This Week's Healthy SC Challenge Tips

Columbia, SC – April 3, 2009 – The Healthy SC Challenge is the Sanford family’s effort to get all South Carolinians to do just a little more to live a healthier lifestyle. The tips are designed to encourage individuals and communities to live healthier lifestyles in three categories – nutrition, exercise and help to quit smoking. The tips can also be found on the challenge’s website, www.healthysc.gov.

Nutrition
You probably already know that fiber is an important part of your diet, and that it’s good for regularity and constipation. However, you maybe surprised at how many other ways a high-fiber diet can benefit your health. Fiber not only promotes general wellness and intestinal health, it lowers the risk of developing many diseases and conditions that can put your life in danger – heart attack, diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke, obesity, and certain cancers.  Fiber can help lower cholesterol by absorbing fat and cholesterol from food.  Not only does fiber prevent fat absorption, it also helps you feel fuller longer. Filling up on high-fiber foods means you’ll have less room for high-fat and highly caloric low-fiber foods.  Some researchers have calculated that if Americans doubled their intake for fiber, they could cut 100 calories from their daily diet – which could shave off 10 pounds of yearly weight gain.  Fiber helps with intestinal health and regularity.
-National Fiber Council, www.nationalfibercouncil.org

Physical Activity
The Bellows Breathing Technique (also known as the Stimulating Breath) is a yogic technique that can be used to help stimulate energy when needed. It is a good thing to use before reaching for a cup of coffee.

* Sit in a comfortable up-right position with your spine straight.
* With your mouth gently closed, breath in and out of your nose as fast as possible. To give an idea of how this is done, think of someone using a bicycle pump (a bellows) to quickly pump up a tire. The upstroke is inspiration and the downstroke is exhalation and both are equal in length.
* The rate of breathing is rapid with as many as 2-3 cycles of inspiration/expiration per second.
* While doing the exercise, you should feel effort at the base of the neck, chest and abdomen. The muscles in these areas will increase in strength the more this technique is practiced. This is truly an exercise.
* Do this for no longer than 15 seconds when first starting. With practice, slowly increase the length of the exercise by 5 seconds each time. Do it as long as you are comfortably able, not exceeding one full minute.
* There is a risk for hyperventilation that can result in loss of consciousness if this exercise is done too much in the beginning. For this reason, it should be practiced in a safe place such as a bed or chair.

This exercise can be used each morning upon awakening or when needed for an energy boost.
-American Medical School Association, www.amsa.org

Tobacco
Secondhand smoke is the smoke that comes from a cigarette or other tobacco that someone other than you is smoking. Everyone knows that smoking is bad for smokers, but did you know—
* Breathing smoke from someone else’s cigarette, pipe, or cigar can make you and your children sick.
* Smoking inside a home or car is more dangerous because smoke gets trapped inside-even fans and open windows don’t help.
* Children who live in homes where people smoke get sick more often with coughs, breathing problems such as asthma, and ear infections.
* Secondhand smoke is also linked to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).
* Secondhand smoke can cause lung cancer in adults and is also bad for the heart.

Take steps to protect your family like make your home and car smoke-free and ask your doctor for ways to help you stop smoking. Remember that keeping a smoke-free home can help improve your health, the health of your children, and your community.
-U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, www.epa.gov

The Healthy SC Challenge is an outcome-based, cooperative effort aimed at encouraging individuals, communities and organizations across the state to show shared responsibility in developing innovative ways to improve the health of South Carolina’s citizens. For more information about the Healthy SC Challenge, please visit www.healthysc.gov, or call 803-737-4772.