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Running is good for looks, health
Running
Running on beach
When Courier staffer Danielle Hipps hits Hilton Head Islands beach on Saturday for her latest half-marathon adventure, shell be running for good looks and good health. - photo by Stock photo

When I’m running on Saturday, I won’t just be running for appearance’s sake — I’ll be running for what’s inside.
Specifically, my heart, lungs, muscles and mind.
Despite my documented hiccups, I plan to forge ahead and run the Hilton Head Island Half-Marathon on Saturday morning, and it’s a challenge that ties in directly with the American Heart Association’s Heart Month.
During months like October, our society places a ton of emphasis on wearing pink and donating to breast-cancer research organizations — but heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States, and people of all ages and backgrounds are susceptible, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
That’s why the message of the American Heart Association’s Go Red for Women initiative, celebrated Feb. 1, is so vital: “to raise awareness that cardiovascular disease is a leading cause of death for women. But this program is not just for women. It really teaches women how to take care of themselves to prevent cardiovascular disease and how to build health for their families and their communities.”
Those sage words are from American Heart Association President Donna Arnett, who also serves as the chairwoman of the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Public Health.
I must admit that until I wrote this week about Joseph Martin and Button Gwinnett Elementary schools participating with Jump Rope for Heart, I wasn’t even aware of this month’s medical significance. But I’ve received the message through other channels that send it home: my own grandmother.
My Nene, as I call her, eats like a bird and frequents her local water aerobics, Pilates and step classes. Though she’s been trying to impart these habits on me all my life, a recent conversation with her finally led to a “Eureka!” moment.
“Oh yeah, we have a bad history of heart disease. That’s why I stick to my exercising like I do,” she told me, recounting that four of her father’s seven siblings either died from heart disease or strokes. Because her mother was adopted, that medical history is much more evasive — but we do know that my maternal great-grandmother died after complications from diabetes.
Hearing Nene’s revelations about my family was shocking. I knew we had breast cancer to contend with, but I’d never heard that the biggest risk may come from our level of activity.
And before I began my fitness journey in November 2011, even what I called exercise was a stretch. I used to jump on the elliptical trainer for about an hour and glide through an episode of “Law & Order: SVU” without breaking a sweat. No wonder I always became frustrated at my weight-loss attempts!
Truth is, even when I started training for fun and modifying my meal choices, I did not have my heart in mind. My motive was the desire to strut on the beaches of Tybee Island in a bikini and without shame and to receive the compliments that come with weight loss.
Each step that I ran in the beginning was a hard one, and I had to get used to a fair amount of discomfort to improve my cardiovascular capability. Even in the Pilates classes I recently picked up, I still sometimes think, “This is uncomfortable,” “I want to stop,” or “I wish I’d slept in instead.”
It’s helped me see that sometimes we have to make ourselves uncomfortable in the moment to ensure long-term benefits.  
More than a year later, the compliments are great motivators, and I’m still not in bikini shape. But that’s also fallen from being my main objective into a bonus side-effect of a greater success.
Though my journey with exercise will never be over and I still would like to become leaner, there’s something incredibly triumphant about knowing I can run 13.1 miles, I no longer become winded when walking up stairs and that I now have ownership of my body, which is the only domain that’s ever mine alone.
And that knowledge has empowered me in other areas of my life. I hope it can for you as well.

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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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