Watch 21st Century Sky Centers Ninja Live at the Fair TODAY

Sky Centers Team Elite recently starred in The Fold’s music video “21st Century Ninja” for LEGO brand toys. The music video is viewable on Youtube and the music is  available on iTunes. Today,

Team Sky Centers Team Sky Elite will be performing 21st century ninja live for you for the very first time at 12:50 PM.  Come watch their awesome presentation.

How to Flu-Proof Your CrossFit

bearexerciseIn a SELF Health article, by Alyssa Giacobbe it was stated that Wall Ball is a CrossFit staple, a multi-part exercise consisting of a full squat to launch a medicine ball vertically up the wall. You catch the ball in front of your face and then repeat the whole thing, squatting and launching again and again, often in multiples of 500, or so it seems.

I’m not especially new to CrossFit, and I’m not all that uncoordinated, and yet I can’t seem to Wall Ball without scraping the medicine ball against my face, often on the way up and then again on the way back down. When I think about what exactly I’m repeatedly brushing my mouth against—not just the well-worn ball but also everything that has touched the wall, the floor (where it rested before the workout began), my hands, and the hands of whomever handled the ball before me… well, you can see why I try not to think about it.

If you assumed plane travel had the lock on germ incubation, you’ll want to consider what happens at your gym this winter, and particularly at your CrossFit box, where packed classes of gung-ho athletes work with multiple forms of shared surfaces and hand held equipment, catching them, wheezing on them (or maybe that’s just me), and tossing them up again. At my CrossFit box, we’re given antibacterial wipes to clean up our sweat after we’re done, but that doesn’t do much to protect you during class, or in the case of partner WODs that have you sharing kettlebells with the neighborhood anti-vaxxer. What’s more, your body may be more susceptible to invasion during and post-workout, when it’s in recovery mode from all the physical exertion, while CrossFitters—a particularly type A lot—are often reluctant to take a day off from the gym even if they’re not feeling 100 percent.

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Village Proclaims Fitness February

DSCN1152The Village of Lombard Proclaimed the 2nd month of 2015 at Fitness February Month:

WHEREAS, Healthy Lombard was formed in 2009 as a Village-wide initiative to address childhood obesity and promote healthy living throughout the Village of Lombard; and

WHEREAS, under the umbrella of the name “Healthy Lombard” over 40 businesses and organizations have joined together usint the Triple “A” Approachof Awareness, Activities, and Achievement to address this need by providing our community with iesources and information on healthy living ; and

WHEREAS, many children and adults make a resolution each January to adopt a healthier lifestyle, but often need a boost to their resolve a few weeks later;

NOW, THEREFORE, I, Keith T. Giagnorio, President of the Village of Lombard,

• Officially proclaim the second month of the year as “Fitness February” in the Village of Lombard;

• Congratulate all the children, adults, and businesses who will receive a Health Hero certificates for practicing and promoting healthy living;

• Remind members of our community who want to make a change in their lifestyle to visit the Healthy Lombard websites ;

•Invite the entire community to visit the Healthy Lombard Fitness February Fair that will be held on February 28, from 10 AM until 2 PM, at Yorktown Center; and

• Recognize the Healthy Lombard Model as a blueprint for other villages and towns to follow in order to make a difference in the health of future generations.

Congrats to Paul Zientarski: Action For Healthy Kids School Health Heroes Award Winner!

61We know the mind body connection is real. Just ask PE consultant, retired teacher, and FORWARD Advisory Board member Paul Zientarski. Paul was inspired when he heard a Harvard professor speak about the positive influence physical activity has on the brain. Paul teamed up with a few like-minded individuals and together they developed the Learning Readiness PE (LEPE) program to prove physical activity has a positive impact on brain function.

The Learning Readiness PE Program collects and analyzes data that proves students perform better in a class they are struggling in if they precede the class with physical activity. The research was a huge breakthrough in what Action for Healthy Kids refers to as The Learning Connection. Stated simply, healthy and active kids learn better. The Program has received worldwide attention and Paul has traveled the country presenting his brain research findings, explaining the effects of fitness and exercise on academic performance. His favorite moments include presenting brain science research to the Illinois Enhance PE Task Force and to the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition.

Paul’s investment in the mind body connection goes much deeper than LEPE. He spent forty years as a physical education teacher. “Helping kids lead healthier lives has been a priority of mine for years.” The biggest struggle he’s come across is trying to educate parents on making smart and healthy choices for their kids. As a loving parent and grandparent himself, Paul says, “Every parent wants their children to be successful but they haven’t figured out that success and happiness come from children who are healthy.” He won’t stop until his message is heard loud and clear!

