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mmm 4B LIFE/C^e C^atlotte $o«t Thursday, June 1 .2006 Weekend in Vegas not to compelling By Cheris F. Hodges cheris.hodgeS'Athecharloltepostcom Th^e’s a reason why what happens in Vegas stays in There’s not much to tell. Honestly, Sin City isn’t as wild as you might think. Over the Memorial Day weekend, I decided to skip the regular jaunts and head over to Las Vegas with my best girlfriend. Actually, she won the trip and asked me to tag along. So I did. For months we were excited about the trip, hitting up some of the famed Las Vegas Strip. We’d decided that we’d take in a show or two. Of course, once we hit Sin City, plans were changed. We checked into the Las Vegas Hilton, a super plush hotel on the north end of the Strip. Now if you’re there just to gamble, you don’t have to leave the Hilton. Just like every place in Vegas, it has its own casino. The Baccarat room was hke something out of a James Bond movie - men and women dressed in formal wear sitting at the tables winning and losii^ money The lights and dings of the slot machines drew me and my home girl in. We’d said we weren’t going to spend all day inside a smoky casino. We hed. We ended up spending more hours on those machines than was in our plan. She won $20 and I lost $30. I was too through with gambling. It was on to another sin, gluttony We headed to Hatrah’s and hit the Flavors buffet. There was more food than you could ever image and since it was the weekend it was Champagne brunch with a fi:ee glass of the bubbly It was only a httle after 1 p m and people were snrkiTig down alcohol hke it was water. My home girl loves food, so we spent about two hours at the buffet sampling just about everything. 'The Chinese food and desserts were the best. After eatir^ our fill, we walked down the strip, taking pictures and hit ting up the most famous of landmarks. What I noticed about Vegas is a lot of elderly people seem to like this place, as did fami- hes with children. Nothing hke the commercials. I was nearly run over by more strohers and wheelchairs lhan when I went to Walt Disney World last summer, a place where you esqject to see families with kids. The MGM Grand is the hub . of the Strip and most people were there. We looked at the hons, watched people lose money and looked for celebri ties. We did a lot of walking after riding the monorail to get fiom casino to casino. The monorail reminded me of Disney World again. Next we went shopping. PHOTO/CHERIS HODGES The Las Vegas strip was almost as tame as Trade and Tryon streets in the Queen City. Just a httle north of the Strip are the Premimn Outlets. They’re much like the ones in Gaf&iey, S.C., however there were a few stores hke Harry and David and Van-Heusen that aren’t in South Carolina. Did I mention that my best fiiend is a shopahohc? Later that night, I decided that I wanted to see some of those quickie marriages that Vegas is so famous for. As it turned out, getting married there is a serious and planned type of thing. Unless, according to a wed- dir^ chapel hostess in the Harrah’s casino, you go te a drive-in chapel in downtown, a la Brittany Spears. My fiiend and I met a cou ple who’d come to Vegas the day before and had gotten married. They were picking out their wedding pictures. I wonder what the odds on that union will be. On our last night, we head ed back out on the Strip, went to a fiee block party where drunken people danced badly to ‘80s music. We were going to Studio 54 in the MGM Grand, but the line was out tile door. So we went shoppir^ at the Aladdin casino, where you could find some of the hottest and trendiest shops aroimd. Besides, after all that walking, we needed some flat shoes. The Vegas experience wasn’t what I’d dreamed up in my head, all night partying, scores of single black men hanging out and maybe a drive-thru wedding followed by a prompt annulment, but it was fun nonetheless. Just not as sinful as the legend of Vegas. Blacks fighting obesity with surgery Continued from page 3B Although some patients with Class Two Obesity can be candidates for surgery because of medical problems, Femstrom emphasizes tiie fact that surgery isn’t a quick fiix for obesity and may not be for everyone. “Just because people think, T’m big enough for surgery- sign me up,’ it doesn’t work hke that, “All the insurance compa nies have a mandatory six- month Mfestjde plan that you must complete with your doc tor that will say that this per son is demonstrating the abil ity not to lose weight, but to stick with a long-term pro gram. Because (patients’) hfestyles after surgery are way harder than before surgery” These challenges can be especially difficult for fami- hes who are used to eating less healthy foods because of cost, Httle access to healthy foods and cultural percep tions of how foods should be prepared. Valerie Campbell, author of “Cooking With Soxd” a bariatric cookbook,” said “hot and heavy” used to be her mantra regarding food. But after' losir^ 120 pounds fol lowing her gastric bypass surgery she has foimd ways to make her favorite foods healthy and has incorporated those recipes into her soul- food catering company “If you’re doing something hke fried chickeai, you can ixse low-fat breading mixes, low fat, low carb pancake mixes instead of flour,” she said. “Instead of using Crisco, you can ixse Canola or Ohve Oil. Use sometiiing natural, so that your body can break it down.” Another, more difficult chal- laige, can be that patients have unrealistic perceptions of how surgery will change their appearance. While surgery patients are warned about scarring and excess skin left behind after surgery some patients are disappoint ed by the fact that, in spite of their wdght loss, they may never be classified as “skin ny “If you look at someone that comes and has 100 pormds to lose, they can expect to lose 60 to’80 pounds with surgery- that’s realistic,” said Courcoulas. ‘Ideal weight is not a goal after surgery, but healthy weight is.” Pam Jennings, who under went gastric bypass surgery in 2003, agrees with Dr. Courcoulas that success for the bariatric surgmy patient cannot be determined by their weight or^ BMI number, but by their improved health. ‘T hke to look at it more of what other metrics I can look at,” said Jennings. “Pre surgery I could barely walk with the group I was with and now I can run on a tread mill for two miles without stopping. I feel a lot more confident in putting myself where I want to be and tiiink I need to be in my career.” Give advertising with The Post a try 704 376 0496 Cl^arlotte Obesity rises faster in poor teens THE ASSOCIATED PRESS CHICAGO-Older American teenagers Hving in poverty have grown fatter at a higher rate than their peers, accord ing to research that seems to imderscore the unequal bur den of obesity on the nation’s poor. “Tbday the percentage of adolescents age 15-17 who are overweight is about 50 percent higher in poor as compared to non-poor fami- hes, a difference that has emei^ed recently” said Johns Hopkins’ sociologist Richard Miech, the study’s lead author. Obesity rates among all teens climbed substantially during the study which cov ered 30 years. But the great divide according to income occurred most notably among the 15- to 17-year-old age group. That led one outside expert to challenge the findings. Rand Corp. economist Roland Sturm said it seems implau sible that yoimger teens would differ so much fium older teesns. Even if they do, he said, ‘Tt seems a rather secondary issue compared to tile general trend in weight gain across all youth.” Ivfiech argued that older teens generally have more autonomy to buy what they want and to determine their own activity levels, which he said might explain the results. And Sturm and other experts said the study’s underlying message about obesity and poverty is sound. The study appears in Wednesday’s Journal of the American Medical Association. It is based on data from 10,800 youngsters ages 12 to 17 who participat ed in four nationally repre sentative health surveys con ducted fium 1971 to 2004. The researchers deter mined poverty levels using family income and the U.S. Census Bureau’s poverty threshold. In the early 1970s, about 4 percent of poor yoimgsters ages 15 to 17 were severely overwei^t, compared with about 5 percent of teens who weren’t poor. By the early 2000s, those rates jumped to 23 percent of the poor and 14 percent of other kids, the researchers said. The results contrast with recent research su^esting that while the poor are most Hkely to be overweight, obesi ty rates among U.S. adults have climbed fastest in recent decades among those with annual salaries over $60,000, Miech said both could be right because eating and exercise habits are different for adults and adolescents. Over the past decade, the percentage of calories fi-om sweetened drinks has grown by more than 20 percent among kids in the 15-17 age group—an increase conc^- trated among the poor, he said. “We also find that physical inactivity increases with age in adolescence, as well as the probability of skipping break fast,” said Miech. “Both th^e factors are more Hkely to be found among the poor and are also associated with over weight.” Economic differences have been linked to other health problems too, including AIDS, cardiovascular disease and some cancers. The dis proportionate rates emea^ as wealthier people seek medical care and makfe Hfestjde changes, while the poor do not, said Barry Popkin, a nutrition scientist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, The study shows that this trend “is emei^it^ in late adolescence and just building into adulthood,” Popkin said. The results also show the need for healthful resources in low-income neighborhoods, said Dr. Rebecca Unger, a Chicago pediatrician who works with a group seeking to lower obesity rates among Chicago children. Adam Drewnowski, a University of Washington researcher, said the disparity will persist unless the under lying problem, poverty is also addressed. “The campaign against obe sity and the struggle against poverty are, in fact, one and the same,” he said. “...Healthier diets cost more,” he said, and access to physi cal activity “depends on how much money you’ve got.” On the Net: JAMA: hnp://Janxaxana-assnx)rg
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