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A focus on health care and more specifically "staying young."
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Wadena Pioneer Journal office: (218) 631-2561 • Fax: (218) 631-1621 • Web site: www.wadenapj.com • E-mail: [email protected] or [email protected]
Dorothy Parker, the fa-mous 20th century writer, poet, satirist and critic would have said that Ethelyn Pear-son had an incurable disease — curiosity.
Pearson will be 90 on her next birthday and while her family is sure to make an oc-casion of the event, she does not take much notice of an-other trip around the sun.
“I don’t pay any attention to my age,” Pearson said.
Sitting in her Fair Oaks Lodge apartment on a cold, January day, Pearson took a trip down memory lane to a time when she received a one-way ticket from Nebraska to Minnesota, helped her mother with janitorial work at the Wadena County courthouse, wrote in a tablet as she sat in a tree and helped her late husband, Milton, put in his crops.
She has been told to “grow up” and has been pitied by her friends at Fair Oaks for having to rise so early in the morning to write. She does a weekly column on residents of Fair Oaks, writes feature stories for the Wadena Pioneer Journal and has many other freelance writing jobs.
Pearson thanks her lucky stars for living the kind of life where she does not have her
day all mapped out.“I am deathly afraid of
‘same old, same old,’” Pear-son said.
She has held many titles in her day but writer is the one she is the proudest to bear.
“I might get up in the morning and start writing right away instead of making the bed,” Pearson said.
So what does a woman who is pushing 90 consider to be the secret to living a long and happy life? Pearson fi nds her happiness in making the journey — facing new challenges, talking to people, wrestling with life and always asking questions. The 89-year-old writer is still meeting up to six deadlines a month.
Pearson has also done her best to take care of herself. She has always refrained from the use of alcohol, drugs and tobacco.
“Anything that screws up your mind is not for me,” Pearson said fl atly.
Pearson was seriously ill when she was a teenager and quit high school to recover her health. She did not see it as a big sacrifi ce at the time because she was already plan-ning to be married. The Pear-sons gave up on farming, trav-eled to California and lived there for several years during World War II before returning to farming.
Ethelyn tackled many tasks
in the fi rst years of her mar-riage, succeeding in some and botching others, but she kept learning. Her special interest was writing and she became a free-lancer. She once had a piece published in Redbook and later received an invitation from author, editor and pub-lisher Helen Gurley Brown, to train as a staff writer. With her kids in high school, Pearson had to decline Brown’s offer.
She played the guitar in a band and loved roller skat-ing. Her family “grew up on wheels” as the Pearsons made trips all around the area to skate. After their last child left for college, her husband asked her “what should we do next?” Following their greatest interest, they bought a roller skating rink of their own in St. Cloud.
Pearson enjoyed the years they owned their rink and she learned to appreciate a common trait found in the very young and the very old — honesty.
“I think they are the most honest,” Pearson said.
All through the 23 years that Pearson worked as a su-pervisor at Fair Oaks she was able to continue writing. She has written on and off for the Pioneer Journal since 1969.
As a free-lancer, Pearson has had to market her stories after writing them. She main-tains that while writing is fun the marketing is tough.
Without the benefi t of a college education, Pearson learned to write from be-ing an avid reader. She has subscribed to many writing magazines, followed the tips of professional writers, and can now recognize “formula” writing in a snap.
Her own writing has been mainly non-fi ction but she considers the best writer she has ever read to be Zane Grey, the famous western fi ction writer who authored “Riders of the Purple Sage.”
“That book has every-thing,” Pearson said with a smile.
So how has Pearson lived such a long and productive life?
“That’s an easy one, you have to keep a lot of lines out
there,” Pearson said. She is as interested in the future as she is in the past. If she is curious about a question she has to dig for the answer.
Anyone telling her that she can’t do this or fi nd out that is
apt to meet with a curt “why not?” from Pearson.
“I am curious,” Pearson said. “I’ve never been able to fi ght it off.”
BRIAN [email protected]
Saturday, January 29, 2011 8 PagesBUILDERMMUNITYC
Alexandria Detroit Lakes Morris East Ottertail Focus Park Rapids WadenaExtra
In this issue of Community Builder, a quarterly publication of local Forum Communications newspapers, is focused on health care and more specifi cally “staying young.”
Nearing 90, curiosity still drives her busy scheduleThe cure for boredom is
curiosity. There is no cure for
curiosity.— Dorothy Parker
Photo by Brian HanselEthelyn Pearson keeps herself very active at the age of 89 as a free-lance writer.
Living longer, living happierMinnesotan travels the globe for National Geographic, seeking secrets to healthy, happy life
What’s the secret of long life? What’s the secret of a happy life?
Many of us have pondered those questions, but Dan Buettner, a Minnesotan working for National Geographic, traveled the world to fi nd out. And he came
back with answers.Buettner is the author
of “Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer
from the People Who’ve Lived the Longest.” He identifi ed fi ve “blue zones” with the greatest incidence of people living to be 100 years old by studying birth and death records. Then he went to those places and learned
their secrets. In his new book,
“Thrive: Finding Happiness the Blue Zones Way,” he sought out the happiest places on the globe and came back with their secrets.
