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4A Daily News – Tuesday, August 14, 2012 Vitalityfitness health MINNEAPOLIS (MCT) — So you always thought the best parking spot was in the front row? The state's largest health insurer is taking over a handful of outlier parking spaces at shop- ping malls across Min- nesota this month to encourage people to sneak in a few extra footsteps on the way inside. The idea is to remind shoppers that small behavior changes can have a big health impact, particularly amid an epidemic of obesity that cuts short lives and weighs down the health care system with added costs. "If you talk to any- body who at one point was inactive, you find they started making one little change — they took the steps up one flight at work instead of the elevator … or they started carrying in their groceries one bag at a time," said Dr. Marc Manley, chief preven- tion officer at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota. "Pretty soon they were doing a lot more physical activity." For the campaign, Eagan, Minn.-based Blue Cross is spraying remote parking spaces with a message of action: "Today is the day we burn calories by parking here." Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota wants you to move back. Way back. & Company urges parking far from entrance Insurance more predictive of death after heart attack than race BALTIMORE (MCT) — Health insurance was a better predictor of survival from health attacks and strokes than race, according to Johns Hopkins researchers who looked at health outcomes in some Maryland hospitals. Specifically, those who did not have coverage were more likely to die in the hospital, even after accounting for race and socioeconomic factors, according to the researchers at the Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. "African Americans living in poor, urban neighbor- hoods bear a high burden of illnesses and early death, from cardiovascular disease in particular," said Derek Ng, lead author of the study and graduate student in the department of epidemiology, in a statement. "Our find- ings suggested that a lack of health insurance, or being under-insured, is a major cause of insufficient treatment and subsequent premature death." The study, published online in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, looked at 13,000 patients form three Maryland hospitals treating patients of all income levels. Those uninsured had a 31 percent higher risk of early death after a heart attack and a 50 percent higher risk after atherosclerosis than those with private insurance. The researchers said that as more people become insured under federal health care reform, efforts are needed to look more closely at the factors that could explain the disparities. MCT photo Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota put "park away for the day" encouraging people to park farther away for the extra exercise. The spots are marked with signs and painted with bright colors. These were pho- tographed on the east side of the mall near Macys at Southdale Center in Edina, Minn. began in 2005 as a work- place effort to get Blue Cross members to take the stairs. The promo- tion has endured and expanded into a broader effort focused on com- munity health, Manley said. The promotion is part of the organization's "do" campaign, which About 61 percent of Minnesotans are over- weight or obese and 66 percent have sedentary jobs, according to Blue Cross. Experts recom- mend 30 minutes of daily exercise, which can be broken into five- or 10-minute chunks. Barbara Loken, a 1010 Jefferson St., Red Bluff 527-7800 Complete Dental Care • Cosmetic Dentistry • Adults And Children • New Patients Warmly Welcomed! www.MooreandPascarella.com University of Minnesota marketing professor and expert in consumer psy- chology, said tactics such as what Blue Cross is trying can be effec- tive. simple explanations help people trigger certain thoughts that, 'Yes, this is relevant. This is important to me in my life,'" she said. "Even if they don't actually use the space, it increases awareness that the num- ber of steps you take going into the mall is important for your phys- ical health." "The use of color and The campaign runs through August at nine malls in the Twin Cities area as well as in Albertville, Duluth, Mankato, Rochester and St. Cloud. Twin Cities malls taking part are Southdale Center in Edina, Ridgedale Center While Blue Cross will get some branding mileage out of the park- ing lot campaign, it's another example of how the message is changing for insurers who see pro- moting a healthy lifestyle as good for business. "We no longer think of marketing as just applying to commercial products and services," said Loken, who has studied how mass media campaigns change health behaviors. "Now there's the mar- in Minnetonka, Eden Prairie Center and Maplewood Mall. keting of social ideas," she said. "You're not trying to get people to go talk to their doctors. You're using sophisti- cated marketing tech- niques to get people to remember things quick- ly and easily." redbluff.mercy.org www.redbluff.mercy.org Community Corrections Partnership Meeting August 16, 2012 at 10:00 a.m. Wetter Hall, Main Room 1740 Walnut Street, Red Bluff 527-5380 ex. 3061 Community Basic Life Support 6:00pm-10:00pm August 14th Tuesday Columba 529-8026 Grief Support Group 3:00pm-5:00pm August 30th Thursdays Coyne Center 528-4207 www.redbluff.mercy.org Stressed-out men prefer a fleshier woman WASHINGTON (MCT) — There may be a love story at the intersection of the nation's battered economy and a steady rise in its obesity rates: Compared with men without a care in the world, men who are stressed out are more like- ly to find a rounder, plumper woman more attractive. Men under stress not only rated the attractiveness of heavier women more positively, they found women appeal- ing across a wider size spectrum than did men who were not stressed, says a new study published by the open-access journal Public Library of Science (PLoS) One. Those findings are in line with long-standing evolution- ary theories of how humans define beauty ideals in the opposite sex. Whether it's a man's square chin or the curve of a woman's waist, physical traits that project good health, maximum fertility and access to food and shelter promise the interested party the prospect of a good mate for carrying forth one's genes, and are thus more attractive. By this reasoning, traits that convey ample access to food and an ability to withstand hardship will become more appealing in places and at times when food supplies are scarce or threatened. The study, conducted by researchers from the University of Westminster in London, gathered 81 heterosexual male university students between the ages of 18 and 42, and divided them into two groups. Each individual in the no- stress group was shown to a quiet room before he was asked to judge a series of photographic and standardized images of women who ranged from emaciated to obese. To induce stress in the members of one group, the researchers put individuals in a mock job-interview situa- tion, standing each man before a video camera, tape recorder and a panel of four judges and asking him to make a five-minute pitch for himself. The "stressed" participants were then further rattled by having to count backward from 1,022 by factors of 13. In the wake of those trials, the average "ideal" body shape identified by the stressed men was larger than that identified by men who had not experienced the combined pressures of a job interview and arithmetic gymnastics. The stressed men rated female body shapes at a higher body- mass index as more attractive than did the unstressed men. At the same time, the stressed men were a little less dis- criminating in their references than were the unstressed men: They found themselves attracted to a wider range of body shapes and sizes than did the unstressed men. In designing their experiment, the researchers acknowl- edged that beauty ideals are strongly influenced by culture and can differ markedly among various ethnic groups. As a result, all of the participants in the study were white British men. Further research, the researchers said, might aim to flesh out how the experience of chronic stress — a more toxic form of stress than that induced in a 15-minute job interview — might account for differences in body-size judgments within and between ethnic groups. JOIN THE NEW GENERATION OF GOOD LISTENERS Wednesday August Every 15, 22 & 29 Pine Street Plaza 332 Pine Street, Suite G Red Bluff, CA Stacy L. 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