BODY: Gearing Up For Flu Season

Old school RX.

By Carl Chancellor

I was heading home the other evening on the orange line of the Metro when the woman in the seat next to where I was standing in the crowded car, begins sneezing and sniffling. To her credit the woman did sneeze into the crook of her arm, just like the President showed us to do, but I still wasn’t liking the fact that I was standing so near to her.

I shifted on my feet for an uncomfortable for a few seconds, trying to figure out my course of action. Maybe I have an overabundance of the polite gene in my makeup, because I was hesitant about bolting and thereby calling attention to the sneezing woman. But when the lady sneezed again and followed it with a cough, I knew I had to book.

I slowly shouldered my way through the bodies pressed against me and worked my way to the far end of the car, as far away from Swine Flu Sue as I could get.

The sneezing woman shot me a dirty look, obviously taking offense at my retreat. I’m sure she didn’t appreciate me acting as if she were contagious. Hey, but you can’t fault a brotha for being cautious, particularly with all the buzz about H1N1.

That was a few days ago. Today, my head is throbbing and I’m sneezing. I’m hoping it is just a cold and nothing more.

To ease my suffering I resorted to the old school remedy of honey, apple cider vinegar and lemon, with a bit of a twist–whiskey. I’ve been downing spoonfuls of the elixir all morning long. And although I’m still sneezing, I’m feeling mighty good.

BODY: Getting the Runaround on Losing Weight

Getting the runaround
Originally uploaded by van heland

By Carl Chancellor

I’m lifting weights. I’m burning up the miles on the treadmill. So why aren’t the pounds just melting away?

The reality is that without changing your diet and monitoring your caloric intake you are not going to shed those extra pounds.

Thinking that you will be able to gorge yourself at the kitchen table and then jog off the after effects of over indulgence is just not going to happen.

Researchers have found that people who exercise don’t necessarily lose weight. A study recently published in the The British Journal of Sports Medicine documents that disappointing but very real fact.

The study followed 58 overweight people as they underwent 12 weeks of supervised aerobic training without changing their diets. The results: the group lost an average of around seven pounds. Some of the study subjects lost less than four pounds.

How can that be? Hard exercise for 12 straight weeks and barely shed a few pounds. I mean, doesn’t exercise burn calories?

The quick answer is, yes. The problem is that most people only burn 200 to 300 calories in a typical 30-minute exercise session. You will put almost that many calories right back into your body when you reach for that bottle of Gatorade to cool off.

The only way to lose weight is through a combination of exercise and diet.

Push-ups ain’t going to help if you don’t push yourself away from the table first.

MIND: New Book On Sugar Ray Robinson Undisputed Winner

Sugar Ray Robinson
Originally uploaded by Drnard

By Carl Chancellor

The brotha had swagger to burn.

That fact comes across like an uppercut square to the chin in the new biography Sweet Thunder: The Life and Times of Sugar Ray Robinson, by Wil Haygood.

The book captures the elegance, grace, pride and determination of one of the all time great boxers as it chronicles a life framed by the brutality of the ring and the turmoil of 20th century America.

Haygood, who is as artistic with the pen as Robinson was with his fists, crafts a lyrical biography that excites and enthralls as surely as Sugar Ray did in his many professional and amateur bouts. Robinson literally punches his way off the pages of Sweet Thunder to step away from mere facts and statistics–174-19-6 record; welterweight and 5-time middleweight champion–to become a flesh and blood character as real as a favorite uncle.

The prose of Haygood’s detail-rich book not only evokes the rage and fury of the ring but depicts the cultural upheaval of the 30s, 40s, 50s and early 60s.

Sweet Thunder is populated by iconic figures, who orbited around Robinson’s sun–Miles Davis, Lena Horne, Jake LaMotta, Langston Hughes, Sammy Davis, etc....The book faithfully paints a picture of the man and his times.

Be warned the book is a page-turner. Once you crack it open and start to read you will be down for the count.

BODY:Are Black Men Afraid of Doctors?

Doctor's Tools
Originally uploaded by Dave Ward Photography

“Why don’t you guys get checkups?”

That was a question a female friend posed to me the other evening while having drinks. She just couldn’t understand why her boyfriend constantly puts off going to the doctor.

“He’s always complaining about this ache, or this pain, yet he won’t go to the doctor to have it checked out,” she said between sips of wine, the frustration clear in her tone.

Several of my male friends said they don’t go to the doctor because they are afraid that the doc might find something wrong. Then there is the attitude-- “Hell, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

But how do you know it ain’t broke?


Hey, we black men aren’t alone when it comes from shying away from the doctors office. According to a recent survey by Men's Health magazine and CNN, one-third of American men have not had a checkup in the past year. Nine million men haven't seen a doctor in the last five years.

An American Medical Association study in 1990 found that men, regardless of their race, don't go to the doctor because of fear, denial, embarrassment and threatened masculinity.

* Each year, men make 150 million fewer trips to doctors than women (the disparity occurs in every age group, not just the years some women have prenatal checkups.) p
* One in nine men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer, yet few will have the easy and painless digital rectal exam and prostate specific antigen blood test to detect it (women, facing similar odds of breast cancer, are much more likely to examine their breasts regularly and have a mammogram).
* Men are at greater risk of stress-related illnesses than women, yet only 20 percent of the people in the typical stress-management program are men. Men are 30 percent more likely than women to have a stroke.
* One out of three male strokes occur before age 65. Each year, over 50,000 men die of emphysema, one of the most preventable diseases. It has been estimated that more than 3 million men are walking around with early type II diabetes, a disease with major complications, and don't know it.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard someone bemoan the fact that they didn’t see a doctor earlier–“Doc, said if the problem had been detected earlier, my chance would be better.”

We black men have bought into that macho myth, maybe more so than other groups. We were told to “suck it up and be a man”; “roll with the punches”; “take it like a man”; and, worst of all–“Boy, those better not be no tears I’m seeing.”

Everything we hear tells us that to be a man is to be bulletproof.

Well, guess what–You ain’t no Superman.

It usually takes no more than 20 minutes to get a basic physical–less than a half-hour for a physician to declare you healthy or detect potential problems.