Charlie Spencer Lackey was facing stomach surgery last fall that she was hoping to avoid. She suffers from gastroesophageal reflux disease, more commonly referred to as GERD; her doctor mentioned one option that could preempt surgery: start exercising, lose some weight. Eager as she was to avoid the surgery, another malady made exercise a challenge.
Category Archives: Fitness
Living young in the Triangle
If you live in the Triangle, you have discovered the fountain of youth.
A study of the 50 largest metro areas in the U.S. finds the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area is among the 10 “youngest” places in the country. The study, released today, looked at 52 factors and ranked the Triangle No. 8 nationally, just below No. 7 San Diego and just above No. 9 Minneapolis-St. Paul, in terms of how old we really are.
DST: Let the after work fun begin
Sunday, one of the kids asked how Daylight Saving Time came to be (a disgruntled kid, I should add, since she’d be waking for school an hour earlier the next morning). I spared her my discourse on a subject I’m peculiarly fascinated by and gave her the short version: Several countries adopted it in World War I as a way to save coal for the war effort. Most dropped it following the war, resumed it for WWII, then, to a large extent, stuck with it.
Spring into stretching
Saturday morning I woke up and immediately realized two things: One, I’d slept really well, since it was more than an hour later than I’m used to waking up on the weekend. And, two, I was intensely sore, all, as Maud Frickert used to say, over my body. Not a flu sore. Rather, an I’ve-done-something-my body’s-not accustomed-to-doing sore. In this case, diving for softballs. Fortunately, I had a cure.
North Carolina’s pockets of activity
At first read, the news from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sounds none-to-good for the Old North State: “Americans who live in parts of Appalachia and the South are the least likely to be physically active in their leisure time … .” Read on, though, and you discover that Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Tennessee are the prime offenders. “In those states, physical inactivity rates are 29.2 percent or greater for more than 70 percent of the counties.” By “physical inactivity” they mean these people get no exercise outside of their regular jobs (which could be sedentary as well). The national average, as of 2008, was 25.4 percent, meaning a quarter of Americans get no leisure exercise