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Did you know that your zip code can be a predictor of your health? So can your place of birth, where you work and play, your income and education, and a host of other factors – in addition to the choices you make each day about what to eat, when to work out and whether or not to see a doctor. These factors, what public health professionals recognize as “social determinants of health,” are linked to the inequities in health and health care (health disparities), among racial and ethnic minorities in America.

During National Minority Health Month each April, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Minority Health (OMH) leads the nation in raising awareness about these disparities, their causes and the impact they have on minority communities and on the nation as whole.

Health disparities exact a devastating toll on the productivity and economic growth of our nation, which makes this an issue of importance to all Americans. Over $50 billion of indirect medical costs resulting from illness are attributable to health inequalities.
The theme of this year’s National Minority Health Month observance – Accelerating Health Equity for the Nation – reflects both a sense of urgency and a sense of determination in moving the country forward toward health equity. That same urgency and determination in 1985, led a group of concerned health care leaders to convene the first comprehensive federal study of the health status of racial ethnic minorities. The results of the groundbreaking Report of the Secretary’s Task Force on Black and Minority Health (Heckler Report) quickly ushered in a new era in addressing minority health issues, and led to the establishment of OMH in 1986.

There has been progress in the decades since – for example, life expectancy gaps are narrowing, and all Americans, including racial and ethnic minorities, are living longer than ever before. Advances in science and access to quality health care have produced considerable improvements in the health of the nation, because of the Affordable Care Act, the HHS Action Plan to Reduce Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities and the National Partnership for Action to End Health Disparities. Despite these advances, disparities persist for minority populations when compared to non-Hispanic whites and are evident in higher rates of diabetes, heart disease, hepatitis B, HIV/AIDS and infant mortality, among other conditions.

The HHS Office of Minority Health is leading efforts to promote and institutionalize the extraordinary steps taken by HHS and the Obama Administration to reduce disparities, advance equity and strengthen our nation as a whole by prioritizing high quality education, safe neighborhoods, quality housing, reliable transportation, clean air, stable employment and nutritious foods for all Americans.

This year, as OMH celebrates its 30th anniversary, a renewed effort is underway with public and private sector partners and stakeholders to accelerate achieving health equity for the nation through the development of research, policies, programs and legislation. This is a national movement that needs your support.

Every community deserves good health. Everyone can join OMH and its federal, state, tribal and local community partners during April and throughout 2016, in accelerating health equity for the nation.

For more information on National Minority Health Month and how you can get involved, visit www.minorityhealth.hhs.gov/NMHM16. 

You want skin that makes a bronzer run for its money?  Drink your green smoothies, period!  Did I just hear you say, ”Yuck!  No thank you!  I’d rather go for the bronzer.”  For men reading this who are wondering, “what is a bronzer?”  It’s a cosmetic some women use on their face and skin to make it seem like the sun is on their face and skin.

Green smoothies don’t taste as bad as you imagine, they actually taste good, if you know how to combine ingredients accurately.  You will want to start drinking them regularly.  I’ll be sharing a recipe in this post that not only tastes good but gives you glowing skin as well, so read on!

Green smoothies are not overrated!  There is no doubt that fruits and vegetables have tremendous benefits to our health, like weight loss, increased energy, mental clarity, increased fiber intake and one of my favorites, which is glowing skin.  As winter slowly rolls away (I said winter because here in Colorado given the recent mighty blizzard we had and snowfall that has occurred three times in a week!  Most parts of the country are enjoying a beautiful spring already), we want to undo the harshness of the winter months on our skin, lose weight and be a storehouse of amazing energy as summer closes in.

I mean who doesn’t want a bikini body?  Well, guess what? Am working hard on mine!

I follow this amazing healthy blogger whose books I have read and also purchase all her products.  Her name is Kimberly Snyder.  She came up with GGS (Green Glowing Smoothie).  The following is her recipe, however in this game; I don’t give myself options, I use either cilantro or parsley but mostly both.

Ingredients (yields about 64 ounces)

• 1-2 cups very cold, filtered water3/4 pound organic romaine lettuce, rough chopped, about 1 head
• 1/2 head large bunch or small bunch organic spinach
• 3-4 organic celery stalks, halved
• 1 organic apple, cored, seeded, quartered
• 1 organic pear, cored, seeded, quartered
• 1 organic banana, peeled
• 1/2 fresh organic lemon, peeled, seeded
• bunch organic cilantro with stems (optional)
• bunch organic parsley with stems (optional)

Directions

Place water, romaine, spinach, celery, and optional ingredients, if using, into a Vitamix container in the order listed and secure the lid.  Start the blender on a low speed and blend until smooth.  Gradually move to higher speeds.  Add apple, pear, banana and lemon to the blender and blend until smooth.  Enjoy!

