Deborah Tausher, emergency preparedness coordinator, Mills-Peninsula Health Services
In our monthly series of articles about emergency preparedness, Deborah Tauscher, emergency preparedness coordinator at Mills Peninsula Health Services, and Jim Schweikhard, Sutter Health Peninsula Coastal Region environmental health and safety manager, break down disaster preparation into manageable, monthly steps. This month’s task is to develop an evacuation plan.
Envision your escape
The first step is to look for two quick escape routes from each room in your home. In addition to the obvious exit paths, such as doorways, keep in mind that the best escape route in an emergency may be through a window. Also consider whether you will need a ladder or other special equipment to escape.
Yoga may seem trendy, but it’s been practiced for health benefits for some 5,000 years. You can do yoga just about anywhere and feel more relaxed and energetic in just 10 – 20 minutes, according to Brooke Benjamin, Mills-Peninsula exercise physiologist.
Some benefits of a regular yoga practice:
Relaxation
Improved digestion
Increased flexibility, strength, coordination and balance
Less anxiety
Lower blood pressure
Watch this video segment from Healthpoint TV to learn a few simple yoga poses you can incorporate into your fitness routine.
Medical experts today understand that the underlying cause of many health problems is excess weight. According to Mills-Peninsula surgeon Pamela Foster, M.D., weight loss surgery is one tool that can be used to treat these sometimes serious conditions, which include type 2 diabetes, hypertension and sleep apnea. It’s also an area of medicine which is making progress due to advances in surgical procedures, she says.
In this video segment from Healthpoint TV, Dr. Foster explains who might be a typical candidate for weight loss surgery and some of the most common and innovative procedures available.
When you walk into the new Mills-Peninsula Medical Center in Burlingame, the construction and engineering effort it takes to run such a modern and life-saving facility may not not be apparent. You have to go down into the basement to see the type of machinery and engineering wonders that make it possible for our staff to take care of patients in comfort 24 hours a day, come what may.
In this video from Healthpoint TV, which was filmed during the building of the hospital that opened in May 2011, you’ll get a quick tour of the basement which houses electrical and heating systems, as well as 90,000 gallons of water (40,000 gallons of fire/sprinkler water and 50,000 of drinking water).
Jim Thompson wishes he had started rehabilitating his heart before doctors needed to fix it.
Thompson, 66, began attending cardiac rehab classes in June, 2011, after doctors placed two stents in his coronary arteries to relieve a dangerous blockage.
Mills-Peninsula’s cardiac rehab is a medically supervised exercise and education program designed to return people to good health after a heart attack or other cardiac event.
Twice a week Thompson attends cardiac rehab at Mills Health Center in San Mateo. Classes are led by an exercise physiologist and supervised by a registered nurse, who monitors each participant’s heart rate and other vital signs before, during and after they exercise.
Exercise is a vital component of any weight loss program. If you are overweight or recovering from injury or surgery, you should begin a fitness routine slowly and consult your doctor first, advises Brooke Benjamin, Mills-Peninsula exercise physiologist.
In this video segment from Healthpoint TV, she demonstrates a beginner’s workout with exercise bands to increase strength and coordination.
Richard and Kathy Gingras collectively lost 200 pounds after having weight loss surgery at Mills-Peninsula. Kathy calls the surgery the best choice she ever made — she feels invigorated and can keep up with her new grandchild. Richard’s doctors told him he would not have survived cardiac arrest two years ago if he hadn’t lost the weight.
“I looked at my children and my wife, and I knew they were more important…than a slice of pizza or that extra scoop of ice cream. I was willing to make the changes because I want to live,” he says in this video segment from Healthpoint TV.
emergency preparedness coordinator, Mills-Peninsula Health Services
When you think of preparing an emergency food supply, are granola bars or freeze-dried foods in individual foil pouches the first thing that come to mind? If yes, think again. Imagine sustaining your family for any length of time on these types of foods.
To be well prepared, you should stock enough food to last your family seven to 10 days (the same counts for emergency water – see last month’s article on storing an emergency water supply). Planning and stocking up in advance will enable you to buy foods that you and your family like when they are on sale – avoiding the high cost of specialized emergency foods.
More that 24 million people in the United States have diabetes and many more are headed there. In fact, more than double that amount have prediabetes or insulin resistance, a condition where blood glucose levels are higher than normal but not high enough to be called diabetes, according to Mills-Peninsula registered dietitian and diabetes educator Donna deKay.
The good news? Studies have shown that by losing weight and increasing physical activity people can prevent or delay prediabetes from progressing to type 2 diabetes.
In this video segment from Healthpoint TV, deKay explains the physiology of type 2 diabetes and the steps people can take to prevent it, including nutrition tips that can make a real difference.
Back pain got you down and out? Do aching knees prevent you from walking long distances or engaging in other types of exercise? If so, you may want to jump in the pool.
“The buoyancy of water lets people exercise with less impact on joints and with a decreased overall weight,” says Kelly Rancatore, an aquatics exercise physiologist at Mills Health Center in San Mateo. “A 200-pound person in chest-deep water only has to support about 50 pounds of their body weight, meaning less pressure on your joints and decreased pain.”
Welcome! This blog is designed as a forum for engaging patients, their families and the community in conversations about health care, and to help promote health education and wellness with articles and tips from our doctors and staff from different departments. We welcome your comments and insight. Thank you for visiting our blog and sharing.
