Month: March 2019

2019-03-04T11:01:00

(BPT) – With popular obstacle- and ninja-style shows taking over TV, you might be curious what it takes to become a part of the competition. A desire is the first step, and one expert ninja says this can springboard you quickly to the next level.

“‘I want to try it.’ This is the first thing I said before exploring training,” says John Wilmas, best known as the stair ninja (@stair_ninja on Instagram). He participates in competitive stair climbing with a passion for charity climbs. He also has competed on American Ninja Warrior.

“Most people enter this sport with a simple desire to give it a try and have fun,” he says. “If that is you, I encourage you to give it a go. From there, you can take additional steps to develop your skills and hone your focus.”

Wilmas recommends five tips when beginning to train for any obstacle-style event:

1. Find a local training gym or park

As the popularity of the shows has grown, so too has the desire for more obstacle-style training facilities. Research what is available in your area. Indoor gyms and outdoor obstacle parks featuring FitCore Extreme fitness equipment by Landscape Structures Inc. offers multiple fitness options available for children ages 5 to 12 and teens/adults ages 13 and over, so the whole family can participate. Learn more at www.playlsi.com. This equipment promotes whole-body fitness and agility with options for varied fitness and skill levels.

2. Use your body weight as a training tool

If you can’t find training opportunities within 30 minutes of your home, focus on body-weight training and calisthenics — the type of training gymnasts do — to build your skills. Keep in mind that even if you can bench a lot of weight, it’s not the same as holding your own body weight. Train by using your own body weight as resistance because that is what will be tested on many of the obstacles.

3. Work on speed, balance and agility

Being agile and having good balance can help you conquer some of the toughest obstacles. Competitors that only focus on upper body strength will slip up on seemingly easier parts of the course simply because they don’t have good balance or speed. The faster you can go, the less energy you’ll expend, which means you can go further without getting tired. Speed can also be an alternative to balance. If you can go through some obstacles quickly, you’ll not have to rely on stellar balance skills.

4. Find friends and build camaraderie

What makes obstacle- and ninja-style competitions unique is everyone supports each other. It’s a competition, but competitors have strong bonds and encourage the success of each participant. When you start training and decide you enjoy the sport, try joining some local groups so you can build your own camaraderie. The support you’ll feel is incredible. You can start by researching local meetups on the Facebook group American Ninja Warrior Comrades.

5. Explore mental training

A big part of succeeding at this style sport is mental strength. Believe in yourself and envision yourself successfully completing a challenge. A mental block is always the hardest obstacle, so if you make a mistake, don’t dwell on it. Repetition helps you gain confidence so your mind trusts your body. Then you can just go without overthinking it. The mind is your biggest asset if you use it to your advantage, but can also be your biggest crutch if you let worries overtake your abilities.

2019-03-04T08:01:00

(BPT) – Today’s plant lovers want more than the traditional flowers to enhance their home. Rather, people want to enjoy the experience of getting in touch with nature, while also looking for unique flowers and plants to add a more creative, personal touch of color and inspiration to their yards. This year, gardens will be more visually interesting, environmentally friendly and demonstrate the love and care provided by the families who tend them.

Here are a few of the latest gardening ideas you and your loved ones can enjoy, from Ball Horticultural Company.

Gardening as an experience

Detoxing from our daily dependence on digital distractions and tech gadgets is becoming not just a desire, but a necessity. What better way for you and your loved ones to take a break from screens than to spend time with plants, creating beauty, serenity and even a nutritious lifestyle? Make the process a group effort: from going to your favorite garden center and choosing your veggies, to caring for them and watching them grow, then harvesting and eating, the full experience is something to enjoy. Plant and grow veggies like the Snackabelle Red Pepper, a mini bell pepper that starts out green, then ripens red, with a rich, sweet flavor — perfect to have at home for snacking as well as cooking.

If you love natural fragrances, Lavender Blue Spear is a wonderful choice. They are easy to grow, and will achieve a height of nearly a foot. You can use the fresh lavender to make infused oil, soap, hand scrubs or bath salts.

New color choices

Look for unexpected colors to help you make a statement with your containers, window boxes or indoor potted plant garden this year. Striking new colors include the 2019 Pantone color of the year, “Living Coral,” seen in the Gerbera Revolution Salmon Shades potted flower, also known as the African Daisy. Gerbera plants are easy to care for and provide great indoor decor, which also makes them perfect choices for gift giving.