Disclaimer:  I currently do not own a Vitamix.  However, start with what you have.

If you are diabetic or struggle with candida, the recipe can be modified.  Consult with your doctor and/or nutritionist.

I drank this recipe numerous times and began getting comments like, your face looks good; your face is glowing.  Face, because that’s what most people see and also the most challenging part of my skin has been my face; multiple acne scars and the whole 50 yards.  Initially, I was an unbeliever until one morning as I was brushing my teeth I saw the sun in my face – yep!  My forehead was glowing.  Gradually I wore less make-up and even now can go out putting on make-up, which was my goal.  I also juice too…I juice mean green stuff (more on that later)!

And I never use a bronzer! Lol!

Not asking you to try what I haven’t tried and tested.  I only ask you to START!  Please check out the following link, which provides pictures and recipes.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/kimberly-snyder/lead+magnets/A+GGS+For+All+Seasons.pdf

By Tolu Oyewumi, a health enthusiast with background and practice in primary care medicine and public health.

Volunteering: Selfless service at its best.

Many of us have had an opportunity to volunteer our service or time to something we feel is worthy of our investment.  Even though volunteering comes in various forms, the impression it leaves on the helped is usually that of gratitude.

The Colorado Black Health Collaborative (CBHC) has engaged in a lot of activities over the past year, and we can’t help but attribute most, if not all, of our success to the selfless service of our volunteers.  You are the threads that make up the fabric of our existence and we appreciate your contributions to making our communities stronger and healthier.  From the 100 watt smiles at our information tables, to the men and women who keep our occasions active with onsite fitness classes, and the various line dance instructors, medical professionals who come out to impart us with healthy wisdom, our seniors who come to support our cause by just showing up, the people who keep our website running, and the many students who volunteer with us, we say a big thank you.

There is none least nor greatest among us.  We have all served in various capacities and we do not take for granted any effort you have made to insure that our endeavors are successful.  We are one big family and we are very proud of what we have accomplished so far by the hands of our volunteers. Here are a few things we can attribute to our volunteers this past year:

• We had thousands of volunteer hours contributed to our organization in 2015.
• Our barbershop outreach, which is one of our most successful means of reaching black folks in the Denver metro area is run primarily by volunteers and we were able to reach over 1000 black folks through our monthly outreaches.
• Volunteers are contributing to our FLOW campaign.
• We had updates to our websites with contributions from writers in different fields and specialties, volunteering their time.
• We had volunteers represent us and man our booths at various health fairs and conferences.
• Our CBHC committees are  also composed of volunteers who do the background work and planning of our programs.

See!  You have accomplished a lot by contributing one way or another to all of these activities.  As the saying goes, “alone we can do so little and together we can do so much” – Helen Keller.  We should be proud of ourselves and never see our most trivial acts of benevolence as insignificant.  What more can I say?  Thank you all for your service!

Yours truly,

Kike Oduba, Volunteer for the CHBC Board of Directors

Exercise is very important not just to look good, but to also feel good. However, as spring approaches, you can add some simple exercises to your schedule, for about 20-30 minutes each day. Spring time is the perfect time to engage in a new exercise goal.

Listed below are a few exercises that you can do without equipment that will help you increase your metabolic rate and increase your fitness level in preparation for the upcoming summer months:

• Lunges

Stand with one of your feet on a step, placing the other foot behind you ensuring that your front knee is over your heel. Secondly, lower your body and keeping your shoulders in alignment with your hips, shoot for 12-15 reps. Repeat this on the other leg.

• Squats

Start by standing with your feet hip-width apart, placing your arms to your side. Imagine there is a chair behind you as you nearly sit down taking your arms out in front of you keeping your back straight/ flat and your stomach muscles pulled in. Repeat 12-15 times.

• Tricep Dips

Sit with your back to the step, placing your hands behind you on the step with your fingertips facing forward. Lift and lower your body using your tricep muscles to do the work keeping your elbows in line with your wrists. Repeat 12-15 times.

• Step-Ups

Make use of a platform or a step that is around 4-6 inches high. Standing with your feet hip-width apart, jump or step on top of the platform or step 15 times. Do another set of tricep dips and repeat the round of Step-Ups.

• Push-ups

This tried and true exercise may conjure a love/hate relationship but is one of the best body weight exercises you can do. Begin pushups in a modified position on your knees unless/until you are strong enough for a full pushup. Place your hands shoulder-width apart from each other on the platform or step. Breathe in as you lower your body to the step and breathe out as you push yourself up. You can repeat for 12-15 replications.

These simple exercises are easily done in your own home environment without any equipment and using very little space. You can do these exercises while you are watching television, before going to work, after coming home from work or any time you have about 20 minutes. We all need to strengthen our muscles which will lose strength over time if we don’t work them. So get off the couch and get moving!

