Running nose.

It’s not your stuffed-up imagination; the spring allergy season really is off to early start this year (and, thanks to climate change, may be trending in this direction). You can read all about it in today’s Charlotte Observer and The News & Observer, in a story I contributed to.

That story is about spring allergies in general. But what about their effect on the more active among us? How does a body already taxed by exertion deal with the added stress of allergens? And what can you do about it?

“Obviously, you’re in a position to be more exposed and exacerbate the problem with exercising,” says Dr. John Sundy with Duke Medicine’s Division of Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care. “You’re breathing more times per minute.”

If you have known allergies, come into the season prepared. “The more tools you have in the chest, the more likely you are to have success,” says Sundy.

If you use a steroid nasal spray, for instance, Sundy says to start using it in anticipation of a pollen outbreak. “You need to use it on a daily basis for several days,” he says. “Don’t wait for the peak to treat a flare-up of symptoms.”

Antihistamines are a little more forgiving. “They’re effective when they’re on board,” says Sundy, meaning you can use them more immediately before an outdoor workout.

You might be able to help yourself by working out later in the day. “Pollen counts are highest in early morning and settle as day goes on,” says Sundy. Mid-afternoon on is best.

And try to avoid working out on dry, windy days, he adds, when pollen on the ground tends to get kicked up.

That advice may help, says Sundy. But it’s not a given. “There’s still going to be pollen out there.”

Ditto shifting your workout indoors. You’ll likely reduce your exposure, especially in an air conditioned, tightly sealed gym. But the little pollen particles can still worm their way in.

A mask? Not so practical with the labored breathing associated with exercise, says Sundy. Besides, there’s that third key orifice of allergen entry, the eyes. (Goggles?)

It can also be helpful to know what you’re allergic to. If you’re allergic to tree pollen, spring will be your worst time. Grass pollen tends to be released in summer, while weeds let loose in the fall.

While wives’ tales abound about the effect of diet on allergies, Sundy says there’s no evidence proving that specific foodstuffs hinder or help allergic reactions to pollen.

Ratcheting down your training during peak pollen periods can also help. According to WebMD, “The more stressful the exercise, the faster you breathe; the faster you breathe, the more allergens and irritants you inhale.” Could be a good time to concentrate on stretching exercises, yoga or weight training.

By the way, adds Sundy, what goes for adults when it comes to allergies applies to kids as well. Teen allergy sufferers, he notes, may need prompting to remind them to take their medications.

Presumably you do this anyway, but don’t dally after a workout: shower immediately. And toss your pollen-coated workout gear into the wash.

* * *

Additional thoughts

WebMD.com offers more tips with “Allergy Tips: Your Outdoor Exercise Checklist.”

You say allergies couldn’t be worse than where you live? If you live in Knoxville, Tenn., you’re right. Here’s the 2010 ranking of the worst places to have a spring allergy, based on a 2010 survey by the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America:

1. Knoxville, Tenn.
2. Louisville, Ky.
3. Chattanooga, Tenn.
4. Dayton, Ohio
5. Charlotte, N.C.
6. Philadelphia, Pa.
7. Greensboro, N.C.
8. Jackson, Miss.
9. St. Louis
10. Wichita, Kan.
12. Columbia, S.C.
28. Greenville, S.C.
39. Virginia Beach, Va.
51. Charleston, S.C.
71. Raleigh, N.C.

100. Harrisburg, Pa.

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Looking rather relaxed for someone who has just over four months to achieve eight of 10 goals.

While most of you are staring down Day 3 of your 2012 New Year’s resolutions, I find myself with less than five months to go on my annual birthday resolutions. Make that “first” annual birthday resolutions: When I turned 55 last May 11 I got to Googling and discovered that 55 is a somewhat pivital year for a male. Among other things, our muscles and organs begin to atrophy; we shrink, on average, 0.4 inches a year; we dehydrate more easily; our joints stiffen ... . Suffice it to say that on May 11 of last year I didn’t feel I could wait seven months to set some goals, so I set 10 immediately.  All with a theme of 55.