Buettner said researchers
used the scientifi c method to identify
pockets of popula-tions that had seem-
ingly found the fountain of youth.
“We begin by work-ing with demographers,” Buettner said. “There
are a handful of them in the world who know the technique for accessing birth records from 100 years ago and the death records from now, and doing the math, adjusting for immigration and emigration. And you want geographically defi ned areas, so you want to make sure it’s not just the way people are moving that explains longevity. You want places where we know people are living to 100 at extraordinary rates, or they have longer life expectancy, or they have low rates of middle age mortality — in other words, they’re not dying of heart disease and cancer.”
Buettner found Raffaella Monne, 107, and a high incidence of other centenarians in Sardenia, an island west of Italy. There he found people who drank red wine and goat’s milk, laughed a lot, were physically active and put family fi rst. In Okinawa, Japan, he found 105-year-old Seiryu Toguchi and learned more secrets: plant a garden, get plenty of sunshine, eat more soy, have a purpose for getting up in the morning. In Loma Linda, Calif., Buettner found Seventh Day Adventists like Marge Jetton, 100, who exercised often and taught Buettner more tips: eat almonds, stick to a plant-based diet more than meats, fi nd a sanctuary. In Costa Rica, he found Don Faustino, a centenar-ian who made it his purpose to go to market and select the menu for the family meal. Buettner also learned to eat a light dinner, keep a focus on family and get plenty of calcium.
Buettner went wherever the demographers told him there were unusual concentrations of 100-year-olds. Some of the locations were a surprise to him.
“Sardenia and Okinawa made perfect sense,” he said. “Costa Rica blew us away, the Nicoya Peninsula and the Adventists in Loma Linda, be-cause there’s a lot of smog and there’s junk food around, but these people managed to squeeze out an extra decade of healthy life.
In fact, some of these blue zones with amazing long life were bordered by places that performed poorly in that category.
“They’re usually isolated people who are vastly outperforming their neighbors,” Buettner said of the blue zones. “These are places where a certain amount of isolation has shielded them and insulated them from some of the forces that erode longevity, like the American food
culture and engineering physical activity out of our lives.”
Asked what fi ve things people should do today if they want to live to be 100, Buettner was quick to rattle them off:
• “If you’re not sleeping at least 7 hours and less than 9, you should start doing that now. Make sure your bedroom is cool, and take the TV out.”
• “Get your house down to one TV and put it in an out-of-the-way place. I think the TV is one of the biggest eroders of both living longer and living better. TV watching is good for about 45 minutes, but that’s it.”
• “Think about who you spend your time with. Are your friends overweight and not doing anything about it? Are they the kind of people who complain and gossip, or do they talk about ideas? Are they the type of people for whom their idea of recreation is physical activity? If they’re not, you should really be expanding your social network. That makes a huge difference.”
• “I don’t care if you’re Muslim, Christian or Jewish. If you were born in a religion, go back to it. There’s so much evidence that religious people are happier than non-religious people. If you don’t have a religion, spend some time to see if there’s one that’s right for you. It’s just such an easy proxy for building a social network, and fi nding purpose.”
• “Go through your house. In every case where you can push a button to make your life easier, get rid of it. We’ve engineered so much physical activity out of our lives. We need to engineer it back in. Just fi lling your life with opportunities to burn fi ve calories here or 10 calories there — that adds up. There’s science that suggests its even more important than the 20 minutes you spend on the treadmill every day.”
Buettner said our culture has made life too easy for us, and we need to force ourselves to do a few things the hard way.
“Mostly, we’re careening toward a huge problem,” he said. “It’s not individuals’ faults. I don’t think Minnesotans are any different than their forefathers. I think we’re disciplined, hard-working, good people, but we live in an environ-ment of sickness where 370 marketing messages
STEVE [email protected]
See BLUE ZONES on PAGE 7
Photo by Richard HumeDan Buettner traveled the globe with National Geographic to fi nd the secrets of long life for his book, “Blue Zones.” His latest offering, “Thrive,” set out to fi nd the world’s happiest populations.
Page 2 • January 29, 2011 PJ Community Builder Wadena Pioneer Journal
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February Festival of Health will be Feb. 5
The 21st annual February Festival of Health will be held on Feb. 5, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at M State, in spite of changes on campus from the June 17 tornado. There, festival-goers can fi nd tidbits to help them achieve their own long lives.
“Pick up little bits of in-formation that may help you in the future,” Lisa Reddick said.
Reddick, who is the direc-tor of administrative services at Tri-County Health Care, said the event would offer many of the same features along with some new events.
“We have Germ City; that’s new this year. That’s pretty exciting. It’s been at the State Fair before. It’s a fun little activity where people get to put this special glow lotion on their hands. They wash their hands how they normally would, with a special soap, and then put up their hands under the black lights and it shows how many germs they missed,” Reddick said. “It’s pretty surprising when people think that they’ve done a pret-ty good job of washing their hands and then they go under the black lights and you see all the stuff you’ve missed.”
