In order for Jackson to become the city that Lumumba envisions, we will need to create a culture of wellness and quality of life. Trip Burns/File Photo

The other day, I bumped into Mayor-elect Chokwe Lumumba in the grocery store. I am happy to report that he was in the produce section. Lumumba, whom I have spoken to on the issue of health several times, is a health-conscious politician who understands the link between economic development and community health.

When a company considers relocating or expanding to a city, it considers more than the conditions of its streets. The health of the population is also a factor because it affects medical costs and productivity, which can adversely affect the company's bottom line.

A report from WalletHub ranks Jackson as the fattest city in the U.S. Blacks account for approximately 75 percent of the population. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website says that black people tend to experience some of the highest rates of conditions that obesity can cause such as hypertension, type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

Chronic conditions are driving up the high costs of medical care, which employers usually sponsor through insurance policies. The National League of Cities reports that the annual health-care costs of obesity-related illnesses are $190.2 billion. Data from the Mississippi Department of Health shows that the total costs of treating diabetes is $245 billion, including $69 billion in reduced productivity. Employers interested in operating in Jackson could possibly be apprehensive toward hiring from such an unhealthy population.

In order for Jackson to become the city that Lumumba envisions, we will need to create a culture of wellness and quality of life. Although the city has passed a smoke-free ordinance, there are other steps it needs to take. The road map to a healthy population should provide opportunities for residents to engage in routine daily physical activity in a safe environment, safely walk or ride a bicycle on city streets, socialize in neighborhood parks, ensure easy access to healthy foods and make healthy living a more appealing option.

This agenda will need buy-in from the city council. But more importantly, it will take the commitment and engagement of local stakeholders to conduct a community-health impact assessment. That will involve critical input, shared data, collaboration, promotion of important community-health issues and the creation of an official agenda. The results should be policies that create and shape environments in which Jackson residents can safely enjoy healthy lifestyles that lead to reduced rates of obesity and the conditions it causes. Community stakeholders should include local business leaders, representatives of community, medical, academic and faith-based institutions, public-health professionals, civilians and others.

The capital city can learn from other municipalities such as the cities of Amory, Starkville and Hernando, all of which received the 2017 Playful City Award from Playful City USA for increasing physical-activity opportunities for children living in their cities and neighborhoods.

Next month, the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Mississippi Foundation will announce its annual Healthy Hometown Award winner. Three municipalities will receive a $25,000 grant award, and the municipality designated as the "Healthiest Hometown in Mississippi" will receive a $50,000 award.

Previous winners include Walnut, Oxford and Morton. The town of Walnut developed a farmers market downtown, which included green space for physical activities. Oxford uses its city website to promote health-related events and businesses. The City of Morton developed Morton in Motion, a health-education program and a weight-loss competition.

There are other private and public grants the City of Jackson could compete for to support its community-health agenda. Our city faces many issues, but community health is equally important in attracting businesses to Jackson. Thankfully, we now have a mayor who can get Jackson moving in the right direction.

Getty Israel, who has a master's degree in public health, is a health consultant and author.

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With obesity still rising among certain groups of kids, a government panel is renewing its advice that all children and adolescents ages 6 to 18 be screened for obesity.

Screening is just the first step. Kids who are obese should then be referred to treatment programs that use a variety of approaches to change their behavior and help them slim down.

The recommendations were issued Tuesday by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a group of experts appointed by the Department of Health and Human Services Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The task forces advice influences healthcare providers and the coverage offered by health insurers.

The new recommendations, which were published in the Journal of the American Medical Assn., earned a B grade from the task force. That means the experts determined with moderate certainty that the overall benefit of obesity screening and treatment referral is moderate.

Read on for more details about the new recommendations.

Not necessarily. As extra pounds become the new normal, fewer parents are able to recognize when their childs weight is too high.

Besides, the medical definition of childhood obesity is pretty specific. You start by measuring a childs height and weight and using that to calculate his or her body mass index. Thats weight (measured in kilograms) divided by height (measured in meters) squared. There are online calculators to help you, like this one from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

To determine if a child meets the criteria for obesity, you compare his or her BMI to the BMIs of other kids who are the same age. Doctors use growth charts from 2000 as a baseline for these comparisons. If a childs BMI is high enough to land him or her in the top 5%, he or she is considered obese. Today, about 17% of Americans ages 2 to 19 are in this category, according to the CDC.

Children with obesity are at greater risk for a variety of health conditions. These include asthma, high blood pressure, insulin resistance, high cholesterol, orthopedic problems and obstructive sleep apnea.

The task force also noted that obese children are more likely to experience mental health and psychological issues, as well as to be teased or be targeted by bullies.

Not necessarily. Tracking studies show that about 64% of pre-teens who are obese grow up to become obese adults. By the time kids become teenagers, the odds are even more stacked against them nearly 80% of obese teens go on to become obese adults.