Here’s a status report:

1. Run 11 5Ks (11 x 5 = 55). So far, I’ve run three, all last summer. The good news is that 5Ks are a dime a dozen — or more accurately, at least one a weekend, so the opportunities are there. Plus, I’ve ramped up my running of late (prompted by a more immediate and daunting goal, the Uwharrie Mountain Run on Feb. 4) and feel ready to get back into a 5K rythym. I should fess up, though, that on New Year’s Day I blew off a prime 5K opportunity: the Run in the New Year Run, which was, literally, three blocks from my house. But it started at midnight and my wife laid odds, based on my New Year's Eve track record, that I wouldn’t make it past 10 (I didn’t). Still, I’m optimistic
2. Climb “The Mummy” at Linville Gorge, a 5.5-rated rock climb. This remains unchecked as well, though again, hope springs eternal. I’ve hooked up with the Triangle Rock Club’s Climbing Meetup, been climbing with them at the TRC and know that when it gets warmer, the group’s leadership (comprised of climbing instructors for the Boy Scouts) will be leadings us outdoors. Asterisk: The leadership being leaders and deciding things like where to go, I may have to substitute another climb of equal or greater difficulty.
3. Do a 55-mile backpacking trip. Bit of a conundrum here. Two weeks ago, Chris David and I did a 50-mile backpack trip on the North Carolina Bartram Trail and the Appalachian Trail. Chris, who’s been backpacking since the 1960s, said it was the hardest trip he’s done. Hence, the conundrum: Does the level of difficulty compensate for coming up five miles short? I’m inclined to say yes, especially if I can’t pull off a planned 60-mile backpack trip on the Mountains-to-Sea Trail along Falls Lake.
4. Do a 55-mile canoe trip. Again, unchecked but confidence reigns. I’m in the midst of writing a book on adventure sports in the Carolinas, with paddling as a primary focus. The trip may take place in a kayak rather than a canoe, but the fun factor alone should assure that this happens.
5. Do 55 continuous push-ups. As I wrote last May: “I’ve been especially slack over the years on strength training; with my muscles atrophying staying strong becomes even more important.” Turns out, I've discovered, the “atrophying muscles” claim isn’t speculation. I’ve been doing pushups regularly, three to five times a week, in sets of three or four. On the last set, I do as many as I can pump out. In October, I got up to 38 on that last set and plateaued. I’ve recommitted on this one and hope to cross it from the list by the end of February.
6. 55: Total of my waist size (30) and BMI (25). Now, three days after the Thanksgiving-Christmas-New Year’s bacchanal, is not the time to be taking measure of one's waist and BMI. Again, check back the end of February.
7. Resting heart rate of 55. Just measured it: 48. (Confession: It was already 54 when I set the goal.)
8. 55-mile mountain bike race. That book I mentioned that I’m writing? Mountain biking is another focus area. I’m looking to accomplish this goal at the Pisgah Mountain Bike Adventure Race in May. The race takes place in the Davidson River area near Brevard and ranges from 45 to 70 miles depending upon your orientation skills. That should assure I get in at least 55 miles.
9. 55 miles on my mountain bike on my birthday. This didn’t happen, I noted at the time, because I had to pick up the kids from school. So when I do it between now and this coming May 11, I’ll add an asterisk. Oh, and at least half of the total — 28 miles — needs to be on singletrack.
10. Umstead 100 endurance run. First timers such as myself are restricted to just ("just"?) 50 miles in the Umstead 100 endurance run, which is March 31. Alas, I missed the registration deadline and the race is full. In search of an alternative. Suggestions welcome.

Let's see, according to the 55 for 55 Goals Tote Board that makes me two for 10 with just over four months to go. Wish me luck with my goals, and best of luck with yours in 2012!

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Chris David atop Wayah Bald.