Another new feature is a bigger giveaway to moms who are currently pregnant or who have had a baby in the last year through the Community Baby Shower.
“We have an increased prize package this year. It’s worth more than $400, which
is pretty cool,” she said.The Community Baby
Shower is sponsored by Tri-County Health Care’s OB department.
The health festival, which receives some sponsoring from M State and KWAD, continues to draw large crowds.
“Last year we had about 800 people come through so it’s a pretty big event,” Red-dick said.
It also still has mostly free health screenings.
“There is a small charge for cholesterol testing, $14 for that. But we have free blood pressure, body fat analysis, pulmonary function testing, diabetes glucose test-ing, vaccinations, fl u, tetanus, diptheria, and pertussis test-ing. Those are all free health screenings,” Reddick said.
A variety of booths from many different government entities, organizations and businesses besides Tri-County will be on display, including the American Cancer Society, the Wadena Fire Department, the Wadena County Sheriff’s Offi ce, Golden Living Center, Fair Oaks, Wadena Soil and Water Conservation, Wadena Lions and Kinship of Todd-Wadena County.
“It’s a good opportunity to have all these entities in one space at one time for the com-munity to be able to access all this information at once,” Reddick said.
And the event is fun as well as educational, she em-phasized. Kids from Just For KIX will dance from 10:30
a.m. to noon, Fair Oaks will demonstrate rehab equipment and exercises from noon to 12:30 p.m., and S.T.O.M.P. MMA will demonstrate mar-tial arts from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. The WDC FCLLA will do face painting from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., and caricatures will be by Doug Curtis, whose quick artistic talent helped him win Wadena’s Miss Tootsie title in early January.
Food will also be served in the cafeteria from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. for a nominal price.
“We weren’t entirely sure that we were going to be able to have the event the same way that we have had for the last 20 years, and we are very fortunate to be able to con-tinue our tradition,” Reddick said. “We are very fortunate to be able to be a strong com-munity partner and leader in this area.”
Photo by Rachelle KlemmeLisa Reddick is the director of administrative services at Tri-County Health Care.
Germ City among new attractions this yearRACHELLE KLEMME
[email protected] February Festival of Healthschedule of events
What: 21st annual Festival of HealthWhen: Saturday, February 5 from 10
a.m. - 2 p.m.Where: M-State, Wadena campus
Hwy 29Why do families enjoy conning to
February Festival of Health?• The event is FREE• Booths provide hands-on learn-
ing with resources for families’ health, well-being and safety.
• Many health screenings• EntertainmentHow many booths will be available
for people to stop by and visit?• More than 70 booths• Booths are represented by local busi-
nesses and organizations, in addition to TCHC
• TCHC booths (example of what’s there includes)
~ EMS ~ Auxiliary~ Diabetes Resource Program ~ Social Work ~ OB~ Radiology ~ “Ask A Provider” ~ Fair Oaks Lodge ~ Respiratory Therapy ~ Plus-many more• Local businesses and organizations
(example of what’s there) ~ American Cancer Society ~ Wadena Soil and Water Conserva-
tion District -BRING WATER SAMPLE FOR TESTING
~ Wadena Lions — glucose testing~ Wadena Fire Department ~ Wadena County Sheriff’s Department ~ Golden Living Center, Henning ~ Fair Oaks Apartments, Senior Housing ~ Kinship of Todd-Wadena Counties ~ Plus... many moreWhat health Screenings can people
take advantage of?• FREE~ Blood pressure~ Body fat analysis~ Pulmonary Function testing~ Diabetes blood glucose test~ Vaccinations - fl u, Tetanus/Diphtheria/Pertussis• Small charge~ Cholesterol testing ($14)Other features:• New this year-Germ City~ Germ City is a science based, edu-
cational program to improve the effective-ness and frequency of hand washing behaviors in adults and children. Germ City has been used at the Minnesota State Fair, county fairs, hospitals, open houses, libraries, schools, employee training and
infection control events, and restaurants.• Ask-A-Provider~ You will have the opportunity to
talk with one of the health care provid-ers from TCHC regarding general health questions.
• Community Baby Shower Booth~ Sponsored by TCHC’s Obstetrics
Department ~ Increased prize package. This year
more than $400 worth of prizes will be given away to moms who are currently pregnant or who have had a baby within the last year.
FREE Entertainment and demonstrations
• Performances by Just for Kix: 10:30 - noon
• Demonstrations by Fair Oaks Lodge staff: Noon - 12:30 p.m.
~ New rehab equipment and exercises that even their residents can do
• Demonstrations by S.T.O.M.P.: 1-2 p.m.
