Go Fetch Fitness Day 6

Day 6 brought us another very experienced speaker in the area of fitness and the physiology of exercise. Paulette Herold is a Registered Nurse Practitioner and has received her MA in Cardiac Rehab and Exercise Physiology from UNI. Paulette has worked in Occupational Health for 14 years. She taught at Allen College, worked in the Vascular Lab and in Cardiac Rehab.
On Friday April 23rd, Paulette discussed the health benefits of walking your dog and of regular exercise in general. Paulette discussed Type 2 diabetes and how regular exercise helps to stabilize blood sugar. This is true for humans and for dogs. So if you or your dog are overweight and are prone to diabetes or already have diabetes, regular exercise a the same time each day will be very beneficial for both of you.
In addition to exercise, keeping a close eye on our sugar intake is important. Watching sugar intake before diabetes is even a concern, helps train our bodies in how to utilize sugar and how to produce insulin. Choosing low sugar, high fiber and roughage type snacks helps keep our insulin production from occuring in great surges and swings and maintains a more even level production. This protects the organ that produces the inuslin, the pancreas.
I appreciated Paulette's suggestion for low-sugar snacks, especially for kids. Cut up veggies with low or no fat ranch dressing, peanut butter, mozzarella cheese sticks, wheat think crackers, yogurt, fruit and Kashi cereals and granola were great suggestions. I have tried these with my own kids with great success!
The common nutrition message that we have been receiving from all of our speakers so far this Go Fetch Fitness season is to avoid processed foods and foods made with bleached or unbleached white flour and foods with hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils. these so called foods, either have no value to us or have a negative impact on our health. They either raise our cholesterol or drive us toward diabetes.
Again, the theme for Go Fetch Fitness is that by exercising with our dogs, we help thwart off the major debilitating diseases that occur in Americans and American dogs such as diabetes, heart disease and even cancer. If we can consistantly watch our diet and exercise, we can live longer with a better quality of life with the ones we love.
Elizabeth Bixby, DVM