Misery Index Medical Conditions and Biggest Killers!!!

The link to this article is on our side page but keeping healthy, we now know, not only keeps us alive longer but our quality of life improves, and we hopefully avoid the misery conditions that can be avoided with moderate daily exercise and good nutrition.  It all matters!
Exercise and eat healthier together as a family and the benefits will last a lifetime.
Bob

“The United States spends more than the rest of the world on health care and leads the world in the quality and quantity of its health research, but that doesn’t add up to better health outcomes,” Murray said in a statement.

One place the U.S. does better – treating some cancers.

“Five-year survival for breast cancer and colorectal cancer are higher in the U.S. than in many OECD countries,” they wrote.

The biggest killers: clogged arteries (known medically as ischemic heart disease), lung cancer, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and road accidents.

Where are people living the longest and shortest lives?

But the diseases that caused the most misery, known in the lingo as disability-adjusted life years, are low back pain, major depressive disorder, other musculoskeletal disorders, neck pain, and anxiety disorders.

In fact, Americans are more disabled now than they were 10 years ago, the researchers found.

“The gap between life expectancy and healthy life expectancy, a measure of the expected number of healthy years that an individual loses to disability—increased from 9.4 to 10.1 years. In other words, individuals in the US are living longer, but not necessarily in good health,” they concluded.

“The United States spends the most per capita on healthcare across all countries, lacks universal health coverage, and lags behind other high-income countries for life expectancy and many other health outcome measures. High costs with mediocre population health outcomes at the national level are compounded by marked disparities across communities, socio-economic groups, and race and ethnicity groups.”

One underlying cause is poor diet. “The most important dietary risks in the U.S. are a diet low in fruits, low in nuts and seeds, high in sodium, high in processed meats, low in vegetables and high in transfats,” they wrote.

"For the first time we're saying that the composition of diet, which is made up 14 different components, things like fruits, grains, nuts, seeds (and) other aspects of diet being analyzed is the biggest determinant of health in the US, followed by smoking, followed by obesity, and then followed by high blood sugar and physical inactivity," Murray told NBC news.

"So if you put all of those together there's huge potential to improve health in the U.S. and in fact get ahead of other high income countries if we were to address these modifiable risks."

First Lady Michelle Obama said the report shows communities and policymakers need to help Americans eat better. "We’re going to be working with food companies and restaurants who are offering more healthy options to families so that when they go into a restaurant they have some decent choices," she said at an event at the White House for her "Let's Move" campaign.

But Dr. Steven Woolf of Virginia Commonwealth University, who chaired a National Academy of Sciences panel that reported on U.S. health in January, says it’s more complex than just bad habits.

Mr. Raudonaitis goes to Station Avenue Elementary

We will miss your infectious smile and humor and the way you spent time with every child!  You made each one feel special and they always knew that some exciting and silly game awaited them in our P.E. class.  You have been such a terrific role model in showing the kids how to have fun and enjoy movement and games.  Station Ave, is lucky to get you but you will always have a home at Ezra Baker.  I will miss you as a colleague and as a friend.  We wish you much success and happiness!  Thanks for all that you did to make our school better!

Bob

Field Day @ Ezra H. Baker-6-5-13 at OneTrueMedia.com

A day of fun! The children enjoy the excitement of the activity and forget about who the winners are....because they all feel that they are all winners!

Make a video - it's fun, easy and free!
www.onetruemedia.com

In the Sunday Cape Cod Times a great article about this topic. Try and read it or contact me and I can send you a word document that contains this article.  It should give you a balanced perspective as to the importance of activity and the values that sports can contribute to your child.  Give yourself a pat on the back for supporting your child in a healthy way.

Enjoy,

Bob

In

Backyard Game Night-5/31/13

A fun night of families sharing time with their children and with friends...Being active is FUN! and builds memories of our time together!

Make a video - it's fun, easy and free!
www.onetruemedia.com

Scooter Skills and add a little FUN!

Scooter fun provides children with opportunities to explore various locomotion strategies while on a scooter. If you notice in the video many children use various methods of moving on the scooter. Some strategies are not as efficient as others but all of the children have an opportunity to see what best works for them. While learning it is obvious just how much fun scooter exploration can be for all of the kids.!

Make a video - it's fun, easy and free!
www.onetruemedia.com

Physical Education for children that learn at a different pace!

The concept of Open Gym was developed by the P.E. Dept. at the Ezra Baker Elementary school in collaboration with our principal Mr. Depin.  The Baker School’s change to become an Innovation school created new offerings such as Spanish, Enrichment class, Calmer Choice, Improved fresh farm food choices,  and an increase in the related arts: Music, Art and Physical Education.

Within the P.E. Dept. the development of base line skills and conditioning were identified as a way to track children over the course of a school year.  We have established a base line of specific abilities and are able to track improvement percentages yearly.  Our goal this year was to set a goal for each child to improve 25% over the course of the year, which we accomplished.

We also, attempted to make a significant change in the way we attempted to deliver P.E classes to reach children with special needs to maximize their opportunities to learn skills, benefit from social opportunities and as a way to integrate all children as a healthy life style was our focus.

Traditionally, children with special needs had their own block of P.E. time at a certain time of day  and special attention was given to the children.  But, the children who participated all had unique needs and the activities presented were diverse and skill focused, which was of questionable value now looking back at those classes.

So, in looking at the  those children who all had different learning styles, our thinking went to “what if” we allowed them to come at a time that was good for each child and not have a set time.  Then, we considered the benefits of learning a skill and their need for social integration among all students and the concept started to take shape.  Why not have these children with different learning styles learn what every other child was learning and become part of the social interaction  and fun of  being part of a class?  It was our opinion that any skill or game could be modified for any child and so we tried out our concept.

After this trial year, we now believe it is the right approach.  Children attended various P.E. classes when they felt the opportunity was right for them during the day.  Even though they attended a class that was different than their regular class, we found the children still enjoyed playing with other children.  Games could be adapted and with the help of their assistants, games became fun, while also providing the acquisition of a skill and the social contact for all students.  Students learned that adapting game rules to include all was a fair and caring strategy for inclusion.  Children never complained about the adaptations and in fact allowed themselves to get tagged by slower children who were using adaptive strategies.  We observed children who had difficulty with social interactions approach other children with a smile, a huge gain!!!!  Children learned concepts like tagging children, throwing balls,  hitting, kicking, using hula hoops etc., things that had they tried to use them in their own P.E. class might not have meant as much.  We had many children who wanted to accompany children with special needs to help them move from class to class, so this integration had a wonderful caring effect on all children, who were more than happy to find ways to included different children!

The difficulties we experienced as teachers were:  children showing up at any time so we had to be prepared to teach to any child and be ready to adapt games; Children who had shouting behaviors were the most difficult because of the distraction to the class when we gave directions.  We solved that by having the shouting students practice their listening skills for a duration that fit within their capabilities and or we asked the assistant to take them for a walk until we could finish our directions and then have the student join us to participate in the skill and to have fun.  At times, we had students come into the gym to do something different than what the class was doing and we stopped that as it was to distracting.  So, we decided that anyone could attend but that they had to do whatever the class was doing and we soon found that to not be a problem.

In conclusion, its more of a challenge for the teacher to deal with children dropping into a class but it’s the benefits to the children that make this challenge well worth the time.  The concept of children learning at their best time during the day just makes sense in the P.E setting.