By Antoinette Grajeda

Children are taught reading, writing and arithmetic and a variety of other subjects in school. PE4life is making sure students also learn the value of being active and healthy. PE4life is a national nonprofit advocacy organization created in 2000 with the mission “to develop a country of active, healthy children and youth by increasing access to quality physical education solutions,” according to the group’s Web site.

Northwest Arkansas is now home to PE4life’s first regional office, which is funded through grants as well as corporate and private donations and located inside the Rogers Athletic Center. The organization’s programs are already being implemented at schools in Springdale, Bentonville and Rogers. The schools will serve as models so these programs can be replicated throughout Northwest Arkansas and the state, community outreach manager Sherry Lloyd said. Lloyd became involved in the local academy because she thought it was “a great way to influence children.”
PE4life’s approach to physical education is it “be offered to every child everyday, be available to all students, not just the athletically inclined, provide a wide variety of sports and fitness activities to promote an active and healthy lifestyle, assess students on their personal progress toward fitness and physical activity goals, incorporate technology on a regular basis, and extend beyond the walls of the gymnasium,” according to the organization’s Web site.

One of the programs the organization offers is exergaming, or the use of technology for fitness. Another option is outdoor adventure where children learn about camping, bicycling, fishing and kayaking. Students are also taught practical applications along the way. For example, when learning about bicycling, children may also learn how to change a bike’s tire or replace a chain. Outdoor activities also create another activity students can do with their families, Lloyd added.

One of the cirriculums PE4life endorses for its elementary physical education is Action Based Learning, a program that focuses on how to incorporate being active into academics.
“I work with teachers, telling them about how the brain works and grows and remembers and develops, and then the strategies that they can use in the classroom to get movement into their teaching — teaching academic concepts kinesthetically,” ABL co-founder Jean Blaydes Madigan said.

Madigan has 30 years of experience as a physical education teacher, but is now a consultant. When she first heard about PE4life, she was excited about the opportunity to work with an organization who had goals similar to her own.
“I considered them like the knight in shining armor riding in on the white horse and they’re going to save my profession because it was a group of business people who were actually saying they were going to give money towards the effort and then also to lobby in Washington on Capitol Hill for daily physical education, which has always been my dream because of the importance of physical education,” she said.

While discussing the importance of being healthy, Madigan cited a study released in part by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier this year, which discovered that one out of five 4-year-olds is obese. When researchers tested the children’s IQs, they also found that their scores were 10 to 20 points lower than their peers.
“What that means is the brain is not getting the fuel that it needs because the high fat, high sugar diet impedes the ability of the brain to get its fuel, which is glucose and oxygen,” Madigan said.

When it comes to improving children’s health, Madigan said it’s important to remember “the good N.E.W.S.” — nutrition, exercise, water and sleep.
“If we can get the parents to do that and work together as a community to help our kids, that’s what it’s all about,” she said.

Schools teaching the PE4life program often track data and so far, their statistics have shown an improvement in students’ fitness scores and decreased disciplinary incidents. There has also been improvements in students’ academics. For example, at Naperville Central High School in Illinois, a new Learning Readiness PE class was implemented for the 2005-06 school year. This program found a link between physical education and improved math and literacy scores when physical activity was offered before reading and math classes. Students who enrolled in a PE class immediately before their math class increased their algebra readiness by an average of 20 percent, according to the organization’s Web site.

Naperville, Ill., was the location of PE4life’s first academy and some argued the program was successful because the school had the proper funding. To test that theory, the organization started an academy in a poorer school district in Grundy Center, Iowa.
“What we wanted people to see is this is not a cookie cutter program,” Lloyd said.
The program was a success there as well and now PE4life has six academies across the United States. Interested teachers, coaches and community leaders can attend these academies to learn more about the program and take the lessons home to their communities.

In June of this year, Bentonville hosted a summit, which attracted more than 200 participants from California, New York, Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee, Missouri and Oklahoma.

After attending a conference, some people become discouraged when they return home because they “hit a brick wall when they get back because of funding,” Lloyd said. The community outreach manager is adamant that participants should not be disheartened.
“If you have to do it on a shoe string budget, it can be done,” she said.

