MEETING SUMMARY - FEBRUARY 17, 2001

If you missed our February meeting, you missed some exciting stuff! We got to meet Nicole Brindle, our new Treasurer, AND her husband. Thanks for coming, husband! We keep encouraging husbands and others to attend so we were glad you were there! Thank you, Nicole for volunteering to be our Treasurer: we can now proceed with formalizing our group!

Our guest speaker, Jennie Comstock, Kinesiologist, gave some good tips on how exercise affects blood sugar control. Some of her tips included:

• If you're hypOglycemic (low blood sugar), eat complex carbohydrates 15-30 minutes before exercise.



• If you're hypERglycemic (high blood sugar, aka diabetic or borderline diabetic), you may not need to eat before exercising. In fact, exercise can help bring down your blood sugar level and thereby reduce your need for insulin.



• Walking at least 3 days/week is excellent, not only to reduce high blood pressure, and strengthen the heart and cardiovascular system, but also as a stress reducer. Since stress can result in adrenaline production, which in turn can cause a "cascade" effect with other hormones, it is especially important that PCOS women keep their stress levels down.



• Weight training is also beneficial, though it won't necessarily lower high blood pressure. It will, however, lower your osteoporosis risk by enabling your bones to absorb the calcium you are taking in. It's also good for sugar control, takes stress off joints by increasing the muscles ability to support those joints, and increases strength for daily activities. If you don't have access to a gym, and don't have access to exercise equipment at home, try using soup cans or pennies tied in a sock. The latter is great for draping across ankles while doing leg lifts! The weight can be increased in 50 cent increments. If you have a little money to spend on some equipment, Academy is a good source for inexpensive handheld dumbbells, and for resistance bands. Resistance bands are like giant stretchable rubber bands with which almost any muscle can be exercised. They're great for travel as they scrunch up and fit in a suitcase. Another good piece of equipment to have at home is the exercise ball or resistance ball. This is a giant ball, large enough to drape your body across. Great for stretching!! Comes in various sizes and runs around $40.



• Shoes: Jennie recommends purchasing cross-trainer shoes as the sole is more even. Especially if you will be doing both walking or aerobics and weight training. And measure your foot while standing and putting all your weight on the foot being measured. Why? Your foot can expand as much as one full shoe size when you stand up and/or walk as opposed to when you're sitting down. If you've experienced toe problems wearing your current size, try having your foot re-measured in the manner above. You may discover you need to go up a size!



• Would you like to join a gym? Several PCOS women have memberships at World Gym. If you can't afford the individual fees, approach your boss about your company signing up with World Gym's corporate program. One company that participates in the program automatically deducts the fee from paychecks. The cost for the employee and spouse was around $40/month - less than for one individual membership! The advantage to World Gym is that they have locations all over town and some locations out of town. Your membership would be good at any locations with some restrictions on out of town usage.



• Can't afford a gym membership? volunteer at your local YMCA! Jennie says volunteers usually get a free membership. The membership is only usable at the particular YMCA where you volunteer, but if you don't travel, that may not be a problem.

Someone at the meeting mentioned a company that offers discounts on purchases of multiple quantities of exercise equipment. The name of the exercise equipment company is Spri. Their web site is: www.leighcrews.com/spri.htm We will be looking further into this to see if it's something our group could take advantage of.

Kudos to Debbie Jefferson, our Vice-President, who introduced our speaker and kept us moving smoothly along! Victoria, we missed you and others who didn't make it and look forward to seeing you at OME! We had a good time and shared lots of information. We hope you can make it to our next meeting in April at the same location. 1 pm is our start time. COME ONE, COME ALL! :-)