Healthy SC Challenge Tips

The Healthy SC Challenge is the Sanford family's effort to get all South Carolinians to do just a little more to live a healthier lifestyle. The tips are designed to encourage individuals and communities to live healthier lifestyles in three categories - nutrition, exercise and help to quit smoking.

Nutrition
Forego the designer coffee drinks. When it's cold outside, people reach for warm drinks; and normally, that means a run to the coffee shop around the corner. If you have to get your fix of caffeine, do it with coffee instead of a mocha latte or a blended drink. Many of the concoctions at your local Starbucks have more than 700 calories. 700 calories for a drink?! Your best bet is a cup of coffee with a bit of skim milk; it has only a few calories and the same pick-me-up power as those calorie-laden lattes. Also, remember to stay hydrated by drinking lots of water during the winter months. This is the time we get dehydrated most often. -www.aarp.org

Physical Activity
The data is convincing that regular physical activity provides protection from breast cancer and a growing number of studies are finding that it may be even more life-saving for breast cancer survivors. Yale School of Medicine scientists followed 933 women diagnosed with breast cancer over a 4 to 9 year time period and found that 2 years after diagnosis, women who engaged in any recreational activity at all had a 60 percent lower risk of death than those who were sedentary. Women who walked briskly at least 2 to 3 hours a week reduced their risk of death by 67 percent. Women who became sedentary after diagnosis were 4 times more likely to die of breast cancer than those who were inactive before diagnosis and remained so. Based on the studies I have reviewed, daily exercise should be a standard part of the treatment plan for any cancer survivor.

For those at risk for cancer (which is all of us!), please remember that regular physical activity (exercise) is 3rd only to avoiding tobacco and maintaining a healthy body weight as the most powerful thing you can do to reduce your cancer risk. For more on cancer prevention, please visit www.PreventCancer.org.
-Dr. Ann Kulze, Nationally recognized nutrition and wellness expert, www.dranns10steps.com

Tobacco
If you have asthma, smoking is especially risky because of the damage it does to the lungs. When someone smokes, he or she may cough, wheeze, and feel short of breath. This is because smoke irritates the airways, causing them to become swollen, narrow, and filled with sticky mucus. These are the same things that happen during an asthma flare-up. That's why smoking can cause asthma flare-ups to happen more often. Those flare-ups may be more severe and harder to control, even with medicine. -www.kidshealth.org