Janet Brooks of Fortitude Health & Wellness Reminds African Americans to Get Screened to Get Healthy

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Janet Brooks, President and CEO of Fortitude Health & Wellness
Inc. works hard to help African Americans understand how to analyze
their bodies and learn ways to help prevent and curb chronic diseases.
Fortitude Health & Wellness participated in the Black Enterprise
Golf and Tennis Challenge in Orlando, Fla., offering free screenings for
blood pressure, glucose, cholesterol, and bioelectrical impedance
analysis (BIA). Brooks was on-hand to discuss some of the things that
African Americans should continue to get screened for and offered some
helpful tips on how to prevent certain illnesses that are prevalent in
the black community.–todd williams


What is BIA?
Body composition — it measures cellular health, fat to muscle ratio,
hydration status, and (basal metabolic rate) which is how many calories
your body burns in a resting state. If you’re trying to lose weight,
you would need to intake your basal metabolic rate of calories. If you
don’t the body cannibalizes itself. You need those calories just for
maintenance of heart, liver, and lungs. So when people go on … 800
[or] 900 caloric intake diets, they actually cause more damage. This
tells you if your cells are being compromised by any type of disease.


Medicine is looking more at HDL [high-density lipoprotein, the good
cholesterol] vs. LDL [low-density lipoprotein, the bad cholesterol]. If
a person has a high HDL, they have less chance of a heart attack caused
by cholesterol. Statistics show that half the people that die of a
heart attack don’t even have high cholesterol. Hypertension is a killer
for us. We tend to be more stressed, so we’re trying to teach people to
handle their stress better. Breathe when you get angry. Get up and walk
around. Learn to handle what you can [and] know that what you can’t
[handle] — you just have to leave and let go.

How can you treat high glucose or diabetes?
Many type 2 diabetics, [if they would] lose weight, wouldn’t have to
be on medication. Exercise and eat your fruits and vegetables. Get up
in the morning [and] put maybe four fruits in a blender [with] some
skim milk. That’s all the servings you need. Understand how to get
those servings in and how important exercise is. If you can’t do 45
minutes, start with 20.


What’s the point?
We teach prevention strategies and have done this workshop to help
people, especially African Americans, reduce diseases. [We] give them
the tools to do that.

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