Contributor: Kim Farmer of Mile High Fitness and Wellness.  Mile High Fitness and Wellness offers in-home personal training and corporate fitness solutions. Visit  www.milehighfitness.com/personaltraining or email [email protected].

Sleep hygiene? Is that even a thing? Yes my friend, it is!  Everybody sleeps, but how well do we really sleep?  Let me start by explaining to you exactly what sleep is and what happens when you sleep.

Sleep is simply a state of temporary suspension of consciousness with your eyes closed and muscles relaxed.  There are two types of sleep divided into five stages:

Non-REM (Rapid Eye Movement) Sleep

Phase 1:                
– Light sleep, easy arousal.

Phase 2:               
– Eye movement stops, body temperature drops (it help to sleep in a cooler room).

Phase 3 and 4:    
–     Deep sleep, not easily aroused.

–     Blood pressure drops.

–     Breathing becomes slower.

–     Muscles are relaxed.

–     Blood supply to muscles increases.

–     Tissue growth and repair occurs.

–     Energy is restored.

–     Hormones essential for growth and development, body repair and rejuvenation and including
muscle development are released (e.g. Growth Hormone).

–     Feeling of grogginess and disorientation if wakened at this stage.

–     Stage where sleepwalking, bed-wetting and night terrors often occur in children.

REM Sleep

REM sleep usually begins between 70-90 minutes after falling asleep.  This phase completes the sleep cycle. A typical sleep cycle takes 90 to 110 minutes.  Energy is supplied to the brain and body for optimal daytime performance.  The body becomes relaxed, as muscle activity is stopped.

Hormonal Activity during Sleep

In addition to these events, the following hormonal activities occur during sleep, and they are more beneficial the longer you sleep.

• Cortisol which is a stress hormone for regulating blood pressure and immunity dips at bed time and increase over the night to increase your alertness in morning.

• The hormone melatonin is released during sleep, the more sleep you get the more melatonin your body makes. Low levels of melatonin have been linked to the incidence of cancers like breast and prostate cancers especially among people who do night shift jobs. In fact, the World Health Organization (WHO) recently added ‘night shift work’ as a class 2A carcinogen (i.e. probable cause of cancer). In essence, you are at increased risk of having certain cancers if you are usually awake at night or are constantly exposed to bright lights, which are known to diminish melatonin levels. Consequently, melatonin is currently used as an adjuvant treatment for some cancers in order to speed up recovery and facilitate chances of survival among cancer patients.

• Sleep also helps to regulate levels of the hormones ghrelin and leptin, which are responsible for the feeling of hunger and satiety. When you have less sleep, you may crave and feel the need to eat more food, which can put you in a poor cycle of overeating and weight gain.

How Much Sleep Do You Really Need?

The American Sleep Association recommends at least 16 hours a day for infants, 9 hours for teenagers and 7 to 8 hours for adults. When you deprive yourself of sleep, you are creating a ‘sleep debt’ that your body will demand from you eventually. Furthermore, you may have done some damage to your immune system and hormone balance if you do not get adequate night sleep for long periods of time.

How to Maintain Optimal Sleep Hygiene

• Get at least the minimum amount of sleep your body requires of you.
• Try to have a regular bedtime routine.
• Always sleep without bright lights.
• Avoid using phones, computers and tablets right before bed.
• Avoid drinking caffeinated drinks too close to bedtime.
• Regular exercise promotes good sleep, but vigorous exercise right before bed can keep you stimulated, early morning exercise is best.
• Eat dinner early to reduce heart burn and excessive fullness before sleep.
• See your doctor if you seem always tired in the mornings and have daytime drowsiness so as to exclude some medical conditions like sleep apnea, insomnia or depression.

In summary, the third of your life spent sleeping everyday has a direct impact on how productive, successful and healthy the other two thirds can be.  Your body deserves a break every day, and it needs time to repair and recharge itself.  Let it do all the work while you enjoy the pleasures of restful sleep.  It’s cheap medicine, just nurture it and be hygienic about it!

Yours truly,

Kike Oduba

Have you seen, heard or been involved in any healthy living challenges since the year began.  Like “7-day juicing challenge”, “14-day running challenge” or “30-day smoothie challenge”?  It seems like a Fad these days right?  I know!  They seem to have abounded, gaining great momentum. Makes me wonder though, after the challenge is over, what then? You stop walking, running or drinking your smoothies???

