Family Fitness

Fit families are healthy families who have an active lifestyle. Frequently, they enjoy the things they do together, and the things they do together foster better communication and closer relationships than watching TV does.

Family fitness takes some parental commitment, leadership, and imagination, and you may have to listen to a lot of grousing and whining to start with, but the entire family will benefit as a result. Five factors that affect your family fitness plan are cost, convenience, family-friendly environment, fun, and success.

Cost

Family fitness doesn’t have to be expensive. Sure, you can drop a couple of hundred dollars or more taking the family skiing. But you can find a slope and sled down it on plastic trash bags for free. Most communities have free or low-cost family activities at community centers or parks. Check your local newspaper or parks and recreation department, and use your imagination to come up with activities your family can do together that don’t break the bank.

Convenience

Families are busy, and convenience is essential to a family fitness plan. If you have to go through a lot of hassle or travel a long way on a regular basis, you won’t follow through. Plan activities that you can do in your own backyard or neighborhood, like play Frisbee. You can also stay home to rake up leaves and jump in them, or make snow angels in the winter months. If you join a club or team, make it one that’s convenient to get to, and one the entire family can be a part of. Joining a bowling league is a great way to keep the family involved.

Family-Friendly Environment

When you join a club or plan an activity, make sure your whole family is welcome. It’s not much fun to look forward to an outing, and then discover that your kids are the only ones there. You want an appropriate environment for young children, too, where they will be safe and not exposed to “adult” language or behavior.

Fun

Fun is the key to successful family fitness. If everybody has fun, you’ll all want to do it again. Ask the kids what kind of activities they enjoy. You could even let them choose some family activities and help with the planning. Have a family meeting, and come up with a list of activities your family wants to try.

In addition to making sure your family fitness activities are fun, you can make sure your family fun activities center around fitness. Take everybody miniature golfing for a birthday instead of having a cake-and-ice-cream party. Celebrate Independence Day by going on a 10K walk together (which you’ll have to train for together). Walk around your neighborhood at Christmas and enjoy the lights, or sing carols. Bring fun and activity together as often as you can, and you and your kids will begin to associate an active lifestyle with having fun.

Success

Every member of your family needs to feel successful at whatever activities your family chooses. They don’t all have to be good at the activity as long as they enjoy it and feel good about themselves doing it. Family fitness can become an unhealthy competition that leaves less athletic family members feeling like failures, and that can defeat the purpose. Choose activities that everybody can participate in and enjoy at least moderate success at.

When our families pursue fitness together, we benefit in other ways, too. Your kids will remember and treasure family camping trips, going swimming together, and having family snowball fights. You’re building good health habits and good childhood memories at the same time, and the whole family is having fun doing it.

Swine flu may drag into 2011

China's Margaret Chan, director general of the World Health Organization, said the swine flu epidemic has shown that there are numerous gaps in the health systems of many countries.
GENEVA - Many more people could become sick with swine flu this winter even though it has peaked in North America and some European countries, the head of the World Health Organization said Tuesday.

The worst of the swine flu outbreak is over in the United States, Canada, Britain and some other countries in the northern hemisphere, said Dr. Margaret Chan.

But there is still intensive flu activity in Egypt, India and elsewhere, she said.

"It is too premature and too early for us to say we have come to an end of the pandemic influenza worldwide," Chan told reporters. Health experts should monitor the pandemic for another six to 12 months, she said, adding that the virus could still mutate and become more dangerous.

Over 11,500 people are known to have died around the globe from the disease since the outbreak began in April, according to WHO. Between 250,000 and 500,000 people around the world die from regular flu each year.

When the U.N. health agency declared swine flu to be a pandemic in June, it described it as "moderate."

While most people recover from the illness without needing medical treatment, officials are also continuing to see severe cases in people under 65 — people who are not usually at risk during regular flu seasons.

As many countries have rolled out massive swine flu vaccination programs, demand for swine flu shots in some European countries has been lower than expected, said Chan.

WHO is talking to these governments to see if superfluous vaccines can be shipped to developing countries, she said.

Virus could be devastating in Africa
The agency has warned that the virus could have a devastating impact in countries across Africa with high numbers of people with health problems like malnutrition, AIDS, and malaria.

Drug makers and countries have promised to donate nearly 190 million doses of vaccines to WHO, she said. The figure is up from about 150 million doses two months ago.

Chan acknowledged she had yet to get her own swine flu shot. Only just back from leave, she said she asked her medical service to find out where she can get vaccinated.

Since flu viruses constantly evolve, experts have feared swine flu could mutate into a more dangerous form.

"One thing we need to guard against is the sense of complacency," Chan said, adding that flu viruses are highly unpredictable.

"We will watch this virus with eagle's eyes," she said.

Last month, WHO warned that with fresh bird flu cases reported in poultry in Egypt, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam, the risk of bird flu and the H1N1 pandemic swine flu virus mixing was heightened.

H1N1 moderate, but harsher on young
5 million doses of nasal H1N1 vaccine recalled
60 million in U.S. vaccinated against swine flu

Scientists fear that bird flu, which remains hard for people to catch but kills about 60 percent of those infected, could combine with the current swine flu virus, which spreads easily among people but kills a low percentage.

Chan said although countries are now better prepared to cope with a global disease outbreak than a few years ago, the swine flu epidemic has shown that there remain numerous gaps in the health systems of many countries.

She said she hopes the world can avoid a pandemic triggered by the avian flu virus, which she said was more toxic and deadly than swine flu.

"The world is not ready for a pandemic caused by H5N1," she said, referring to the scientific name of bird flu.