Adults who are obese (defined as having a body mass index of 30 or higher) are more likely to develop serious chronic diseases like Type 2 diabetes and heart disease as well as certain types of cancer.

The task force advises doctors to help their patients find a comprehensive, intensive behavioral intervention. Thats a fancy way of describing a weight-loss counseling program.

In clinical trials, the programs that were most effective shared several features:

They included at least 26 contact hours with patients, spread out over a period of months. The ones with the best results had 52 contact hours, enough for one hour per week for an entire year.

They involved not just the child but his or her parents and siblings.

They included instruction on healthful eating, including steps like how to read nutrition information on food labels.

They showed kids how to exercise safely and supervised some of their workouts.

They taught kids the value of reducing their access to junk food, limiting their screen time and steering clear of other triggers that could undermine their progress.

They helped kids learn how to set goals for themselves, monitor their progress and reward themselves when appropriate.

A program like this can involve not just doctors but dietitians, psychologists, exercise physiologists and other kinds of specialists. The task force acknowledged that some families would have limited access to programs like this, but it didnt dwell on this problem.

Others did. In an editorial published Tuesday in JAMA Internal Medicine, Drs. Jason Block and Emily Oken of Harvard Medical School pointed out that in most areas of the United States, programs like this simply arent available. Among childrens hospitals, for instance, only 60% have something that meets the task forces criteria, and only 25% have a program that lasts a full year.

Even if a kid is fortunate enough to live near one of these hospitals, his or her family might not be able to afford to use it, Block and Oken added.

Three other doctors from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine were even more critical. In a JAMA editorial, Drs. Rachel Thornton, Raquel Hernandez and Tina Cheng wrote that the task forces recommendations could wind up diverting resources from more practical public health measures that would probably do more to reduce childhood obesity.

Thornton, Hernandez and Cheng touted efforts to keep junk foods out of schools and prevent companies from marketing sugary drinks to kids.

Block and Oken mentioned some other policies that have been shown to improve kids eating habits, such as taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages or changes in the rules governing the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children.

Greater focus on policies that support healthful behaviors across all settings will be essential not only in ensuring the sustained success of treatment for established obesity, but also in preventing its onset, the Harvard pair wrote.

The task force considered two medications that are sometimes used to help kids lose weight, orlistat and metformin. Clinical trials have found that both drugs helped children lose about five to seven pounds. But that wasnt enough to reduce their BMIs by even 1 point. However, the drugs did cause side effects, such as vomiting, cramping and uncontrolled passage of stool, according to the panels report.

Overall, the experts concluded that the clinical benefit of these drugs was uncertain.

Thats true for American kids overall its been around 17% for about the past decade, according to data from the CDCs National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys. At the turn of the century, that figure was about 14%; in the 1970s, it was under 6%.

But some groups of kids are still getting fatter. For instance, obesity rates are still rising among African American girls and Latino boys. Also, the proportion of kids who are severely obese continues to grow.

karen.kaplan@latimes.com

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Here's why experts say all kids ages 6 and up should be screened for obesity - Los Angeles Times

Heart disease, which includes coronary heart disease, hypertension (high blood pressure) and stroke, is the number one cause of death in the United States.

And yet, the American Heart Association and American Stroke Association both assert that a whopping 80 percent never have to happen.

Thats because prevention can reverse these numbers and improve your life and life expectancy.

If youre not sure of your risk level for heart disease or stroke, the AHA has a simple (and free) online Lifes Simple 7 risk assessment tool.

But regardless of your risk level, these seven ways to reduce heart attack and stroke risk can get you on the right path

Lucky #7 Seven is a widely popular lucky number in many cultures and religions. Its also what you want to see when playing the slots in Vegas. But when it comes to promoting health and preventing illness theres no room to gamble.

Heart disease and stroke share many of the same causes, including high blood pressure, smoking, obesity, diabetes, lack of exercise, poor diet and high cholesterol.

But turning these unlucky risk factors around with these 7 lifesaving habits can reduce your risk by 80% and thats a win you can take to the bank

1 Get Active Increasing physical exercises is the first step because it can reduce blood sugar, lower cholesterol, lower weight and makes you feel great! You can begin by taking walks, parking further form the store and taking the stairs instead of the elevator.

The AHA recommends the following programs:

1) Moderate-to-high-intensity muscle-strengthening activity, at least two days per week.

2) 150 minutes per week total of moderate-intensity exercise (30 mins a day, 5 days a week);

3) OR 75 minutes of vigorous aerobic activity per week (25 minutes, 3 days per week).

