This week’s blog is a guest post from Ishea Muhammad, the founder and editor of Black to My Roots.

Black to My Roots is an uplifting space and resource with blogs and videos on health and wellbeing, motherhood, parenting, relationships and more. In today’s blog, Ishea discusses keeping healthy and active through walking.

Our health often suffers from us having a busy schedule and as a result the need for us to do some type of regular exercise can go out the window. In falling victim to this we have to be creative in how we can get that workout in and keep fit.

In recently having my second child and initiating my mission to get back to my pre-pregnancy weight and get fit I’ve taken it to the street…. well OK the park to walk off the excess pounds. I have seen great improvement in my energy levels and weight loss and have met other Mum’s and made a friend or two!

Whatever your circumstances so long as you are mobile, young or old you can walk your way to fitness and reap all the benefits that it brings whilst aiding your time management as you make walking a multi-tasking activity. You are in control as you choose to walk slowly or at a faster pace depending on your level of fitness, ease your way in and take it from there.

If like me you are a busy mum with young children you can have great fun with your little ones helping them to build stamina and get a daily workout whilst getting in some rare me time for yourself as they run around.

Being outdoors in beautiful surrounding takes your attention off the stresses of life and opens you up to be creative as you remember that the gift of life is awesome and you can bring into reality anything you visualize if you just believe in yourself, with God’s backing everything is possible.

On the social side of things a walk in the park can open up some great networking opportunities as you meet other parents and exchange all the parental knowledge and share what you have in common. Your children will grow their circle of little friends to hook up with every now and then too so it’s a win-win situation!

If you have a dog you can take him or her along whilst you walk with the children, I’ve witnessed a mum running with her baby in the pram whilst the dog ran alongside them, how’s that for multi-tasking!

The first step is to think of how you can increase your opportunity to walk as a regular form of exercise such as getting off a few stops before your destination when taking the bus to get that power walk in. You can leave the car at home for short trips especially whilst the weather is warm.

The benefits of walking are numerous:

Watch the video below and click the description box for references to learn more about the health benefits listed above.

The Lake Foundation would like to thank Ishea Muhammad for her guest blog post which was first published on 26th September 2014 here. Visit Black to My Roots for more information and you can stay connected with Ishea through the social media platforms below:

Twitter: @blacktomyroots
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/blacktomyroots
Instagram: http://instagram.com/blacktomyroots
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/blacktomyroots1

Fibroids are very common in black women with an estimated 55% of black women expected to develop them. This is significantly more common than in white women with black women being 2-3 times more likely to develop fibroids than their white counterparts.

The reason that fibroids are more common in black women is not fully understood but it is thought to be a combination of genetic and lifestyle factors.

The quest to understand why fibroids are more common in black women is an ongoing one, and one area that was explored a couple of years ago by researchers at Boston University was whether relaxers (chemical hair straighteners) increase a women’s risk of developing fibroids.

Relaxers are seemingly a good place to start when it comes to identifying factors that put black women at a higher risk of developing fibroids. This is a product that is specifically used by black women and is used by millions of us worldwide.  But, more importantly, as fibroids can be stimulated by the hormones oestrogen and progesterone and relaxers are known to contain chemicals that behave like hormones (phthalates), then logically we can hypothesise that use of relaxers may have an impact of the development of fibroids.

As part of the Black Women’s Health Study in the US, researchers explored whether relaxers may play a part in the development of fibroids. This study included 23,580 black women from across the US and they found a very slight increase (17% increase) in the rate of fibroids when women who  used relaxers were compared with women who had never used relaxers. They also found that there was a slightly positive trend when they looked at how often people used relaxers, how long and how many relaxer burns they experienced. So for example women who had used relaxers for more than seven years had the highest rate of fibroids, but this was still only slightly higher (23% higher) than women who never used relaxers.

Looking at this we could say that the findings suggest that relaxers may play a part in the development of fibroids but when you delve deeper it is harder to say for sure. Firstly, the study shows an association between fibroids and relaxers it doesn’t actually confirm that relaxers cause fibroids. Also, researchers found through DNA testing that black women with more African ancestry used relaxers more than those with more European ancestry and once they took ancestry into account there was less of a link between fibroids and relaxers. What this means is that the association between relaxers and fibroids in this study may have had nothing to do with the relaxers  playing a part in the development of fibroids but it was actually the degree of African ancestry that is the important factor.

The researchers therefore stated that:

“ We cannot rule out the possibility that greater African ancestry, thought to increase genetic predisposition to uterine leiomyomata  (fibroids), explains part or all of the observed association”.

Additionally, researchers didn’t have any information on the brands of relaxers women used or the exact chemicals that women would have been exposed to and how much they were exposed to. This makes it hard to say if women were in fact exposed to the hormone-like chemicals that are of concern when it comes to fibroids.

The take home message is that relaxers probably do not play a major role in the development of fibroids and if they do their impact is very small.  It would appear that the main risk factor is African Ancestry.

We do know that there are some lifestyle factors that can reduce a women’s risk of fibroids. These include exercise, maintaining a healthy weight, reducing your red meat consumption and eating a diet high in green vegetables.  So, we can all reduce our risk by adopting a healthy lifestyle

You can read the original research paper from the Black Women’s Health Study below.