We were on day three of a four-day, 50-mile backpack trip on a particularly rugged region of the  rugged Nantahala National Forest in western North Carolina. Specifically, we were about a third of the way up a climb that would see us gain close to a thousand vertical feet in less than a mile. It was not the first such climb we had encountered. In fact, much of this trip had been something of a roller coaster, with long, slow, steep climbs followed by long, slow, steep descents (I said something of a roller coaster). My quads and calves ached on the former, my knees on the latter. Yet here we were, me at 55, Chris David at 67, plugging along at a good clip, averaging about 2.5 miles per hour.
Chris’s proclamation wasn’t old guy braggadocio or uninformed speculation. He’s been backpacking since the early 1960s, thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail in 1983, and has been leading hikes for the Sierra Club for more than a decade. He’s hiked with beginners, he’s hiked with people who are on the trail as much as he is. He knows backpackers.
“I’d say about 1 percent,” he said, throwing a statistic into the mix. “No, make that one tenth of 1 percent.”
I won’t deny I found some satisfaction in Chris’s assessment, but I was mainly just glad that I could do this. That I could hike all day with 35 pounds on my back, that I could experience the winter-clear 360-degree view from atop 5,342-foot Wayah Bald, that I could stand beneath London Bald and stare down a treed bobcat not 10 feet away, that I could survive the wild gorge trying to contain Ledbetter Creek and stand atop Cheoah Bald, enshrouded in a cold rain trying to turn to snow wondering what the view might be like. That I, an absent-minded guy who is just as likely to find his car keys in the fridge as in the key bowl, would be able to remember nearly every step of this trip two weeks hence.
That reminded me of the one other thing I’m good at remembering, the thing that made it possible for me to be here in the first place:
The importance of setting the right goals.
Set a goal and the rest will follow. Advice that may seem obvious on this, the first day of the new year when so many of us are intent on erasing our bad habits and charting a new course. Goals are the carrots we employ to help us achieve an end to a means. Unfortunately, many of us won’t make it to February with our goal for the year intact.
Why?
We may set goals, but often we don’t set the right goals, the goals that we’re truly motivated to achieve.
Take Chris. Chris is a long-time runner, with 68 marathons under his belt since his first, the Marine Corps, in 1986. But it’s not the races that continue motivating him to run 50 miles a week. It’s the opportunity to do trips such as this, or his recent 63-mile backpack trip through the Smokies, or the 155-mile solo trip he did in the Nantahalas a couple years back. Or that make him think about another thru-hike on the AT. Backpacking in the wild is his true motivation.
My mountain biking buddy Peter Hollis is likewise driven by what for him is the right goal. Most people either lie about their age or demure when the topic is broached. Peter is likely to bring up his age, apropos of nothing, in the first sentence or two of an encounter.
At the start of the Huck-A-Buck cross-country mountain bike race at Lake Crabtree this summer, Peter lamented the fact that they didn’t announce our ages at the start (at 59, he was the oldest contestant — and proud of it). When I ran into him at Umstead a few days ago, the second thing he said (after updating me on trail conditions), was, “Well, as of January 1 my race age for this year is 60.” Peter claims he races to stay in shape, not to win. But he’s quick to add that he wants to be the fastest 60-year-old on the trail, and if he can whip some 40- and 30-year-olds in the process (which he does), so much the better. Being able to ride a gray streak is his true motivation, his real goal. If he wins the race, and he often does, so much the better.
Setting the right goal may require a little introspection.
Take the No. 1 health-related goal that so many people will set today: to lose weight. Is it really the weight that’s important? Is it strictly a numbers game, to see the scale record 10 fewer pounds by the end of January, 10 fewer still by Leap Day?
Or is weight loss a secondary benefit of your true goal? Is your true goal to fit into a size 4 dress  by prom? To abandon your 1920s-fashionable tank suit http://fashion-era.com/swimwear.htm for a bikini come summer? To shave three minutes off your 5K time? Focus on your true goal and secondary benefits, such as weight loss, will follow.
Knowing your true goal will also make it easier to come up with an effective strategy for reaching said goal.
During my junior year in college (my second junior year), I had managed to balloon up over 200 pounds going into winter break. For Christmas, Santa brought me a lime green polyester Addidas running suit. The running boom of the ‘70s was just kicking in and I decided then and there that I would be able to run 5 miles by the end of the semester. Starting that afternoon and continuing for the next four months I put one foot in front of the other faster and more often than I had the day before.
Darned if the semester didn’t come to an end and I was running 5 miles. And darned if I hadn’t lost 45 pounds in the process. Walking across the quad one day in April, a former suitemate whom I hadn’t seen in a while stopped me, eyes agog, and asked, “What the hell happened to you?”
I hesitated, both to let my friend twist over what he could only be thinking — that I was deathly ill, because in our acquaintance I had never once demonstrated anything resembling discipline or restraint — but also to ponder the question: What the hell had happened to me?
I thought back to my rotund self sitting next to the Christmas tree contemplating the lime green polyester Addidas running suit which had inspired my true goal.
“I became a runner.”

