Health fair

On Wednesday Feb 11, SJC held a community health fair. If you read this blog regularly, you should have known it was coming because it was posted on the "Coming Soon" section. Judging from the few community people who attended, not too many people got the message.

When classes let out, there was a crowd of people signing up. To enter, you had to sign a form that basically said that you would not hold them responsible for anything.
There were quite a few tables set up. Some were full of information.
Some had people telling you about good health or dental procedures.
Others did things to you. One of the first stops for a lot of people was the blood pressure station. The only thing that hurt here was hearing the results.
Across the way was another blood pressure station that used a automatic cuff rather than the old method relying on the stethoscope. Unfortunately for me, the results were almost the same. They gave me several pages of instructions on what changes I could make to live healthier. I suspect I need to reduce the amount of junk food I am eating.
Do you recognize the little blue things. Yep. It is the blood-stick station.
Ouch!
Here is another person who has been stuck and is having blood drawn into a little capillary tube. They tested for cholesterol and blood sugar.
I barely passed the blood sugar test. Maybe I would have done better if I had studied harder.
The oximeter test was easy and did not hurt at all. It measures oxygen saturation (and pulse rate). I was hoping for a 99%, but they only gave me a 96%.
Next to it was a test for carbon monoxide that they only gave that to people who smoke. One student I know wanted to take it even though he does not smoke. He scored a perfect zero and thought it would be funny to tell them that smoking did not hurt him after all. However, he had enough sense not to do that.
There was a station that measured the body mass index, body fat, and basal metabolic rate (BMR). It used a special scale hooked up to a computer. You had to stand on this with bare feet. I am not sure why you needed to be barefooted, but the scale was clearly doing something more than just weighing people. My guess is that it was using bioelectrical impedance analysis. One student who took this had a body fat percentage of less than 8% and was told he was anorexic. I doubt that--he is a sprinter on the track team. Another student was told he had a body fat percent well over twenty, and I doubt that too, because he is a muscular football player. I will not tell you what I got on this test, but it is probably pretty accurate.

The BMR is an estimate of how many calories you will burn if you are a complete couch potato, that is, if you do not exercise at all but just stay in bed. A student who is a basketball player had a BMR that was 600 calories above mine. I bet his parents see a huge reduction in the grocery bill when he is in school.
I did not have time to stop at the massage station. Most of the stations did not hurt, a few were mildly painful or uncomfortable, but this was the only one that looked like it was pleasurable.
If you missed this fair, you can always have your blood pressure taken if you donate blood. Today the Red Cross is at St. Luke's Lutheran Church.