Keep the Weight Off

Maintaining weight loss can be more difficult than losing it in the first place.

The American Council on Exercise suggests how to help maintain weight loss:

•  Weigh yourself every week.

• Move as much as possible, walking frequently, watching less TV and even fidgeting while you are seated.

• Stock your kitchen with plenty of nutritious treats.

•  Place your gym bag near the door, and keep any home exercise equipment where you can frequently see it.

•  Make exercise part of your social life.

•   Measure your waist once monthly and make changes to your diet and exercise routine if your waistline starts growing.

What is a riptide?

What is a riptide? It is a stream of rapidly moving water that is heading away from the beach and back out into the ocean, in effect forming its own current. If you are caught in this current, there is a risk of being pulled out deeper into the ocean that you want to be. The biggest thing to remember, though, is that riptides in general are not extremely wide in area. This means if you react smartly instead of fighting against the riptide, you can get yourself out of it. If you are ever in the ocean and feel a swift current trying to pull you out into the ocean, swim parallel to the shore. Do not try to swim towards the shore, the riptide will be too strong to swim into and will quickly tire you out and increase the risk of the current taking you out into the ocean. Continue to swim parallel to the shore until you feel the current from the riptide weaken and eventually break. At this point you can either swim (if you are in water too deep to stand), or walk back to the shore if your feet can touch the bottom of the ocean.

Take a Walk

Walking is a great form of exercise. The American Council on Exercise warns new walkers to start slowly and not to overdo it.

Here are the council’s recommendations:

• Start out with a short walk of about five minutes. Gradually increase your time and distance.
• Don’t walk too quickly; stick to a comfortable pace.
• Practice proper posture with your head up and shoulders relaxed.
• Allow your arms to swing naturally.
• Breathe deeply, and slow down if you can’t catch your breath.
• Don’t move so vigorously that you can’t talk while walking.

Children & Sunburn

Pictured:  Lisa Bohrer, R.N.,BC, Community Health and Wellness 

Manager for PharmaCare, discusses sun safety with 

St. Michael’s PreSchool children.

More than 90% of skin cancers are the result of sun exposure.  Unprotected sun exposure is even more dangerous for kids who have many moles or freckles, very fair skin and hair, or a family history of skin cancer.  We all need sun exposure.  It is our primary source of vitamin D, which helps us absorb calcium for stronger, healthier bones.  It doesn’t take much time in the sun for most people to get the vitamin D they need.

Every child needs extra sun protection.  The American Academy of Dermatology recommends that all kids, regardless of their skin tone, wear sunscreen with an SPF of 30 or higher.  Although dark skin has more protective melanin and tans more easily than it burns, remember that tanning is also a sign of sun damage.  Dark-skinned kids also can develop painful sunburns.

The best treatment for sunburn is prevention.  Mild sunburn results in skin irritation and redness and can be safely treated at home.  Severe sunburn requires medical attention.

In case of a sunburn:

• Remove the child from the sun

• Place the child in a cool shower or bath or apply cool compresses several times a day

• Offer the child extra fluids for the next two to three days

• Give the child ibuprofen or acetaminophen as directed, if needed, to relieve pain

• Make sure all sunburned areas are fully covered to protect the child from the sun until healed.Think prevention.  Before the kids go out in the sun, remember, 

“Slip, Slap, Slop”:

Slip on a shirt.

Slap on a brimmed hat and sunglasses.

Slop on sunscreen with an SPF of at least 30 and reapply every two hours or if the child has been in the water or sweating.

For more information, visit:  www.kidshealth.org.

This article was submitted by Lisa Bohrer, R.N.,BC, the Community Health and Wellness Manager, for the PharmaCare Network.  She is available to speak on various health and wellness topics.  For more information, contact her at 301.689.2909 or lbohrer@3ipc.com

Workplace wellness programs can lead to decrease in sick days taken by employees

PharmaCare's Lisa Bohrer, RN, BC, Community Health and Wellness Manager at The PharmaCare Network, was recently featured on the front page of the Cumberland Times- News, Cumberland, MD, promoting the benefits of the wellness program she initiated at The PharmaCare Network. For more information on how you can implement an employee wellness program in your company or for information on wellness presentations by Lisa, please call Lisa at 301.689.2909 or  e-mail lbohrer@3ipc.com. 

 

PharmaCare Network uses Merit the Carrot mascot as way to boost participation among its workers

Elaine Blaisdell Cumberland Times-News

 

— FROSTBURG — Workplace wellness programs are invaluable for companies to have, according to Lisa Bohrer, community health and wellness manager at PharmaCare Network.

“It enriches the workplace and makes people feel valued as employees,” said Bohrer, who noted that a program can also help reduce the number of sick days.

 An estimated 25 to 30 percent of companies’ medical costs per year are spent in employees with excess health risk, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nearly 60 percent of employers’ after-tax profits are spent on corporate health benefits.