* * *

• To help jumpstart your thinking about how to set the right goal, check out this OutsideOnline piece in which staffers test-drive seven potential resolutions, from giving up caffeine to a body cleanse.

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If you’re looking for a time of year that’s hardest on your body, you’d be hard-pressed to beat the one that kicked off with pants-unbuckling Thanksgiving and ends with a cold pack on your head New Year’s Day. Think about the damage alone done by the one-two punch of Thanksgiving and Black Friday.

Thanksgiving: overeating. Estimates place the typical holiday meal at 3,000-plus calories, or closing in on twice the recommended daily calorie intake for the average person. And that’s just for the main meal; in the case of Thanksgiving you can nearly double that amount if you throw in the follow-up leftover meals that will be consumed by day’s end.

Black Friday: stress. First, there’s the business of consuming nearly 6,000 calories on Thanksgiving, then heading out at midnight to elbow your way to the $2 waffle irons table. Add to that your wacko fellow shoppers — a female shopper at a California Walmart used pepper spray to keep her competitors at bay — and you’ve pretty much taken 10 years off your life with those two days alone. And the bulk of the holiday season remains.

You want a truly happy holidays, or at least a holiday season that won’t do you in? Then you need to do something that helps you deal with both overeating and stress. Lucky for you that some thing is one thing:

Going for a walk.

Walking is the nation’s most popular form of exercise. According to the National Sporting Goods Association, 95.8 million Americans walked for exercise in 2010 (exercising with equipment was a distant second, with 55.3 million participants). There’s good reason for this: most people can walk, it doesn’t require special equipment, you can do it spontaneously, out your front door, so it can be done quickly.

There’s more reasons to walk. According to the Mayo Clinic, walking can:

• Lower low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol (the "bad" cholesterol)
• Raise high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol (the "good" cholesterol)
• Lower your blood pressure
• Reduce your risk of or manage type 2 diabetes
• Manage your weight
• Improve your mood
• Keep you strong and fit

Walking isn’t a magic bullet. It won’t completely diffuse the stress of the holidays; but it will take the edges off and make the season more manageable. And it won’t exactly act as a cross to that batch of Christmas fudge your vampire coworkers bring in, but it will help in keeping the damage to a minimum. And, truly, a half hour at lunch, after work or at some point during the day can make a huge difference.

That said, are you ready to commit to a daily walk? And if not daily, then what is a realistic goal? Take our survey and we’ll report back in a week or so with the results. And take a minute to tell us your favorite place to walk. It could serve as inspiration to others.

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I wrote the following story for the Charlotte Observer and The News & Observer in Raleigh; it appeared in both newspapers on Oct. 18, 2011. It appears here in expanded form, with links. Check out yesterday’s post for more on teens and sleep.

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It’s 11 o’clock on a school night! you yell at your teen. You need to go to bed!

But I’m not tired! your wide-awake teen protests.

Well ... go to bed, anyway! you reply, frustrated.

Frustrated, because your teen obviously isn’t tired, and just because he needs to get up in seven hours to make the 7:15 a.m. school bell,  it’s not like you can force him to sleep. Even more frustrating when you learn that science is on his side.

“There are certain times of day when teens are most alert,” says Dr. Tracey Marks, an Atlanta psychiatrist and author of “Master Your Sleep: Proven Methods Simplified.” Attribute this to a circadian clock driven in large part by the hormonal explosion common during the teenage years.

“They have a dip in late afternoon,” says Marks, “but experience a late-day surge that takes them through 9 or 10 o’clock.”

“They open that sail and ride that wind,” she adds. “They really can’t get to sleep. They can accumulate quite a sleep debt.”

Quick math explains the problem: Research on various fronts — including that by the National Sleep Foundation — says teens need 8 1/2 to 9 1/4 hours of sleep every night, the majority of high school students in Triangle area schools and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools need to be to school by 7:30, a post 11 p.m. bedtime and 6 a.m. wake-up yields just seven hours of sleep, leaving a nightly deficit of roughly two hours.

What’s a teen — and a teen’s parent — to do?