~ highlighting a new form of fi tness in the area
~ Jiu-Jitsu classes in January~ They are located in Jefferson Square• Face painting by WDC-FCCLA:
10 a.m.-2 p.m.~ Wadena Deer Creek High School
students in the Family, Careers and Community Leaders of America (FCCLA) club
~ Free face painting ~ Club’s advisor is Cindy Koll• Caricatures by Doug Curtis:
10 a.m. - 2 p.m. ~ Free~ Talented individual ~ Crowd favoriteWhen is food available?• Between 11 a.m. - 1 p.m.• In the cafeteria• Nominal fee Sponsors for February Festival of
Health• Tri-County Health Care Foundation• KWAD/KNSP/K106~ A huge thank you to Rick Youngbauer
and his staff that help make this event suc-cessful.
~ Someone from Rick’s staff will spend part of the morning at the February Festi-val of Health doing a live remote.
• M-State, Wadena campusOther event in Wadena same weekend• Liquidation Sale~ Wadena Armory from 8 a.m.-3 p.m. ~ Bargains galoreWho should people contact for more
information• Holly Weller, TCHC Event
Coordinator• 218-632-8777
Dr. Nicole Strand of Tri-County Hospital has some ideas on what makes for a long and healthy life.
“Sometimes we think that people who live to be 102 or 104 or in their 90s have great genes, right? Or great genet-ics. Or that they’re lucky. But a lot of it is their lifestyle,” she said.
Strand specializes in family practice and said Tri-County covers different age groups from prenatal care and birth all the way to hospice.
“I think it’s important to have a partnership with your provider and to try to stay with the same provider,” she said.
Strand said that even healthy people need to go to the doctor to stay healthy.
“See your provider on a yearly basis even if you’re healthy because it’s important to talk about pap smears and how often we should have them, colon cancer screening, prostate, cholesterol, diabetes testing, because I really think
that preventative health care is the key,” Strand said. “If you can detect either a disease or an illness early, or prevent it altogether based on your lifestyle, it makes a big differ-ence.”
She said that for kids, im-munizations are part of seeing one’s doctor while healthy.
Strand said that the recom-mendations to start screenings vary, and some have changed.
Pap smears have changed; instead of being as early as age 16, the current guidelines for women are to start at age 21 or three years after fi rst intercourse.
For colon cancer screen-ing, people without family history start at 50 years old and people with family history should start 10 years younger than their parent when their
An ounce of prevention equals a pound of cure for long life
RACHELLE [email protected]
Photo providedDr. Nicole Strand is a phy-sician at Wadena Medical Center, part of Tri-County Health Care.
Booth sponsored by the CHAMP Coalition of Wadena County. Funding by the MN Department of Human Services, Alcohol and Drug Abuse Division.
Festival of Healthat M State – Feb 5th – 10am-2pmRegister to
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See STRAND on PAGE 7
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Wadena Pioneer Journal PJ Community Builder January 29, 2011 • Page 3
If you want to get an an-swer that makes sense, you have to ask the right ques-tion.
I set out to do a story on the spiritual and emotional path to staying young.
But a better question is how do we stay connected and vibrant and growing, no matter what our age?
And if we feel unconnect-ed, dull and stagnant, how do we change that?
A strong spiritual base can help people get through the tough times as they age, said Vicki Marthaler, chaplain at Emmanuel Community in Detroit Lakes.
“Sometimes if people are struggling with their health and loss — and it can be not just death, but the loss of mobility or home, sometimes even your mind — a person can have a crisis of faith, and that emptiness and despair that goes with it,” she said.
“People that are grounded in faith, that have a spiritual connection, will ride the crest of that wave, and are more apt to come to a place of peace, of strength.”
“But spirituality is more than a church or a religion,” she added. “It is hope and peace and joy and content-ment.”
And one of the best ways to fi nd some of that for your-self is to let yourself open up and connect with people.
“I see us being created to be people of community,” Marthaler said. She believes God works through people, which is the spiritual side of community.
“You want to kind of stay connected to your community and to your family,” agreed Karen Lenius, Becker County coordinator on aging.
“Emotionally and mental health-wise, if people are pre-pared and they are connected, it helps as they age.”
Having a workable, realistic plan for retirement can directly correlate to emo-tional well-being down the road, Lenius said.
“Have a fi nancial plan. Have a medical plan. Have a legal plan — who will make decisions on your behalf?” she said.
“When you retire, where do you want to live? How do you want to live?”
More people are retiring while still in debt, or are still paying on a mortgage. “You might want to re-think that whole plan,” she said.
Situational depression can be the result of fi nancial prob-lems at any age, and that’s true of the elderly as well.
“A lot of people age with-out appropriate thought to fi nancial considerations,” Le-nius said. “If you turn 65 and think the government is just going to care for you, it’s not going to happen. Everybody needs to care for themselves… Make your 50s as productive as possible.”
One of the best things you can do for your emotional health is to volunteer. It helps people stay connected, to feel like they are a contributing member of society — and they are needed, Lenius said. “There’s not one program
in the city or the county that could survive without volun-teers.”
Staying connected with a church community is also im-portant as people age, Lenius said.
Those who don’t have a church community can stay connected through the public library, adult basic education, travel, or by volunteering with hospice, the United Way, the Red Cross or the Salvation Army, she suggested.