One of the ways Lloyd’s office can help is by assisting interested parties in their search for funding and by offering a grant writing class. The local office also offers public speaking and in the fall, the academy will host training sessions.
Information: 479-621-8878 or www.pe4life.org.

Back when Dr. Joel Brenner, a national committee member on sports medicine and fitness for the American Academy of Pediatrics, played youth baseball, he was out on the field four times a week for three months out of the year. Now, Brenner said those same kinds of seasons routinely run six days a week for six months out of the year.
With increased pressure to combat childhood obesity and work toward athletic greatness, more children are turning up with sports-related injuries than ever before.
“There are more activities and more organized sports,” said Brenner, the Medical Director of Sports Medicine at the Children’s Hospital of the Kings Daughters in Norfolk, Va. “They’re going six to seven days a week. (Children) aren’t giving their bodies a chance to heal.”
This increase in activity has caused lasting damage in many children. An injury to an adult may end their sports season. An injury to a child could wash away their entire career and stunt their growth.
According to the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford University, more than 30 million children in the United States participate in sports every year. Of those, more than 3.5 million injuries are reported each year.
Many are left with overuse injuries, or injuries that happen because they are using the same repetitive motions during sports too often. An overuse injury is basically one that affects a bone, joint or tendon because of repetitive motions with little recovery time, Brenner said. They were once unknown but are now prevalent in many youngsters.
Some overuse injuries are becoming so common that they are even uniquely named, like Little League elbow, which is damage to growth cartilage in the elbow from so much throwing. Some of the most common overuse injuries are knee pain, shin splints, Little League elbow and swimmer’s shoulder.
There are, however, some protective measures that can be taken, said Jennifer Byrd, the Director of Athletic Training at the National Center for Sports Safety. Things such as proper equipment, pitch counts and weight classes can combat overuse injuries. But the sprains, strains and pains will still happen.
“Guidelines can be followed for each sport, but the incident of injury is always there because of the normal wear and tear on the body,” Byrd said.
But the average wear and tear can be detrimental. Many children are playing
sports nonstop throughout the entire calendar year.
Parents and coaches want children to succeed and earn that college scholarship. They want to see children become Olympians one day. Brenner said that’s a remote possibility as less than 1 percent of high school athletes turn professional. Even fewer will make it to the Olympics.
That’s why Brenner doesn’t see the point of juggling multiple sports for the majority of the year.
“When children play sports, they don’t need to do so for six or seven days a week, 12 months out of the year,” Brenner said.
Preventing Overuse Injuries
Any child on any court or field is susceptible to overuse injuries. A few too many pitches or one too many strokes could end their young athletic careers.
Luckily, there are some preventive steps to take to combat and help avoid these types of injuries.
The first is education, Byrd said.
“All parties involved from the athlete to coaches and parents should be able to recognize the signs and symptoms of overuse injuries and to take proper steps of rehab for the injury,” Byrd said.
When children are growing, they are more likely to sustain an injury. That’s why children going through puberty should pay particular attention to the signs of injury.
Overuse injuries are tough to detect. Nothing triggers an overuse injury, like a sudden break or tear. Rather, these develop gradually over time as kids go through the same practices and drills countless times.
Oftentimes, children won’t recognize these injuries because there is no sudden time of injury. If untreated, they can lead to permanent damage or could even lead to long-lasting complications such as arthritis.
It’s not a trip or a fall that will trigger such an injury. Rather, overtraining is the chief cause in overuse injuries.
Naturally, parents and coaches will look for a way to avoid overtraining. But the demands to succeed both as a team and individually still exist.
So how much is too much? That’s a question Brenner routinely fields. There isn’t a magical number, but a resting period is crucial, Brenner said. Children should take at least one or two days off per week to avoid overtraining. In the long run, Brenner said children should take at least two or three months away from sports every year.
“People are putting more time in,” he said. “They feel pressured to train more.”
Enrolling children in the right sports can also help ease the burden. Sports that are organized through recreations areas, schools and clubs usually field certified athletic trainers. A trainer will not only know how to treat injuries, but also how to prevent them.
Protective gear is another basic step that shouldn’t be overlooked. Many sports have common injuries that can easily be avoided. Mouth guards and eye protection should be used in any contact sports, while appropriate padding for other sports such as football and soccer are needed.
A simple acronym — R.I.C.E. — can help treat many common overuse injuries if a doctor or trainer is not immediately available. The steps are: R: Reduce or rest the injured area. I: Ice the injured area for 20 minutes at a time. C: Compress the injury with bandages, splints, boots or an appropriate wrap. E: Elevate the injury above the heart.
The body needs time to heal, but Jamie Croley of Trinity Rehabilitation said finding that time is the biggest challenge he faces.
“As an athletic trainer all I try to do is I try to find a way to break a repetitive cycle of inflammation,” he said.
In addition to ice, Croley also uses electrical stimulation, stretching techniques, ibuprofen and a type of ultrasound to get deep heat into tissue to treat an overuse injury.
To prevent the injuries, Croley suggested athletes work on their form and stretch. With baseball season underway, he suggests pitchers work on rotator cuff exercises or take a break from the mound by playing a different position.
Time off can often be the best antidote.
Playing sports year-round will likely result in injuries, regardless of steps taken before or after the activity.
But an overuse injury can’t occur if muscles, joints and bones are routinely rested.
“Even professional athletes have an off-season,” Brenner said.