1. Determine individual sleep needs. There’s a 45-minute range in that 8 1/2-9 1/4 recommendation — and that range only applies to the “typical” teen. Some need more, some less. Susan Kuczmarski, author of “The Sacred Flight of the Teenager: A Parent’s Guide to Stepping Back and Letting Go,” says a good first step in determining a teen’s specific sleep needs is to have them keep a sleep journal.  “Get them to record when they went to bed, when they got up, how much sleep they got and how they felt when they got up,” says Kuczmarski. Basically, if they get up before the alarm goes off, they’ve gotten enough sleep; if they repeatedly slap the snooze button, they need more sack time. Marks suggests conducting this experiment over several days during vacation, when you don’t have to wake by a certain time.

2. Tinker with time. Once you determine how much sleep junior needs, do a back-out plan. If he does best on 9 hours and needs to be up by 6:30 a.m., he needs to get to bed by 9:30 p.m. Part of what’s keeping him up past 11 is that circadian clock, which is set by daylight. Dr. Marks is a fan of fooling Mother Nature by using a light box, a device that replicates the blue light of sunlight (frequently prescribed to treat Seasonal Affective Disorder — SAD — and depression). Turn on the light for 15 to 30 minutes every morning, she says, and the body will adjust accordingly, waking up earlier and thus, tiring out earlier in the evening.

Dr. Marks doesn’t pull punches: “It will be painful initially.” “Put one in the bathroom or where you’ll be getting ready for school,” she advises. The exposure will help shut down the body’s production of melatonin the hormone that regulates sleep and waking cycles.

3. An exercised body is a tired body. Get your teen to exercise after school. “Exercise promotes sleep,” says Kuczmarski. (It also keeps them busy during that crucial period between 2 and 4 p.m., when teens are most likely to get into mischief.) “It relaxes the body.” But don’t let them exercise within an hour of bedtime; exercise stimulates the body by raising the core body temperature.

4. Wind down before bed. No cell phones, no computers, no TV within an hour of bedtime. The light emitted by these devices can be stimulating, says Marks. “We need a  mental wind-down period,” she says. Read a book (textbooks are often effective sedatives), meditate, listen to music (“Something low key,” advises Marks. “You don’t want them listening to gangsters.”)

5. Quantity vs. quality. Staying in bed for nine hours is good only if it’s a quality nine hours — that is, the restive sleep that lets the brain run its gamut of restorative phases. To that end: avoid caffeine (especially the new breed of so-called energy drinks loaded with the stuff), sugar (especially a few hours before bedtime) and drink 16 ounces a day of “tart cherry juice.” “It’s thought to increase melatonin production,” says Marks. (But don’t drink it too close to bedtime, lest you be making a bathroom run in the middle of the night.) Also, keep the bedroom temperature at a sleep-friendly 68-70 degrees.

6. Lobby for the benefits of sleep. Lack of sleep can: lead to inattention and thus, poor grades; affect performance in sports; cause weight gain; contribute to acne and other skin problems; make you grouchy; lead to social ineptitude during an already trying phase of social development); inhibit production of growth hormones (leading one, in the delicate words of Dr. Jacob Tietlebaum, Hawaii-based author of “From Fatigued to Fantastic!” to be a “late bloomer”). Hopefully, say the experts, one of these motivations will take.

7. Cut ‘em some slack on weekends. Yes, mom and dad, your teen can make up a sleep deficit on the weekend — to an extent. “Let your kids get a couple of extra hours of sleep on the weekends,” suggests Kuczmarski. A couple hours, she emphasizes — “not sleeping in until 1 in the afternoon.”

8. It it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Getting enough sleep is all good and well, says Dr. Tietlebaum, but parents need to remember that teens are “adults in training” — they need to figure out what works on their own. Present them with the facts, provide suggestions for what they can do, but let them make make the decisions. “Ask them the question, ‘How’s that working for you?’”

“If they’re getting good grades, if they’re not getting into trouble,” says Dr. Tietlebaum, “leave them alone.”

“I don’t know how you did it at 9:30!,” she wrote back. “I ran this morning at 5:30 and it was already 80 degrees!”

Who’s crazier — the person who slept in and ran at 9:30 or the one who went out at 5:30 when it was five degrees cooler — is open for debate. What’s not debatable is how crazy it is to workout in weather like this and not hydrate. Some quick reminders to get you through the next couple of teetering-on-100 days, thanks to the folks at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

How much do I need to drink? Sweating is a very personal thing, you may go out at 9:30, run four miles and break a mild glow, I’ll go out and look like one of those kiddie pool water fountains, spraying every which way. Here’s how to calculate your personal sweat rate: Get naked and weigh yourself. Then get dressed and workout for half an hour, not drinking anything or going to the bathroom. Then get naked again and weigh yourself. The amount less you weigh is the amount of water you’ve lost, and thus how much you should be taking in to prevent said loss. So if you lost a pound, you should drink 16 ounces of fluid during that half hour workout.

