By Andrea Ginacola, MPH RD

Looking for someone who will look out for your kid’s health during the school day? Look no further than the registered dietitian (RD). As food service directors and nutrition specialists, RDs across the country are doing great things to ensure kids eat healthful meals at school. Although new meal standards, set forth by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, went into effect July 1, 2012 requiring more fruits, vegetables, whole grains and less sodium, school based RDs were already employing innovative techniques (from salad and taco bars to fruit-and-yogurt parfaits) to entice kids to eat right.

Look to an RD for Expertise

RDs are crucial to school meal programs because they have the nutrition expertise and “vision to create a healthy food climate in the cafeteria that engages students not only in eating healthy, but in developing healthy behaviors,” says Dona Richwine, MS, RD, Nutrition Specialist for Santa Monica Malibu (Calif.) Unified School District. Debbi Beauvais, RD, SNS, Director of School Nutrition for Gates Chili & East Rochester Schools (New York) and Spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics concurs, “Schools are a good venue to model good eating behaviors for kids.”

Healthier Menu Options

Beauvais’ mission is to provide healthy menu items for the 75 percent of her students who choose the school cafeteria over brown-bagging it. But, Beauvais says, “It’s not nutrition unless they eat it.” Beauvais finds that students make healthier choices with her “made fresh for you” and taco bar programs. “Children tend to consume more vegetables when they can add them. They pick more variety.”

Richwine agrees; for over 10 years she’s been getting kids excited about produce with a farmers’ market salad bar. Richwine says the favorite part of her job is to watch students walk away with their plates piled high with fruits and veggies. Schools are now also providing healthier versions of some of kids’ favorites. In Beauvais’ schools, chicken nuggets are baked with whole grain breading, and are lower in fat and sodium than typical restaurant versions. A healthier pizza comes with low- fat mozzarella and a whole grain crust. Leaner versions of hamburgers and hot dogs are served on whole grain buns.

Andrea Giancola is a Registered Dietitian with a Masters of Public Health. To learn more about her, click here. 

This article was published as part of the Kids Eat Right campaign. For more information visit www.eatright.org/kids.

Tomatoes grow in abundance with the help of the Tower Garden.

On your patio or balcony

By Gwen O’Neill

Ask experienced gardeners about their secrets to success and they will tell you about the soil. Is it fertile, does it hold water and what is its structure? These are critical factors to succeed for traditional gardeners everywhere. Now take the soil out of the equation and you have another way of growing plants. Hydroponic and aeroponic gardening uses water and mineral solutions but no soil.

Hydroponics has been around for hundreds of years, but recent breakthroughs in technology have yielded new options for the home gardener. Many challenges such as busy home life, jobs, family commitments and other influences like weather and wildlife make what was at first enjoyable, a now backbreaking chore.

No more digging in the dirt.

Digging holes and tilling soil is not fun or easy. Protecting the plants from squirrels and other pests adds another level of

Tower garden

challenge.

A new system of gardening that anyone can do, virtually anywhere is a combination of container gardening and hydroponic gardening. This single unit holds a promise of success for the home gardener with less time involved, is an affordable investment and is moved easily.

Single unit portable system

The plant tower combines aeration technology with the flexibility and convenience of a container garden in a single unit. If you are tired of battling gophers and snails, digging in clay and hauling bags of compost and soil amendments into the garden only to have them break down over time and disappear, this advanced form of hydroponic gardening may be your new gardening passion!

Imagine a lightweight plant tower that assembles like a fountain with a reservoir and pump at the bottom, small enough to sit on a deck or porch, with castors to facilitate easy movement to take advantage of changing sun patterns as the seasons change. The tower garden® is a high quality unit made of food grade plastic with steel hardware for long-lasting durability, which uses closed system technology to recycle 90% of water and nutrients. Taking soil born pests and diseases out of your garden and growing your garden gets easier with the tower garden®.

Produce in Half the Time

This use of technology not only saves backs and pocketbooks, but it produces meals from seeds in half the time of conventional growing techniques. This system delivers the produce for only the cost of seeds and a modest amount of electricity to run the pump, producing a bountiful harvest that any professional farmer could be proud of!

Do you remember sprouting an avocado pit or Lima beans in a glass of water as a child? Do you remember how exciting it was to see that first bit of root emerge, and then a tiny sprout? That miracle of life emerges quickly through this unit in the form of lettuce, tomatoes, chard, herbs, beans, berries and more. The units can be stacked to create taller towers to maximize crop yield in a small area.

The seeds germinate in a day or two, and the seedlings harden off in a week or two, which makes this system easy to be a successful grower. The roots of your seedlings are continually bathed in nutrient solution in a highly oxygenated environment, which allows the plants to grow at an accelerated rate.

