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Pain, disease workshop set for Long County
0212 Loreatha Jenkins
Coastal Regional Commission spokeswoman Loreatha Jenkins speaks to a group at First Baptist Church of Ludowici about managing chronic pain and disease.

Long County residents on Thursday got a preview of a free chronic pain and disease workshop that will be offered starting this month.
Loreatha Jenkins of the Coastal Regional Commission spoke at the First Baptist Church of Ludowici about the Living Well Coastal Workshop, which will be held in the Long County Library.  
Jenkins said the course is a six-session workshop to educate people on coping with chronic pain and disease.  The workshop is available to the public.
“This free workshop will help you get to feeling better, be in control of your life and help you get to doing the things you want to do in your life,” Jenkins said.
She said the course will show those who have chronic pain and disease how to have more energy, get relief from fatigue and deal with their health issues.  The course will cover 17 topics including exercise and nutrition, stress management, medication usage, depression and how to talk to a doctor.  She said that some examples of people who would benefit from the program include those who have arthritis, diabetes, asthma, high blood pressure, cancer, anxiety attacks and heart disease.
Jenkins said that the workshop was developed by the Stanford Center for Research in Patient Education, and is being taught in 19 locations in Georgia, all 50 states and 40 countries.  
Jenkins said that normally the course costs $250 to attend, but that because of a grant, there is no charge.  She said that every person who attends the course will receive a book and CD. She added that for every person who makes at least four of the six sessions, that they will receive a certificate of completion.
Long County Sheriff Craig Nobles, who attended the forum, said, “It was a good presentation, getting some good information out. I think that the class they’re offering would help a lot of folks in our community, and I think we all need to do all we can to support and help our older citizens.”
Five people who attended the forum signed up for the course, including church member Janice Anderson.
“I thought it was very informative and it opened my eyes to some avenues that I did not know existed. I suffer from arthritis, high blood pressure and back pain, and I look forward to attending the workshop and hope to get some relief,” Anderson said.
The workshop will start at 9 a.m. every Tuesday from Feb. 21-March 27 in the library.  For more information or to sign up for the course, call 912-262-2843.

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From the book 'Outliers' comes proof that good health is more than just genetics
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Friends Jim Young, left, Mike Natale, Jeff Natale and Ryan Kiernan were on Greenwich High School football team together and Jim and Mike were captains. Jim, who was the youngest in Sherry Young's family, was welcome in the homes of the other three boys who still had siblings around and grandparents near. - photo by Sherry Young
As I look back on my life and the lives of others, both personally and in the reading I have done, I am convinced of the necessity of positive human contact in our lives. We are doubly blessed when we are able to make good friends or are a part of a family where we are accepted and loved.

Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers tells of a time in the 1950s when Dr. Stewart Wolf met a physician who practiced in the area of Roseto, Pennsylvania. Roseto was settled by a group of Italian families from Roseto, Italy, who re-created their life again in America.

This was in the 1950s before drugs and measures to prevent heart disease became important. In their conversation the physician said, You know, Ive been practicing for 17 years. I get patients from all over, and I rarely find anyone from Roseto under the age of 65 with heart disease.

Wolf was surprised by these words as, It was impossible to be a doctor, common sense said, and not see heart disease.

Wolf enlisted the aid of a sociologist and friend John Bruhn to help him. They found, There was no suicide, no alcoholism, no drug addiction, and very little crime. They didnt have anyone on welfare. Then we looked at peptic ulcers. They didnt have any of those either. These people were dying of old age. Thats it.

They checked into diet, genetics and possibilities of something in the foothills of eastern Pennsylvania but nothing made sense.

What they found was that Rosetans visited one another, stopping to chat in Italian on the street, say, or cooking for one another in their backyards. (Researchers) learned about the extended family clans that underlay the towns social structure. They saw how many homes had three generations living under one roof and how much respect grandparents commanded. They went to Mass at Our Lady of Mount Carmel and saw the unifying and calming effect of the church. They counted 22 separate civic organizations in a town of just under 2,000 people. They picked up on the particular egalitarian ethos of the community, which discouraged the wealthy from flaunting their success and helped the unsuccessful obscure their failures.

What they found eventually convinced the medical establishment to look beyond the individual and understand the culture people are part of their friends, families and town they came from. They determined that the people we surround ourselves with and the values of the world we inhabit have a profound effect on who we are.

Likely, this study could have been done with other ethnicities. However, my family's experiences with the Italian families in Connecticut ring true to the study. Our hungry and growing sons, especially our youngest son, Jim, who was left home alone with two beady-eyed parents, all had some memorable experiences being fed and loved in the Cos Cob multigenerational families. Proof of the African proverb, It takes a village to raise a child.

We live in an age when the contact we have with people often is on the internet, and many of us live among strangers. Unless we make the effort to reach out, we will become isolated, especially as we age. The Rosetan study is proof that reaching out and communicating may be good for our health.
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