New Tattoo Vinca looks like a work of art, with gorgeous petals showing modern colors, swirled with soft strokes of black that make each petal look inked. The Tattoo Vinca is not only low-maintenance and heat-tolerant, but will attract pollinators like bees and butterflies to your garden. The Double Zahara Bright Orange Zinnia is another great choice for head-turning color. Its double flowers bloom in vivid orange, and they are suitable for landscaping and container planting. This flower is also a breeze to care for and pollinator-friendly.

Or you can choose a unique plant with warm tones, like the bright and colorful Ornamental Pepper, with such attractive multi-colored fruits that they are grown just for show. The Ornamental Pepper displays intense shades of yellows, oranges and reds in its fruit.

Other flowers catch the eye with dynamic texture, such as the lovely Double PinkTastic Calibrachoa, a fully double flower with a dark pink eye and lighter pink petals. Its burst of blooms will cover the plant and spill over their containers, window boxes or hanging baskets.

Easy options for beginning gardeners

New gardeners who want choices beyond traditional flower options have great alternatives this year. If you’re looking for plants that are durable and colorful, the Echinacea Sombrero Tres Amigos produces a deer-resistant perennial flower that is highly attractive to butterflies and songbirds. Tres Amigos shows three colors, opening as a peachy-orange color, then aging to rose and fading to burgundy.

A great way to fill large spaces quickly is the attention-getting Big Blue Salvia, with spires that continuously bloom from July into the fall, with little care needed. This flower grows from 24 to 36 inches tall, with beautiful deep blue blooms that are attractive to hummingbirds and bees.

Beginner and experienced gardeners alike can enjoy the newest gardening trends by branching out into plants and flowers to attract pollinators, taking advantage of vivid new color options and involving the whole family in the process. To explore a whole new world of gardening options, visit your favorite local garden center this spring. Share your own style for 2019 by making your garden a personal experience.

2019-03-01T14:16:39

(BPT) – Just try to walk by an unfinished jigsaw puzzle without stopping. It’s almost impossible. In fact, nearly half of all Americans puzzle for fun, to relax or to relieve stress.

Families puzzle together as a tradition. Millennials puzzle to connect with each other and disconnect from a hyper-digital lifestyle, while seniors puzzle for a brain boost. It may feel like puzzling is one of many retro activities in vogue again, but it has always been in fashion.

Here are some fun facts you might not know about the always-fashionable hobby:

1. Puzzles in ancient times. Puzzling has been around since the dawn of time (almost). Greek mathematician Archimedes puzzled around 250 B.C. to solve geometry problems. He cut a square into 14 pieces, then examined how many different configurations could be made from those pieces. This puzzle was recently solved by Bill Cutler, a mathematician from Cornell University, who showed the puzzle has 536 truly distinct solutions.

2. The first jigsaw puzzle. Engraver and mapmaker John Spilsbury is credited with inventing the first jigsaw puzzle in 1767. He drew a map on top of a piece of wood, then used a jigsaw to cut it into small pieces. The name clearly stuck! Kids today still learn geography by using jigsaw puzzles of maps. In fact, the “Geographical Puzzle” was the first wooden puzzle produced in 1891 by the puzzle maker Ravensburger.

3. A puzzling craze sweeps the nation. Puzzles for adults became popular around 1900, and by 1908 puzzles were a staple of the upper class. Why upper class? Wooden puzzles were expensive, typically costing $5 each (or $140 today). For working people, who earned an average of $50 per month, puzzles would have been a luxury. Over time, cardboard puzzles became a less expensive option, making puzzling available to everyone.

4. A welcome escape. During the Great Depression, puzzles offered people a quiet, inexpensive escape from the troubled economy. In 1932, a new concept emerged: a weekly puzzle. The “Jig of the Week” was sold at newsstands every Wednesday. In February 1933, puzzle production reached an all-time high of 10 million puzzles per week.

5. Puzzles grew. Literally. In 1977, Ravensburger debuted the world’s largest puzzle for its time, with 5,000 pieces. Today, the world’s largest Disney puzzle, “Memorable Disney Moments,” clocks in at 40,320 pieces. It took the puzzle creators 650 hours to trace each of the 10 scenes by hand to be digitally rendered on the computer and another 400 hours to bend the steel sheets with a hammer to create the cutting tool.

6. Puzzling today. As far back as we can trace, puzzling has been equal parts art and craft, driven by puzzlers who race to place the last piece and solve the puzzle. And today, there are even new game-like Escape Puzzles that combine puzzling with escape-the-room mystery. Puzzling is more than ever a respite from today’s hectic lifestyle to relax and connect with one another over a shared goal.

To learn more about jigsaw puzzles, visit https://www.ravensburger.us.

