Working Out With a Splash!

If you haven’t heard of Zumba® Fitness, you must live under a rock. With classes all over the world and late night infomercials, it’s hard not to know that this 10-year program is the latest fitness craze! What you may not know is that Zumba® Fitness has five specialty programs, one that is causing quite the splash around town.

On Saturdays at 1pm, you can find licensed Zumba® Instructors Ashley Harris and Neki Garrett teaching Aqua Zumba® at Wallace Pool on the Lakeshore Foundation campus in Homewood. Accompanied by fun upbeat music, Aqua Zumba® makes exercising seem like a pool party, incorporating the same fun upbeat music as in land Zumba® classes and offers the same or even better benefits as exercising on land.

The fitness benefits you find on land exists in Aqua Zumba®, such as muscle strength and endurance, cardiovascular endurance, caloric expansion and muscle flexibility. By being in the water, there are additional benefits, lower impact on joints and bones and higher resistance for muscle toning resulting in a higher workout intensity compared to land exercise and a full body massage from the water around you. Those are just a few of the benefits exercising in water provides.

Aqua Zumba® classes attract people of all ages and fitness levels. Only your torso is submerged in the water, so there is no requirement to know how to swim since the water is at chest level. Water shoes are encouraged so they can provide support and traction and protection from the pool floor.

All you have to do is ADD WATER! If you interested in trying Aqua Zumba® classes, contact Ashley Harris at (205) 212-4697 and ZumbaFitnessWithAshley@Gmail.com or Neki Garrett at (205) 249-6561 and ZumbaNeki@Gmail.com. Summer class will continue through the end of August. You can also visit www.Zumba.com to see if there is a Aqua Zumba® class near you. For a quick video teaser on the Aqua Zumba® program, click on http://youtu.be/ajv8AMBNwsY.

Are you still “Natural?”

I’ve had so many people ask me recently…”Are you still natural?” My name is Keisa Sharpe, also known as “The Natural Hair Diva.” I began my natural hair journey two years ago after chemical relaxer was mistakenly left on my scalp by a stylist. Today, I’m officially a natural hair lover and I’m on a mission to inspire other women on the same path.

But back to the question.  The reason for this question is that I allowed Birmingham stylist Zach Pickett (Nhancements) to shampoo, condition, blow dry and flat iron my natural tresses. I adore the new style, but talk about shaking things up.
I’ve had several guys and ladies comment on “how much” they liked my hair, but would ask right after, “Now is that a “natural” hair style?” Well, it absolutely is a natural hair style, or if I could best describe it, it is straightened without the aid of any chemicals. I think some people are amazed and enlightened that a beautiful straightened hairstyle can be accomplished this way. Amazing, but true.
I look at this as an opportunity, though, because I absolutely love to educate people on the variety of styles we can accomplish with natural hair. Some may have the option of relaxing their hair again. I don’t. I’ve drawn a line in the sand — it’s me and my natural hair from here on out. It’s a good thing we’ve made peace with each other!

And to answer your next question…. I won’t be keeping this style long-term. I wanted to try something different for my birthday and also see how much length I’ve acquired in this natural state. People have also been amazed by how much my hair has grown. I am hopeful it is an example of how you can easily grow long, healthy hair by caring for it chemically-free. Long-term, I’ve seen that straightening or flat ironing my hair ruins its natural state. I like my own curl pattern and naturally curly styles too much to risk losing them.

So again, this is ONLY a short-term alternative for me. I do know there are many women, with natural hair, who straighten their hair and wouldn’t have it any other way. If you are one of them, then continue to rock your style. I wouldn’t dare knock any woman who’s found the style she loves because it gives you an opportunity to put your best face forward.

But you should know, in just a few days when you see me out and about in the Magic City, I’m back to my twist outs and afro puffs. So pictures will be the only proof that I straightened my hair until I have an inkling to do it again.
In the meantime, Happy Trails, all of you Birmingham natural divas!

Keisa Sharpe, The Natural Hair Diva, is founding editor of www.thenaturalhairdiva.com. Follow her on www.facebook.com/TheNaturalHairDiva or Twitter @Ilovemyownhair.

Sportplex Total Fitness has served the Birmingham area for almost three decades. With 3 facilities totaling over 35,000 square feet. Sportplex offers group fitness, personal training, racquetball, swimming pools, basketball, and indoor walking tracks.

For more information on our FREE VIP Membership click here!