The uses for this system are wide and varied. Use them in a greenhouse, on a roof or a deck, for schools, food banks and shelters, restaurants, for commercial or for home use. Good health begins with good organic foods. You no longer need to rely on expensive commercially produced fruits and vegetables to support the needs of your family.

The towers were introduced to the market in April of 2012 and are available for purchase with an interest-free payment plan.

For information, contact Gwen O’Neill at 925-777-9780 or visit her blog at www.gwenoneillgarden.com. Additional information can be found at http://gwenoneill.towergarden.com.

By Brandon Roberts, D.C.

On Saturday August, 18 about a dozen other chiropractors and I went to San Quentin State Prison to adjust inmates. It was the 9^th annual San Quentin TRUST Health Fair (TRUST stands for Teaching Responsibility Utilizing Sociological Training).

The event was sponsored by Centerforce, Bay Area Black Nurses Association, and the Alameda County Public Health Department. There were many other health care workers there including dentists, mental health, as well as cholesterol and blood pressure screens.

I wanted to get involved after hearing about it and talking to some of the chiropractors who went last year. One of the core principles of my chiropractic college (Life West) is Lasting Purpose: Give, Love, and Serve out of abundance. I thought this would be a great way to live that principle.

My thinking was only of maybe helping one person realize some people on the outside do care enough to donate their time and because of that, it might keep my family and community safer when these inmates get released. But after talking to a friend, who is a Sheriff, and hearing her thoughts on it, I had serious doubts if I wanted to be involved in helping these people who have done some very terrible, violent things to innocent people. Was it something cool to check off a list of things I’ve done in my life? Was it just about me?

I spoke with a friend who has participated for a couple of years and he told me he knows some guards who want us there. He said “after you chiropractors come we have a couple of the most peaceful days of the year.” I figured if the guards want us there then I wanted to be there.

We walked through the front gates of the prison and we searched and had out ID’s checked a couple times then had an orientation by some guards and TRUST fellows.

Then we walked out onto The Yard and were out there with the inmates working out, jogging, playing tennis and handball. It was scary and surreal. The inmates had an award ceremony and a keynote speaker. I couldn’t stop moving around I was too afraid to get comfortable listening to the speakers, I wanted to be totally aware of my surroundings at all times.

We then went to the gym and got to work. The inmates were let in about 100 at a time. The line was from one side of the yard to the other. The line to see us was probably the longest except for the dentist (they were giving out toothbrushes). There wasn’t much small talk and I didn’t even get most guys names. Usually a fist bump or maybe a hand shake. I told them “you experience your life through your nerve system, every human action or experience is through your nerve system. If you experience more stress than your body can handle it is like blowing a fuse and your body can’t work properly and you experience less life, if this happens in the spine it is called a subluxation. Chiropractors detect and correct these problems so you are more able to adapt to your environment and can have a better life experience” It doesn’t matter if they had pain or not, all I was doing was finding that stress and removing it.

It was much more calm, orderly and quite than I thought it would be, I kept having to say aloud “We’re inside San Quentin!” to my colleagues to remind myself where I was. The normalcy is what actually bothered me the most I think.

I checked some shoulders and knees from playing football and tennis on the yard. I saw some old bullet wounds that definitely reminded me were I was.

One thing I’ll never forget is a very buffed man probably in his fifties with 3 really long braids in his beard that had no expression, had his ‘Game Face’ on, looked tough as hell and was one of the only men that made me feel uncomfortable get a big grin on his face and giggle after I adjusted him.

I think I saw 45-50 inmates in the few hours we were adjusting.

We got our things together and were leaving walking back across the yard and many of the men were shouting thanks. The last man I talked to I told, I’ll see you next year he said” I hope not.” I smiled and said I hope I never see you ever again then.

There is an inmate newspaper and I adjusted the editor and he said friend me on Facebook. That’s something else I won’t forget.

There was a film crew, the guys were learning filming, editing, directing and they did a couple interviews with us.

The inmates were low to medium security and couldn’t have had any violations for at least a year to be involved in this event.

We are going to try and get chiropractic as a regular part of the inmate’s health care. Some might think, and I heard people say, “Great my tax dollars at work, what next, private chefs?” Chiropractic isn’t a luxury like a massage or a Mani Pedi. It can save the state a lot of money. Many of these inmates were saying they take Motrin, naprosyn or other NSAIDS every day.

These can cause ulcers and are one of the primary reasons for people having kidney failure and being on dialysis. If chiropractic can keep these guys off drugs and prevent these very serious, expensive side effects a lot of money will be saved. I adjusted more than one guy that had shoulder or knee surgery while in prison.

We’re also thinking about doing some kind of event for the guards also.

