My Plan For Health

Image from Junonia.com

Women’s plus-size activewear retailer Junonia is offering a 10-percent-off coupon to anyone who participates in active events.

When you register for any kind of run, walk, or bike event, forward your confirmation email to Junonia and you’ll receive the coupon as part of the company’s new “It Pays to Play” program.

If you’ve already signed up for the Pelotonia charity bike tour to benefit cancer research at Ohio State, then you’re eligible for the coupon! Why not get a new outfit and look good on the road August 28-30? (The outfit shown in this image is casual, but Junonia offers performance bike wear as well. I can testify that Junonia clothing is of high quality, though a bit expensive — that’s where the coupon comes in handy.)

Details of the program and a list of sample events are here.

As of today, Pelotonia is not on the list, but Junonia Marketing Associate Ira Brooker tells me that it will be added to the page with the next site update. Meanwhile, you can forward your Pelotonia confirmation email at any time to get your coupon.

And here are some other upcoming athletic events for central Ohio:

The Columbus Marathon

The Start! 2009 Central Ohio Heart Walk

The American Diabetes Association Step Out: Walk to Fight Diabetes

After several weeks away from yoga, I returned to class with Holly Wagner, RN,  and got a bit of a surprise.

She asked us to sit straight up, legs crossed — a typical beginning posture. She reminded us to reach around and pull the fleshy parts of our backsides out to the sides, so that we could plant our sitz bones (the bones on the base of the pelvis) directly on the mat.

This is a standard yoga move not just for plus-sized people, but for anyone who… well, anyone who has a backside. And I’ve been doing it for so long now that it’s second nature.

What I noticed that day was that I seemed to have a little less backside to move out of the way than I’d remembered. That was a nice, positive thing to think about as I started class!

One of the most valuable parts of the book MegaYoga comes near the beginning, when author Megan Garcia explains how to manipulate a curvy body for certain yoga postures such as bends and twists. She advises that we take a moment to smooth the fleshy parts of the body out of the way — for instance, moving the buttocks out of the way as I just described, or smoothing the belly up and away from the hip joint during a bend. After reading the book, I tried out some of these techniques in Holly’s class, and they worked.

Garcia offers advice on how to safely attain poses, and how to adjust using props such as yoga blocks and yoga straps. I was glad to see that she explained how to safely stand up from the mat, a procedure she calls “mindful standing.” I tend to get dizzy sometimes when I stand up, so her instructions on when to pause and breathe during standing were particularly useful to me.

There are a wide variety of poses in the book, from beginning level to advanced, including handstands and shoulder stands. Garcia definitely proves that plus-sized people can perform any pose with the proper adjustments — and lots of practice, of course. She explains each move step by step with photographs.

At the end of the book, she offers a 30-minute routine for beginners, a 60-minute routine for intermediate students, and a 90-minute routine for advanced students. These are good for practice outside of class — something that I aspire to.

Read about Garcia’s yoga studio and classes.

Bonus: Long before I heard of MegaYoga, I found the video Yoga for Round Bodies, which encourages the use of props and lots of self-acceptance. Read about the making of the video here.

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!

Have you seen this?

My blissed-out time in Marblehead was punctuated by a nasty case of sunburn. Like Conan O’Brien, who joked in a recent ad that his “pale Irish skin” burns “like a vampire” in the sun, my genes make me vulnerable to sunburn. My father is Irish, and like him I don’t really tan — I burn, and peel, and then I’m pale again. Or, as happened in Marblehead, I bypass the normal  sunburn and go straight for blisters.

From May through October, this is my typical routine: I slather an SPF 15 lotion all over every day — this is just to get me from the car to my office without getting singed. On my face, I wear an SPF 45 face cream, generally followed by some face powder to lend further opacity. I keep an SPF 50 sunscreen on hand at all times, and apply it whenever I plan to linger outside, even for a few minutes. I have a geeky sun hat (you saw this in my post on the geology hike) and I often wear long sleeves, even in summer.