And for those who split from their church commu-nity years ago, often for trau-matic reasons, churches have changed, and it’s never too
late to reconcile.That’s one thing Marthaler,
the nursing home chaplain, tries to do with residents at Emmanuel.
“This has been an oppor-tunity for people to reconnect with their church,” she said.
Years ago, a couple’s di-vorce could mean in effect a divorce from the church, and suicides were sometimes buried outside the church-yard walls.
Things happened that soured people on their church — she estimates that about 20 percent of the residents at Emmanuel had a falling out with their church
at some point and still carry that emotional burden.
Her No. 1 goal is to re-con-nect people to their churches, but she also offers the constant spiritual message that “they are loved and they are people of value, people of worth.”
Other paths to emotional well-being include healthy
doses of humor — Marthaler said one thing people never seem to lose is their sense of humor.
And don’t be shy about telling your story.
“If you give a person a chance to tell their life stories, it empowers them,” she said.
To stay young, stay connectedNATHAN BOWE
Photo by Brian Basham/DL Newspapers Staying active and having fun are key to emotional health at any age. Emmanuel Community (of Detroit Lakes) Chaplain Vicki Marthaler, left, shares a laugh with 98-year-old resident Ethel Hallock, who delights in making “sunshine books” fi lled with positive messages and funny, or inspiring, photos.
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Sanford Health clinics in Perham, New York Mills, Ottertail, Hawley and Ulen have received a $15,000 grant from the Minnesota Department of Health to help fi ght obesity.
According to Beth Ulschmid, director of clinic operations, the grant is part of a statewide initiative to make a difference in the health of Minnesotans. The Statewide Health Improvement pro-gram’s original goal was to fi ght chronic diseases and reduce smoking, and quickly turned to fi ghting obesity, a main contributing factor to diseases such as diabetes.
The $15,000 will be used in the clinics to dedicate to nurse time to assisting pa-tients with body mass indexes (BMI) of 30 or more. With the use of computerized medical records, clinic staff can fi nd out “who’s been naughty or nice,” according to Ulschmid. Nurses then help patients come up with interventions and get them on track.
“Our goal is to reduce av-erage BMI of our clients,” Ulschmid said.
At the clinics, BMI charts are available so patients can see if they are overweight or obese. Ulschmid said that although Perham has many venues for exercise including the Perham Area Community Center and bike trails, getting the area healthier is no easy feat.
“These are really baby steps on how to make our communities healthier,” she said.
Also with the grant, porta-ble scales are being purchased for Sanford staff to take to health fairs.
The Sanford clinics have also been making changes, in-cluding have healthy potlucks and having healthy treats as opposed to candy and cook-ies.
“It’s been just as eye opening for our own staff,” Ulschmid said. “We need to be supportive of each other in our workplaces and in our communities.”
The clinics will start im-plementing the service at the
Sanford clinics awarded mini-grant to fi ght obesityASHLEY BERGEN
Weight [pounds]
ObeseOverweightNormal RangeUnderweight
Heig
ht [f
eet a
nd in
ches
]
fi rst of the year. Ulschmid explained that the state and federal governments are pushing to curb obesity, as public perception about what’s considered overweight is changing.
“The government is very concerned about weight-related conditions,” she said. “What we perceive to be normal is overweight.”
SHIP aims to tackle the top three
causes of preventable illness and death in the United States: Tobacco use, physical inactivity and poor nutrition. These factors have been estimated to cause 35 percent of all annual deaths in the United States, or 800,000 deaths each year. These factors also drive up health care costs. SHIP interventions are projected to save an estimated $1.9 billion in Minnesota by 2015.
“If we want to truly improve health in Minnesota, we have to move up-stream to prevent the chronic diseases that bring people into the health care system in the fi rst place,” Dr. Sanne Magnan, Minnesota Commissioner of Health said in a news release. “Not only do those chronic diseases reduce the quality of life and life expectan-cy for Minnesotans, but the costs of
treating them create a substantial bur-den for our health care system. SHIP can reach across the state to improve policies, systems and environments and make it easier for Minnesotans to engage in healthy behaviors that help prevent chronic disease.”
Wadena Pioneer Journal PJ Community Builder January 29, 2011 • Page 5
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Susan Sigurdson’s 94-year-old mother grew up on a farm. It was a rigorous life that was full of work. Her family raised the food they ate and prepared it for the table. It was good, farm-fresh food. Since there were also a lot of mouths to feed, no one ate more than their share.
Now a registered dietician at Tri-County Hospital, Sigurdson is convinced that her mother had a great advantage over the average American of today.
The rural lifestyle was a com-mon one early in the 20th century but that is far from the case today. Census fi gures show that 83 percent of the nation’s 310 million citizens live in metropolitan areas.
“People should maintain a healthy weight for their body size, doing that by eating moderately, eating regularly, eating a variety of foods,” Sigurdson said. There was a lot of physical activity connected with the rural lifestyle but urban life-styles tend to promote a sedentary workplace where stress and long hours, not exercise, is the norm.