By Cecily Guest, AFAA, NCEP certified instructor

Could it be that there’s one, singular way to burn fat, tone muscle, reduce stress, increase serotonin levels, protect against heart disease, dementia and depression, make you smarter and bring you closer to friends and family? Yes! It’s called dancing.

For many exercisers there’s no secret that dance-aerobics burns 300-500 calories per 60 minute workout. Others have learned that dance classes can quickly tone leg muscles as well as muscles of the upper arm, chest and upper back. But recent studies like the one I found in the New England Journal of Medicine reports that the one activity that offered the greatest risk protection against dementia was dance. Golf and cycling offered 0% protection, reading a crossword puzzling offered 35-47% protection, dance offers up to 76% protection against dementia.

“The cerebral cortex and hippocampus which are critical to [dance] are remarkably plastic, and they rewire themselves based upon their use” say on Havard Medical School psychiatrist.

If you want to loose weight while dancing you’ll have to pick up the pace as slow dance, ballet and casual clubbing don’t raise your heart rate enough for high caloric burn. Once you’ve found the best dance based exercise program to suit your personality you’ll be more likely to stick with it because you’ll actually enjoy yourself and you’ll start to look forward to interacting with the other students. Don’t worry if you’re a little uncoordinated. You’re not going for an Olympic medal and there are no Hollywood stars waiting to give you the buzzer. Relax and have fun in your dance-based workouts.

One of the most popular dance-based exercise forms in the last 10-years is Zumba ™, created by fitness instructor Alberto “Beto” Perez. The format has more than 12 million people in 125 countries following and using it to get into better shape. Zumba’s popularity exists in many local, community studios and dance halls as followers consider it to be the only fitness experience they need. It’s a total body workout with some intricate Latin based moves, which help improve coordination, balance and cognitive skills. Classes in your area are easy to find on Zumba’s website and most local studios charge as little as $5 per class. This means you can easily take Zumba ™ 3-5 days per week. Plus there are frequent Zumba-thons in the Bay Area which are usually associated with charity drives.

Here are some unofficial signs you’re serious about Zumba:

1. You own Zumba ™ gear

2. You find that you are doing Zumba workouts more than once a week.

3. You are humming Zumba ™ songs in the shower, kitchen, while pumping gas, etc.

4. When you meet fun people, you try to get them to go to class with you

5. Your kids, spouses and in-laws join you at least once a week

6. You’re a “gidder done” type of guy who finds himself leading the dance line at weddings

7. You’re loosing weight and burning fat with a smile on your face.

8. You have a Zumba ™ song as your ring tone

9. You’re thinking of getting certified to teach Zumba ™

10. You made a fitness budget that includes Zumba ™ workouts.

Guest is owner of Progressive Fitness in Antioch.

As a personal trainer for the better part of 25 years, I’ve seen marketed almost every “get fit quick” scheme there is. From my experience in the fitness industry I can say that most all of them do not work and have little impact but on the pocket book.

In recent years marketers of these fitness products and routines “in a box”, have refined their techniques of selling, by preying on the late night food bingers (you know who you are) with television commercials designed to help you feel less guilty about that after hours snack or bowl of ice cream. They offer a “miracle” weight loss product or program that of course you can have in three easy payments.

Seeing the dramatic results of “everyday people” losing 30, 60, 120 lbs. and women dropping dress sizes down from an 8 to a 2 or even a 0 and strutting around with renewed confidence plays on the emotions of what has you sitting there chomping away to begin with, a lack of confidence. It is the ultimate temptation: to make you feel like the product can do something to change the way you feel about yourself, and how other people view you.

The real secret to the financial success of these “get fit quick” programs, and your ultimate failure in changing your life and getting in the shape you “want”, is not “false” advertising or even the products they offer. While it is not easy to hear this; it is your weakness. A lack of self-confidence that leads to your lack of will, and self-control.

Your miracle product is in the mail. Opening it up, excited about what it offers, at some point you come to the realization that you are going to have to put work in to making the product effective and lose the extra pounds that the product “promised” you would. To be fair, you are set up to fail from the very start because of unrealistic expectations. These products don’t come with will power.

Looking for the next great fitness product? Don’t. The next one you already have. There is no initial payment to make, just a rock solid commitment to changing your life. In fact it isn’t a product at all, it’s you. And it is guaranteed to work if you stick with it.

Not only will you lose the weight you want, but your health and your life will be fuller and richer than any bowl of ice cream or dessert you have ever had.

Find a boot camp; hire a trainer; grab your wife, husband or the kids and go for a walk; watch what you eat, and follow a nutritional program. You had to make a decision to open the refrigerator, just make the decision not to open it. And the next time you find yourself up at 3 a.m. wanting a snack… GO TO BED!

Terrell Lambacker is a Certified Personal Trainer and owner of Progressive Fitness in Antioch. For more information visit his website at www.MyProgressiveFitness.com or see the ad below.

