Take Five: Tips for Family Health This Fall

The start of a school year can ratchet up stress for families as they adjust to new schedules, classrooms and peers. But transition also offers opportunities to tweak habits toward a healthier lifestyle.

Dr. Robin Mogul, a child psychiatrist from Charlotte  who focuses on nutrition, recently teamed up with Dr. Carolyn Keeler, a Duke physician who specializes in physical medicine and rehabilitation, to offer "Healthy Families for the Fall," a seminar sponsored by DukeWell, Duke's health improvement program.

Mogul and Keeler are Bravewell Fellows who completed a two-year program in integrative medicine to learn to address the full range of physical, emotional, mental, social, spiritual and environmental influences that impact a person's health. Their seminar covered ways to cope from a mind, body and spirit perspective. They reviewed exercises to maintain flexibility and recipes for healthy snack and lunch ideas for children and adults.

"We don't always need to make big changes to make a big difference to our health," Mogul said. "Often it is more a matter of maintaining balance and proportion in what we eat and what activities we indulge in." 

Here are their five tips to reduce stress and optimize health. 

Make exercise an activity, not an effort

People often resist exercise because they think it is hard work, said Keeler, the Duke physician who specializes in physical medicine and rehabilitation. The antidote is to count all physical movement as exercise. "Kids are wired for physical activity and love to move, whether it is walking, running, playing with a hula hoop, or putting on music for 15 minutes for a dance party," Keeler said. "The important thing is to keep them busy and make it a family activity by joining in."

Avoid crisis cooking

Healthy eating requires planning, according to Mogul. "Try to avoid crisis cooking, where you come home and have no idea what is for supper," she said. "That leads to bad decisions." She suggested using the weekends to plan weekday menus and cooking double (or more) portions for freezing whenever possible. "We cook on the weekend and then my son can grab a frozen homemade brownie for his school lunch during the week," she said. Mogul included recipes for healthy brownies and other snacks.

Create an evening routine

As days get busier, slowing down in the evening becomes even more important. "A night-time ritual gives you time to gear down from the fast pace of the day, both physically and mentally," Keeler said. She recommends turning off electronics at least 60 minutes before bed, avoiding strenuous activity just before bedtime and having a healthy snack such as peppermint tea or milk before bed to eliminate nighttime hunger pangs.

Understand what's healthy and why

Mogul offered several tips to help youngsters and adults understand what's healthy and what's not. She said that at least half of each meal - and each snack - should consist of fruits or vegetables. The remaining half should be divided between lean protein and whole grains. She's also found an easy way to help kids understand why whole grains are important. "Bread you can roll up into a pea-sized ball is likely to be made of highly processed flour and will quickly dumps glucose into your body. This causes sugar rush and insulin surge, followed by energy crashes and spikes in hormones," she said. "Fruits, veggies and whole grains take longer to digest and give your body energy over a longer time."

Be role models

Mogul and Keeler both emphasized that children are natural copycats, so it is important to make healthy habits a family effort. "You may not think your teens see you as role model, but you are," Keeler said. "Even when children seem to be ignoring you, your behavior makes a difference."