Building healthy habits
An energetic student at St. Mary of the Assumption School in Herman, Ali Eshenbaugh may be far from a typical pre-teen. When it comes to a choice between television and working out, Eshenbaugh will choose exercise every time.
Doing a number of jumping jacks and sit-ups everyday, the 10-year-old knows the importance of keeping her body in shape and encourages her peers to do the same.
However, experts say that video games, television and new media could be causing U.S. childhood obesity to skyrocket to dangerous levels. Based on recent studies, more than 15 percent of children between the ages of 6 and 11 are obese. Those numbers have increased steadily since 1976.
The Second Annual Health Fair held recently at St. Mary was an attempt to combat the trend.
"It's important for other kids to do those things so they can get their exercise," Eshenbaugh said. "It gets them to be more active so they can be fit."
Becky Traigga of Community Care Connections, who spearheaded the fair, feels the same way. "This is our push, to have our kids be healthy and provide a healthy lifestyle," she said. "Countless studies have shown that kids who adopt a healthy lifestyle early adopt a healthy lifestyle later in life."
Community Care, a human services agency based in Butler Township, participated to offer posture assessment services, and an instructor from the Yoma Room, a yoga facility located in Jefferson Township, taught breathing, stretching and relaxation techniques."Yoga can serve a variety of purposes in children," said Lisa McWilliams of the Yoma Room. "It can help them deal with the anxiety they feel as well as helping their posture, aligning bones."Yoga's breathing techniques can increase lung capacity and help with concentration. (Yoga) can alleviate asthma symptoms and it's good for high blood pressure and cholesterol. It really has so many benefits," Traigga said."Good posture is becoming more important to teach in school kids because they spend more time hunched over computers both at school and at home," said Traigga."We are demonstrating to them today through using weights in backpacks what can happen to the body when we are carrying such heavy weights on our back," she said.A number of parents also attended to help run stations for cardiovascular endurance and to show students the difference between their resting and working heart rates.Carla Eshenbaugh, Ali's mother and a nurse at the The Surgery Center at Cranberry, taught children how to find their pulse. They were also shown how to assess their heart rate after performing a cardiovascular activity such as walking or jumping rope."For older children, you want your heart rate to be between 1.5 to two times their resting rate," Eshenbaugh said. "For younger children, it really can vary depending on their resting heart rate."Government goalsThe obesity problem is prompting a number of government agencies to get involved in implementing healthy living initiatives.As of last year, all school districts in the state had to adopt wellness policies. The health fair, which began last year, was the school's way of beginning to execute that policy.While the state is working to integrate wellness education in the schools, other state organizations are attempting to show what families can do at home.The Food Related Intergenerational Discussion Group Experiences pilot program is such an initiative. The three-week FRIDGE program being held at Grove City Medical Center looks to bring families together to learn more about food and nutrition.According to Frasier Zanhiser, who helps run the program locally through the Penn State Cooperative Extension of Mercer County, communication is the biggest key for families to develop healthy eating patterns."It's so important because there really is an interdependency in a family," Zanhiser said. "Children may want to make healthier choices, but if the parents don't let them because they are the ones buying the food, healthy options aren't always available."Also in today's society, it is often left to the children to make decisions about food because both parents are out earning a living. There needs to be that communication between the two so the family can work together and implement a plan to stay healthy."FRIDGE was formed after a group of professionals at Penn State Extension found research on family nutrition issues lacking.As a result, the branch performed its own research, which later received an award from the National Extension Association of Family and Consumer Sciences.Focus groups were formed statewide with all age groups expressing the need to improve their nutritional behavior and ways to improve family communication on the issue.
Kelly Miller, an employee at Grove City Medical Center, jumped at the opportunity to attend the FRIDGE program and was impressed by the communication techniques she learned at the first session."I'm definitely concerned about nutrition, especially for my kids," Miller said. "My son is very active and tends to make healthier choices, but my daughter likes to read a lot and is not as active and she doesn't always make those healthy choices. I wanted her to learn about those healthy habits."Miller found the session enlightening."I learned from a lot of the parents that most of them eat in front of the television," Miler said. "But most of the kids indicated that they wanted to eat together as a family at least once a day.""That's just the example of miscommunication and families thinking they already know what someone is going to say," said Zanhiser.To show that families don't always know each other as well as they think, the groups played a game in which they tried to answer a question as they believed their counterpart would."I think they were amazed to find that the answer wasn't always what they thought it was going to be," Zanhiser said.To Miller, the initiative is well worth three nights of education."There are just a lot of simple things that can be learned," she said. "It's worth it for your family to be healthy."To find out more about the FRIDGE program, call 724-662-3141.
