Go Green and Save Some Green

Living a life that helps the environment can help your wallet as well.

Help for Your Hide

Your body�s largest organ sheds about 30,000 to 40,000 cells per minute. It provides protection from infection and sickness. It eliminates waste fluid and regulates your body�s temperature. If you haven�t figured it out yet, we�re talking about your skin. Because November is National Healthy Skin Month, devote some time to improving your outer shell.

Students Crave Healthier Choices

This year�s college food trends list from Sodexo, a food service provider on 600 campuses in the U.S., reveals that students are hungry for nourishing foods. To see the meals that comprise the top 10 college food trends in 2010:

Here are the top 10 college food trends in 2010 according to the food service provider Sodexho:
1. Apricot-glazed Turkey
2. Meatloaf with Frizzle-Fried Onions
3. Vietnamese Pho (Rice Noodle Soup)
4. Vegetarian Lentil Shepherd's Pie
5. Chicken Adobo (Mexican Stew with Chiles)
6. Stuffed Pork Chops
7. Vegetarian Jambalaya
8. Lemon Herbed Baked Tilapia
9. Rotisserie Chicken
10. Home Style Pot Roast

Encouraging Job News

Here is some positive news for college students looking ahead to employment opportunities after graduation. Employers responding to a recent survey from the National Association of Colleges and Employers indicated that they expect to hire 13.5% more new college graduates from the Class of 2011 compared to 2010. To find out more, VISIT http://www.naceweb.org/s009012010/job_market_outlook/

Fitness U

Maddie Burke, Duke University student and personal trainer, shows you a workout you can do at home without weights

Hey y�all. My name�s Maddie Burke, and I�m a senior at Duke University. I�m also a certified personal trainer. Today, I�m going to show you a workout that you can do at home without any sort of weights. All you need is a chair.

We�re going to start by doing push ups with your feet on a chair. This allows you to get a wider range of motion and engage more muscle groups. We�re going to be doing fifteen of these.

Next we�re going to do lunges with one foot on a chair. Again, this will give you a wider range of motion, and if you raise your hands above your head, you�ll be challenged to balance. Always remember to prevent your knee from going too far in front of your toe.

In the next exercise, we are going to engage our arms again by doing the standard dip using the chair. As you can see, you want to lower your body to the point where your arms make a ninety-degree angle. Then, you want to lift yourself up. We�re going to do this exercise fifteen times.

Finally, we�re going to do an ab called the froggy crunch. Here, you�re going to extend your legs straight, extending your arms out to the side. Then, you�re going to pull your arms and legs in. Do this whole thing twenty times.

 

Ask the Doc

Dr. P. Davis Smith, medical director at Wesleyan University�s Davison Health Center, answers questions submitted by our readers.

How long should it take for a badly sprained ankle to recover? It's been nearly six months, and it is still painful to move my ankle. Should I worry or seek help?

�Rachel, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada

With most ankle sprains that we see, it takes about 3 to 4 weeks for students to get back to better than 90% of full function. Some take a good bit longer. Sometimes
this is because of the severity of the injury, but usually it is because of a lack of commitment to rehab. Six months is a long time after the injury to still have pain and
definitely warrants reevaluation.

Most ankle injuries are inversion events (twisting inward). The injury, in consequence, is to the outside of the ankle (lateral malleolus). This part of the ankle has three
major ligaments, and the severity of an ankle sprain is usually graded by the extent of injury to each ligament. Most sprains we see in our clinic are the result of club-level
sports mishaps and daily accidents (curb missteps are common), and these usually entail partial tears of the first or first and second ligaments from the top of the ankle.
More severe injuries can actually destabilize the ankle or involve fractures. Fractures are usually of the fibula, the smaller, outside (lateral) bone of the lower leg.
Few ankle injuries require x-rays for evaluation because almost all of them are soft-tissue injuries. The treatment involves rest, ice, compression, and elevation. Assuming
no danger signs on exam, we generally recommend weight-bearing activity as tolerated, ice for the first few days, compression with an Aircast, anti-inflammatory
medication such as ibuprofen for 3 to 10 days, and elevation. Elevation is especially important because gravity makes it difficult for the leg veins to clear damaged tissue
and inflammatory fluid from the ankle area. I recommend students lay on their backs with their buttocks against a wall and the injured foot up at ninety degrees for
about 15 minutes three times a day for the first few days. This can dramatically speed the pace of recovery.

The first physical therapy we recommend is spelling out the alphabet with the big toe once or twice an hour while awake. The letters should be as big as possible without
causing undue pain. Once pain is controlled, swelling down, and weight-bearing better than 80% of normal, we recommend physical therapy to help chase out the last of
the inflammation, signal the ligaments to facilitate correctly oriented repair, and rebuild strength and proprioceptive (sense of the location of the foot in space) sense.
An ankle that is still not tolerating weight-bearing two weeks after the injury is a reason to go back to your provider for reevaluation. Sometimes the original injury may
have been more serious than first apparent. Often patients just need a reminder about best practices for caring for the injury. The good news about ankle sprains is that
proper management often leads to a stronger, more flexible ankle than pre-injury.