At the same time, the variety of the food supply has increased. What has been the result? According to the Centers for Disease Prevention, nearly 34 percent of adults are obese, more than double the percentage 30 years ago. The share of obese chil-dren tripled during that time, to 17 percent.
“We don’t have to work very hard to get our food supply,” Sigurdson said. “We can talk to a box outside of a restaurant and say I want this, this and this and then we just drive up to a window and trade some money for some food.”
As a society, Americans are vo-racious consumers when it comes to meat. Some Americans eat 8-12 ounces of meat at one meal.
“Meat can be bad in large quanti-ties and high fat contents,” Sigurd-son said.
Because of a go-go lifestyle many Americans also opt for processed foods, some of which are good, but which do not have the nutrients of fresh food.
Teenagers are one group of
Americans that should be paying more attention to what they eat. Sig-urdson does not see teenagers basing their food choice decisions on living a long, long life, but if they did, it would help them a lot as the years go by.
“I’m not sure if a 16-year-old ever thinks that because they think they’re invincible,” Sigurdson said.
In most cases, Sigurdson believes that people do not start thinking about what they eat until they are in their late 20s and 30s.
“It’s a lifetime of choices,” Sig-urdson said. “We have to build some skills to make choices.”
Consumer infl uences are starting to help young people make good choices. Sigurdson recently saw fresh fruit cups at a convenience store — a refreshing change from candy and chips.
“We’ve got a bigger, broader food supply available to us in this country than we had prior,” Sigurdson said.
While there are more processed foods there are also more fresh foods, such as what they can receive from community gardens.
Community gardens are provid-ing whatever is ripe and ready to pick all summer.
“We have so many choices so it’s whether people realize the power of the fuel that they put into their body.”
Going hand-in-hand with the
right kind of foods is preparing them right.
Sigurdson never liked spin-ach until she had it fresh from the garden. She had always eaten the canned spinach.
“It wasn’t even the same thing,” Sigurdson said.
One downfall many Americans share is the tendency to think that more is better. Buffets are an ex-ample. Sigurdson looks at buffets as a license to over-eat.
“In America we tend to eat too much, it’s kind of changing but the attitude is that more is always bet-ter,” Sigurdson said. “Well, it isn’t always better.”
While growing children usually have big appetites they burn up most of their calories. The problem for many adults is that the habit of eat-ing big meals is ingrained in them. After the teenage growing years are over a person needs fewer calories.
“For every decade that goes by we need 2 percent less energy to maintain the same weight,” Sigurd-son said.
Diet, exercise and moderation all contribute to the chance for a longer life but Sigurdson has known people who get away with fl aunting the rules.
“There is always someone that breaks all of the rules and still gets to live a long time,” Sigurdson said.
Eating for long life? Too much of the wrong foods complicates matters
BRIAN [email protected]
Photo by Brian HanselSusan Sigurdson is a dietician at Tri-County Hospital in Wadena.
Consume fresh food for higher nutrient value.
Nearly 34 percent of adults are obese, more than double the percentage 30 years ago.
Page 6 • January 29, 2011 PJ Community Builder Wadena Pioneer Journal
Miriam’s Massage, just a block from downtown New York Mills, offers a little more than just massages.
Located at 102 South Main Avenue in NY Mills, Miriam’s Massage aims to assist clients achieve their optimal state of health and well-being.
Miriam Mursu, who has run the business for eight years, is a Licensed Reflexologist (LR), a Certified Personal Trainer (CPT) and is Nationally Certified in Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork (NCTMB).
Mursu, who farmed with her husband for 30 years, said that she realized that offering massages and wellness servic-es was something she wanted to do while attending school to be certified and working at a crisis center.
“I’ve always had compas-sion for people since I was young,” she said. “I can’t stand pain, and I can’t stand people in pain, but I want to help, and doing what I do now is exactly what I wanted to do.”
Mursu said that one of the things she enjoys most about her job is meeting people, es-pecially elderly clients.
“I always enjoyed working with the elderly at a nursing home,” she said. “Their life experiences and life stories are so interesting – they have so much to say.”
Mursu’s clients range from infants to elderly as old as 95 years old.
“Some people come in once a week, others once a month,” Mursu said. “I’m usu-ally busy with a full schedule every day.”
Mursu said that it’s im-portant for her to cater to her clients. Whether that means making herself available at
5 a.m. or 10 p.m., she’s happy to do it.
“I usually can’t promise that I can help somebody, but I’m willing to try,” she said. “It provides me satisfaction seeing relief on their faces.”
Learning moreMursu said that clients
should know that she is al-ways working to learn more about what she does, and that she will continue to keep her-self certified in the services
she offers. “It’s just so fascinating
to learn how different parts of the body are connected,” she said, pointing to a foot display that describes which parts of the foot are connected to other parts of the body.
Likewise, “the more class-es you take, the more you find out there is to learn,” she said.
In the same way, Mursu said that she’s always open to learning new things from her
clients themselves, such as old family remedies that have been passed on from genera-tion to generation.
Mursu just recently re-turned from Phoenix, where she went to get training in Thai reflexology massage.