Antoinette Grajeda contributed to this report.

By Antoinette Grajeda
You can tell spring has sprung once plants start blooming, but those pretty flowers come with pesky pollens that can be troublesome for allergy sufferers.
“Allergies are diseases of the immune system that cause an overreaction to substances called allergens,” according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America Web site. Allergies can be grouped by trigger, time of year or where symptoms appear on the body. These categories include indoor and outdoor allergies, latex allergies, insect allergies, skin allergies, eye allergies or food and drug allergies.
Jenny Campbell, a board-certified physician at Hedburg Allergy & Asthma Center in Rogers, said the most common food allergies found in children are milk, eggs, soy, wheat, peanuts and seafood. A food reaction can occur one to four hours after ingestion, and sometimes children don’t have an allergic reaction to a certain food until later on in life.
“The main thing that I don’t think parents know or realize is that they’re never going to have a reaction the first time they’re exposed to a food,” she said.
If someone suspects they have allergies, they can visit a physician who will ask for a good history of their symptoms and a list of allergens they may have been exposed to. To test for allergies, a drop of a suspected allergen is pricked or scratched on the surface of the skin of your back or forearm, according to the American College of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology’s Web site. If you’re allergic to the substance, redness and swelling will occur at the test spot.
There are three options for treating allergies. The first is avoiding the things you’re allergic to. For example, someone with indoor allergies may be told to avoid pets, clean the kitchen, wash bed linens in hot water once a week, vacuum and dust the bedroom or place allergy covers on pillows and mattresses.
“We really focus on the bedroom because that’s where patients spend a third of their day,” Campbell said.
For people with outdoor allergies, she said patients should keep windows closed as well as rinse off and change clothing after being outside for long periods of time. Campbell noted that people tend to have more trouble with allergies here in Northwest Arkansas than other places because of the foliage.
“This is definitely an allergy hot spot,” she said. “It is a warmer climate and so we’ll start seeing trees pollinate sometimes even in December, but the end of January for sure.”
If avoiding allergens doesn’t work, the next step is medication. Campbell recommended over-the-counter medicines like Claritin and Zyrtec. She also said patients should be cautious of nose sprays and eye drops, which can sometimes make symptoms worse. If these medications don’t control symptoms, a doctor can provide allergy shots.