The other day I was reading an article from one of the bloggers I follow and he recounted how he had to wait 20-30 minutes to get on a treadmill at the gym in January and by the first week of February when he got to the gym, he just got a spot immediately at the gym.  You wonder why?  Well, as you might have guessed, the gym was half empty!  Why?  Because most people who had all these New Year goals and/or resolutions had begun to faint on them.  #sighs #guiltyface

I am not against these kinds of challenges as it helps jumpstart you on a path but more importantly, how do you keep what you attained through this challenge.  Yeah, life happens….people get busy, things get crazy and all that, but I am of the opinion that we always make time for whatever is REALLY important to us.  There’s a “busy flu” going around.  Urgh!!  Hope you didn’t get it?  You should not be too busy for your health.  I’ll share more on this “busy flu” later.

What is a Fad?  I found various attention-grabbing adjectives that describe it so well.

“A craze”; “Mania” ; “ Enthusiasm” ; “Passion” ; “Obsession”; “ In Vogue” ; “A trend”; “Fetish” ; “ Fancy”; “Fascination”.  The best definition I liked is “Intense and widely shared enthusiasm for something, especially one that is short-lived and without basis in the object’s qualities”! GBAM! See! The key word there is short-lived.  I am sure we all want lasting changes for our bodies and health and not just a spurt or ripple of goodness.

Well, in order to achieve so, we need to embrace lifestyle changes and not just join a Fad or movement but consistently do good to our bodies to have lasting results.  It can be challenging to do this on our own and there are tools for accountability we can capitalize on to do so.  Stay tuned and I’ll share with you some of these tools that have been proven to help if you use them.

Dear friends, quit the fads on diet and exercise binging – you get no lasting change from it.  Stop having flings and one-night stands with your health.  A winter relationship isn’t good enough. Make a commitment, get married to lifestyle changes, and put a ring on it!  I leave you with this insightful quote.

Article is by Tolu Oyewumi, a Primary Care Physician and Public Health professional.

The best fitness resolution that will work for you this year is one that you will do consistently. The bottom line is that the best way to make the fitness gains you want is to be honest with yourself when thinking about frequency, intensity, the types of training you will undertake, and the fitness goals you are hoping to achieve. There are many reasons that people have not been able to adhere to an exercise program, read on to see if they sound familiar:

Not getting results? One of the most common reasons people find it hard to stick to their fitness-related resolutions is because they aren’t seeing the results they want even though they are sticking to their program 100%. You may make a goal to “lose weight” but often times this goal can be a misnomer. Skeletal muscle tissue is more dense than fatty tissue, so as a person exercises, they may gain muscle mass while losing fat mass resulting in either slower weight loss, or even weight gain in some cases. Instead of making resolutions based off of simple weight, make your goals based off of values like decreasing body fat percentage, clothing sizes, or create an exercise benchmark like completing a half marathon or improving a competitive score.

Unrealistic timing. Another reason people might not shed the pounds or make other physical changes as quickly as they would like (and often times quit their program early) is because scientific research shows it can take as much as six weeks for your body to start making adaptations to your exercise program at the cellular level. It is at this point where dramatic changes in your metabolism, blood flow, and exercise capacity take place and fitness gains will begin to develop, so stick with your program for 6-8 weeks before making any major alterations to your program. Your body needs time to adapt to your new habit of maintaining a physically active lifestyle. Additionally, the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) and other organizations recommend a weight loss rate of two pounds per week for individuals that are not under medically supervised weight-loss programs.

Adjust Your Schedule! One of the main reasons you may find it difficult to adopt a physically active lifestyle is because you have a hard time fitting it into your schedule of other daily activities. Avoid this is by making physical activity as important of a commitment as a shift at work, dropping the kids off at practice or going grocery shopping. You may find it easier to wake up an hour earlier and exercise before heading off to work. By making it the first item on your daily to-do list, not only do you boost your energy higher than a double shot of espresso, but you no longer have to worry about having enough energy to work out at the end of a long day. When it comes to which time of day is ideal, the scientific research is currently inconclusive, so go with what works best for you. Pick a time and stick to it.

Take Small Steps. Lastly, do not take on more than you can handle. Make small steps and gradually build your program. Not only will it be easier to comply with your program, but you’ll be less likely to injure yourself. Remember that exercise does not follow an all-or-nothing principal. Even the smallest of workouts is better than nothing, so don’t give up an entire week’s worth of training because of one bad day.

You must have complete buy-in from yourself with your fitness program. If you’re not giving it an honest effort, reassess and try to find the reasoning behind your lack of dedication. Usually one of the three main reasons listed above is halting your progress, so try to apply the principles given. If you think you need help, speak with a fitness professional and try to rework your program in a way that will better serve your needs and abilities. And remember that some exercise is always better than none so if your schedule is full, start with 15 minutes of consistent physical activity and work your way up. Plan, progress and repeat!

Thanks for reading!

Happy New Year!

Contributors: Kim Farmer of Mile High Fitness.  Mile High Fitness offers in-home personal training and corporate fitness solutions.  Visit  www.milehighfitness.com or email [email protected]