Better wear this.

But one day in Marblehead, I donned all my layers of sunscreen early in the morning, and did not re-apply until afternoon. In between, I wandered along the Lake Erie shore sans jacket and hat, and I burned. In fact, as I sat at Marblehead Lighthouse for my photo in the blog entry below, I was already burning. I just didn’t know it.

As it happens, I’ve written about sunburn before. Bern Kohler, professor of chemistry, has done some groundbreaking work in photochemistry. He studies how DNA protects itself from ultraviolet damage, and what happens to our DNA when we get sunburned.

From writing about Kohler, I know that DNA avoids damage by converting UV rays into heat. The conversion happens in just a tiny fraction of a second (and that’s why his  lab uses special ultra-fast lasers to reveal what’s going on). Kohler explained that sunscreens like my SPF 50 lotion protect us by reflecting sunlight away from the skin, and also by dissipating UV as heat.

I also learned that sunburn happens when the DNA absorbs the UV energy instead of converting it to heat. This is due in part to the random position of the DNA molecule within our cells when the UV hits it. When the UV energy is absorbed, it triggers chemical reactions that alter the DNA’s molecular structure.

So after I returned to Columbus and my sunburn was mostly healed, I emailed Kohler to gain his perspective on what had happened to me. Here’s his chemical  explanation:

I am sure you formed vast numbers of cyclobutane pyrimidine dimers in your DNA along with significant quantities of 6-4 photoadducts.

Translation: Inside my DNA, chemical bonds formed where they weren’t supposed to. Luckily my DNA could employ some chemical reactions of its own to heal itself. But when DNA sustains too much damage, it can’t replicate properly. Badly damaged cells simply die — that’s what gives sunburn its sting.  Scientists also believe that chronic damage creates mutations that lead to diseases such as skin cancer — a good reason for everyone (not just the tanning-impaired) to keep applying sunscreen!

An undamaged stack of thymine bases is colored green in the DNA double helix on the left. In the double helix on the right, UV light has caused two new chemical bonds to form, fusing two thymine bases together. Graphic by Bern Kohler.

Kohler added this as well:

Take solace in the fact that the body’s repair system is highly efficient. If only man-made solar cells had the same ability to fix themselves after they get damaged by sunlight!

Hmm. So even the most high-tech electronic devices designed to harvest solar energy get damaged by sunlight! I didn’t know that. I have a really cool job because I get to learn this kind of stuff.

One downside to the email: Kohler informed me that he’s leaving Ohio State for Montana State University next month. I’m very sorry to hear that! But I hope he will stay in touch and keep us informed about his research.

Stay shady, everyone.

A fact sheet on sunburn from OSU Medical Center

More sunburn info from WebMD

Marblehead Lighthouse

I just got back from vacation in Lakeside Marblehead — a week of swimming, shopping, walking the shoreline and watching the surf.

We stayed in a resort on Sandusky Bay, and I enjoyed a spa package — a pedicure and my first-ever massage. The pedicure was excellent, and I was certain after the massage that the world was a bright, happy place and I was impervious to all evil.

Ommmmm.....ommmmm....

My thoughts did occasionally turn to work, and I felt a little stressed about falling behind at the office, but by the end of the week I think I had finally relaxed. It took a while to break out of my old mental patterns and actually feel like I was on vacation, you know?

What do you think? Do I look relaxed? My husband Bill took this photo one afternoon as we sat on the shore at Marblehead Lighthouse.

Everybody needs time away from work once in a while. Stress has very negative effects on the body. Ohio State researchers have shown, for instance, that stress slows the body’s ability to heal and even makes allergy attacks worse. That’s why, when I took the PHA test, WebMD advised me to lower stress for overall health.

In case you’re wondering why I look so blissed out above, here’s the video of what I was looking at (when my eyes were open, anyway). Video courtesy of Bill Gorder.

Click on the image to see a QuickTime movie of the waves at Marblehead Lighthouse