Starting next week, a lot of you will be getting to spend more quality family time together. Parents often take time off from work over the holidays — either by choice or by employer mandate — the kids enter that glorious time known as winter break. Together, it adds up to more time to do ______ together. Starting Monday and running through the end of the year, we’ll help you…
Benefit events — runs, rides, walks, hikes, whatever involves movement to raise money — are a dime a dozen. Provided, that is, you’re in pretty good shape. Witness the plethora of 5Ks on the market for runners, the MS 150, or the Ultimate Hike, which I recently was involved with. For the latter, a 12-week training program was required — or very highly recommended — to help participants complete the…
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. * * * 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…
Sleeping and driving. According to a report by the National Sleep Foundation’s Sleep and Teens Task Force: “Drowsiness or fatigue has been identified as a principle cause in at least 100,000 police-reported traffic crashes each year, killing more than 1,500 Americans and injuring another 71,000, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA, 1994). Young drivers age 25 or under cause more than one-half of fall-asleep crashes. A North…
This is Take A Child Outside Week, a week that, for reasons that escape me, we must force ourselves to force our kids outside. Not to sound like an old crank, though I will, back in the day our parents used to boot us outdoor first thing in the morning every day. Then, come sunset, they’d open that door and start yelling for us to come in. That was a…
On this spring weekend, take a serene paddle or work up a sweat at a festival. Coast Warmer weather means more paddling opportunities. Saturday’s three-hour guided kayak trip down the Lumber River, for instance. Bring sunscreen, drinking water, a snack “and any other necessary items,” says trip organizer Eric Siratt, a ranger with Lumber River State Park. It’s free, but space is limited for this trip that shoves off from…
This weekend highlights some of the best North Carolina has to offer in the outdoors. Coast Not long ago, a biathlon/duathlon typically meant running and swimming. More and more, it can mean pretty much anything. Such as running and paddleboarding. That’s the case at Saturday’s Wrightsville Beach Biathlon, where participants will depart from the dock harbor side at the Blockade Runner, paddle four miles through Banks Channel, hop off the…
Senior citizens in the Triad have helped in a key discovery about how they and their peers can retain their mobility: walk and lose weight. A five-year study of 288 seniors (ages 60-79) in Davidson, Forsyth and Guilford counties found that those who walked regularly and lose weight improved their mobility by as much as 20 percent. The Wake Forest University study divided the seniors into three groups: a control…
Today, a look at a trio of studies on kids’ health, presented in three acts. Act I: Leave it to poor cholesterol The scene: Lunchtime at Grant Avenue Grammar School as Larry and Gilbert sit down to eat. Let’s listen. Gilbert: Lunchables? Larry: Yeah, why? Gilbert: Ya knucklehead! Don’t you realize that the lifestyle choices you make today can have a profound effect on your cholesterol levels as an adult?…
The following GGNC story appeared in the November 23 editions of The News & Observer in Raleigh and the Charlotte Observer. It’s rerun here, with links. For additional information about getting kids outside, visit yesterday’s post. The virtues of kids being outdoors have been touted in a number of studies. But when it comes down to it, the proof is in the playing. Mounting evidence shows our kids spend too…