2019-03-01T09:01:00

(BPT) – Having access to adequate healthcare services is a critical factor in maintaining one’s health, but for the more than 60 million Americans living in rural areas of the country, medical resources are often limited. This means that general doctors, most often surgeons, are required to wear many hats and be experts across different branches of medical specialties.

One such specialty is gastroenterology (GI), the branch of medicine focused on the digestive system. In a rural setting, many patients visit their primary care physician for GI matters, and when needed, will schedule consultations with a general surgeon who is able to perform more complex endoscopic GI procedures. Endoscopic procedures utilize a patient’s natural body openings to diagnose conditions and perform minimally invasive procedures in the digestive system for conditions like gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), also known as heartburn.

When it comes to the diagnosis and management of GERD, a condition that impacts 20 percent of Americans, there are major differences between rural and urban treatment practices. Compared to their urban peers, most endoscopic procedures will be performed by a general surgeon in a rural setting versus a specialized gastroenterologist. However, endoscopic training may not be sufficient for rural general surgeons with respect to diagnostic (testing) and therapeutic GERD procedures.

“Endoscopic training for rural general surgeons presents a unique opportunity for them to play an integral role in the diagnosis and treatment of GERD patients,” said Dr. Medhat Fanous, general surgeon in Iron River, Michigan and recent winner of the 2018 Oweida scholarship. “To be able to work with a patient at different stages of their condition gives us exposure to the entire spectrum of GERD, and in doing so, can improve patient outcomes, and facilitate research in rural areas.”

A number of large medical societies are sensitive to the need for additional specialty education for rural general surgeons, offering scholarships and grants to help encourage and potentially subsidize training. One example is the scholarship awarded to Dr. Fanous, called the Nizar N. Oweida, MD FACS, Scholarship of the American College of Surgeons (ACS) which is given to surgeons who choose to practice in small towns or rural areas.

ACS awarded Dr. Fanous the scholarship for playing an essential role in developing an acid reflux management program at his hospital — a program that has helped more than 530 patients deal with chronic GERD.

Recent developments in GERD treatment are creating a shift for the future of antireflux surgery. First, many over-the-counter products (proton pump inhibitors, also known as PPIs) for treating GERD have been found to cause serious side effects, including osteoporosis, dementia and kidney disease. Second, there are many endoscopic treatments for GERD that have been found to be extremely effective and safe, including Transoral Incisionless Fundoplication (TIF 2.0 procedure), which is minimally invasive and reported to have an easy learning curve for endoscopically trained surgeons.

If you or a loved one is suffering from GERD please visit www.gerdhelp.com to learn more about the TIF 2.0 procedure, or https://www.gerdhelp.com/find-a-physician/ to find a TIF 2.0 trained physician near you.

2019-02-28T22:01:00

(BPT) – It is a common misconception that a 20 percent down payment is required to buy a home. Advice to wait and save a large down payment is often based on the theory that the cost of mortgage insurance (MI), which is required when you buy with a smaller down payment, should be avoided. This may not be the best advice and is, in fact, not in line with market trends, considering the median down payment for first-time homebuyers is 7 percent, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Yes, you can qualify for a conventional mortgage with a down payment as small as 3 percent of the purchase price. It is also true that you can reduce your monthly mortgage payment by paying for discount points at closing, but that can be 5 or 10 percent of the purchase price — not 20. And because every buyer’s situation is unique, it’s important to do the math. In today’s market, it could take a family earning the national median income up to 20 years to save 20 percent, according to calculations by U.S. Mortgage Insurers using a methodology developed by the Center for Responsible Lending; a lot can change during that time, in the family’s personal finances and in overall mortgage market trends.

How can buying now save you money later?

Consider you want to purchase a $255,000 home. A 5 percent down payment is $12,750 versus $51,000 in cash for 20 percent down. With a 740 credit score at today’s MI rates, your monthly MI payment would be about $110, which is added to your monthly mortgage payment until MI cancels. MI typically cancels after five years; therefore, you will only have this added cost for a short period of time versus waiting an average of 20 years to save for 20 percent.

With home price appreciation, today’s $255,000 home will likely cost more in the years ahead and this will also have an impact on the necessary down payment and length of time required to save for it. There are other variables in the equation too, such as interest rates. As federal rates rise from their historic lows, so too will the costs associated with financing a mortgage. The savings a borrower might calculate today could be altogether negated by waiting even a few more years. Another factor is that rents are on the rise across the nation, leading to a reduced capacity for many would-be homebuyers to save for larger down payments.