Raising “Super” Healthy Families is the goal of every parent. Moms and dads innately want the best for their beloved. With the right health philosophy and action steps, you and your loved ones can enjoy an excellent quality of life together. Here’s a super healthy philosophy with some science and common sense to back it up.

Health comes from within. The moment you were conceived, one cell from your mother and one from your father united to form a unique and magnificent you. This united cell multiplied over and over again during the next nine months into 80 quadrillion cells without any help from the scientific community. Your heart, lungs, fingers and toes, were all positioned by your Innate Intelligence to develop and function properly.

As long as there is no interference to this process, everything can develop perfectly and you are prepared to be delivered into this world. This Innate Intelligence stays with you after you are born. With the nervous system as its conduit, this intelligence controls and coordinates the function of your entire body. Keeping this system free from interference is essential to a healthy life. This Innate philosophy strengthens you. It keeps you healthy in mind and body. If you teach this philosophy to your children you will raise them as strong, confident individuals who trust their body, immune system, and genetic potential. They will be “super” healthy kids.

On the other hand, teaching a drug-oriented philosophy from birth can lead to drug-dependency as an adult. Too many people buy into the philosophy that they need drugs to be healthy.

While this may be true in limited cases of extreme pain, sickness and disease, it is not true or healthy as an overall philosophy or lifestyle.

Think about the impact of a “drug first” philosophy. When your baby gets sick for the first time, you have a choice. If you do not have confidence in your child’s natural immune system, you might immediately panic and give your child a drug. In their toddler years when they get a cold or infection you may give them a drug right away so they won’t “suffer”. Each time they say they do not feel good, rather than rely on their body’s innate wisdom, do you call in a prescription or go to the store and get them an over-the-counter drug?

When your child is old enough to go to school, the teacher might inform you that they are struggling to concentrate or sit still. The child might be labeled and immediately given a drug.

What is the message that is constantly sent to a child under these “drug first” conditions? If a child is taught that they should take a drug every time they do not feel good, this drug-first behavior becomes conditioned. Is it any wonder that when this child has a minor ailment, does not make the team, or has a social conflict that they turn to drugs to “feel better?”

Your health care philosophy is your choice. The 100 Year Lifestyle and chiropractic deliver an innate health care philosophy which is working for millions. It can also work for you and your family. Isn’t it time you begin trusting yourself and this innate philosophy and begin living the ‘super” healthy life that you and your children deserve?

This article is provided by Dr. Brandon Roberts, D.C. and was reprinted with permission of The Family Practice, Inc.

Dr. Roberts has a 100 Year Lifestyle Affiliate Office. Deer Valley Chiropractic, 3381 Deer Valley Road, Antioch, 925-757-7571

Vasant Lad, BAMS, MASc, world-renowned Ayurveda Physician, scholar and teacher, will be giving a weekend workshop on “Ayurvedic Principles for Body, Mind and Spirit March 16-18. Shri Anandi Ma, Self-realized master of the ancient yoga lineage of Kundalini Maha Yoga will join Vasant Lad for this workshop.

Ayurveda is a Sanskrit word that means “Science of Life.” It is probably the oldest authentically recorded healing science in existence, having been practiced throughout India for over 5,000 years. Its knowledge is empowering and timely. Ayurveda seeks to understand and correct imbalances and to restore the innate intelligence and harmony of the individual through diet, herbal medicines, lifestyle changes and other treatments.

It creates balance within and around us. It is a simple, practical science of life whose principles are universally applicable to each individual’s daily existence. Ayurveda speaks to every element and facet of human life, offering guidance that has been tested and refined over many centuries to all those who seek greater harmony, peace and longevity.

We are thrilled that Vasant Lad will be traveling to our Center in Antioch from his base at the Ayurvedic Institute in Albuqueque, NM.

A volunteer free medical clinic in Pittsburg will celebrate its first anniversary Feb. 9, having served more than 700 uninsured patients in its very successful first year.

The RotaCare Pittsburg Free Medical Clinic at St. Vincent de Paul opened on Feb. 9, 2011. The clinic is a joint effort by the St. Vincent de Paul Society of Contra Costa County and 10 Rotary Clubs in the county. It is open each Wednesday from 4 to 7 p.m. at 2210 Gladstone Dr., Pittsburg. Volunteer doctors and nurses are the heart of the clinic.

The clinic serves a wide range of uninsured people in the community. Three-fourths of the patients live in Pittsburg or Antioch; most of the rest live in Oakley, Brentwood or Bay Point.

Many of the patients are middle-aged, most underemployed or recently unemployed. Two-thirds come to the clinic for acute illnesses, with upper respiratory infections the biggest single illness treated. More than a third of the patients have diabetes or hypertension.