Start out well hydrated. And don’t just gulp down a glass of water right before heading out. Start hydrating the evening before.

Don’t wait until you’re thirsty to drink. The “thirst mechanism” isn't triggered until you're 2 percent dehydrated.

Drink throughout your workout. Say you’re that person above who lost a pound during the half-hour workout. Take your water bottle with 16 ounces and sip at it throughout your workout.

Drink cool fluids. There’s no greater deterrent for drinking than to take in a long tug on your Camelbak only to get a mouthful of water suitable for brewing. Toss an ice cube or two into your water, or freeze a half full water bottle overnight and top it off before heading out.
The final arbitur. As always, the litmus test for weather you’re drinking enough is the color of your urine: the less yellow the better.
Drink up afterward. According to UT Chattanooga, the 30 minutes immediately after a workout is crucial to rehydrating.

Yoga helps Darlene Jonas cope with Parkinson's disease, enables scientist Lynn Conley to sit at his desk for long stretches, lets Bill Glasheen keep playing golf and has helped Nancy Wren cope with the death of her husband. Robin Kneeburg credits yoga with saving her life.

Once perceived as the domain of the uber fit, lithe and limber, yoga is being increasingly embraced as a kind of holistic drug for a plethora of physical and emotional issues.

Yoga, according to the Mayo Clinic, can help with cancer and high blood pressure, and anxiety, depression and insomnia.

"While you shouldn't expect yoga to cure you or offer 100 percent relief," advises the Rochester, Minn.-based research, education and health-care provider, "it can help some health conditions when combined with standard treatment."

According to a 2008 survey by the Yoga Journal, about 16 million Americans practice some form of yoga, and nearly half took up yoga "to improve their overall health." A similar study in 2003 put that number at just 5.6 percent.

"It's not a cure, but a better way of life," says Glasheen, a 73-year-old Monroe resident who credits yoga with helping him not miss a Sunday morning tee time in more than a decade despite the crippling effects of Parkinson's disease.

Four years ago, Wren's husband Tom started attending a yoga class to help with his Parkinson's. She joined in, quickly realizing the physical relief yoga offered from the demands of helping her 300-pound, wheelchair-bound husband. When Tom died two years ago, she quit going to class. It was then, as she struggled to deal with her loss, that she realized she needed yoga more than ever.

"It helped me to sit and be calm, to focus my mind so I'm not flying all over the place with a million thoughts," says Wren, who is 61. "It helped me get hold of my emotions."

The practice of yoga predates written history, going back at least 5,000 years. While its origins are uncertain, its focus has been to help achieve total health through exercise, breathing and meditation.

Instructor Nancy Nicholson, a licensed clinical social worker certified in various yoga techniques, explains: "The breathing exercises help to calm, to focus the mind. It can be very grounding."

If you're considering yoga, talk to your doctor. Physicians are becoming well-versed in yoga and its applications for various maladies.

Perhaps most important, see whether you can sit in on a class before signing up, and pay close attention to how the teacher interacts with students.

During a recent Gentle Yoga class at Duke Integrative Medicine in Durham, instructor Carol Krucoff approached one of her students and said, "Your expression tells me this (move) isn't good for you."

She then recommended a less taxing variation. Pain, she emphasizes, is not part of healing yoga.

"It should be challenging," she says, "but not straining."

Conley, 54, was already having back issues when he and his wife, Anne, moved to Durham from San Diego three years ago. The stress of a new job didn't help, nor did six months of physical therapy. "That only made it worse," he says.

Anne, who is 58, had been doing yoga for her back problem, and Conley decided to follow suit, enrolling in a Gentle Yoga class taught by Krucoff at the Duke Center for Integrative Medicine.

It was a good fit: Krucoff had spent years experimenting with her own yoga to develop a practice that would help the neck, shoulder and back issues she had developed hunching over a keyboard as a journalist. (She wrote a book on the subject, "Healing Yoga for Neck & Shoulder Pain," published last year.)

