PELINKS4U - Health, Fitness, & Nutrition

CWU

Health, Fitness, & Nutrition

October 30 , 2000, Vol. 2, No.19				CONFERENCE/WORKSHOP CALENDAR

Featured Health & Fitness Articles

Good news about moderate caffeine intake! That tall latte on the way to work or the quick cup of coffee in the teacher's lounge may actually help lower your risk to Parkinson's Disease.

Weight Training for Children

One hundred years is long enough for a myth to exist. The March issue of the Georgia Tech Sports Medicine and Performance Newsletter debunks four of them, including, Myth #4: Children should not participate in strengthtraining.

The Benefits of Weight Training for Children Explored "In the past few years, more children have been given the opportunity to engage in strength training. Many parents and coaches, however, are questioning the safety of resistance exercises for growing children. The latest research has found that strength training can be incorporated into a child's fitness or sport-related exercise routine without causing injury or growth problems." Even the American Academy of Pediatrics supports supervised weight training for children.

Other Weight Training & Children Links:

AAPHERD Bookstore Product on Wt. Training for Kids

KidsHealth.Com

Children and 2nd Hand Smoke According to the American Heart Association, About 43 percent of American children ages 2-11 are exposed to secondhand smoke in the home. Studies have shown that children (especially infants) of smoking parents have more lung illnesses, such as bronchitis and pneumonia, and can develop asthma. And because smoking parents are more likely to cough and spread germs, their children are more likely to develop chest illnesses. Exposure to tobacco smoke also increases the risk of heart disease

Promoting Physical Activity Through School Physical Education Jim Morrow and colleagues outline how physical education can contribute to the promotion of regular physical activity and its associated fitness and health benefits.

"Education is not the filling of the pail but the lighting of the fire"

William Butler Yeats

Consumer Health

Step Right up! Dr. Lardbottom's Patented Pervasive Penultimate Potion will cure all that ails you! Now for just $19.95 Johnny Goodbody's Pocket Fitness Machine is available to you--call now, operators are standing by!

No matter if it's the turn of the last century or the turn of this century, hucksters and quacks are still bilking suckers out of their hard earned cash. Teens and children are especially targeted by health quacks infomercials and magazine advertisements.

How can we spot a swindle when it all looks so good and appealing? Dr. Stephen Barrett lays out 25 good Ways to Spot Quacks at his Quackwatch website.

Editorial

Welcome to the new PELINKS4U, Health, Fitness, & Nutrition section. Please tell your colleagues about this online informational resource. We also invite you to contact us with contributions for forthcoming issues.

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Having visited the National Parks over the summer many of us heeded the signs that state " Do not Feed The Chipmunks". As cute as the little critters are, and as grateful as they seem for our snacks of marshmallows and cookies, we are made to understand that feeding them all summer will surely cause them to starve in the winter. With a plentiful summer food supply, the ground squirrels neglect to store away any food for winter. Their dependence on us leads to their ultimate demise. So it is with becoming the all-knowing authority on health and fitness.

The most important objective in teaching a lesson, unit or class on wellness is the fostering of self- responsibility in our learners. In order to achieve a high level of wellness individuals need to come to the realization that they and they alone can make the greatest difference in their health, fitness, and mental state of being. As the old motto goes, "If it is to be--it is up to me."

Admiration becomes a powerful tonic and it is easy for the health or PE teacher to become drunken with role of guru. Says Don Ardell, PhD the author of our Featured Website, " It seems to me that genuine wellness promoters, unlike your typical diet book author, metaphysical snake-oil huckster, and/or smooth-talking know-it-all self help infomercial celebrity, would never wish to be your guru. "

"The main reason genuine wellness promoters don't want to be your guru is they want YOU to be responsible for your own health, and the quality and direction of your life. That is, they want YOU to be the guru--for yourself, because self-responsibility is the foundation of a wellness lifestyle."

As Health and Physical Education teachers we must strive to move gradually away from answering all of tour student's questions to encouraging them to seek their own answers using the basic tools and skills we give them in class. A healthy helping of fundamental fitness and health knowledge combined with a side order of critical thinking skills should comprise the daily meal we provide our students. If we feed them content information alone, they become malnourished and dependent and have no stores for the long periods of time when they are away from our tutelage.

Andrew P. Jenkins, PhD, CHES Health and Fitness Editor

"If exercise could be put into a pill, it would be the single most prescribed medication."
Dr. James H. Rimmer

Adult Fitness

Mature Fitness Awards

Want to motivate an older adult to exercise? Feeling older yourself and in need of motivation? Here's a program designed to get older adults into regular physical activity.

Take the Food Pyramid Challenge

It's easy to eat foods that will give you lots of energy and help you stay healthy! One way to eat right is to follow the U.S.D.A. Food Pyramid.

Calculate Your Body Mass Index (BMI)

See if your weight puts you at risk of health problems.

Click here to join the

Bulletin Board for PE & Health Teachers

PE Archives

Welcome to the fall edition of PELINKS4U. please let your colleagues know about PELINKS4U and remember you can catch up on a year's worth of news in our Archives.

Featured Web Site

Don Ardell's Wellness Center
This site features many wellness oritented topics and links. You have to like upbeat and off-the-wall humor to gain the greatest of benefits from author and webmaster Don Ardell.

Miscellaneous

Contributors Wanted!! PELINKS4U welcomes articles, letters, ideas, conference dates and reports, suggestions for links and any suggestions for site improvements. Help to support quality physical education by contributing to this site.

Fitness Tips

Hamstrung and Side Stitched?
You've broken away for an nice afternoon trot when suddenly, right in the middle of mile number two you feel as though a sword was jabbed under your rib. What causes those nasty side-stitches? "The general consensus, though, is that a side stitch is a spasm of the diaphragm muscle. It also seems related to a person's level of fitness."

Flexibility, as we all know, is an important but often neglected part of adult and youth sports and fitness programs. Fitness editor Stephanie Oakes at Discovery Health.Com provides us with several flexibility exercises and some encouraging advice to help us incorporate flexibility exercises into our fitness routines.

Growing Children Healthy
Michigan has the highest chronic disease rate and one of the highest incidences of heart disease. The problem may begin in childhood.

BODY FAT DISTRIBUTION IN CHILDREN
Obese children have greater risk of developing CVD as they age. An article in the February 2 issue of Circulation suggests that the relationship between CVD risk and apple or pear body fat distribution holds true for children as young as nine years old.

Scott Roberts, PhD, Health and Fitness Section Editor.