“They’re really the only thing that we have that actually changes their immune system to treat their allergies so we’re not just covering it up with medications; we’re actually fixing the problem,” Campbell said.
The shots work by exposing the patient to what they’re allergic to. By starting with small doses and increasing them, it desensitizes the body to the allergen, she explained. After three to five years of shots, 80 percent of people respond well and continue to respond even after the allergy shots are completed, she added.
These shots are helpful, but there are risks. Common reactions include redness and swelling near the injection site. Life-threatening reactions can also occur, which is why Campbell’s patients are asked to remain in the office 20 minutes after receiving a shot. If a patient has a severe reaction, physicians simply lower the dosage.
Even with the risk, studies have shown that allergy shots given to children may prevent them from becoming allergic to other allergens and it also may prevent them from developing asthma, Campbell said.
“Asthma is a disease of the lungs in which the airways become blocked or narrowed, causing breathing dif-ficulty,” according to the AAFA Web site. This chronic disease affects 20 million Americans and is strongly connected to allergies. About 80 percent to 90 percent of kids who have asthma also have allergies that trigger their asthma, and in about 50 percent of adults, the same is true, Campbell added.
“People that have asthma, it is important to get evaluated for allergies because avoiding those things that you’re allergic to can help improve not only your nasal symptoms, but your asthma symptoms as well,” she said.
In addition to avoiding allergens, asthma sufferers can use medications such as an inhaled steroid or leukotriene modifiers (pills). Patients are given maintenance medication that must be taken regularly in addition to rescue medications that can be taken during an asthma attack.
Physicians don’t know what causes asthma, but they can treat it so people can go about their daily lives, which can be particularly important for active children.
“We want children to be able to have a normal life despite having asthma so we just try to monitor them closely, get them on the correct medications,” she said. “We don’t want them to feel like they have to restrict their activities in any way and they shouldn’t have to.”
Parents wondering if their kids have asthma should look for symptoms such as coughing at night as well as any kind of wheezing or shortness of breath. The only way to know for sure is by visiting a doctor. Hedburg Allergy and Asthma will host a free asthma screening from noon to 2 p.m. May 16 at their office in Rogers.

FREE SCREENING
Hedburg Allergy and Asthma will host a free asthma screening from noon to 2 p.m. May 16, 2009 at its office in Rogers

Gardasil May Be Effective for Males
Merck announced the results of a clinical trial that indicated Gardasil’s efficacy in preventing HPV-related genital warts and other lesions without any serious safety concerns.
According a report by The Associated Press, the trial involved 4,000 males between the ages of 16 and 26, and the vaccine was 90 percent effective in preventing external genital lesions.
At least 50 percent of sexually active men and women acquire genital HPV infection at some point in their lives, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
About 20 million Americans are currently infected with HPV, and another 6.2 million people become infected each year.
Merck intends to apply to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to license the vaccine for use in males.
It isn’t clear from the reports if the advisory committee will recommend broad use of the vaccine in males.

Teen drinkers face greater health risks
An Australian study found teen drinkers having their first full drink of alcohol by age 15, which could put them at greater risk for dependence and mental health issues.
Women older than 60 reported having their first drink at about age 23, but those between 20 and 29 reported starting in their mid-teens.
The study’s lead researcher said statistics indicated girls were starting to drink as early as boys, in part because of exposure to advertising.
Easy access to alcohol, ample disposable income and early maturity among teens were listed by researchers as contributing factors to the trend of early drinking.
Teens can start drinking for a variety of reasons such as curiosity, peer pressure or as a way to deal with pain or unresolved issues, said Dr. Mark Lee family medicine physician at the Rogers Medical Center. Although the contributing factors to early drinking can be identified, the trend is not always easy to prevent.
“When it comes to prevention and treatment, that’s where it gets a little tricky because the only thing you can do is to identify these children early as a risk,” Lee said.
In 2004, 393 people from ages 12 to 20 years old were admitted for alcohol treatment in Arkansas, according to the International Institute for Alcohol Awareness. This accounted for 6 percent of all treatment admissions for alcohol abuse in the state.
The good news? Another study found that 45 percent of college students reduced their drinking substantially after exposure to online education about acceptable consumption.

Study links sex on TV  to teen pregnancy
The RAND Corporation conducted a study of teens 12 to 17 years old monitored until reaching 15 to 20 years of age and found a possible link between exposure to sexual content on television and teen pregnancy.
Researchers said factors leading to teen pregnancy are complex, but added there is little doubt that TV can be one of those factors. The study’s authors urge parents, pediatricians and educators to be aware of television’s potential influence on teens’ health decisions.
Teenagers spend an average of three hours per day watching television, and researchers say TV’s impact on teen health choices is still not well understood.
Of the 2,003 teenagers included in the study, those who had watched the most sexual content on television were twice as likely to have experienced a pregnancy or gotten a girl pregnant as the teens with the lowest levels of exposure.
Researchers cautioned that while it is clear television has an impact on teen sexual behavior, its extent isn’t yet known because there are many other factors involved in a teen’s choices about sex.
According to a report released in January by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Arkansas ranks fourth in the nation for its teen pregnancy rate.

The Morning News’ correspondent Antoinette Grajeda contributed to this report.