Examples of moderate intensity activity include:

Walking briskly (3 miles per hour or faster, but not race-walking) Water aerobics Bicycling slower than 10 miles per hour Tennis (doubles) Ballroom dancing General gardening Vigorous activity would include something like:

Race walking, jogging, or running Swimming laps Tennis (singles) Aerobic dancing Bicycling 10 miles per hour or faster Jumping rope Heavy gardening (continuous digging or hoeing) Hiking uphill or with a heavy backpack

2 Balance Your Cholesterol While statin drugs are the mainstay of modern medicine for lowering LDL (bad) cholesterol, they may be doing more harm than good. Thats why I believe when it comes to balancing cholesterol, natural solutions are the most gentle and are effective.

If your LDL (bad) cholesterol is too high it may increase your risk of heart attack and stroke. You need to keep the LDL in check and increase the HLD (good) cholesterol, which helps shuttle the bad out of your body.

Its well established that simply losing weight has cholesterol lessening effects. Much of this success could be due to the nature of how weight is lost: through exercise (above) and diet (see below). Exercise metabolizes fats in the body and a healthy diet should decrease inflammation-causing processed foods from entering your body.

3 Control Your Blood Pressure Keeping an eye on blood pressure is key to preventing it from getting too high and being a risk factor in heart disease and stroke. Again, exercise and diet are your friends here. Get up and move more to reduce HBP and lose weight. You can also limit your alcohol consumption and eat a heart-healthy diet. You might consider these 5 supplements for healthy blood pressure, start drinking beet juice and be sure to eat these 20 foods for a strong heart.

4 Eat Better Along with exercise, diet is a pillar of any wellness program and certainly has direct effects on many facets of the causes and prevention of heart disease and stroke. This is often difficult for people to change because we are creatures of habit. But making a change to a heart healthy diet is essential.

East more fresh fruit and vegetables. Choose lean proteins over fatty meats. Eat more whole grains and less processed ones. Avoid added salts, fats and sugars. Eat more wild Alaskan salmon. Limit your intake of saturated fat and full-fat dairy and avoid trans fats (found mostly in processed, packaged foods).

5 Lose Weight Losing weight is important for controlling diabetes and risk of stroke and heart attack. With heart disease being the No. 1 killer, its no surprise that 70% of Americas are overweight or obese. The AHA recommends losing 2 pounds a month to total 24 pounds per year to get you there safely and avoid the rebound weight gain of many fad diets.

Increasing exercise, making healthier eating choices, and increasing fiber intake will all help you lose weight. But also consider portion control. Researchers at Cornell University found that junk food is not the cause of obesity in America. In fact, it is simply our lack of portion control; that is, the vast quantity of food we eat daily.

6 Reduce Blood Sugar Dropping your blood sugar is essential to reducing your risk of diabetes, heart disease and stroke. Not only that, but elevated blood sugar can increase your risk of heart disease and stroke by 4 times! Exercise and diet are the key to reducing blood sugar. Click here for more tips on naturally lowering your blood sugar.

7 Stop Smoking A no-brainer Smoking causes one in five deaths and these are all preventable by quitting. Quitting smoking can help prevent heart disease, stroke, cancer and lung disease. There are several methods to help you quit, and this Free Guide can help you!

Motivation So, Americas No. 1 disease is preventable in 80% of cases. And the prevention model is steeped in making healthier choices in these seven areas weve just outlined. But these seven areas all are affected directly by exercising more and adopting a healthier diet. So what more do you need to get started?

How about a little motivation

The chilling statistics from the AHA and ASA are a scary wake-up call to everyone. Have a look at these deadly 7 deadly facts, then, get busy turning your 7 risk factors into 7 lucky lifesaving habits:

Coronary heart disease accounts for 1 in 7 deaths in the US, killing over 360,000 people a year. About 790,000 people in the US have heart attacks each year. Of those, about 114,000 will die. There are 580,000 new attacks and 210,000 recurrent attacks each year in the US. Each year, about 795,000 people experience a new or recurrent stroke. Approximately 610,000 of these are first attacks, and 185,000 are recurrent attacks. Stroke is a leading cause of serious long-term disability in the US. In 2013, worldwide prevalence of stroke was 25.7 million, with 10.3 million people having a first stroke. Stroke was the second-leading global cause of death behind heart disease in 2013, accounting for 11.8 percent of total deaths worldwide.

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Baby Boomers and Gen X like to fault millennials for complaining about, well, everything, but it looks like 20-somethings finally have some ground to stand on with one big gripe: It's harder now than ever before to lose weight. And before you let mom and dad tell you it's because of what else? social media, think again. Those #foodporn photos kids these days post all the time aren't doing the damage. (At least, there's not a study on that yet.)

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According to researchers, even if you work out as much and eat the same amount as people did in the '70s and '80s, you're not going to get a summer bod nearly as easily. After comparing weights of people with the same lifestyles and similar food intake in 1988 and 2006, they saw that the latter group had a BMI 2.3 points higher than the first group. They go on to hypothesize three reasons why this is so.