Services offeredMiriam’s Massage pro-
vides services such as Swedish massage, Thai foot massage, cranial-sacral thera-py, deep tissue, sports and hot stone massage, reflexology and lymph drainage, among many others.
For first-time clients, a massage costs $30, which Mursu said is the same price she charged when she started her business eight years ago.
“People have asked me, why haven’t you raised your prices?” she said. “And I say it’s because it’s important to keep the services affordable. And I’d also rather be busy.”
The business also offers traditional and naturapathic services, such as varieties of physicals, well child visits and ear candling.
Mursu also sells dietary supplements, healthy cof-fee, gift certificates and other wellness-related items.
Mursu says her clients come from all over the area, including Fargo, Staples, Perham, Battle Lake and other cities.
She said that she thinks the services that she offers are unique, especially for a small community like NY Mills.
Mursu has been happy with how her business has been re-ceived by the NY Mills com-munity, she said.
“I’ve been real happy with how things have worked out here,” she said. “The biggest blessing is just meeting all the new people.”
All services are offered at her office, which is handicap accessible. For more informa-tion, contact Miriam at 218-385-3855.
Miriam’s Massage in New York Mills offers alternative medicine solutions
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Sam Benshoof/FOCUSMiriam Mursu sits next to the massage bed in her office in NY Mills.
Miriam’s Massage, located at 102 South Main Avenue in NY Mills, is housed in this building, which Miriam Mursu bought when she started her business eight years ago.
“The more classes you
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Wadena Pioneer Journal PJ Community Builder January 29, 2011 • Page 7
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rinse over our psyches every day, reminding us to buy crap we don’t need and eat food that’s not good for us. It’s very hard to fight that. We can’t rent a movie or go pick up cough medicine without being routed through a gauntlet of junk food.”
“There’s not enough work being done at changing our environment so the healthy option is the easy op-tion and the active option is the easy option,” Buettner continued. “We’re too obsessed with the easy thing to yield any real progress on either living longer or living better, right now.”
In his new book, “Thrive,” Buettner found himself in Denmark, Singapore, Mexico and San Luis Obispo, which were some of the happiest places on earth, his researchers discovered.
The happiest of all the people he encountered was Douglas Foo, who runs sushi restaurants in Singapore.
“He’s a man with a very clear set of values, which are make my mother proud and do right by my children, and the way he manifests that is by building a business which is run like a big family,” Buettner said. “He has a laugh that can fill a room. You know Douglas Foo is on his way when you hear his laugh coming first.”
Buettner found many of the same things that made people live long also made them happier, such as fam-ily, faith and healthy habits.
“It’s that blending of valued-driven mission in life, with the capacity to enjoy the moment,” Buettner said.
Perhaps most remarkably, Buettner set out to create a Blue Zone where one hadn’t existed before, in Albert Lea, Minn. After a series of newspaper articles, a vital-ity center was founded, bike paths were constructed and social networks were formed. Most of those still exist today, years after their establishment. Buettner said AARP magazine recently did a follow-up on Albert Lea. He said other communities can start their own blue zones, too.
Both of Buettner’s books are available on Amazon.com and he encouraged people to go to www.Blue-Zones.com and put your information into his “True Happiness Compass” to get a self-assessment.
Photo by David McLainMaking room for bikes is the only way to go in San Luis Obispo, Calif., a town that prides itself on making recreation and social interaction easier. Newer establishments often have a bike valet service.
parent was diagnosed.A new blood test marketed
by Johnson and Johnson has made headlines in the past few weeks as a way to detect cancer earlier and possibly replace some of the more in-vasive screening procedures.
Strand said the blood tests would be good especially if they encouraged more people to get themselves screened, but they were not widely available yet, and normal screening guidelines still ap-ply.
She said that avoiding cigarettes, avoiding excess alcohol, healthy eating and exercise are important, but mental and emotional health is important as well. Emo-tional health includes manag-
ing stress, staying connected with people and the three L’s: live, laugh and love.
Strand said that for seniors, it is important to stay busy to lead to vitality of life.
“I read somewhere online it said, ‘Retire don’t expire,’” she said. “It’s a great time to take up a new hobby or
volunteer or be involved, take some classes, do what you’ve always wanted to do. “
Strand said that living long is about the big picture.
“Sometimes we focus on longevity, but quality is, I think, equally important,” she said.
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Photo by Brian HanselTaking up a hobby like horseshoes is a good way to stay active and mingle with people.
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STRAND CONTINUED FROM PAGE 2
Page 8 • January 29, 2011 PJ Community Builder Wadena Pioneer Journal
Saturday, February 5
• “Ask A Provider”• Body Fat Analysis• Cancer Education• Chemical & Mental Health• Cholesterol Screenings• Community Baby Shower• DNA Swabs• Germ City – as seen at the MN State Fair• Glucose Screenings
• Leader Dogs for the Blind• Interventional Radiology• Mentoring• Nutrition• Physical Activity • Public Safety • Vaccinations – Flu, Tetanus/Diphtheria/
Pertussis • Water Testing – Bring your sample
Entertainment:• Performances by: Just for Kix
10:30 a.m. – noon• Demonstrations by:
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Noon – 12:30 p.m. • Demonstrations by: S.T.O.M.P.
highlighting a new form of fitness to the area
1 p.m. – 2 p.m.• Face painting by: WDC – FCCLA
10 a.m. – 2 p.m.• Caricatures by: Doug Curtis
10 a.m. – 2 p.m.