The focused exercises make it possible for Conley to sit at his desk for the long stretches required of a Research Triangle Park scientist, while the breathing exercises help him deal with job stress. Relaxing is no longer a problem.

"Didn't you hear him snoring?" Anne asks after a recent yoga class.

In 2005, Robin Kneeburg was living a normal life in California. Then, overnight, her body became permeated with pain. Though her doctors were able to attribute the pain to a repetitive motion injury, they were mystified by its origins and how to deal with it.
"It shut me down," says the 42-year-old Kneeburg. "It hurt to breathe. It hurt to cough."

Three years ago, she and her husband heard about the Duke Center for Integrative Medicine and decided to move to Durham and give it a try. She met with a team that included everyone from a neurologist to Krucoff. Gentle yoga was prescribed as part of her treatment.
"When she first came here," says Krucoff, "she couldn't even get down on the floor."

After three years of Kneeburg being in constant pain, the class' emphasis on breathing, focusing the mind and movement resulted in a breakthrough: "It didn't hurt to breathe anymore," she says. Kneeburg continues to make progress, and though she isn't pain-free, she says she's getting there.

"It's ongoing improvement," Kneeburg says of her progress through yoga. "I did better this week than I could last week." She pauses, then adds:

"This is freedom for me."

* * *

Read on?

Interested in reading more about the various applications of yoga? Check out yesterday's post.

That’s not according to the Yoga Chamber of Commerce. That’s according to 61-year-old Nancy Wren of Matthews, who first relied on yoga to help her through pregnancy — and labor — in the 1970s, and more recently used it to cope with the physical demands and stress of helping her ill husband, and then to help her through the grieving process when he died. Wren is something of a poster child for the several-thousand-year-old practice of yoga, which the Mayo Clinic defines as “an alternative medicine practice [that] brings together physical and mental disciplines to achieve peacefulness of body and mind, helping you relax and manage stress and anxiety.”

That “miracle drug” nature of yoga is the topic of my story today in the Charlotte Observer and The News & Observer. Read the story (or return to this space tomorrow for an expanded version with links), then return here for direction on where you can learn more.

Learn more ...

Overall health benefits of Yoga
So what are those benefits? The Mayo Clinic gives a good overview in the online article, “Yoga: Tap into the many health benefits.”

Yoga, from Ashtanga to Vinyasa
There are many different variations of yoga on the market. Some, as Chapel Hill-based yoga instructor and writer Carol Krucoff writes for the Huffington Post in “Are You Practicing Yoga or Yoga-Flavored Exercise?” adhere more to basic tenants of yoga. For a good overview of the different types of yoga, check out the About.com Yoga Style Guide.

Yoga and ... golf?
Bill Glasheen credits yoga with enabling him to keep his Sunday morning tee-time for the past decade. Diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease 13 years ago, Glasheen, who is 73 and lives in Monroe, turned to yoga to help control the shaking and difficulty walking associated with the disease. “It’s something anyone can do,” he says of the Kripalu yoga class he takes Saturday mornings. “Even if you’re crippled.” Learn more about yoga for golfers at YogaforGolfers.com.

My achin’ neck
Back pain is one of the most common maladies in America, affecting nearly everyone at one point or another. It affected Carol Krucoff, a yoga practitioner and health writer for the Washington Post in the 1980s. Using what she’d learned from yoga, she began tweaking her practice to address her chronic neck and shoulder issues and before long, no more neck and back issues. She shares her approach in her book, “Healing Yoga for Neck & Shoulder Pain” (2010, New Harbinger Publications).

Yoga and depression
Nancy Nicholson uses yoga in her social work practice — or does she use social work in her yoga practice? The Charlotte instructor uses her background in both — she’s a licensed clinical social worker in North Carolina and is certified in various forms of yoga, including her LifeForce Yoga Certification — to help patients suffering from addictions, anxiety, abuse, depression and grief. “We use different breathing techniques to create more energy and to help you calm down. ... The movements can be very grounding.” Learn more about yoga and its applications for dealing with mental health issues at YogaforDepression.com.

Yoga and weight loss?
You don’t burn a lot of calories with most forms of yoga, but some practitioners say it can have a more profound effect on your weight by helping to strengthen the mind-body connection. See what WebMD has to say on the subject.

