Mr. Schroeder's Blog

When we diet, most of us eat more fruits and vegetables, many choose an established weight loss program, and one in four of us get some help from a smartphone app.
Those are some of the results from a recent ConsumerReports.org survey of 3,201 subscribers who shared their experiences about becoming more healthy. If your new year's resolutons are to lose weight, get in shape and feel good in 2012, perhaps some of these enlightening tidbits will help steer you in the right direction.
In an effort to lose weight, 2,680 of the survey respondents followed a popular diet plan, and 50 percent chose Weight Watchers or Weight Watchers online at some point since 2008.
To slim down, most people (74 percent) ate more fruits and vegetables, just as the doctor recommends. Many also controlled their portions at meals (71 percent), and 69 percent cut back on sugar in their foods and beverages.

Health News,
Chicago Tribune 1/2012

*1/2 cup of holiday memories

*1 tbsp holiday cheer

*1/2 cup peace and gentleness

*1 plate of cookies

*1 tsp snow

*1 cozy fire to warm us

*2 dashes of joy

Happy Holidays

Each year in the United States, about a third of female athletes incur a soccer or basketball related injury, primarily to the knees and ankles, experts say.
But Dr. Cynthia LaBella, associate professor of pediatrics, and her team at Northwestern University School of Medicine have found a way to keep more of Chicago's female athletes healthy and on the field and court. Girls who participated in a special 20-minute warm-up developed by LaBella's research team before practices reduced their rate of injury compared to girls who did not do the warm-up, a study by the team found.
Compared to males, females have a greater imbalance in strength between the right and left sides of their bodies, as well as stronger quadricep muscules relative to their hamstrings. The program focused on diminishing this imbalance.
It also used plyometrics, which involves dynamic movements and jumps that mimic maneuvers found in sports like soccer and basketball and train the neuromuscular system to perform them.

Kelly April Tyrrell
Tribune Newspaper 11/11

Call them sneakers, trainers, athletic shoes or runners, sizing up the rubber-soled riches on offer these days can be a dauntless task.
Experts say the right footwear can make or break your workout, but money will not necessarily buy insole happiness.
"Your shoes are, from a safety and comfort standpoint, the most important thing about your fitness," said Kevin Burns of American Council on Exercise. "They are the most important success tool one can invest in".
But not all shoes fit all feet, or feats, Burn said.
"Newer shoes get most of marketing but may not be appropriate for you," he said.
Cross-trainers, the jack-of-all-trades of fitness footwear, are good general purpose shoes for those who vary their workouts, Burns said. But if you regularly engage in a specific activity, such as running, tennis, aerobics or baskebtball, choose a shoe designed specifically for that sport.
Burns said some people go to the shoe store, try one shoe, test and buy.
"Try on both shoes and walk around to make sure they're comfortable," he said, "and don"t just assume you're a size 9."

Tribune-Health News
July/2011

Dear Parent/Guardian,
As Physical Education teacher at St. John Fisher School, my goals for the coming year are not only physical fitness and exercise tests, but also the development of athletic skills through various activities. Grades P-4 will be learning motor and movement skills through exercise and play. Grades 5-8 will develop skills and knowledge of rules and regulations in individual and team sports.
The students will have five to ten minutes of stretching and exercise, ten to fifteen minutes of instruction, and twenty-five minutes of a physical activity. Students on their assigned day must wear their official physical education uniform purchased through school. Lack of participation due to not being prepared will be reflected on their grade. If for some reason, a student must be out of uniform or exempt from participation, a parent/guardian note explaining the problem will be required.

PHYSICAL EDUCATION UNIFORM
Girls and Boys: Grades K - 8, SJF Physical Education gym shorts or gym sweatpants
SJF Physical Education gym swearshirt
SJF Physical Education gym shirt (blue or white)
Gym shoes
White socks