Not only does a wellness program improve employees’ physical condition but also improves mental alertness, according to Bohrer. PharmaCare started a wellness program about five years ago.

The company recently added a mascot — Merit the Carrot — to provide incentives for employees to participate in the program. Each time an employee completes a wellness event, he earns a paper carrot that gets put into a drawing for a prize. The carrots collection begins in January and runs through December.

 “The employees are crazy about it (the carrots). Since we have had Merit the Carrot, participation in the program has increased by 50 percent,” said Bohrer.

Two of the biggest health-related events that PharmaCare employees participate in are walking programs and monthly blood pressure screenings, according to Bohrer. PharmaCare hosts themed walking events. This year’s theme is Marching to Mexico, and last year’s was Hopping to Honolulu.

Marching to Mexico provides employees with walking logs and pedometers and their miles will be added up and tracked on a map of the U.S. from June 1 until Sept. 3. A fiesta complete with healthy food will be held when they reach Mexico.

Other offerings with the wellness program at PharmaCare include a healthy cooking class, nutrition counseling, smoking cessation programs, a wellness newsletter, and various health screenings and risk assesments. In addition to promoting in-house wellness at PharmaCare, employees are also given a carrot if they get a mammogram or colonoscopy screening, according to Bohrer.

Bohrer has a stash of exercise DVDs, healthy cookbooks and health magazines that employees can borrow. During any awareness month, employees get an awareness pin, educational information and carrots for wearing colors associated with that month. For example, employees who wear blue for Colon Cancer Awareness Month would get a carrot.

“It’s a playful way to get important health information out there. It provides employees something to take back and utilize. It forces them to think a little more,” said Bohrer, noting that the educational aspect of the program creates more awareness of health problems. “I try to bring wellness cheer wherever I go.”

On average about 75 percent of the employees at the seven PharmaCare locations participate in the program, according to Bohrer,

“It gives them something different for them to look forward to in their day,” said Bohrer.

Contact Elaine Blaisdell at eblaisdell@times-news.com.

Fit vs. Fat

How much you exercise and what the scale says both play a role in determining whether you will develop problems like high blood pressure and bad cholesterol—so does the amount of body fat you are carrying. A new study has entered the debate over whether someone can be heavy but heart healthy.

Researchers included more than 3,100 healthy men and women who volunteered for at least three check-ups. Those who maintained or improved their fitness between the first two check-ups were less likely to develop high blood pressure or cholesterol problems during the next six years. Those who put on more body fat were more likely to develop these problems.

That’s not surprising, but here is the interesting news. If people who put on fat kept their fitness levels up, their risk of problems did not increase as much. According to researchers, exercising to become more fit can trigger improvements within your body, regardless of how your body fat changes. So if you are exercising but not losing the weigh you’d like, you are still doing your heart a favor.

*Submitted by Lisa Bohrer, RN, BC, Health and Wellness Manager for The PharmaCare Network. 

National Distracted Driving Awareness Month

Lisa Bohrer presents "Don't Text and Drive" to a
group of elementary school students.

Safe driving is about more than two hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road.  It is about exclusively focusing on the task of driving.  When drivers engage in two activities that require a great amount of mental focus, the brain quickly switches between those tasks sequentially.  As a result, the brain suffers from inattention blindness.  Drivers using cell phones to talk or text look out the windshield, but do not see up to 50% of the driving environment.  In fact, the brain is so overloaded that not all critical driving cues such as red lights, stop signs and pedestrians are delivered to the brain.

“Joe was a vivacious 12 year old boy.  On a January day in 2004, Joe’s mother was driving him to an after-school activity when a 20 year old woman ran a red light and slammed into their car, killing Joe.  The driver was talking on her cell phone at the time of the crash.  She passed four cars and a school bus that were all stopped at the red light, but never applied her brakes.  Witnesses say she was looking straight out the front window.  She didn’t see the red light because she was distracted by her conversation.  Joe was killed because of a cell phone conversation.”(www.focusdriven.org)

If you are tempted to use your cell phone when driving:

•          Change your voicemail greeting to indicate you are driving and will call back when safely parked.

•          Put your phone in your trunk or glove box.

•          Turn your phone to “silent”.

•          If you need to contact someone, pull over to a safe location and put our vehicle in “park” before dialing.

Fifty-seven percent of drivers recognize talking on cell phones is a very serious threat to their personal safety, yet 2 out of 3 admit to talking on their cell phones in the past month  (according to results from a AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety survey).

For more information, visit www.focusdriven.org.

This article was submitted by Lisa Bohrer, R.N.,BC, the Community Health and Wellness Manager for the PharmaCare Network. She is available to speak on various health and wellness topics. For more information, contact her at 301.689.2909 or lbohrer@3ipc.com