On Thursday 17^th July, Abi Begho, our Founder & CEO, represented The Lake Foundation on the Brain Tumour Thursday show on Croydon Radio.

On Tuesday, we attended an event hosted by King’s College London and Ipsos MORI entitled “Public health: an individual’s or the government’s responsibility?”. This was a really interesting event that featured:

• Duncan Selbie, Chief Executive of Public Health England
• Ben Page, Chief Executive of Ipsos MORI
• Janet Atherton, President of the Association of Directors for Public Health
• Louise Park, Head of Public Health Research at Ipsos MORI
• Dr James Rubin, Senior Lecturer at King’s College London

The speakers explored the range of approaches that the government use to encourage the public to adopt a healthy lifestyle (education, incentives, taxation, bans and innovative behavioural science techniques) and the public’s reaction to these. The key questions this event aimed to answer were: Does the public welcome such approaches and where do they draw the line between individual and state responsibility?

These questions were answered by Louise Park, Head of Public Health Research at Ipsos MORI, who presented data from a recent study. This study showed that the public were evenly split about their feelings about government involvement in influencing an individual’s behaviour to encourage a healthy lifestyle with 39% saying the government should intervene and 32% saying the government should not intervene.

In terms of where the public begins to draw the line between individual and state responsibility for health, predictably the public starts to draw the line as they begin to feel their freedom of choice is being compromised.

The findings from the Ipsos MORI study opened up a discussion on the role the government should play. Generally it was felt that the government should be an information provider who gently nudges the public into rethinking their behaviour but there was concern from attendees that the government does give mixed messages which can be confusing and this is further compounded by media misrepresentation of the facts. In response to this Public Health England stressed that the government follows the most reliable evidence when providing information and will continue to stand by that approach.

The event ended with agreement that improving the public’s health requires everyone to take some responsibility, this includes members of the public, the government, food manufacturers, restaurants, schools and many more.

This was a good debate to have and we recognise the role that charities like ourselves can play in developing healthy lifestyle programmes for communities that the government does not reach.

On 27th March, we attended the 100 Black Men of London’s event “Keep calm and let’s talk about prostate cancer”. This was a very interesting event that highlighted the many challenges faced by black men when it comes to prostate cancer.

The event started with a presentation by Dr Kingsley Osayi, a Consultant Pathologist at Basildon and Thurrock Hospital. Dr Osayi gave an overview of the role of the prostate, common prostate conditions, the symptoms of prostate cancer, risk factors and treatment.

The most startling statistic from Dr Osayi’s presentation was just how common prostate cancer is in black men with 1 in 4 black men expected to develop prostate cancer compared to 1 in 8 white men. It was unsettling to learn that there still isn’t a clear understanding of why prostate cancer is more common in black men, but the prevailing view is that there is a genetic reason for this rather than it being lifestyle related.

After Dr Osayi set the scene it was time for the debate, which was chaired by Kola Sonaike, President of 100 Black Men of London and featured the following panellists:
· Elijah Ashanti Israel– a prostate cancer survivor
· Rose Thompson – Director, BME Cancer Communities
· Ann Smart – Clinical Nurse Specialist, Prostate Cancer UK
· Dr Kingsley Osayi – Consultant Pathologist, Basildon and Thurrock Hospital

We learnt from the debate that:

1. Black men suffer from a more aggressive type of prostate cancer that develops at a younger age than the less aggressive forms that affect the general population. NHS guidelines recommend PSA testing should be made available, if requested, to men from the age of 50, but this is not helpful for black men and may need to be readjusted to allow black men to easily request a PSA test at a younger age.

2. Black men with a family history of prostate and breast cancer are not being dealt with appropriately by their doctors. Anyone with a strong family history of cancer should be provided with sound advice from their doctor; given the opportunity to discuss regular PSA testing; and also be offered a referral to a genetic counsellor for a discussion about what their family history might mean about their risk of developing prostate cancer and what options are available to reduce their risk or to ensure early diagnosis.

3. There is a low level of awareness of prostate cancer in the black community and a lack of willingness to discuss this issue.This means that black men don’t realise the seriousness of urinary symptoms and don’t visit their doctors soon enough. Furthermore there is an unwillingness to discuss cancer in the black community which means the challenges experienced by black men are not identified so key issues are not addressed at a political level.

The debate ended with agreement that these issues need to be dealt with on two levels. Firstly, GPs need to be made aware of how prostate cancer affects black men and guidelines need to be developed on how GPs should manage black men especially those with a family history of prostate, breast and ovarian cancer. Secondly, the black community needs to be more informed about prostate cancer to ensure we are more proactive on this issue so that more men are diagnosed early.

A lot of the issues raised at the event have been analysed and presented in a report entitled ‘Hear me Now’ written by Rose Thompson. You can read the report here and a follow-up report will be launched in a of couple weeks’ time.

We thoroughly enjoyed this most informative event and The Lake Foundation will continue to raise awareness of prostate cancer and will work with other organisations to address the issues raised.