Party in Pink Zumbathon to benefit the Susan G. Komen Foundation for the Cure

Three local Zumba® instructors, Yolanda Banks, Ashley Harris and Neki Garrett, are hosting a Party in Pink Zumbathon® to benefit the Susan G. Komen Foundation for the Cure® on Friday, October 22, 2010 at the Trussville Civic Center from 6:30pm – 8pm. Doors will open at 6:00pm.

Zumba® is a cardio dance fitness program that fuses hypnotic Latin rhythms and easy to follow moves. The revolutionary fitness program is sweeping the nation. As of May 2010, the Zumba® program is being offered in over 60,000 locations in 105 countries, has sold millions of DVDs, and has changed the lives of Zumba® fanatics worldwide with 7.5 million participants taking Zumba® classes every week.

The Party in Pink Zumbathon® is a part of a national campaign between Zumba® and the Susan G. Komen Foundation for the Cure®. Zumba® instructors all over the world are hosting and participating in this joint venture.

The Birmingham party will include local Zumba® instructors presenting thirty minutes of choreography and special guest Zumba® Educational Specialist Erick Santana conducting an hour masterclass for the attendees. Tickets are $15 in advance and $20 at the door.

For more information, please contact:
Primary contact:     Yolanda Banks, (205) 563-8750 orzumbawithyogi@yahoo.com
Additional contacts: Ashley Harris (205) 212-4697 or zumbajam@yahoo.com
Neki Garrett (205) 249-6561 or zumbaneki@gmail.com

For more information on Zumba®: www.Zumba.com

Download the flier!

Let’s Get The Facts Straight

September is Sickle Cell Awareness Month; and for patients it is not just another month in a new year to bring to the public’s attention a debilitating disease, it is another year to celebrate life.  The life expectancy for many who suffer from this inherited blood disorder is 40-50 years of age, and that statistic holds true for those who live in rural areas where there is no access to good doctors who are knowledgeable with the newest and latest technology, medicines, and procedures.  However, those patients who live in urban areas where they have access to doctors with the latest health care procedures, ongoing studies and research, and well equipped hospitals with people on staff who are well versed in the care and treatment of Sickle Cell patients are living well over 70-80 years of age.

 

This blood inherited disorder did not just pop up 20 years ago, this year marks the 100^th year anniversary (in this country) of the discovery, that is oh too often overlooked and disregarded.  In 1910, James Herrick in Chicago, IL discovered “early investigators emphasized that sickle cell anemia (SCA) patients have exercise limitations, may suffer shortness of breath at rest and orthopnea—particularly during crisis—and often have murmurs which require differentiation from other forms of organic heart disease. Cardiomegaly has been a frequent finding on clinical examination. The chest x-ray is an essential screening tool for causes of cardiopulmonary symptomatology, including tuberculosis, pulmonary infarction, pneumonia, pleural effusion, and pulmonary edema. Frequently noted findings on chest x-ray in SCA patients include generalized cardiomegaly, great vessel engorgement, prominence of the pulmonary artery, and right and left chamber enlargement.” (www.nmanet.org).

 

“Early investigators noted that SCA patients in the United States were almost always of African origin. Subsequent global epidemiological studies established that SCA and sickle-cell trait are present at high levels in parts of sub-Saharan Africa, the Saudi Arabian peninsula, central India, and certain parts of Southern Europe, Anthony Allison, an internist and epidemiologist working in Kenya, wondered how this mutant gene, which causes a deadly disease when present in two copies, could have reached such high levels in certain populations while being nearly nonexistent in other African populations (Allison, 1954). He reasoned that possession of a single mutant gene must confer a survival advantage and be positively selected at the population level. In particular, Allison linked the global distribution of sickle-cell trait to regions most affected by falciparum malaria, a parasitic disease that primarily affects RBCs. Malaria causes the death of approximately one million children per year, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2010).”  (http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/sickle-cell-anemia-a-look-at-global-8756219)

 

As a patient who lives with this debilitating disease, in layman’s terms, is hundreds of years ago there was a bad outbreak of malaria in tropical and sub-Saharan areas caused by mosquitoes that was killing people in record numbers, but no one had a clue as to why?  The people affected, their bodies began to mutate into sickled cells (or cells shaped like a fourth of a moon) to protect the body from dying.  Well this is the only known disease that mutated its own red blood cells (that carry oxygen throughout the body) to keep the body from dying.  Over the years, people who carried these mutated cells mated with one another, not knowing that mating with someone else who possessed this mutated sickled cell would create babies who would have the disease also and/or carry the trait which would pass this disease on from generation to generation.  This disease is not only confined to the African or African American race there are so many other races that were affected by this mutated red blood cell disorder such as in Portuguese, Spanish, French Corsicans, Sardinians, Sicilians, mainland Italians, Greeks, Turks and Cypriots. Sickle cell disease also appears in Middle Eastern countries and Asia who share the same pains and effects of this disease that I and so many others share.