I had to: According to the National Institutes of Health, while 55 is when males generally start dropping weight (sorry gals, it doesn’t happen for you until around 65), I’m now more inclined to hang on to the weight I'm keeping — in the form of fat — around my midsection.

Some other interesting bits I learned from the NIH on getting older:

• Shrinking Coming into 55, I was worried I might start the geriatric shrinking process. Turns out I should have started worrying about that 15 years ago: According to the NIH, people generally shrink 0.4 inches every 10 years. After 70, your height can diminish by up to 3 inches over a decade. (That shrinkage, incidentally, is in the torso, not in the arms or legs.)
• Muscle and organ atrophy Muscles, liver, kidney and other organs start to lose cells. I’m not so worried about the liver and kidneys, but that loss of muscle can make them weaker, fatigue more easily and result in “reduced activity tolerance.” (Worried that might have happened overnight, I’ve also celebrated today with a 70-minute, 12-mile mountain bike ride at Lake Crabtree.)
• Slowed reflexes Did I mention that on the aforementioned mountain bike ride I reacted late to a tree root, hit the disc brakes and flew into, then over, the handlebars? This reduction is caused less by a slowing of nerve impulses and more by changes in the muscles and tendons.
• Dehydration A “change in body water” makes it easier for older people to get dehydrated. May be time to upgrade my Camelbak from a 70 ml bladder to 100.
• Stiff joints, less flexibility. Hips and knees, in particular, ankles less so. Seems the best way to keep them from stiffening up is to not let them stop moving.
• Wrinkly, sagging skin, gray hair, crow’s feet, less hair growing where I want it, more growing where I don’t ... I’m ahead of the game on these counts, but who cares? Gray eyebrows don’t keep you from running a half marathon, droopy eyelids don’t keep you from riding a mountain bike.

So I’ll have a few more age-related challenges in the year ahead. All the more reason to be disciplined, and the best way I know to do that is to have goals. Thus, to mark the milestone of having turned 55 I’ve adopted the number 55 as my theme for the year ahead. That said, my goals (some of which are inspired by a book I’m starting to write on adventure sports in the Carolinas):

• Run 11 5Ks (11 x 5 = 55, for those of you who didn’t come here expecting math problems)
• Climb “The Mummy” at Linville Gorge, a 5.5-rated rock climb.
• Do a 55-mile backpacking trip.
• Do a 55-mile canoe trip.
• Do 55 straight push-ups. (I’ve been especially slack over the years on strength training; with my muscles atrophying staying strong becomes even more important.)
• 55: Total of my waist size (30) and BMI (25). I’m an inch or two away on the waist size, and while the body mass index is still woefully flawed, I’m still irked that my current rating of 26 makes me overweight in the government’s eyes.
• Resting heart rate of 55. Cheating a little on this one: Last time I checked my resting heart rate was 54.
• 55-mile mountain bike race. Still looking for a candidate for this one. Could come in a 6-hour endurance race, though the most miles I’ve racked up in one of those was 48. Yell if you know of any 55-mile mountain bike races.
• 55 miles on my mountain bike on my birthday. I cut this one short because I need to fetch kids from school starting a 2 p.m. Hopefully next week.
• Umstead 50-miler trail run. OK, so it’s five short. I’ll be dang lucky to make the 50. (Most runners in this race, btw, run 100 miles.)

As my 55th approached, I was asked a few times how I felt about turning 55. I gave the only answer that made sense: It beats not turning 55.

Besides, look at all the cool stuff I get to do!

Maybe not. If 1,850 older Taiwanese are any indication, you could be improving your odds of a long life.

According to a study published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, the 17 percent of study participants who said they shopped daily “were 27 percent less likely to die.” (Curiously, frequent male shoppers (28 percent) were less likely to die than frequent females (23 percent). According to the study’s authors, frequent shopping may have less to do with actually acquiring things than with being around people and getting out and exercising. Said the authors: “Shopping captures several dimensions of personal well-being, health and security, as well as contributing to the community’s cohesiveness and economy, and may represent or actually confer increased longevity.”

For the record, the majority of shopping being done by the 1,850 older Taiwanese studied wasn’t for $105 sneakers or $9,200 bikes — it was for food. But the point remains: If you think new shoes or wheels will make a difference, go for it. It won’t kill you.

Quite the contrary.