose I can do at my desk.

Then it was onto a standing forward bend to stretch out the backs of my legs, and finally to a sun salutation (explanatory video here), featuring downward-facing dog. As with my posture during eagle, I’ve got the right form — I just need to develop the endurance to hold the poses longer. I pushed myself a bit, and experienced the wonder of gravity as my face hit the floor. That was a good lesson. Yoga is about exploring our natural limitations and becoming comfortable with them, not pushing ourselves until we do a face-plant.

Holly offered to compose a ten-minute routine for me — something that I can do on my own, every day.  She is a huge inspiration to me in that regard. She just earned her license as a registered nurse, and is working to become a nurse practitioner. When she’s not caring for patients at OSU Medical Center, she’s studying. And yet she finds time to squeeze in her own yoga practice, and teach it to others. If she can do that, I hope I can dedicate 10 minutes a day.

The way I look at it, yoga is the enabling technology for the rest of my fitness routine. It will keep me stretched and relaxed, so I don’t get worn down by all those trips to the gym.

The other day after a swim, I ducked into the RPAC sauna… a girl who had been lounging there squinted at my new swim shoes. I figured she was just jealous, because these shoes are absolutely adorable. Only then did I read the sign on the door: shoes prohibited. Her flip-flops were sitting demurely outside.

Adorable, no?

Aghast, I scanned the tile floor in vain for any visible sign of athletes’ foot fungus. Could it really be safe to walk barefoot here? I walked barefoot in a gym once. Once.

Yet all around me at RPAC, people were barefoot. Exiting the locker rooms, crossing the hallway, emerging from the pool. All oblivious to the itchy danger that might lurk beneath them.

My mind raced. Could the RPAC floor be made from magic fungus-resistant tile? Could these people have acquired some kind of fungal immunity? Could I stop asking these questions and just take off my shoes already?

No, I couldn’t. I left them on.

No one arrested me.

I’m a little flummoxed about the shoe policy. I can see why RPAC wouldn’t allow street shoes in the saunas — it’s a cleanliness issue. But why not allow shower shoes or swim shoes? Does anybody know? Send me an email, or leave a comment below. And let me know whether you’ve walked barefoot in RPAC and emerged fungus free.