CASA announces 2015 board of directors, new volunteers ä2G
ADVOCATE THE SOUTHSIDE
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THURSDAY FEBRUARY 19, 2015 H
B O C AG E • C O U N T RY C LU B • H I G H L A N D • J E F F E R S O N T E R R AC E • K E N I LW O R T H • P E R K I N S • U N I V E R S I T Y C LU B THEADVOCATE.COM
How to geaux smoke-free
Darlene Denstorff
BY C.J. FUTCH
ON THE SOUTHSIDE
cfutch@theadvocate.com
DDENSTORFF@ THEADVOCATE.COM
YMCA celebrates nutrition month YMCAs across Baton Rouge are celebrating National Nutrition Month in March with programs teaching good eating habits and how to make informative food choices. National Nutrition Month is a nutrition education and information campaign supported annually by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Throughout the month, the YMCA will offer the free classes to provide information on making informative food choices and developing sound eating habits. Classes will be provided on: n March 11: 6 p.m. at the Paula G. Manship YMCA, 8100 YMCA Plaza Drive. Call (225) 767 9622. n March 18: 11 a.m. at the ExxonMobil YMCA, 7717 Howell Blvd. Call (225) 9065424. n March 25: 6:30 p.m. at the C.B. Pennington Jr. YMCA, 15550 Old Hammond Highway. Call (225) 272-9622. n March 25: 5:30 p.m. at the Dow Westside YMCA, 3688 Sugar Plantation Parkway. Call (225) 687-3325. n March 26: 6:30 p.m. at the A. C. Lewis YMCA, 350 S. Foster Drive. Call (225) 924-3606. The YMCA offers these tips to meet your lifestyles nutritional needs: n Busy work and travel days lead to fast-paced meals and easy grabs. To prevent the fast food pit stops, keep single-serving packages of nuts, fruit, peanut butter or nutrition bars at hand. n The student life is also fast-paced and low-budget. However, making healthsavvy choices is easy with the right foods. On your next grocery run, pick up these health foods: apples with peanut butter, carrots and hummus, hardboiled eggs and fruit, banana and yogurt, almonds, low-fat cheese and whole-grained cereal. n Caring for family, whether children, elderly parents or both, can be a handful. However, family meals allow parents to be role models and promoters toward healthy eating. For healthy fixes, keep meals simple. Create a collection of recipes that are quick and easy to make. Use ingredients that can be used for more than one meal. äSee SOUTHSIDE, page 5G
Chrishelle Stipe, tobacco cessation coordinator with Mary Bird Perkins-Our Lady of the Lake Cancer Center, prepared class materials Feb. 11 for a session of Geaux Free, the center’s smoking cessation outreach effort in Baton Rouge. This night’s crowd is light Advocate photos by C.J. FUTCH — just two participants arChrishelle Stipe, tobacco ces- rive by 5 p.m. to the meeting sation coordinator with Mary room in the Bienville Building Bird Perkins-Our Lady of the downtown. Mardi Gras, or the Lake Cancer Center, demon- illnesses that come with winstrates how the carbon mon- ter weather, may be partly to oxide monitor is used. blame for the attendance, but
Stipe has hosted classes with as many as 25 students at once. The approaches to quitting smoking are as varied and personal as the reasons people start smoking in the first place, Stipe said, and it takes a personalized effort to make it work. “People don’t have to quit during the class if they don’t want to,” Stipe said, though she measures the program’s success on how many people quit by the end of the 9-week sessions. She recommends participants try, she said, because in her years as a smoking cessation educator, she’s noticed that the classes often bond over their
mutual struggle to quit, and act as a support network that reinforces the concepts taught in the classes, and give students a chance to practice the skills they’re learning while they have the support in place. They start off each class by breathing into a monitor that measures carbon monoxide in the breath. This gives each student a measurable way to track progress. Smoking creates carbon monoxide in the lungs, which must be expelled. Nonsmokers should have CO levels at 6 parts per million or lower. “I think the highest reading I’ve gotten was 80 parts per
million,” she said. Ashwin Shetty’s CO level is 4 — he hasn’t smoked all day, he said. The engineer is a mostly social smoker, he said, and though Stipe advocates the use of nicotine replacement therapies like nicotine gum or patches, Shetty is determined not to rely on them. “I don’t want to replace a drug with a drug,” he said, admitting it’s been tough. One of the techniques Stipe teaches is one of simple prevention — don’t bring cigarettes äSee SMOKE-FREE, page 5G
Budding purchases
Advocate staff photo by TRAVIS SPRADLING
Baton Rouge’s Ann Zedlitz, left, and her sister, Claire Roche, of Houston, examine varieties of camellias at the Baton Rouge Camellia Society’s 44th annual show Saturday at the LSU AgCenter Rural Life Museum. Zedlitz purchased camellia plants for Roche and her other sisters as a Valentine’s Day gift.
Woman’s Hospital campuses work for healthy employees BY C.J. FUTCH
cfutch@theadvocate.com It would be an exaggeration to say that Well Ahead, a state initiative focused on Louisiana residents’ health, saved Dana Bourg’s life, but not by much. The 46-year-old signed up for a health risk assessment to save money on her employer’s insurance plan in November, and as a result of the numbers she got back, made her first appointment with a cardiologist.
Within the next couple of months, Bourg’s doctors would discover dangerous artery blockages in her heart and perform two open-heart surgeries — one double bypass and a second procedure to place a stent. “I was one of those people who never got sick. I never went to the doctor. I felt fine,” she said. Despite a family history of heart disease, she’d never noticed any symptoms that would have prompted a visit to the doctor.
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After her initial blood-work assessment showed elevated triglycerides and other warning signs for heart disease, she began to pay attention to the occasional shortness of breath she’d shrugged off as a need for more exercise. She went to her cardiologist’s appointment and was on a gurney on the way to surgery the same day. “I can remember saying,
Photo provided by DANA C. MICHELL
Harris Walking Trail, a 1.25-mile loop outside Woman’s Hospital, provides a place for employees to exercise close to the äSee WOMAN’S, page 5G hospital during breaks, or before and after work.