For starters, there's the fact that we're exposed to a lot more chemicals than folks have been in the past. A recent, separate study found that one-third of fast food packaging contains harmful additives, but products you find in grocery stores can have them, too. Things that fall under that umbrella include pesticides and flame retardants, and they can alter your hormones, affecting the way you put on weight. Prescription drugs are also to blame, researchers say. Doctors hand out more scripts for antidepressants, which are often linked to weight gain.

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But the third assumption might be the most upsetting because there's literally nothing you can do about it. Americans' microbiomes, the army of bacteria in your gut, have altered since the '80s. This is not necessarily new: Humans' microbiomes have been changing since ancient times. Even so, the changes in the past few decades have made us more prone to weight gain and obesity. It might be all the meat we're eating at last, a case for Meatless Mondays!) or the artificial sweeteners that clog so many foods.

Unfortunately, it looks like all those out-of-our-hands factors are majorly bumming out Americans. Many overweight people have stopped even trying to shed pounds. In March, researchers analyzed health surveys conducted between 1988 and 2014 by the U.S. government and noticed the percentage of people who said they were trying to slim down dropped from 55 percent in earlier years to 49 percent.

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Yogahas gone from something of a pastime at retreats to a serious fitness trend pretty darn quickly.So, for those of you who want to lose weight easily and quickly, yoga maythe answer youre looking for. Here are 5 yoga poses to lose weight easily and quickly

When youre on the heavierside of the scale, it shows on your face too(double chin, heres looking at you). So while youre trying to shed those kilos off, why notlose some grams fromyour face as well? Kareena Kapoor made facial yogapopularwhen she revealed it as one of her beauty secrets.

Also called the Downward Dog, Adho Mukh Svanasana is perhaps the most recognizable of all yoga poses. Not only is it (somewhat) easy to master, but it is also one of the most effective. The pose helps work on your biceps and back. However, this exercise is best avoided for those with carpel tunnel syndrome, shoulder injuries and high blood pressure.

Chaturanga Dandasana issimilar to a plank, but with some changes. If you want to push yourself to get some more core stability, this pose is the one for you. However, do not do this pose if you have had a shoulder or hand injury in the past.

Urdhva Mukha Svanasanais also called the Upwards Facing Dog and is great for holding your weight and toning your arms. Those with neck and shoulder injuries should avoid this one.

Paripurna Navasana is alsoknown as the Naukasana, this pose is supposed to be de-stressing and helps keep the digestive system fit and healthy, while also flexing your abdomen for better movement. This pose is difficult to master, but definitely worth the benefits. If you get this one right, its a big yay for you.

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While carb-loading before exercise can increase performance in particular sports fields, such as sprinting, it stops the body from using stored body fat for energy.

So if the point of your workouts is to keep slim, going fasted is what you need to do.

This is the latest advice from personal trainer and owner of Naturafit, Max Lowery.

He said: Over the course of the day you go in and out of fed and fasted states.

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Initially, your workouts will fell a lot harder than before, but quite quickly your body will become more efficient as your muscles learn to use less glycogen and burn fat for fuel instead.

The fasted state lasts for about four to six hours after your last meal, during which time your body releases insulin to lower your blood sugar, proteins and fats are absorbed by the digestive system, and glucose is transported to the muscles to be used as energy (glycogen).

Six hours after eating you enter the fasted state. Glucagon is released to keep your blood sugar at normal levels. Your body starts to break down adipose (fat) tissue into free fatty acids, which can then be converted into a form of energy known as ketone bodies. In laymans terms, youre burning fat for energy.

As soon as you start eating, the process is halted. Insulin now inhibits the breakdown of fatty acids, leading your body to burn the sugars youve just ingested. The fat burning stage is over.

Writing for the Telegraph, Max says the theory behind fasted exercise is strong, but suggests anyone used to a heavy carb load before their workout need to ease themselves in gently.

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He suggests starting your fasted training with gentle aerobic activities, like walking jogging or swimming.

He said: Initially, your workouts will fell a lot harder than before, but quite quickly your body will become more efficient as your muscles learn to use less glycogen and burn fat for fuel instead.

Once you get used to it, you might find theres no going back. Ive spent the past four years training fasted - and three of those were as a competitive sprinter, competing nationally.

I hate the feeling of training with food in my stomach, I feel heavy, bloated and lethargic.

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But Max doesnt always exercise fasted. He still carb-loads before a race, to maximise his performance on the day.

When it comes to your gym workout, there are just five moves youll ever need to stay in shape.

From TRX to calisthenics, and strongman training to pilates, knowing which exercises to do can be as much of a challenge as motivating yourself to hit the gym.

Lawrence Hannah - personal trainer and founder of newly-launched back-to-basics functional training studio Metabolic London (www.metaboliclondon.com) - believes that its possible to remain in the best shape of your life with just five simple moves.

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