 

There is no accurate count of the population neither in this country nor beyond the borders of the United States that tells the story and the magnitude of this disease that has no sympathy on those who live with it.  How can you help?  First of all get tested at any Sickle Cell Foundation around the country (for free), secondly if you are not a carrier donate blood every chance you get, sign up to be apart of the bone marrow registry “Be The Match” that can save a life, and lastly volunteer your time, talent, and resources.  Many who live with this disease describe it as broken glass flowing through the veins and we consider ourselves as the forgotten few left alone to live in silence.  As I write this article, I am in the hospital with two central lines in both sides of my neck (as my blood was removed from my body and donated blood took its place), heavily sedated on lots of medication that may harm the baby I carry in my womb, yet still I write for those of us with no voice who live day to day with a disease that torments us with no defense on our part to change this terrorist in our bodies. 

By Tina Kay Hughes, Author of “TKay’s Inspirationals:  Walking In Your Season” www.tinakay.net   Also, founder & Board President of Chronic Illness Advocacy

Your Purpose & Your Health

How many of you feel that not living out what’s deep inside of you is literally making you sick?

You know what to do, but you simply have not the courage to live it out.  Day in and day out you are urged from within to take that dreaded first step onto the known yet unknown path.  The path is known because you see it in your mind’s eye, you feel it, you experience it as real and familiar.  Yet the path is unknown for you have yet to truly live by FAITH guided by the spontaneous leadership of the Spirit within.

Think about it.  Which is better, to allow your purpose to perish with you or to courageously take the first step in full confidence that if you keep the vision, persistently act from that vision, that you will see it manifested in physical form.  This is healthy living!

One Big Happy Family?

I am starting to have a serious problem with the cable channel TLC. I endured the miserable marriage of Jon & Kate + 8, and have an enduring soft spot for the tulle and beaded embellishments of Say Yes to the Dress. I have made no comment on the somewhat morbid fascination the channel has with the lives of little people, little couples, or those with extreme large families. But yesterday morning I happened to catch One Big Happy Family. It’s an inside look at the Coles, an African-American family whose combined weight tops 1400 pounds. “As big as they are, their love for one another is even bigger,” the show’s profile tells us.

Wow.

Rather than taking an interventionist’s angle, the series introduces us to this family in all their cholesterol-be-darned, “why no, 14 pancakes per person is not too many” excess. Norris (340 pounds), the stay-at-home father who believes dinosaurs still roam the earth, sports beaded cornrows and shops yard sales to post items on eBay. Older daughter Amber (348 pounds) struggles to keep up as a member of her high school’s colorguard and shares that “food is [her] drug,” Tameka (380 pounds) is the long-suffering matriarch who works two jobs, and baby boy Shayne (308 pounds) admits that he was eating “fried chicken before he was two.” Food is comfort for this family, and they need a lot of it: heaping platters of butter-drenched pancakes, greasy chicken wings, and gobs of cheesecake on Family Truth Night.

The episode I caught shows the family at the Wet ‘n Wild water park, and (big surprise) they exceed the weight requirements to enjoy the more exciting rides. “At least they are attempting to get some exercise,” I thought…but all they were able to do was coast down the wave pool in innertubes.

What is the point of this show? No medical professional steps in to offer to help this family with their obvious obesity. This issue is generational and I am a little disgusted with TLC’s exploitation of this family. We see almost every inch of the effects of their extreme weight gain, and there’s really no way around that. But why did the network choose a black family to feed into (no pun intended) the race-crossing stereotype of fat, jovial people? The episode I watched cuts to an image of Shayne in a pool, alone, waxing poetic about his image and “associates” (rather than friends). But he looks pretty lonely and unconvinced of his own swag to me.

Before I get lambasted for judging this family, let me make it clear that I am not saying they need to be borderline bougie or even unrealistically thin. My complaint is that TLC never shows the other reality show participants it features in situations that are this unflattering or insulting (I take that back: Jon and Kate were an unmitigated trainwreck). Yes, I realize that the Coles signed up to participate on their own. The end result of filming, however, is a little disturbing.