Rethinking Your Drink?

summer-workout-austinElle Penner, M.P.H., R.D., the Registered Dietitian and Food & Nutrition Editor at MyFitnesssPal, as well as an active runner and food-enthusiast shared that the reasons to stop drinking soda are abundant. Whether you want to cut down on empty calories and added sugars, consume less artificial sweeteners, wean off of caffeine, or even save money, ditching soda is a great place to start.

I actually used to be a big soda drinker–the diet type in particular. Something about it being calorie-free gave me permission to drink it with reckless abandon–so I did. At one point, I consumed more soda than water throughout the course of the day.

Back in 2006 I decided I wanted to rid myself of a dependence on artificial sweeteners, so naturally I started with soda. Over the course of about a year I went from drinking 2-3 sodas per day to 2 to 3 per month. I still very much enjoy a cola with my cheeseburger and french fries, but now that I drink it so much less frequently, I have no problem treating myself to the real deal.

As a former soda-drinker myself, I thought I’d share some tips and tricks I found helpful along the way for those of you who also want to get off the sweet stuff:

1. Be okay with scaling back slowly. If you drink 3+ sodas a day, switching to tap water cold turkey will most likely make every sip feel like a punishment… not to mention induce some serious caffeine withdrawal headaches. I bet you can rather painlessly replace 3 sodas per week with tap or sparkling water, though. Heck, maybe even 1 per day! Whatever the number, make it reasonable. Soda has not, and will not kill you over the next few weeks or months while you gradually get off of it. Over time, you’ll miss those first few sodas less and less and eventually you’ll be ready to cut out one or two more.

 

2. Get on a soda schedule. Keeping #1 in mind, jot down a schedule for weaning your soda consumption. By writing a plan, you’re thinking through and committing to a reasonable approach to drinking less. For example, if you normally drink 3 sodas per day, cut down to 2 per day for an entire month, and then 1 per day the month after. From there, you can gradually cut down even further. Allow yourself 5 per week for the 3rd month, 4 per week for the 4th month, and so on.

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More evidence that exercise can help fight Alzheimer's disease

Lenny Bernstein in the The Washington Post shared that evidence continues to accumulate that physical activity can help hold off the changes in the brain associated with Alzheimer’s disease, and perhaps the devastating symptoms of the disease itself.

The latest information comes from researchers at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, who looked at 317 late-middle aged adults and determined that those who exercised five times a week or more had fewer of the age-related changes in the brain that are associated with the disease, and did better on cognitive tests.

Age remains the single greatest risk factor for Alzheimer’s, greater even than having the gene found in many people with the disease, the study confirmed. But “what we have shown here is that physical activity diminishes the deleterious influence of age,” said Ozioma Okonkwo, an assistant professor of medicine at the school who led the study.

People who exercised had less accumulation of “beta amyloid plaque,” the proteins that build up in the brains of people who suffer from Alzheimer’s disease. They had less shrinkage of the hippocampus and less reduction in use of glucose in the brain, two other symptoms of the disease. And they had fewer neurofibrillary tangles, twisted fibers inside brain cells of people with Alzheimer’s. When researchers tested the people who worked out, they did better on memory and visual-spatial tests.

An increasing amount of research has shown that exercise can help hold off Alzheimer’s disease, including this July study that The New York Times called “inspiring.” The University Wisconsin research, published in November in the journal Neurology, adds strong evidence from examinations of the subjects’ brains to support that conclusion.

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Where does the fat go when you lose it?

Lenny Bernstein from The Washington Post shared that you’ve lost a pound of fat. Congrats, that’s not easy to do during the holidays. But where exactly does it go when you manage to get rid of it?

First, some possible answers:

A. The fat fairy came and took it. That’s why you always weigh less in the morning.

B. You converted it to heat and radiated it into the atmosphere.

C. It’s not really lost, it’s just delayed in Cleveland.

D. You released it as carbon dioxide and water through your lungs.

E. You melted it and excreted it in your urine and feces.

If you didn’t answer D, don’t worry too much. Neither did a bunch of doctors and biochemistry students whom Ruben Meerman queried before writing about all this in a short paper released in the British Medical Journal this month.

“We’re going to remove the mystery,” Meerman said in an interview from Sydney, Australia, where he lives. “Right now, most people, including doctors, have got an idea that’s scientifically incorrect. It’s literally impossible to do what they think is happening.”

Meerman is a former physicist who abandoned that career to take up “science communication,” including work for a popular Australian television show, “Catalyst.” Last year, he lost some weight and began to think about what happens on a molecular level to the kilograms of fat he was shedding.