If you decide to buy today with a low down payment mortgage that has private MI, keep in mind that the monthly MI payments are temporary and go away, lowering the monthly payment over time. Again, private MI typically lasts about five years as it can be cancelled once a homeowner builds approximately 20 percent equity in the home through payments or appreciation and automatically terminates for most borrowers once he or she reaches 22 percent equity. Importantly, the insurance premiums on an FHA mortgage — a 100 percent taxpayer-backed government version of mortgage insurance — cannot be cancelled for the vast majority of borrowers.

So, do the math and let the numbers guide you. There are many online mortgage calculators that can help. Check out lowdownpaymentfacts.org to learn more.

2019-02-28T23:01:00

(BPT) – At age 20, Tommy Shafer’s kidneys failed, and he was diagnosed with end stage renal disease (ESRD). He needed dialysis immediately to sustain life. The news shook him to his core. His thoughts immediately traveled back in time to the moment when he first learned kidney disease might change his life forever.

At 14, Shafer was active and healthy, spending his time at cross country practice and at school. It was a mild afternoon in Kentucky, and Shafer was swimming in the Ohio River with friends. He had a small cut on his foot from new running shoes, which didn’t mean much to him at the time. But the open wound mixed with the river water caused a bacterial infection. The infection landed Shafer in the hospital and caused him to develop IgA nephropathy.

“IgA is a type of antibody that helps fight infections,” said Adam Weinstein, M.D., vice president of medical affairs for DaVita Kidney Care. “When some types of antibodies are made in inappropriately high levels, they can damage the small blood vessels in the kidneys. The damage over time led to Tommy’s diagnosis of kidney failure.”

Shafer knew there was a chance he may experience kidney failure at some point in his life due to the damage his kidneys sustained. But Tommy tried to put that out of his mind at the time.

Six years later, as he was taking in his ESRD diagnosis, it was a realization he couldn’t help but face.

Dialysis replaces kidney function by filtering toxins from the blood. According to the latest U.S. Renal Data System Annual Data Report, more than 660,000 Americans are being treated for ESRD. Of these, 468,000 are dialysis patients.

The lifestyle changes for dialysis patients can be significant.

“Patients must closely manage their diet, fluid intake and medications,” said Dr. Weinstein. “Dialysis can have a big impact on the patient’s daily schedule, especially for the patients we see in-center for hemodialysis.”

There are several dialysis treatment options available to patients. In-center hemodialysis (ICHD) is the option Shafer initially chose. Most patients on ICHD visit a dialysis center three days a week for up to four hours each time.

While on ICHD Shafer found it difficult to maintain his independence and active lifestyle. After consulting with his care team, he decided to switch to a different dialysis treatment option — peritoneal dialysis (PD) — that could be administered at home. PD is a form of dialysis that uses the lining of the abdomen to filter waste from the blood.

Home dialysis treatments, such as PD or home hemodialysis (HHD), may allow patients more flexibility with their schedules. Patients dialyzing at home may experience shorter recovery times after treatments, better transplant outcomes, better blood pressure control and improved sleep.

“I wanted to feel in control of my health after experiencing such an abrupt change,” Shafer shared. “Ultimately, PD allowed me more flexibility.”

Shafer was simultaneously pursuing a kidney transplant. In 2015 at age 21, he found a living donor and received a transplant.

“I was hopeful it would allow me to close a big chapter of my life and move forward,” Shafer explained. “But this step wasn’t what I thought it would be.”

Due to complications with the transplant, Shafer was frequently hospitalized. Rather than feeling defeated during this trying time, his focus was drawn to Paige, a close friend who eventually became his wife.

“Paige spent every night by my side while I was in and out of the hospital,” Shafer said. “Though we’d just started dating, I knew she cared for me and it helped me get through.”

Shafer’s transplant ended up failing. He had to go back on dialysis. He and Paige were now engaged, so choosing the right care team and treatment option would impact them both. They decided to treat with DaVita Kidney Care, and together with Shafer’s care team, the couple chose home hemodialysis (HHD). HHD is the same dialysis therapy as ICHD, but HHD is administered at home and with different timing increments.

2018 was a big year for the couple. They got married. They traveled to Hawaii for their honeymoon. And they both decided to start new careers as patient care technicians (PCTs) with DaVita.

The Shafers were inspired by their experience with their DaVita care team and believed delivering care to dialysis patients would bring them purpose and fulfillment. They wanted to give back to fellow patients because they could truly empathize and understand the kidney disease journey.

The couple is now helping give life with DaVita while Shafer is pursuing a second kidney transplant.

“I know a transplant is my next step,” he shared. “I still want to close this chapter and move forward, always trying to be a better version of me.”

For more information on kidney donation, or to become an organ donor, visit the National Kidney Registry: https://www.kidneyregistry.org/.