As a whole, obesity seems to be a laughing matter to the Coles family. They visit a doctor, but Shayne blows off the necessity of the visit. Upcoming clips indicate that this family will re-examine their diet, exercise and make a commitment to adopt healthier behaviors and lose some pounds. But I’m still troubled by the fact that when TLC chose a family of color to profile, they picked one that portrays us (compared to the other families and individuals they regularly spotlight) in such thinly-disguised contempt (you can view the bad wigs, doo rags, moobs, unflattering camera angles and more ridiculousness for yourself HERE and HERE). According to the network’s website, “no nutritionist or personal trainer” will be offering support, advice or guidance to the family, and with such in-grained bad habits, how can they possibly succeed?

Jon & Kate received plastic surgery, hair replacement therapy, multiple book deals and endorsements off their reality show ride. And this family can’t even get a home gym, a Subway tie-in or a visit from Dr. Ian?

Yeah, right.

I’m going to keep watching; it’s great to see a family that loves and supports each other as much as this one does, and in truth, they are humorous.  It would be to the Cole family’s credit if they can motivate each other to healthier choices and success all on their own.

One Big Happy Family returns to TLC this summer.

FREE Breast & Cervical Cancer Screening

Hello Sistah’s!  I’m sure that many of you know of at least one person affected by cancer.  Not having health insurance is one of the reasons why many of us don’t get checked regularly or have a new breast lump checked right away.   The unfortunate result is finding cancer at later stages with possibly lower survival rates.  Fortunately, there’s an easy solution that’s available today!

Did you know that uninsured Sistah’s, may qualify for a FREE preventive health visit at La MammaSpa?

That’s right!  If you qualify, you will receive a complete history, physical exam, BMI, waist measurement, pap smear, and mammogram, which is scheduled the same day of your exam absolutely FREE!  Furthermore, La MammaSpa offers low cost preventive health labs.  These labs allow you to learn more about your risks for cardiovascular disease.  These labs includes lipid levels, thyroid function, blood count, diabetes screening, urine analysis, and comprehensive metabolic profile.

If you have a finding suspicious of breast or cervical cancer, you will be referred either for additional screenings, to a participating breast surgeon, or to a participating gynecologist for diagnostic work-up – FREE!

So, stop worrying about getting breast cancer or that lump you’ve found in your breast.  Instead, get the facts.  Let’s see if you qualify:

• Sistah’s 40 – 64 may be eligible to get full screening; Sistah’s under 40 with breast complaints may be  eligible to receive breast cancer screening service only.

• No insurance or underinsured. Underinsured is insurance that does not cover cancer screening (i.e. mammograms) or has a high deductible that the you are unable to pay.

• Meet these Income Eligibility Guidelines

(Effective March 20, 2009, until revised)
Household Size      Annual            Monthly
1                               $21,660           $1,805
2                              $29,140            $2,428
3                              $36,620            $3,052
4                              $44,100            $3,675
5                              $51,580            $4,298
6                              $59,060            $4,922
7                              $66,540            $5,545
8                              $74,020            $6,168

Do you or someone you know qualifies?  If so, call for your appointment today, 205.783.7293.

Already diagnosed with breast or cervical cancer and uninsured?

If you meet these guidelines and have a diagnosis of breast or cervical cancer and haven’t started treatment, you need to apply for Medicaid for cancer treatment!  So, don’t hesitate, let’s talk soon:  205.783.7293, email La MammaSpa@live.com, or complete the contact information below.

PASS IT ON!  SAVE A LIFE!

It’s Your Time! Because when mama’s happy…

“It’s Your Time” is this year’s theme for National Women’s Health Week celebrated May 9 – 15, 2010.  National Women’s Health Week is a weeklong health observance coordinated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Women’s Health (OWH).  During this week, if you are a women, you are encouraged to make your health a top priority.  You are often the caregivers for your spouses, children, and parents and forget to focus on your own health.  According to research, by taking care of  you, the health of your family also improves.  You are encouraged to take the following simple steps for a longer, healthier, and happier life.

1. Get at least 2 hours and 30 minutes of moderate physical activity, 1 hour and 15 minutes of vigorous physical activity, or a combination of both each week
2. Eat a nutritious diet – watch out for the carbs
   
3. Visit a health care professional to receive regular checkups and preventive screenings
4. Avoid risky behaviors, such as smoking and not wearing seatbelt
5. Pay attention to your mental health, including getting enough sleep and managing stress

Take these simple steps to enjoy a healthier, happier, and longer life.  Because when mama’s happy & healthy, everybody’s happy & healthy.

Ref:  http://www.womenshealth.gov/whw/activity-planning/womens-health-week.pd

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