“I had a little bit of understanding you can’t just turn fat into heat,” he said, though that turned out to be a popular answer when he started asking the question.

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Tis The Season for STRESS!

Virgin Heath shared in its 2014 Survey on “The holidays’ impact on employees’ health happiness (& what it means for employers) that it looks like the stress – not to mention all that turkey and eggnog – is weighing on employees’ health.

Sixty-two percent said eating healthy is the hardest aspect of well-being to maintain during the holidays, with 71 percent of respondents saying they eat unhealthily between two and five days a week.

Employees are also have trouble finding time to exercise and aren’t logging enough sleep. Fifty-one percent and 46 percent, respectively, said these were the aspects of well-being they found hardest to maintain during the holidays. Fifty-nine percent of respondents said they sleep poorly and 51 percent said they skip exercising between two and five days during the holidays.

Encourage your employees to maintain their healthy habits during the holidays, and all year long. With exercise, sleep, and proper nutrition all proven to have dramatic impacts on people’s performance.

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Researchers Shed Light on Asthma's Mysteries

SHIRLEY S. WANG shared this article in the Wall Street Journal Newspaper on Sept. 22, 2014.  I found it very informative.
Researchers are making interesting new discoveries about a particularly confusing type of asthma.

Doctors increasingly are recognizing that as many as half of asthma sufferers have a form of the lung disease known as nonallergic asthma. Some medications that help control symptoms of the more familiar allergic asthma aren’t as effective in nonallergic patients.

There is still much that isn’t understood about allergic asthma, which is brought on by an overactive response of the body’s immune system to food, pollen and other allergens. Even more mysterious is the cause of nonallergic asthma, which doesn’t involve an immune-system response. Symptoms for both forms of the disease typically include constricted airways, wheezing and coughing.

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Researchers also continue to discover substances in the environment that appear to increase the risk for developing asthma. One of the latest studies, from New York’s Columbia University Medical Center, found an association between asthma rates and phthalates, chemicals used in many plastic products that have raised health concerns.

The scientific hunt for the causes of asthma reflects concern about the puzzling rise in rates of the disease. In the U.S., the percentage of the population diagnosed increased in 2010 to 8.4%—or more than 25 million adults and children—from 5.5% in 1996, according to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some 1.8 million people visited a hospital emergency department in 2010 for asthma-related treatment.

Scientists studying nonallergic asthma say greater understanding of the molecular pathways in this form of the disease could lead to new targets for drug development.

Stefan Worgall, chief of the pediatric pulmonology, allergy and immunology division at Weill Cornell Medical College, and his colleagues recently discovered that when a normally occurring type of fat, known as sphingolipids, isn’t embedded properly in the cell walls in the lungs of mice, the airways constrict.

In a related experiment, they administered a drug to inhibit sphingolipid production in tissue taken from a healthy human lung. The tissue showed the same type of constriction as seen in the mice, the study found. The report was published last year in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Dr. Worgall says the finding could help explain why obesity is a risk factor for asthma. Obese people tend to exhibit abnormalities in sphingolipids, he says.

Currently, Dr. Worgall and his team are measuring sphingolipid levels in the blood and breath of asthmatic children. Early findings suggest the levels appear abnormal, he says.

Jeroen Douwes, director of the Centre for Public Health Research, at Massey University in New Zealand, believes nonallergic-asthma patients might have particularly sensitive nerves in the lungs that tell the brain at a lower-than-normal threshold that a noxious substance is in the air and airways need to be constricted.

 

 

Walk or bike to work to increase happiness

Walking to work is not only good for your body; it may also benefit your psychological health, a new study from England suggests, FOX News reports.

In the study, the researchers analyzed information from nearly 18,000 commuters in England who answered questions about their well-being, such as whether they experienced feelings of worthlessness, unhappiness or sleepless nights in the last few weeks. Based on those answers, the researchers gave each participant a well-being score. Participants completed the survey for at least three consecutive years between 1991 and 2009.

People who walked or cycled to work had higher well-being scores than those who drove. In particular, people who drove to work had a 13 percent higher likelihood of feeling that they were constantly under strain and unable to concentrate, compared with those who walked or cycled.

The findings held even after the researchers took into account factors that could affect well-being, such as household income, overall health and whether the participants had children.

What’s more, people who switched from driving to walking or cycling to work tended to experience an improvement in well-being, the study found.

“These results appear to suggest that avoiding car driving may be beneficial to well-being,” the researchers wrote in the Sept. 15 issue of the journal Preventive Medicine.