Young baseball players should pitch no more than 100 innings in any calendar year, according to new research that claims exceeding this threshold increases the risk of injury.
The study, published in the American Journal of Sports Medicine and scheduled to be presented Feb. 25 at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, tracked 481 youth pitchers between the ages of 9 and 14 for a decade. During that 10 year span, 5 percent of the young hurlers suffered a serious injury resulting in surgery or retirement.
Overall, the data showed that participants who pitched more than 100 innings in at least one year were 3.5 times more likely to be injured. The study also suggested that pitchers should also avoid playing catcher, as it appears to increase a pitcher's risk of injury.
Two of the boys in the study had surgery before their 13th birthday. Only 2.2 perceent were still pitching by the 10th year of the study, but the dropout rate could br due to a variety of factors, including lack of interest or talent, the researchers said.
"The younger a child is when an injury happens, the more serious it can be in the long run," said lead researcher Glenn Fleisig, the Research Director of the American Sports Medicine Institute in Birmingham, Ala. "Pitchers of all ages have a hard road returning from elbow or shouder surgery, but now we're seeing secondary problems for young pitchers who pitch many years after surgery, such as more surgery or arthritis."
Pitchers suffer elbow and shouder injuries because of the stress the throwing motion puts on bones, muscles, tendons and ligaments.
Throwing curveballs has previously been suggested as a risk factor, but the study couldn't determine whether starting curveballs before age 13 increases the risk of injury.

By Julie Deardorff
Tribune Reporter

Families who eat dinner at home together tend to have more nourishing meals, but there may be other health benefits as well. A study finds that having quality family interactions at mealtime was linked with better overall health for children with asthma.
Family meals were recorded via video for 200 families with children age 5 to 12 who had persistent asthma. Researchers noted how the families spent their time together and found most time was spent either in activity (talking on the phone, watching television) or comunication (parents showing interest in what their children did during the day, talking about the events of the day).
The latter interactions were associated with less severe asthma symptoms in the children, a higher quality of life for them and a more faithful adherence to their medical regimen. When mealtimes had more distractions, children's asthma symptoms were more severe.

Chicago Tribune, 2/7/11
Health news

Here's another reason to get children to bed early: More sleep may lower their risk of becoming obese.
Researchers have found that every additional hour per night a 3rd grader spends sleeping reduces the child's chances of becoming obese in the 6th grade by 40 percent.
The less sleep they got, the more likely the children were to be obese in 6th grade, no matter what the child's weight was in 3rd grade, said Dr. Julie Lumeng of the University of Michigan, who led the research.
If there was a magic number for the 3rd graders, it was nine hours, 45 minutes of sleep. Sleeping more than that lowered the risk significantly.
The study gives parents one more erason to enforce bedtimes, restrict caffeine and yank the TV from the bedroom.

Helping Kids Sleep

Wake time: The biological clock resets in the morning, so it is just as important to have a consistent wake-up time as consistent bedtime.

Overscheduling: Consider limits on activities that crowd out slumber. Keep it to one sport per season, for example.

Caffeine: Soda or chocolate at lunch may keep some children awake at night.

Electronics: Keep TV's, cell phones, and other such devices out of the bedroom.

Bedtime routine: Encourage reading, chatting or other soothing activities in the 30 minutes before bed.

Pediatrics Journal 11/2010

Increasing physical activity among all individuals continues to be a national priority due to the positive physical benefits associated with maintaining an active lifestyle (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1996). Experts stress that lifestyle physical- activity habits need to be developed early in life (Sallis & McKenzie, 1991) and that early, positive, physical activity experiences may increase the likelihood of maintaining a physically active lifestyle (Weiss, 2000).
A major objective of a quality physical education program is to educate all children and empower them with the skills necessary to enjoy the benefits of regular physical activity for the rest of their lives (Pangrazi, 2001). Saint John Fisher physical educaton program can meet this goal by providing students a physical-activity environment that is structured to increase their motivation to become, and remain physically active.

Americans have some walking to do if they want to catch up with the rest of the world.
They are outpaced by Australians, asians and Europeans, who walk much more, according to a new study.
Adults in western Australia averaged 9,695 steps a day. The Swiss followed, with 9,650, while the Japanese took 7,168 steps. But Americans managed just 5,117 steps.
One mile equals about 2,000 steps, and "five thousand steps is really pretty inactive," said Dr. David Basset, the lead author of the study published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise.
Basset thinks America's car culture and lack of adequate public transportation provide fertile ground for couch potatoes.
Julia Valentour, who developed the walking program for the American Council on Exercise, said fit people usually take about 10,000 steps per day.

Spotlight World Fitness
Chicago Tribune Oct. 13, 2010