FREEADMISSION for the public!
Sponsored by: KWAD/KNSP/K106, M-STATE, WADENA CAMPUS AND TRI-COUNTY HEALTH CARE FOUNDATION
415 Je erson Street North • Wadena, MN 56482218-631-3510 or 1-800-631-1811
With Clinics in: Bertha, Henning, O ertail, Sebeka, Wadena
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Festivalof HealthFebruary
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Activities & Information:
M-State, Wadena Campus • 405 Colfax Avenue SW, Wadena10 a.m. – 2 p.m.
Physical activity: it’s not just for bodybuilders or shoppers who want the bragging rights to a smaller pants size.
Mike Gibson, the administrator at Fair Oaks Lodge from 1968 to 2007, said it is a crucial component to aging well and investing in long-term health.
Gibson, who now owns Gibson Consulting LLC, gives presentations with the title “Investing.”
“Initially, most of the groups will anticipate they’re going to hear me come in and talk about investing funds for old age so we have money when we grow old, where on the contrary, my investing is investing in yourself physically so that in fact, when you do get to the age that you want to spend some of the money you’ve been [saving], you can spend it on something that’s more enter-taining than paying for health care,” Gibson said.
Gibson said physical activity helps nursing home residents survive longer or even recover and return home.
He said factors for surviving lon-ger include genetics, getting physi-cal activity and/or physical therapy, and social life.
“Those people that will mix with the other residents and develop friends and participate in the activi-ties that are offered — those folks will generally fare better than those that are reclusive and do not have good interaction with staff and resi-dents and visitors,” he said. “This is assuming that everything else is equal.”
Gibson’s history with the Wadena nursing home goes back to 1952, when his father was the first administrator and they lived on the grounds.
He said that the nursing home
populations have changed. In the 50s, 60s and 70s, there was a greater variety of ability levels. Many el-derly residents simply could not live alone or did not have any other place to live and did not require steady care.
“We had people that needed heavy care all the way to the point where we had people that were up and about and alert, and physically rather active,” he said. “Now what’s happened since those years is that the nursing home today, the population is considerably different. ... Most of the people that are in the nursing homes today need nursing care and attention on a steady basis.”
Gibson said that the average stay years ago was 7 to 10 years, and because of the change in population having more medical needs in mod-ern times, it is about 5 years. Physi-cal activity helps people survive longer, he said.
“Recently, many of those people admitted to the nursing home [will] return home,” he said.
He said, of course, it is ideal to never have to go to the nursing home and stay active while younger.
Gibson said that in the earlier days when much of the population was up and about, some residents made sure to walk around the cam-pus or even to town and back.
“You had people who didn’t care to do any walking, and just for the most part sit back in the chair and go to meals and that type of thing — physically very inactive,” he said. “Seeing some people that had such a difficult time just getting up out of the chair and going to a meal as compared to some of the others, I remember noting that it seemed like those people that had been farmers… seemed to be able to get around bet-ter than those folks that had more sedentary work in their lives.”
What about people who have sedentary jobs?
“I spent the greater part of my life
behind a desk. And what needs to be done in those cases, is individu-als need to discipline themselves to cut out part of the day where they, in fact, do some physical activity. In my particular case, I made it a point to do it in the morning so I would get out of bed quite early,” he said.
Gibson gets up at 4:30 a.m. to exercise.
“If you haven’t exercised for some time, very definitely [you] should get the input of [your] phy-sician,” he said. “The exercise does not have to be going out and running five to 10 miles. It can be going out and just having a good walk.”
Gibson also recommended resis-tance exercise, which can be done with dumbbells or even empty gal-lon milk containers filled with water or sand.
“Otherwise those muscles can atrophy, and you have a problem getting up steps, even getting out of a chair, walking. You have to use those muscles so you have balance,” he said.
Gibson said he got to reading and studying up on the benefits of physi-cal activity, including subscribing to monthly publications from medical schools addressing health issues.
“It’s very rare that one of those publications would come out where they do not address the benefits of some type of physical activity for people to be able to maintain a higher quality of life — and in many cases maybe a longer life,” he said.
Gibson said that genes can and do have in impact on health and longevity.
“But with everything else being equal, barring an accident or a dis-ease,” he said. “I’m very comfort-able in saying that the more active you can stay both physically and mentally, the better quality and a pretty good chance of longer life will be enjoyed.”
No pain, no gain (of long life)Gibson recognized exercise a key to better living
RACHELLE [email protected]
Photo by Rachelle KlemmeMike Gibson was the administrator at Fair Oaks Lodge from 1968 to 2007.
